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And he was desperate now, because he’d tried, because growing things took time and wouldn’t it have been nice for the house and garden to coincide as one thing at the same time —- it was easy enough to get plants after all? They grew places all over the city! In backyards, and nurseries, and parks…..in little packets of seeds. It woulda been one thing if everything he’d grabbed was dead, but no - some of that s**t was alive n healthy and then? Then it straight up wasn’t!

Albite wondered — stood staring over his south of the citadel plant plot, where it butted right upside the ‘sunrise’ facing wall. — If some of this had to do with far more than the location they were growing in. Maybe he’d gotten the materials from a bad patch — maybe?

And then another whole stalk full of fat sprigs withered into dust and crumpled into the dirt around it’s smiley painted ceramic pot. <********, either it was the citadel or the surface, one way or another he was getting to the bottom of this!!

Oh, ohshit, maybe if he sent pictures?

Just - he wasn't sure if pictures would do the plant the same justice as 'seeing with the eyes' would ********, maybe he should've just summoned the guy again? Except, no, no, no, he'd promised he'd ask like a person instead of playing with his newfound powers like a child. Even if it was really, super, totally, fun times!

He wondered that Faustite didn't do it more often.



Bonding was his thing after-all, he totally knew bonding! Didn't think it was a plant thing. Unless it was a plant thing? Holy s**t, had his peppers died because he hadn't been loving enough!? Did fertilizer fix that? He'd been told by various people that everything from miracle grow to ground up bones, coffee, and eggshells fixed that.

The dying part. Not the loving part. He'd never had any sorta love issues that were made better by adding eggshells and bone meal....

Coffee, though?

Albite sighed, watched another leaf wilt away in despair, as though his merely breathing nearby made the situation exponentially worse....


*heart emoji, coffin emoji, 3x fires and a sad looking clown*

It was clearly an emergency of the highest order, for not one bit of glitter or pooping unicorn was included in the text.

"Sup! 'Bout freaking time --- I'm hugging you." That was the warning Fulgurite got, as subspace yanked a nearly willing, yet mostly resigned water-boy through -- into the Negaverse of all places. Into -- "Welcome to my home! Our home? Our home, technically. Did I mention me n faustite n the team n..whatever. I'll get into specifics later, plant now, people after!"

Arm thrown over fulgurites shoulder, squeezing in the comradery nice n fast, because he knew he had to set him free! Lest he suffer consequences.

"Things can grow here, I've been told this is totally a thing. I know it's all -- uhm -- ********, I call it South of the Citadel - where we are. It's technically the Sunken City, yanno -- 'Everything the light touches Simba'; except that shadowy s**t. So of course Faustite did the most badass thing he could've done and got us the shadowy s**t to live in. <******** love that man." Albites sigh full of rough affection while he briefly clapped Fulgurite on the shoulder, before beckoning him on round the furthest edge of the 'still in the process of being fixed' building. There was plotting laid out, of a sort, areas where things had been transplanted from Earth and down into soil that would've reeked of death and decay, save for how much 'Earth' it looked like.

"You wouldn't believe how much s**t I've dragged in from...You just wouldn't. Nurserys, depots, you name it. I got bored one night, yeah? Checked out the whole 'false sun' s**t. Realized a bit of magic seed n -- ahm -- what is it - Oh! Aeration. That's it. Might help -- everything here was alive at one point. I ******** checked, but pictures? Pictures don't do it justice. Nothing should go black like that..." spoken with an edge of terseness for how nothing now matched even the surrounding desolation, it was a whole new level of ashen decay that was beyond wrong even for this sort of a spot. Normally he'd have thought nothing of it, except?

It was in the potted plants as well. It was in everything. Cropped up above, cropped up below - his poor, precious, beautiful peppers. Dead n gone. He knew it, but didn't know for the life of him what exactly was the cause!?

The occasional looming youma, feral sort of friend, the ones that lingered in shadows not far off, the rest that scuttled round the edges of wall two stories up and incomplete -- watching them. Curiously, carefully, instead of like they were outright meals.

Though that all could've changed so fast...

"Nothing weird as whatever caused this, n the youma aren't as interested in plants as they are in -- well -- other things. Least, I haven't found myself a gardening youma yet. Might put a pin in that kinduv idea tho, cause it's a good one," hemmed and hawed because it was a good idea, finding a few beasties with past lives entrenched in digging things up from garden beds. Maybe a dog or two? Or one of those gangly looking tree types?

He'd make sure to ask Faustite about it once he had some extra free time, maybe even beg him out into the wilds so he could pluck up a few personally.

The look he caught on Fulgurites face boded not at all well, led to him sighing before clapping the Senshi firmly on the back, "C'mon now Fulgurite, you're my water Senshi! N I believe in you. So, spitball some ideas with me; the youma won't eat you while I'm here...or at all..mostly..It's just a lotta staring since you're this super glowy beacon of interesting!" so much cheer for being a Senshi standing centerfield of what should've been enemies. Albite was miles from worried though, because the ones who didn't get the memo, got dusted, easy as breathing pie. Baking roasts? Some simple food analogy that he'd find on his 'recipe of the day' calendar; s**t he'd compiled over time with various other 'word of' and 'joke of's' and the like..

"N even if they come by, some of 'em are fine, couldn't harm a fly. We're fixing up the place - yanno? N it's taking more then just me n our resident bonfire to manage it anything like easily." a pause for that as he moved to kneel near enough the ruined soil, sifted it with hopes of life, it didn't even look like mold would grow there though.

"Seriously...all I wanted were some peppers. I don't have time for magical diseases..."

It shouldn'tve been so hard to get one thing to go right. He didn't even know who to ask about magical plant problems!!

Sat cross-crossed in the dirt, head in the v of a propped hand; Albite had himself a long think, seemed to sift the words over like the pitch black dirt — fingers a sieve, his mind trickling sand collecting at the end of an hourglass.

He didn’t quite have answers for that at the ready, had to find them while gazing at the gloam of horizon n their ever shifting false suns rays.

“Mostly. C’mon Fulgurite, weren't you in the Scar with us?” when he thought about it hard enough, he hadn’t seen the guy off with any others at the campsite near the end; the parties had been split so thoroughly — then there’d been so much chaos — it was amazing back then. Simpler, even, to manage them all, the responsibilities he had now. “M’sure you can envision a youma taking a nibble instead of a bite — sparing a starseed but not a body, depending on their mood. Heh, leaving just the bones, they don’t seem to digest those too well. Not that it matters when the place is ever changing as the freaking wind.” all the ways Albite knew what could become of a body of given enough time, how he made the statements like well observed facts, instead of his usual haphazard guesstimates.

“But, again? Senshi — we’re close enough to the Citadel that we’re not entirely without power, even if this is sorta a dead zone…s’just…I know things can grow here!! I’ve seen it. I give people plants all the time! N even in the Rift — there’s growing things.” he couldn’t wrap his head around which where he’d ******** up in the transfer from surface side to down here. Wrung his dreads between fingers, cats cradle full of frustrated tangles — before he finally sighed n stood.

“It was alive, was, but now it’s not? Maybe this is just a bad spot for it all. Could be chaos, like you say, sept it doesn’t quite feel like our kinda chaos, yanno?” He shrugged for it, because realistically he didn’t, and he couldn’t begin to come up with a theory until he had more to go off of than ‘plants be dead’ —

“Maybe if we find more spots like this then it’ll start to make sense? Do..do you think there’s more…or alternatively? That I can save any of— uh, this?”