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Signs of the quake, though not as significant here, still existed. Countless things were scattered across the floor in places where they shouldn't have been, or at least where they usually weren't, but that was somewhat difficult to tell when nothing really had a home to begin with. Aprife's hive looked only slightly messier than it normally did and despite the tremors that shook the building, there were only a few casualties among their possessions. One of Bumblesuckle's pots had tipped over and shattered, and dirt mixed with tiny lusus tears when the bee was finally brave enough to come out from his hiding spot under the desk to inspect the damage. His yellowblooded charge had promised to buy a replacement ASAP, just as soon as he'd had an opportunity to survey the damage across the far side of the city.

Survey the mass of displaced trolls, more like it. It was rather unfortunate, but that plan never quite came to fruition.

When a sharp knock sounded against the front door some time later, Aprife's head shot up, and his body did too, even before he realized the voice he heard in unison belonged to someone he knew. Bumbs had done quite well in keeping his snoopy little troll from wandering out and getting into trouble so far by blocking the door and looking threatening (more like in need of comfort). Zeffer would find, when he tried to get in on his own, that it had been unlocked since earlier when Aprife meant to leave the first time. Since then troll and bee had been sitting on the couch together, which was honestly pretty boring after a while, so it was no surprise that the yellowblood's think pan was already teeming with ways he could use his friend's unexpected appearance to get him out of the hivestem and away from his wibbling lusus.

"Course I'm alive!" he shouted, a grin in his voice. Bumbs was hanging loosely from his arms, buzzing in discontent, as he made his way quickly over to the door.

In the suburbs the earthquake made its presence known. Deep, angry rumbles shook the walls, the foundations of hives groaning under strain. Mili stumbled on the bottom floor, clinging to the wall. From above came the sharp shriek of metal giving way. Without having to wonder, the troll girl knew: Owl Mom’s perch had come undone. Flinging herself from the hive (Owl-mom had hoot fluffed away in the chaos), Mili narrowly escaped the beam as it crashed through the ceiling.

A cacophony of sound reverberated through the streets. Collapsing buildings, shrieking wails of trapped trolls, and the angry alternian ground shaking joined in the uproar. Mili became immensely thankful for living in the suburbs as compared to the epicenter, where the tall hives collapsed upon themselves with clouds of soot filled dust.

When the shakes finally ended, Mili stood and brushed herself off. All around the groans of the broken city were plainly audible. Before she could make a decision on what to do next, Owl-mom fluttered down and dropped a flier in her hands. ‘Support the P.P.S.’? She thought skeptically. With a hoot, her lusus returned to the house, intent on inspecting the damage.

So, it was Owl-mom’s opinion that she ought to help out the P.P.S and deliver any beetles and help to them? B.I.G.S.I.S had given Mili a bad taste in her mouth, and the PPS was no better. Anyone with half a functioning think pan would know that those resources would be dished out to the highest bloods and trickle down slowly to the bottom, if they reached there at all.

Right about then, carried on the bitter wind, a crumpled flier bumped into Mili’s foot. Curiously, she picked it up, flattening the wrinkles until it was legible, and read quickly. A resistance movement, was it? Now that was much more desirable. It wasn’t the best, but better than giving everything to those who would misuse it! Chucking the paper into the wind, Mili returned to the hive and rummaged around, finding a backpack, two blank books, a writing stick, and a couple other goodies: water, beetles, some fletched arrows, and an extra writing stick.

With everything gathered she trekked into the more damaged parts of the city, leaving the suburb behind her. Closer and closer to the center of NHC the destruction worsened. A few roads were completely blocked and noxious fumes caused the mute girl to cough and stumble away more than once. Any cries of help from far away were drowned by the roar of fires and sound of wreckage being moved. Not that Milieu would ever wish to see them, but where were the imperial drones? Their strength could really be useful.

Eventually she settled near an intact hive stem and rested her weary feet. Normally shinning brightly, the city was dulled and dim. Any light was thrown by the fires and stars and dual moon over head.

Maybe going out on a limb like this was not the smartest idea. Staying at home was worse, though. Surely there was someone she could help here.

"Well, good. At least the entire building didn't fall." Zeffer snorted, taking one more glance around. It was amazing, the way it seemed as if the yellowblood's hive had hardly been fazed. If his own hive had been in the city, it probably would have been pretty similar, and their similar, messy habits made Zeffer grin. "Yeah. I need help down there. It'll be better this way, we can watch each other's backs." He added in trying to reassure the little bee. Poor thing looked pretty pathetic, but it would get over its wrecked flowers sooner or later, right?

"I'm comin'!!" Zeffer laughed as he found himself being tugged along, hurrying to keep up with his friend. The look Aprife shot made his heart quicken with wild-spirited excitement, the prospect of destruction, treasure, and adventure all too alluring. But as they burst out of the front doors he paused, remembering his second target, his other companion.

"It's why I've been staying away for a while...no idea why they haven't put them in the Fronds yet. Hey Aprife, would you mind making a little detour? I have another buddy livin' in the city and I wanna make sure she's okay, too." He confessed, looking a little stone-faced for a moment as he hoped Aprife would be accepting of the request. The yellowblood had come out of the incident fairly well, but he didn't know about Sarcel. If she wasn't dead, she probably wasn't going to be too happy.

"Her hive's off this way. It won't take long, I promise." He insisted, hopping over a patch of messed up street and gesturing for Aprife to follow.

Alifax glanced back at the worker, raised his eyebrows, and turned back to the tealblood, glancing briefly back down at his (bare but for bandages, whoops - he'd forgotten that the debris would dig into his soles and hadn't thought to dig up his very hole-y pair of trainers, or at least some socks) feet and then back at the kid. "Um, that's doable! I'm not, ah, actually gonna be at a station, though," he explained as he turned away. "And, ah, I'm not sure the relief workers want, um, younger, um, trolls out doing, er, damage assessment with us - but maybe you could try, um, to gather supplies as I, ah, work?"

He glanced down at his arm and realized he could be allocating resources much better by taking the subversive flyers out from under his arm and pressing them between a few pages of the cheap notepad he'd been assigned - he did so, but definitely not in a way that would have allowed Aandes to see them this time, considering he didn't unfold them. What were the areas they had to look over? He glanced over the example on the front page as he walked, and then he remembered the kid. "Will that be all right, um, highbl - um, what's your name?" He'd caught himself!

To be honest, he wasn't sure that he'd have done that even a few perigees ago. But it was getting more and more ridiculous to call kids who were practically wrigglers by an honorific, and as far as he'd seen they tended to be far less strict about the hemospectrum when they were young. He hoped this one was the same way.

[hi chaos i'm not quoting you because you probably just got 2 notifs haha - but this tag is for you too i guess OUO]

Another donor! Dictys grinned at them - oh, this one was stylish, too. It was so rare to see landdwellers with good taste (or the ability to afford clothing that fit Dictys' tastes, but Dictys seemed blissfully unaware of the misfortunes attached to poverty). "Lowblood, it's excellent to see that you, at least, care about New Hemisect City, and the very hub of Alternian civilization! If you'll pen your name in here I can ensure that you can get an exemption for the beetles you just donated - and of course you can feel free to find something to do."

Dictys would admit that ey was quite interested in the blueblood's name for eir own sake, too; good second-in-commands were in short supply! "I'm Dictys Glauci," ey added. "I'd shake fins but, well..." Ey shook eir hand, quite impatiently, at the tealblood (who ey really hadn't given a chance to respond yet, but trolls should be running over themselves to donate to the P.P.S.' cause!).

Unable to stop herself for a million beetles, Regina's eyes swung down to her rather flat chest as the rack remark floated up from the mouth of the younger troll. Pulling them back up and forcing herself to dismiss that comment without further interrogation, the queen breezily waved aside the not-so-subtle attempts at recruiting made by Dictys.

"Already done my duity to the crown mate, got my receipt for money and services donated to the cause right here."

The paper had been nabbed from the freshly printed stacks as she had fled the palace in preparation for this such event, and was waved vaguely in front of the other seadwellers face for a moment before shoved back into the folds of her clothes. Turning as the other trolls began to gather at the booth, she let the question of her name slide by into the chatter of the others.

Immediately, she recognized the orangeblood. The girl had entered into the impromptu fighting tournament, hadn't she? And a little blueblood. Idly flicking through her mental index of faces and drawing a blank, she only surfaced back in the conversation as the small seadweller gave her a pointed look. Grinning disarmingly back, she fluttered her eyelashes in an almost imbecilic expression of good-natured friendlyness.

"Oh! Sorry, are we doing names? I'm Reiagn, Reiagn uh - Miarna. Charrrrmed to meetcha."

Nervit nodded, acknowledging the subtle threat, then approached the lusus, careful not to keep eye contact for too long as that could provoke aggression to territorial lusii. As she approached she looked at the delicate membrane of the wing. The tear wasn't large but it was right at the flap - in this case she thought stitches would work better than glue as the constant flexing meant it would be more likely to flake off. But the issue was the thickness of a membrane - even scaled up with the lusus's size, it was still an insect wing and therefore thin and delicate. Like gauze. So if she reinforced the stitching sites with flexible glue...yes, that might work! It was kind of weird how much sewing clothes also applied to sewing up people. Except that you had to sterilise stuff first with people.

She opened up her bag, bringing out a thin needle, a pot of sopor, a bottle of ethanol that she'd previously used to get stains from fabric, a lighter, some nylon thread and a bottle of skin glue she'd taken from the troll she'd helped stitch up - a gift and payment all in one. She ran the needle through the flame until it was white hot, then dipped it in the ethanol - where she also dipped her fingertips with a slight wince as it got into a cut on the top. Very gently she took the lusus's wing and spread the sopor on it.

"Tell me when you can't feel this, okay."

She pressed gently, and then with increasing pressure until the all-clear was given. Then she would wipe off the residual sopor and dab the glue onto either side of the tear.

"Please don't move momentarily, ma'amsirother."

She wasn't sure whether the lusus was male or female. I mean generally the gender of a lusus tended to match up with their troll - but it was never an exact thing, and there were always exceptions to the rule, or defiers of the binary entirely and well - especially with such a high highblood (he was straddling the purple-blue divide and she hadn't had enough time to examine the shade of his symbol to be certain - but either way he topped the landdwelling charts) - it was safer to be safe than sorry. Especially if the sorry meant you ended up injured or worse. (There was always worse. Not that she was actually sure what worse ~was~ but Pyredad often referred to it ominously, so it obviously existed. )

Just before the glue set, she pulled the needle through, stitching the wound tightly and neatly. She'd threaded the needle whilst waiting for it to become semi-hardened. Then pyredad scuttled to the end of her arm and bit the thread off, leaving a small, neatly-repaired wing for the larger lusus.

"You should remove the stitches when the wound seems healed, don't leave them in longer than a perigree, though. I could give you this pot of sopor as pain relief but you have resources and access to medicine of a better quality than I can provide, so you may be better off using those."

She blinked once, packing her things back in her bag.

"Anything else?"

(ogawd......I'm getting the mental image of Miache on a pirate ship demanding everyone to constantly clean......worst first mate ever....)

"Of course," Miache agreed, either ignoring or not caring about being deemed a lowblood, "the fiscal concerns, alone, that would come from having such a major city completely lost would be a drain on other cities." He stepped over to the paper to scrawl out his own name, Miache Gahiji, in an attractive cursive. He did thank his lucky stars the highblood wasn't for shaking. Hands could be incredibly filthy....though....Dictys DID look adequately clean, plus Miache did have his hand sanitizer.....he supposed shaking the highblood's hand wouldn't be the worst fate.

As he glanced at trolls passing the table he frowned. "Hm....perhaps I could find something here to help with..." he said, none too pleased to see so many unwilling to help save the city. Perhaps he could also find himself another box so trolls could donate whatever they could spare to trolls that needed a little help. If he left it on the table next to the seadweller, Miache could shake down anyone that passed by...and would others really be able to say they could donate neither money nor supplies to those hurt by the disaster?

He nodded at the tealblood. That was acceptable. Reiagn had done her part to help out, though....more probably couldn't hurt. He could appreciate that she had done her part to help without too much harassing needed. "I'm Miache Gahiji. A pleasure I'm sure," he said, maintaining a certain level of manners he wouldn't bother to offer a rustblood. Although....the tealblood wasn't dressed nearly as fetchingly as the seadweller, as thus Dictys commanded his attention far more than the other. Plus.....Dictys just looked so prim and proper, Miache would even venture to guess that ey was clean enough to match his high standards.