#jotober2018

Adair might be many things. An artist, a good cook, full of pies and puns, but he was pretty sure he wasn't poisonous. Fortunately the person to ask came over and sat on Etri's other side. "Blade, I'm not poisonous, right?"

Besides, why would Etri touch him if he was? Although considering Etri's habit of self-sacrifice, maybe that was the wrong question to ask.

Blythe picked at the dried paint on her shirt. "I'd probably call you contagious... Come on, were you even using blue paint today?"

She was a big help.

"I do not mean that in the literal sense when I call you both as such. It is figurative. If I may ask, how is it that a toadstool appears?"

Oh! Adair knew this one! The perk of growing up in the home of a culinary master. "Something to do with underground fungus and growing where there's decomposing wood."

Etri was silent for a long moment. Adair turned his head to find Etri's eyebrows knitted. Did this mean there was finally a fact he didn't know or was Adair's information that wrong? It had been a long time since he went mushroom gathering and he was never very good at paying attention.

"It's a food fact. Of course he's right."

Adair stuck his tongue out at her. "And the girl with enough plants in her house to equal a small forest would know. I swear I saw one trying to push my bags out the door the other day."

Etri cleared his throat. "If I am incorrect, then the reason behind the term is incorrect and I will cease using it."

"Oh no you don't," Blythe said. "You're not off the hook that easily. What's the reason?"

Etri pushed himself back on the bed until his back was against the wall, making it so that he could see both of his pair. "I will tell. In the temple in which I grew, relationships are forbidden. I have said this, yes?"

Adair nodded and took one of Etri's hands while Blythe took the other, earning a once-rare smile from Etri. Those were becoming more common, even during a subject that Adair knew made him uncomfortable. When Blythe and Adair had been alone earlier in the day, she'd grumbled and threatened to go to Montglace to give everyone there a piece of her mind for making Etri's past so terrible. If Etri's birthplace hadn't been a gazillion miles away, she probably would have done it right then. Adair couldn't blame her.

Etri squeezed their hands tightly. "Yet still there are those who seek out companionship and friendship. This is done in secret."

While Adair tried to wrap his head around not being able to have even friendships, Blythe was getting impatient. "And this ties into mushrooms how? Do the people involved sneak out for dinner together?"

Etri shook his head. "If you knew Montglace as I, you would not jest. It is because these relationships are unexpected and dangerous. The same is thought of toadstools, which are believed to grow in unexpected places."

Blythe let out a little snort of a laugh. "Okay, unexpected I can believe. You can't possibly be saying that Adair is dangerous. He's about as dangerous as a kitten in a basket of yarn."

"Hey! I can be dangerous! There was the time I... no, that won't work, that just ended in me burning dinner. Or when... no, that was Sol getting me into trouble. Wait! ... No, that was Sol again." Adair tapped his head with the palm of his hand. There had to be a memory in there somewhere. After discarding a few more possibilities, he had to admit defeat. "Okay, yeah, fine, I'm a kitten."

"You're sweet, even if you aren't poisonous." Blythe leaned over to kiss his cheek, then turned back to Etri. "So you're saying that because your people think mushrooms are dangerous and pop up unexpectedly, and relationships do the same, that you call those people your toadstools. Makes sense, I guess. More sense than me thinking you were calling us short."

Adair threw his arms up. "So I'm not the only one who thought that!"

Etri caught his hand and squeezed it again. "I apologize for the confusion. If you would rather I cease to use the term because it is wrong or not to your liking-"

"No!" Adair said at the same time as Blythe. She grinned and gestured at him to talk, probably thinking he'd be better at talking relationship stuff than she would.

Which he was, but she was going to regret it. "It's cute, Etch. We want you to keep calling us that. But does that mean I can start calling you both 'pumpkin'?"

Blythe buried her face in her hands. "Why do I ever let you open your mouth?”

"I'm not hearing a no."

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(I’m only going to do minor editing with these so I have time to write one every day, so hopefully this all makes sense. My plan is to write short things about a bunch of my characters this month, including secondary ones and maybe characters I was writing prior to this series (like my Hidden Magic characters), but my trio demanded the first prompt. I would like to also draw things for Inktober to go along with the day’s story, but I ran out of time today. 

He didn’t even condition his hair. He was rushing out of the shower, into his dirty clothes from the day, grabbing his keys and the stun gun that Jensen had told him he had to have as he thrust it into his hands, and raced down the stairs. He didn’t trust the elevator on the best of days. He plugged in the coordinates on his phone and hooked it into his bike and then was making his way back into the heart of the city, going to a hotel that had been defunct for years. He parked a few blocks away and by the time he’d made it to the front steps, it had already been half an hour.

There were Harvesters at the door. He could tell just by looking at them. They were all packing and the stun gun he’d brought was a toy compared to that heat, even though they were pretending to conceal it. They all looked paranoid and were walking the street and there was no way Pritchard could sneak past there. He wasn’t Jensen, he couldn’t fight people, he wasn’t even good at sneaking. If he relied on his own skills, he’d be shot within five minutes.

He tried to act nonchalant, as the panic ate his stomach like moths at wool. He walked around the side of the building, trying to think of someway that he could get inside. There were more Harvesters here, some of which looked terribly pleased with themselves, but they all looked like they were on a smoke break and a few of them were even drunk, passing around a bottle of whiskey. They weren’t quiet.

They’d found a big hit, a lot of expensive pieces, hard to salvage but worth it. He shivered. They were talking about Jensen, he knew that, but they were talking about him like he was a car, abandoned at a garage and ripe for the picking. They all laughed when they reminisced over how they’d brought him down. Pritchard pulled out a cigarette of his own and stood with a couple of punks at a flaming barrel. They watched him, they knew he wasn’t one of them, but they could see the anxiety in his features, and they let him be. It had been a bad fight and a few of them had been knocked out while their prize ghosted around them. They’d caught on eventually and gone after him, all together, and he’d thrown an EMP grenade at them. Idiot hadn’t thrown it fast enough and he took himself down, even with how they’d shot him.

He grit his teeth, almost biting through the cigarette. A woman, wearing far too little clothing for the weather, sporting a bright red mohawk, put her hand on his shoulder. He shrugged her off, glaring, assuming that she was going to interrupt his thought and hearing with some suggestion that he didn’t want to hear.

Instead she just cocked her head in the special way that was supposed to lead him. He didn’t exactly want to follow her, but he did, taking another turn into another alley. She looked both ways before pointing down at a window, close to the ground. “It’s not the right room but it’s a room,” she whispered, “You’re here for their big hit right? I heard him screaming down there. I guess they couldn’t figure out how to get his arms off.”

He nodded, looking into the room as best he could, seeing an apartment that had been filled with computer systems and security equipment. He might not have been as good at this stuff as Jensen, but security was his specialty, especially with computers.

“Yeah, that bastard called me when I was in the shower. He’s got to pay for interrupting my day off.” He pulled his credit chip out of his pocket. “Can I ask you a favor?”

She looked at his money more than she looked at him. “Distraction?”

He nodded. “How much?” She thought on it a moment. “Four hundred? This isn’t a nice part of town as it is, but I wouldn’t mind it not getting worse.”

He gave her five. “Get yourself a jacket.” He stared down into the room as she rushed around the corner, towards the front of the building. He couldn’t trust her, but he didn’t have time for anything else. There were a couple of Harvesters in there, but none of them were looking towards the window. He could get in there, hide behind the bed that was still in there under some computer towers, and draw them away with some quick work of his fingers. He just needed to get through the window.

It was locked, of course. He kept his ears pricked. He could hear her, in the distance, shouting something, drawing a few of the guards away. But it wasn’t until he heard a loud crash that those inside were responding. It sounded like a car had crashed into the side of the building and the bricks all shook in response. He’d though five hundred was too much but no, he owed her far more than that.

There was shouting coming from inside and the Harvesters, holding machine guns lazily in their own turf, left the room. He held his breath, listening, hearing them rush around and explore. He waited until he couldn’t hear anything from within the apartment. And then he kicked the window in.

It was small. Too small for Jensen to squeeze through, with his muscles and broad shoulders. Pritchard was wiry and narrow, even if he was long, and was able to slide through with only scraping through his leather jacket sleeves and a bit of the skin on his legs, through his cargo pants, catching on the shards.

The distraction outside wouldn’t hold them all, not for too terribly long, so he went to the security section. Hacking it was a breeze and he deposited a great deal of their funds into his own, just as an aside, as he took control. He set the alarms to a timer, they’d go off, in different areas of the building, a few minutes apart. He had to hope that their paranoia was worse than his own, and that they wouldn’t realize that someone was messing with the system after the second one. He still had to find Jensen, after all, and get him out of there.

He changed all of the passwords on the computers in there and went out into the hall. There was no one out there but he could hear speaking from the other side of the opposite wall. He went for the nearest door, peaking in before flattening himself, becoming as invisible as he could. He didn’t know how to fight. He didn’t know how to do anything. Jensen wasn’t too hard to find though.

The apartments had been knocked down, just the supports and exterior walls remaining. The new room was a massive workshop, with electronics everywhere. There were multiple dental chairs that had been dragged in, and the bathtubs had been left in place as well. There were tables everywhere, covered in tools, and there was a large man working at one of the chairs, chatting away as if his patient was an old friend. There were two large shapes on one of the work tables next to him. Pritchard couldn’t tell what they were from this distance, but they were shiny and black and part of Jensen.

He bit his lip, drawing the stun gun. It was short range, almost melee. He’d have to be silent.

He took a few steps into the room, watching his feet and the man’s back. He shifted to the side, just enough to see Jensen in the chair. He was swallowing hard, licking his lips, and his lenses were up over his eyes. He was shaking and sweating. He looked like he was trying to hide how much pain he was in, but it wasn’t working at all. Francis toed over faster.

Jensen made a noise in his throat, this horrible whine that sounded like desperation and agony.

“I know,” the mechanic cooed and his hand went up, tracing over the lines in Jensen’s forehead and Pritchard was raising the gun. “I know, it hurts. I can’t give you another shot now though, can’t lose you this early. There’s still so much we can take from you.” the man almost sounded like he cared. Jensen just shook his head, being pitiful.

He was being a distraction.

Pritchard drew close and fired, seeing the man stiffen as the voltage ran through him. He fell limp in his own chair when Pritchard let go of the trigger and he was able to see everything.

“Jensen!” he shoved forward, cradling the man’s head in his hands.

The lenses slid back into the grooves in his face, hidden along his temples and he laughed a wet, painful sound. “Took you long enough.”

“Come now, listen to all that drama? I had to come up with the best way to make an entrance.”

Jensen made that sound again but didn’t move. It took too long for Pritchard to realize that it was because his arms were bolted down, literally, with large bolts between his fingers and around his wrists, to pin him. Pritchard had to pull them away with a wrench, and then Jensen’s hands were on his gut, his flesh gut, feeling the quick and not exactly proper medical work that had been done to him. There was gauze and what looked like stitches underneath, but he was bleeding through all of it.

“Home?” he almost whispered.

Pritchard nodded, before looking down, only now realizing that Jensen was missing a few things. Some of the bolts in his chest were missing, which meant his self healing wasn’t working. His clothes were all gone and that wasn’t something that Pritchard had been expecting at all but that wasn’t the worst of it.

“You can take a good look later Francis,” there was a hint of teasing among the pain and the push to go.

He looked over at the table, the large shapes that still sat there. “As much as I’m sure you need a boost for your ego, that’s not what I was staring at. Jensen, your legs are off.”

“Oh yeah,” he murmured, sounding like he was close to passing out. “Yeah, he took them off. Guess you’re on your own from here, huh?”

“You couldn’t have picked a worse time to be completely useless, Jensen.” he groaned, stealing the mechanic’s jacket to wrap Jensen’s body in. They didn’t have time for him to try to fix this. He pulled Jensen up and he wrapped those cold arms around Pritchard’s chest.

“Shit, you’re heavy.”

“You say that,” Jensen muttered, sounding even closer to sleep as he rested his head on Pritchard’s shoulder, “but I feel like I’ve lost a lot of weight.”