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 Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2024 11:57 am
Quote: Firework Flowers (13) : A rare and unique breed of flowers that blossom into long, stiff-stamened, spherical orbs like those of the blossoming Powder-Puff flowers are on full display in Destiny City. A unique hybrid of several species, these plants were being engineered at a small landscaping company. While they were only meant to exist in their private greenhouse as they continued development, a simple accident resulted in thousands of seeds spreading across Destiny City. Thankfully, the Firework Flower is a beautiful, albeit temporary addition. The stems grow rapidly and look like tall blades of grass until the week before the flower blooms; the bulb is hardy and opens overnight to reveal the beautiful firework flower, which can be found in almost any color.
However, unlike normal Powder-Puff flowers, when these flowers are jostled they explode in a burst of colors. Whether it is a simple touch or a strong breeze, these âFirework Flowersâ seem to burn up from the center of the flower outwards. It creates a beautiful display of lightâespecially at night. Scientists describe it as a harmless chemical reaction and encourage everyone to appreciate the flowers while they are here. The dust from an explosion can carry on the wind and will glow for a few hours after the reaction. The explosion cannot harm anyone and poses no danger to anyone.
Against all genuine sense and logic, needing to make a purchase seemed to turn even normally tolerable people into the worst examples of humanity that one ever could have met. They screeched about wanting to see the manager over the slightest inconvenience, even when the manager would not tell them anything different. They made demands of store staff without a semblance of manners on display, as though their families had raised them feral. They could and would interrupt you in the middle of a task, acting as though whatever they currently struggled with was the worst of all possible fates, even if one found oneself in the middle of administering CPR to someone else.
Destiny Cityâs annual summer festivities only exacerbated this collective tendency, and on some level, Preston didnât know whom to blame for this. On one hand, the department of parks and recreation provided the people with all the mysterious foods and drink, mindless trinkets, and miscellaneous toys that enabled them to leave such chaos in their wake. But on the other hand, the city-employed public servants could hardly be blamed for how people turned the things that Star Festival provided them into tools of destruction. Beyond those two data points, it also bore consideration that customers and their typical ways of being could not possibly change much overnight, as they would have needed to do in order for Star Festivalâs sharp uptick in Customer Incidents to be entirely the fault of the trinkets that the city provided.
Unsurprising, really. Customers, in Prestonâs experience, didnât require a special occasion to make you miserable.
Some of the Star Festival trinkets were undeniably worse than others, though. The strange flowers going all over town, for instance, immeasurably helped people in their drive to create utter bedlam. Early in the festivalâs run, the Kaynes hadnât thought much of the flowers. Brightly colored, spherical orbs of stamens and petals had fit right in with the vibes that Lavender Haze generally cultivated, and customers who hadnât brought any in with them seemed to appreciate the view. Preston too, in the ignorant bliss heâd enjoyed nearly two weeks ago, had mistakenly thought that flowers like this couldnât harm anybody. Like the Lilies of the Valley, they seemed to do very little beyond looking nice and making people smile.
Then, theyâd started exploding.
Nobody had gotten hurt yet, thankfully. Some of the employees had cited that fact while defending their notion that the flowers deserved to continue existing in the shop. In the dim lighting, the little bursts of light looked quite lovely and nobody had come to harm, so why couldnât they stay?
Preston hadnât meant to answer that question. Most of his coworkers didnât like him much, so they wouldnât want to hear such things from him. In fairness, the feeling was mutualâthe only one of them he really liked was Jupiterâbut the point about how explosions of pollen could hurt people even without fire and without the force behind them being that strong had felt so obvious, Preston hadnât felt as though heâd needed to make it. Someone else could have easily done soâŠâŠbut Hunter had had one of the flowers with them at the time. While trying to show off how harmless the flower was, theyâd jostled it far too close to Preston. The pollen had set off his allergies so badly, heâd wound up needing his asthma inhaler.
Thankfully, the âPLEASE NO POWDER-PUFF FIREWORK FLOWERS IN STOREâ signs had gone up before noon, that day.
Ever since, the trouble had been enforcing the rule. Sometimes, people didnât mind taking their flowers outside or being asked to leave until theyâd exploded. But different customers took it as a personal offense that anyone asked them to care about the welfare of others. Whenever anyone entered the store with one of the blossoms in question, Preston held out hope that theyâd be a case of the former, not the latter. Moreover, he hoped that someone else would deal with them so he didnât need to.
He was shelving a new shipment of crystals when a petite, very pink-haired someone came in the shop. From this vantage point, Preston couldnât quite tell if they were carrying one of the firework flowers or not. If they were, then Preston hoped someone else would deal with itâŠâŠbut only two employees seemed to be out on the floor right now. Kirsten stood behind the counter right now, which left the responsibility to Preston.
Standing up with an armful of crystals, feeling the amber star charm heâd found on a break shift inside his pocket, Preston craned his neck to try and get a better look at the customer, to see if they actually did have any flowers. He didnât want to make unfair accusations, after all. More than that, he didnât want to deal with any customers if he didnât need to.
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Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2024 2:34 pm
Perrie was in need of mushrooms. Not button or shiitake or portobello either. No, he needed mushrooms of the magic variety, Psilocybe cubensis to be specific. He used magic mushrooms medicinally, therapeutically; like some jockeys drank to cope with the stress of the job, he got high. They were also his preferred coping mechanism for the whole Senshi thing, which he was coming to accept. It was almost fun to take some mushrooms and power up just as he was peaking. Made the weirdnesses that happened while he was out and about as Parsifal, Sailor Senshi of Alternatives, more bearable. And a lot of weird s**t happened while powered up. So he made his way, sober, to the dispensary that was his usual supplier. They were out, but they recommended this other place in town that was usually quite well-stocked with the particular variety of psychoactives he preferred. With a shrug, Perrie wandered across town to the new store, Lavender Haze. Cool name, he approved! Along the way, he stopped and picked a big happy Powder Puff Fireworks flower to take to them. Everyone liked flowers! And these flowers were fun! A bell jingled merrily as he entered Lavender Haze, and he looked around. There was one guy on the floor of the shop, arms full of crystals, a taller guy (but almost everyone was taller than he was), with dark ombre hair, glasses, and a sour expression. Surely a flower would cheer him up! "Hi!" Perrie chirped, holding out the flower, which bobbled dangerously. "This is for you! I was told you have magic mushrooms here?"
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Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2024 12:37 pm
âŠâŠOh, no.
When the new customer pivoted his way, Preston froze like a deer whoâd wandered onto a train-track. Something inside of him tensed as the strange, pink-haired person approached him. This didnât mean much at first, because Preston strongly preferred working in the back, especially minding the plants and their growing conditions, and trying to deal with most people made him tense.
As the customer in the pink hair got closer, though, the tension seizing Prestonâs shoulders increasingly became very, very personal. For one thing, he seemedâŠâŠexuberant. Not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but people who came on strong like that were people Preston didnât know how to deal with. Too many of them inevitably reminded him of certain others whoâd come to Brother Horaceâs flock looking for one thing or another, and had never quite worked their way into his inner circle, but had managed to become reliable grunts. Not serious enough to get privileged access to their leader, but optimistic and inoffensive enough to handle the day-to-day work that had kept the compound functioning.
The flowers, as well, set Prestonâs nerves right on edge. Hugging the armful of crystals closer to his chest did nothing to help himâit mostly made some of them feel like they might fall if he didnât get them on the shelf soonâbut Preston did it without entirely intending to. And then that question.âŠâŠ
Bemusedly tilting his head, Preston tried to search for any detail that might have revealed the âcustomerââs persona some manner of façade. True, some of Prestonâs coworkers took the fact of Lavender Hazeâs in-house marijuana dispensary as permission to dispense other substances, but officially, Preston had no idea about any of that. Officially, any such activity at the store could have gotten everyone who worked hereâespecially the Kaynes, who owned and ran the placeâin a lot of trouble. There had, briefly, been whisperings that things might change when a bill concerning the magic mushrooms the âcustomerâ asked after had gotten through the Virginia State Senate, but the legislation to decriminalize psilocybin possession ultimately hadnât passed to the House.
Preston considered himself lucky in that he had only rarely needed to deal with law enforcement officers, all of them had been in uniform at the time, and none of them had been hostile to him (while he didnât exactly have wealth on his side, Preston was white and male, and calling about a potential violation of a restraining order, even if it wound up not being provable, made him an immediately sympathetic party). Still, heâd heard about police going undercover in ways that did not make them appear to be police. Brightly colored hair dye, ripped up jeans and punk band t-shirts, badges with pronouns and ostensibly anticapitalist sloganeering.âŠâŠ Preston felt like he had also read that cops in these positions tended to favor bulky jackets or sweatshirts (better to hide any armor they had underneath their shirts), and that they tended to look bulkier overall (which this customer distinctly did not), but longer-term undercover operations happened as well, so the lack of those things didnât mean that this customer wasnât a cop.
The best course of action, as far as Preston could tell, probably wouldnât win him any social points if this customer turned out not to be a cop. But just in case he was, better safe than sorry and risking everybodyâs livelihoods.
âSir, under Title Eighteen-point-Two-dash-Two-Fifty of the Virginia legal code, possession of a Schedule One controlled substance such as psilocybin mushrooms constitutes a Class Five felony,â Preston told the customer seriously, soberly, and trying his best to sound respectful rather than rude, just in case the customer was a cop. âAdditionally, Title Eighteen-point-Two-dash-Two-Forty-Eight outlines that distribution of a Schedule One controlled substance constitutes a felony punishable with between five and forty years in prison. Lavender Haze only distributes marijuana to medical patients with a valid prescription as stipulated by our establishmentâs license to do so.â
Unless the customer turned out not to be a cop, in which case Preston would justâŠâŠgently direct him over to Hunter. But one more thing needed to be said first: âAlso, we ask that customers please not have any of the pollen-exploding Firework Flowers in the store.â
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Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2024 1:25 pm
Perrie blinked stupidly at the clerk, who went off (in a respectful way) spouting legal codes and Schedule One things and prison terms. And then the man went off on the flowers he'd brought into the store. Perrie didn't mean to cause a fuss, but somehow he had. He just stared at the clerk, amber eyes wide and innocent-like. Cause he was innocent! "Nonononono, I don't wanna get anybody in trouble," he hissed in a stage whisper, glancing around to see if there were any cops in the store, undercover or otherwise. "I didn't â I wasn't â I'm not â I was sent here by a 'friend'" (complete with finger quotes) "on account of they were out of stock there! Dude, man, I know they're not technically legal, but I need them â like for psychotherapy and s**t. I'm psycho, they're therapy." Soon as he said that he realized he hadn't helped his cause any, especially since he'd been gesticulating while he spoke and jostling the Powder Puff Fireworks Flowers around a bit. And those things went off if you jostled them too much. He froze, clutching the flowers in both hands so as not to rattle them around any more. That would only have made matters much much worse, having the apparently-hated flowers exploding in the store. "Look, I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to upset you or anything, I'm really super sorry! Um⊠still, since I'm here and everything, do you 'have'" (again with the fingerquotes, careful not to disturb the flowers) "any? It's kind of urgent â I need them for ummm work! I'm a jockey, see, at DC Downs, and no, I'm not stupid enough to ride a horse while tripping, but they really help with the stress and pressure of being a jock! See, it's like commission-based, getting a ride at the track, and the pressure's really on to do well so you get more rides and get paid more, and there's all these other guys competing for rides too, and like I like most of them but it's a cutthroat business, you know? So we all kinda cope in our own ways, and I don't like booze except for beer, but beer doesn't help, and they're the only thing that doesâŠ" Pausing to catch his breath, he gave the clerk his best sad puppy eyes. If Kenny said they had some, they had to have some!
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Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2024 3:55 pm
âŠâŠOh.
Well.
ââŠâŠApologies, I?â Preston sighed, glasses slipping a bit down his nose right as his hands werenât free to do anything about it. ââŠâŠIâm sorry, I wasnât sure ifâ?â He turned toward the shelf as much as he could while still mostly looking at the customer, who seemed more than somewhat upset about the confusion. As Preston nudged the first crystal out of his arms and into position, he explained, âI thought you might have been an undercover cop? And if you had been, thenâŠâŠit might have caused problems.â
To say the very least.
Either way, Preston unloaded his armful of crystals as quickly as he could. âIâm not capable of helping you,â he said, shifting to stand beside the customer (being careful of the flowers, which thankfully hadnât gone off yet), âbut Harper behind the counter can. Just a moment and Iâll get him for you, alright?â
It truly did only take a moment. Harper was just finishing with a different customer as Preston came up to the counter. Their messy, honey-colored curls bounced around a fairly well-shaped face with sunkissed tan skin, and when Preston cleared his throat, Harper looked his way.
âWhy donât you go on break,â Preston said, even though he dreaded the idea of handling everything alone until Jupiter or someone else got back. âA friendâs here to see you.â
He gestured back at the customer with the pink hair and the flowers, which only made Harper look confused.
âI donât know them,â Harper said with a shrug.
âHe said heâs from the Mycological Society.â When that didnât help Harper get the point, Preston leaned in closer and lowered his voice: âSomeone sent him here for psilocybin. Do you have any you can sell him?â
âOhhhhhh,â Harper exclaimed, and nodded. Pitching their voice up enough that anyone in the back couldâve heard, they added, âThanks for getting the register for me, man. Iâm gonna go for my fifteen-minute break.â
Finally, they made a beeline toward the customer in the pink hair. As Harper greeted himââHey, howâs it going, why donât we go talk outside and Iâll help you outââPreston slipped into place behind the counter. Maybe it wasnât much as an apology, but before Harper and the poor, stressed out jockey could leave, Preston waved at the customer and tried very hard to smile.
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Posted: Mon Jul 01, 2024 4:50 pm
Blinking, Perrie stared at the clerk, then burst out laughing. "You thought â you thought I was a â ahahahahahaahah no ******** way, ACAB and s**t!" He looked around the store again just to make double sure there were no cops around. Kenny didn't tell him they had funny people working at Lavender Haze! With a nod he watched the poor confused clerk fetch the person who could help him. It was a delicate job, getting mushrooms in Destiny City, and only a bad stroke of luck that his usual supplier of psilocybin didn't have any this time. He'd have to start growing them himself, he decided â get some spores from Kenny, put them in a dark corner of the grounds of the boarding stable he lived at, supply them with all the horse manure they could want⊠should be an easy, relatively painless task to grow his own. As the other clerk came over, he smiled with relief. Someone who actually knew what was going on. He waved back at the dark-haired clerk as the blond guy escorted him to the back of the store, waved with the hand holding the flowers⊠POOF. "Oops." Perrie hustled after the blond clerk out the back, escaping the mess he'd just made of the place.
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