Rey had made a point to go and check in on Adrian before work, since his phone was in a swamp and she was still in Concerned Girlfriend mode. She felt better having seen that he was doing better, and that Pam had done an amazing job healing the Grove, so she had less reason to worry even if she was going to do so anyway. Things she was also going to do: fix the phone issue since she had the hookup.

Between that and trying to catch up on work, she was suitably distracted enough that she had no idea when the Starbucks cup appeared on her workspace, whether it was a random Fandom thing or if she'd just automatically gone and bought one. Both were worrying for different reasons.


[Modding done with permission. Open!]

Good morning, everyone, it's Captain Steve Rogers again. Tony's down in the lab with an idea and I decided it was better not to disturb him.

*chittering*

No, I don't think he's making squirrel-sized jetpacks.

*disappointed chittering*

Let's get to the notes. Raiden was serving chicken fried eggs--how does that work?--as his employees talked abut Thanksgiving dinner plans, and Adrian--

*confused chittering*

--broke his forest. Lydia came by after her broadcast to see what had happened, if Adrian was all right, and if his cat had yelled at him about it enough. That is a very Fandom sentence. Ohhh, here's the context I was looking for! Adrian sucked all of the energy out of the forest to heal Pam and she repaid him by fixing the forest back now that she feels better. Then there was a lot of 'what the heck was that' about whatever had happened to injure Pam in the first place.

...and then there was a dance celebrating Homecoming, which is quite a shift in tone. There was mingling and saying hello and the punch was smoking. Beaker was back, so I'm confident those two things are related.

Have a swell rest of your weekend!

Gregorith spent the morning looking at the event specific exhibits. He found it interesting that Fandom had been a high school for quite a while, before becoming a university, and it brought back memories of the equivalent of Homecoming back home.

He was just beginning his emo goth phase then, if he recalled correctly.

Then he settled behind the desk in the lobby with his sketch pad, trying to expand on some of his pottery ideas. He was kind of warming up to the idea of a bird bath, with maybe a lounging Cthulhu.

(Le Museum, she is open.)

Today at Over Easy, people were chatting about their Thanksgiving plans, and eventually someone asked Raiden if he had plans yet, as if he somehow gave the impression that he hadn't had the menu planned out a month ago. He wasn't sure how to feel about that, if he was honest. Did they doubt him so?

Nah, he was over it. He had chicken fried eggs to consume.

Specials
Chicken Fried Eggs
Eggs Benedict Nachos
Caramel Waffle French Toast

Over Easy is open!

Good morning, everyone! It is I, Miss Lydia Bennet, here to bring you all the news of the day. Let's crack on with it, shall we?

We'll begin as usual with the school, where Driver's Education watched a film, surely one educating them about driving, and Weather & Storms learned all about snow. I've nothing from the dormitory, likely because everyone was at the carnival, but we'll get to that in due time. For now we move on to the town proper. It seems Dr. Isley had a health crisis at Pick Your Poison, attended by Dr. Quinn and Mr. Blackwood, before leaving the island via portal. I do hope she is well! Mr. Henry of Skalitz was recovering from a night of pizza at the forge, whilst at The Arms Hotel Miss Connell was preparing for Homecoming weekend. Miss Skywalker was doing some reading at her apartment when she was joined by Mr. Blackwood, who wanted--a shower and to stay the night. Mr. Blackwood!

I shan't read any more of that. Instead we shall move along to the fun of the homecoming carnival in the park! Amongst the activities were kissing booths, including one manned by Miss Beniko, who was visited by Miss Vess and Miss Wren, and one manned by Miss Vess, who was visited by both Mr. Starks. I shall not comment on any kissing that may or may not have occurred, especially as at least one of these people is a married man. At the dunking booths, Dean Skywalker was dunked by Mrs. Skywalker-Fel and her children, whilst Miss Eleanor also participated, but there is no news on whether or not she had to take a dip. At the pie tossing stations, a Mr. Lester and Mr. Raiden had pies tossed at them, as did Mrs. Pryde-Barton, who Mr. Anthony Stark suspected of cheating. There was much food and drink, of which I am told Mr. Gregorith partook, and there were of course games and rides, including a strength test, which Miss Williams partook in. She compared universes with Mr. Rogers, and was cheered on by Mr. Boone. And the last note I have is that Mr. Sims partook of a hay ride. And I'm sure much other fun was had at the fair! With that, dear listeners, I must go. Until next week!

Adrian turned in a slow circle, examining his Grove from every angle, his brows drawing together and his shoulders slumping. The damage was...extensive. Not catastrophic, thank the Forest, but not far off, either. 'Devastated' might be about right.

Naked branches clawed at the sky. Tree trunks were withered and twisted. The grass was dried and yellow under his feet, crumbling to dust wherever he stepped. The soil was thin and powdery and several of his reservoir rocks had split or shattered. Even the air felt thin here. He laid a hand on his heart tree, the acorns all paper-thin husks scattered across the ground.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to the great oak, which seemed a little diminished under his touch. "I was a poor steward to you. You are my responsibility and I failed. I'm sorry. I'll do better, I swear. Just..." He looked around again. He wasn't even sure where to begin to fix the damage he'd caused. "Just keep going. I'll swear, you'll be strong and healthy again."

"Adrian!" A yowl as a black blur streaked from the cabin to his side. "Adrian, what happened? How did this happen? What did you do?"

Adrian looked down at the accusatory face of his familiar and winced a bit. "C'mon," he said, holding his arms out to Boston. "I'll explain inside. We've got a lot of work to do."

[Open, though Pam's thread is canonically last!]

Things had loosened up... slightly in the days after the tour. Being back home always helped settle Dane's nerves, and it meant both of them were out of the house and doing other stuff with other people for vast portions of the day, which also didn't hurt.

And then Jack had brought up going to Homecoming and hit a wall of That's-Fine, and boy if that didn't trigger his contrarian instincts. So now he was trying to sit on that, hanging out at the dinner table paging through a music magazine and trying to ignore the guy silently prepping for his workday in the living area.

Ugh.

You know, it's not like Dane would notice if he ran off to go to the Homecoming dance that evening and then came back before his shift ended, right? Right?

[[ expecting one, but can be open for texts/phone calls ]]

It wouldn't really be a Homecoming dance without a theme, and what kind of theme used up a chunk of the glitter reserves? Outer space! The out-of-this-world decorations had twinkling star lights, cheesy styrofoam planets hanging from the ceiling, and swirling glitter galaxies adorning the walls.

The food table was full, the music was rocking, and the dance floor was ready for guests to arrive!

It wouldn't be Homecoming without Mary being pulled in five million directions. She had barely made it to the front desk before a maid ran in yelling that there were gremlins sleeping in the clean bedding in the laundry room. Luckily, there was another linen closet on the 7th floor with sheets and blankets that were clean, if a little musty.

Then Gunther had an "emergency" in the kitchen, which was nothing more than the chef being pissed that he got outbid on Ebay for an over-priced bear-shaped drink cup. Mary got him to go back to work after point out how difficult those cups must be to clean.

And just as Mary got back to the front desk, her phone started blowing up with calls from Las Vegas. She was going to do her best to avoid them for now.

[Room assignments || Request a room]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to all visiting alumni this weekend. I'm Captain Steve Rogers and I'm here with the news of yesterday.

In classes, Baking class learned that making your own puffy pastry is a huge pain, Food Adventures explored sushi in Toyko, and Belle had a pair of crocs--the shoes, not the animal--wandering around the library. Don was in Liliana's class explaining the health aspects of surviving the apocalypse and then she and Ignis enjoyed their lunch.

*sniggering*

Don't be rude. In town, Henry took his pony for a walk in the park, Liz and Prompto talked about how close they are to meeting their newest addition, Steven and Watts had their weekly lunch at the museum, Lucifer and Duke went fishing, and then Lucifer met Gregorith and starting asking him about his version of Hell. ...why?

*chittering*

Ah, Gregorith is a demon from a different version, so this was a professional courtesy. Lana mistook him for a Devaronian from her galaxy and then introduced herself.

Thor was keeping the drinks seasonally appropriate for November at the Devil's Nest, and the Supper Club went to Pizza Planet!

And that's everything. I'll see you at the carnival!

Today the students would find themselves back in the Danger Shop classroom, although the storm that whirled outside was a blizzard, near-whiteout conditions. The screaming of the wind was muted by the walls just enough for Thor to be heard clearly without raising his voice.

"As we move toward winter, I thought it wise to discuss the hallmarks of the season," Thor told his students. "Specifically, snow. Now, snow is merely preciptation that has frozen in the clouds before it falls to Earth. There are other forms of frozen precipitation, of course: hail and sleet. We will get to those in time. Snowflakes form crystalline structures, which can be quite beautiful. It is said that no two snowflakes are alike, and a storm can contain millions upon millions of them. When it is not warm enough for the snow to melt, it will accumulate, building up to a height even of many feet, enough to crush buildings, or at least to force the inhabitants to dig their way out. In the mountains, where there are sloping surfaces, one must mind the dangers of avalanches when the snow is deep...but those are not quite a weather condition, and thus not under the aegis of this class.

"We will likely see some snow this winter, although we are not so far north as to expect overmuch of it, I should think. Do any of you have any thoughts to share with the class on the matter of snow?"

Rey was having a quiet, and probably late, night. She was going through one of the old texts, an extremely long project that required translating several languages, some of which were almost dead, on very, very old pages. It was maybe the nerdiest thing she did and she loved it, but it was also probably the most time-consuming thing she'd ever do.

She was hunched over her coffee table with notebooks she'd largely filled with notes that she hadn't wanted to write into the books, pretty sure at some point she was going to blink and see that several hours had gone by.


[For one!]

There was a television all set up for the class before they even arrived today. Because you had to know that Homecoming would cut into the Friday classes, right? Everyone wanted to get to those kissing booths or something.

"Don't worry, we won't keep any of you too long," Jane promised.

"Today we have a movie about driving quickly as a solution to your problems." And also the cause of no small number of them.

It honestly seemed really apt for the whole island.

"So, let's enjoy the movie and you all can head onto the carnival," Jane suggested.

"And be glad it's not an evil one." Because that was a thing that happened here sometimes.

I'm in the Netherlands and it's somehow afternoon and yet still SOMEHOW EARLY ENOUGH FOR A MEME! So we're doing this one because the last time we did it was in June and in the soup that is "time in 2025," that's both yesterday and a million years ago.

Your character has ingested a large quantity of truth potion. Any questions asked of them, they have to answer truthfully, whether they want to or not! There's absolutely no way around it.

Henry... had perhaps had a bit too much pizza last night. His body felt heavy and his stomach overfull.

So he pulled up a stool in the morning and eyed the forge. He'd gotten it going, of course. But he was going to wait until his guts settled before he tried to experiment with it a bit more.

Maybe more horseshoes?

Horseshoes seemed about where he was at, today.

[[ open! ]]

Sorry for the mid-semester infopost, but I was holding off on this until Ivy's big canon catchup. So!

( On Poison Ivy/Pamela Isley... )

( The others: Henry of Skalitz, Lucifer, Jesse Faden. )

It wasn't one of Pam's better days, today. Or... any day this week, really. She'd asked Adrian to come in because inventory was coming in, and she-- well. Carrying big boxes just wasn't happening.

Eventually, she retreated upstairs entirely. In her lab, fussing around with the last batch of antidote.

Sitting down and staring at vials, she could do. "Hm, this looks about ready to go back to Gotham." She reached for her phone to hit the app for her personal portal set-up.

( In which the other shoe finally drops, and chaos comes to Slaughter Swamp. )

[[ CW: BODY HORROR under the cut. taken and adapted from Poison Ivy #18 through #24 by G. Willow Wilson and Marcio Takara. much love to witchoftheflesh and totalwildcard for playing through this with me. ]]

While the forecast was calling for colder weather soon, the temperature wasn't all that bad today (which was especially good news for the folks about to spend their day getting dunked). The sun was shining, the booths were ready, the food was prepared, and it was time to gather for some fun!

Now that Halloween was over, it was time to focus on the next major holiday. No, not Thanksgiving, don't be ridiculous. Liliana's birthday. There were so many ways to celebrate and she really should pick one. Or two. Okay, probably no more than three.

But which ones?

...And if Fandom turned her into a child for it again, she was going to invite the entire Cult of Rakdos to the island as punishment.

Lydia had sent out missives to the various Supper Club regulars, and hoped that word would get around to anyone else who might like to join them, to meet this week for pizza.

Or pasta or salad or whatever else was on the menu, of course, but everyone knew the real focus was the pizza. Just ask Mr. Raiden.

Welcome to Supper Club, everyone! Pizza Planet is open!

Thor was a big proponent of keeping things seasonally appropriate. To everything its time, in the natural rhythms of the Earth, and all of that. Which was to say that there would be no decorating for Christmas in November on his watch.

"Let the decorative gourds have their time. We will gut them and bake them into pies soon enough."

Well. Now Tiny was mildly disturbed, even though that was exactly what would happen.

Special
Cranberry Rosemary Cocktail

The Devil's Nest is open!

The Danger Shop was once more in the classroom configuration, and Liliana was not alone at the front of it. She and Don were chatting softly as the class entered, and once the bell or whatever went off, she nodded to him to begin.

"Hello," Don said to Liliana's class. "I'm Dr. Donald Blake, and I've been asked to talk to you about surviving the zombie apocalypse. I'm assuming this means your standard zombie apocalypse scenario where society has broken down and whatnot, so, how do you survive that?

"The first and most important thing is sanitation. Honestly, you're probably much more likely to die from bad drinking water than from being attacked by a zombie. We're assuming the powers that be are no longer maintaining the water supply, so clean water is no longer coming out of your pipes. If you're collecting rainwater or collecting it via evaporation--which I just know is an option, I don't know how to teach you to do it, sorry--it's going to be pretty clean already unless acid rain has made a comeback, but if you're collecting water from a source like a pond or river, you're going to need to boil it for at least one minute. 'But Dr. Blake, I thought running water was--' No. Boil your water. The same goes for food. Heat is your friend. If you're living off the land, for the love of Thor, cook your meat thoroughly. If you're eating canned goods, most of them are okay to eat even a few years out of date, but boil them for at least a minute, and don't eat anything if the can looks funny--dented, bulging, any of that.

"Cleanliness is still important in the apocalypse. If you have soap, use it. Wash your hands. Maybe wash your hands more than you did before, because you can't afford food poisoning. You don't have to boil the water for washing! It's not going in your body. And for the love of Thor, keep your latrine on the opposite side of your camp or whatever from your water source. Remember: in all things, cross-contamination is not your friend.

"Now, in my first aid classes, I usually show my students how to stabilize their patient until they can get to a medical professional. That's what first aid is. In this scenario, you may not going to have access to a medical professional, so the best thing you can do is be careful. Don't do anything daring or risky that could lead to you needing an ambulance and an OR on standby, because you don't have either of those things. You may have a stick to bite and a buddy who knows how to sew. Keep that in mind."

With that, he turned to Liliana and asked, "Was there anything else?"

Liliana smiled at him and shook her head. "Not unless there are any questions from the class...?"

"All right, folks," Raiden said to his students, "today we're headed to Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Tokyo is the largest metropolitan area in the world--over forty-one million residents!--so we won't get to explore all of it, but we'll get a little taste that might just leave you hungry for more.

"You may already be familiar with one form of Japanese food from the Sushi Station in town, but there's a lot more out there, and you may not know that 'sushi' refers to the rice, not raw fish.

"Now, Japan is an archipelago, which means it's an island country. Until very recently, this kept it pretty isolated from most other cultures and outside influences on its food--except for China, its nearest neighbor--although these days that's changed and you'll see foreign influences in things like the wild proliferation of different flavors of KitKat." To name just one. "Rice is a staple, as well as the products of the sea, like fish and seaweed, and spices are used sparingly, because they were hard to get here for a very long time, resulting in a different flavor profile from what you may be used to.

"Today we're going to go on a food tour before we stop by a 7-Eleven, where you can try some other classic Japanese foods (or one of those sandwiches with whipped cream and strawberries) and pick up some snacks."

"Hello, everyone," Steve said with a grin. "We trust you have all of your fingers intact despite your fruit carving homework."

"Because this week will be a lot of rolling out dough for puff pastry!" Tony filled in. "They do this with machines for a reason, I realized trying it myself."

"We had so much leaking butter," Steve admitted. "Our signature challenge is fancy pigs in blankets!"

Or Beef Wellington, Steve.

But he wasn't really wrong about the concept at least.

"A Wellington of whatever meat you'd like to try," Tony said. "So feel free to be creative with it. Following that, we'll have you attempt an apple strudel."

"Don't forget the whipped cream," Steve said with a grin and a nod. "And because it takes forever, your homework is going to be making baklava.

There was a pair of Crocs in the library. No feet. Just Crocs. And those Crocs kept moving. Not while Belle was looking at them, of course, but every time she saw them they were in a new position.

Were the shoes haunted?

Was there a dedicated and sneaky gremlin moving them?

Were the shoes simply alive?

Belle did not know. Belle might never know.