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Magic Reserves & Support Services, Wednesday After Classes

"Good afternoon," Dolf said, waving at those gathered. He was doing a fair lot better at the 'not blushing' bit this week, and he was happy about it. "Some of us aren't here today because there was a problem. Don't worry, though." The two people standing here would most likely be worrying enough. "I'm sure they will be okay. Uh. Last week was a complicated one. Everyone felt a little weird, right? Today we'll talk about that, and about not worrying much. Sometimes things just happen, and we deal with them depending on what happens."

He glanced in Tara's direction. Somehow, he felt less nervous when he wasn't being the newest one out of four people. "Tara knows a few things about that, I think."

She did? Er. Of course she did. It was just that she was always a little surprised to realize it was her turn to talk, and part of her brain was taken up worrying about Kennedy. Which made what she was about to say distinctly hypocritical.

"What you need to remember," Tara said, "wh-when all your friends have gone off to save the world again, is that it's probably safe - -at least for them. I've seen a lot of people go and do really brave, really scary things, and they all came back in one piece. Spending all your time obsessing and texting every 10 minutes to check in is not going to help them." A slight smile. "Even when it's really, really tempting."

"We have to just go about our lives, and do what we normally do. Like -- going to this meeting, or going to classes. And maybe planning for a nice surprise when they get back."

"To take care of them," Dolf added. "And remember our aid lessons if they are sick, though we'll hope not." He smiled briefly, mostly for his own sake. "Sometimes, all we can do is wait and prepare. And work on ourselves, to make sure we can still help if something else happens. Would you be ready to go into trouble and help if asked? How would you travel there? What people would you take?" ... Going slightly off the point of the meeting there, Dolf.

He took a deep breath. "Today we should share stories of problems we got out of safely, and home to our friends and family," which wasn't a bad topic for him at all, "And talk about what to do when we have to wait. I will start with the first part."

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The usual cookies and cake are available for snacking. Dolf's not exactly creative in the arts of food management.

When Cassidy realized that neither Karla nor Raven were at the meeting, she became extremely worried. After all, it wasn't too long ago that Karla had disappeared and...

She swallowed, shaking her head. She wouldn't think about that right now.

She made herself comfortable on the grass and spread her skirt about her as she listened to the discussions going on, and held the baby droid from Anakin's class. So far, Ranira seemed to be in a good mood today.

And if her smile seemed less cheerful and bright than it normally was, well, that was to be expected, too.

What was going on now? Zatanna wasn't precisely worried, but the same persons kept going missing time and time again -or just a couple of times-, and the fact those weren't her favorite group of people really didn't matter. If something was wrong, or if they were getting into trouble...well, they better take care.

She was going to attack the cake in silence now.

While for some 'there was a problem' and two people she cared for were missing instantly would cause worry, Elphaba thought hard about that for a moment while the present leaders spoke. She decided that of all people, Raven and Karla were some of the most capable she knew, and that if they worked tandem there was probably nothing they could not handle.

So Elphaba instead snacked on an apple, without much worry at all.

She'd brought it herself. She believed in being prepared.

Alexander was, of course, nibbling on a cookie and looking thoughtful, as he was wont to do. The main thing about today's meeting, it would seem, would be actually having to pick which of the multitude of stories available to him would be best to tell. There was plenty work with.

~~BUT WAS THE CAKE A LIE?~~

Gabrielle had noticed the lack of her roommate, yes, and of Raven, and it was hardly as if she could disapprove of people running off last-second to do possibly crazy things.

This did not, she feel, rob her of the right to be concerned as she halfheartedly nibbled at a cookie and contemplated one of her much less depressing stories to share.

Alex helped herself to some cake and wondered where Karla and Raven had gone. She hoped they came back in one piece, wherever they were.

Cally was beginning to wonder when half the leaders of the reserves wouldn't be absent on some mission of mercy or rescue.

Selfishly, the thought that paused a cookie halfway to her mouth wasn't about the ones currently gone -- they had weathered trouble recently and seemed to do so frequently -- but how bad she'd be at not worrying if one day it was Dolf who wasn't here.

Rinoa shivered a little, this week's topic being unnerving once again. She was here to learn about magic; that went with the territory, she supposed.

Did you ever rush off to fix something and come back in one piece, no problems?

"Once, the children I was with were attacked," Dolf started, scraping his throat. (Leonardo would say Dolf excelled at these kind of things, especially the running-off-doing-dumb-things variety, but Dolf would beg to differ.) "A count from a close city wanted more men, so he demanded many children as toll for us. We refused, but they were taken anyway. Our leaders told me the children were lost and we should just keep going."

Not that Dolf wasn't still annoyed by that, or anything. "So I took those that did want to listen, and we went to the castle. Of course we couldn't beat it by fighting, so we used our brains." He pointed at his head. "The men of the castle were afraid of demons, so we put on ashes and bird poo," which didn't sound silly at all, really, "and put horns on our head and made a lot of noise. They were so scared, we could just run in and get the children, and then we ran into the forest and went back. They had thought we were devils, and we never saw them again."

And if that wasn't an uplifting story ~~despite how much Leonardo mocked him afterwards~~, Dolf didn't know what was.

Edited 2010-11-17 17:41 (UTC)

"That's the story of my entire life," Gabrielle said with a laugh that rang a bit hollow; this last trip, running off, had done the opposite of fixing anything. (She hadn't asked what had happened in Xena and Boadicea's battle against Caesar; Xena didn't seem like she wanted to talk about it ~~and it never came up again, damn you canon~~ so she was guessing it hadn't gone entirely well. Still, there hadn't been Roman flags everywhere by the time they'd left Britannia . . .)

Delving further back into the past seemed like a good idea.

"I guess running off to Troy when Helen asked went fairly well," she said after a moment. (Well, Perdicas issues notwithstanding.) "It ended a ten year war; that can't be bad, can it?"

Right. Try not to brood about how your self-appointed role as peacemaker was sullied by killing Meridian, Gabrielle. Not right now. Or how that -- and the entire mess afterward -- had happened precisely because of running off to help yet another old friend of Xena's. Tell another story instead.

"Or when we ended up going undercover to stop unscrupulous thieves from auctioning off some tablets -- these stone tablets with ten commandments on them, in a golden ark -- that were sacred to friends of Xena's . . . sure, I was sore for days after Sinteres got me with his pressure points, but everyone came out fine." She paused. "Well, not Sinteres and the thieves. They, um . . . got turned to ash when someone got the bright idea to open the ark-thing."

Dolf... frowned, because he had only understood about half of that. He latched on to the half he did get, and prompted, "You stopped a war?" See? That bit made sense! "That was good."

Frowning was a pretty low-key reaction to that kind of ramble from Gabrielle, all things considered; at least the brain-breakage wasn't audible this time.

"It was awkward," Gabrielle admitted. "Being Greek, and helping the Trojans. And having to hide out in a giant wooden horse . . . but we stopped it, and I think Helen was much happier afterward."

There. That was looking for the bright side, right?

...That bit, on the other hand, probably made more sense to Dolf than it would to anyone else, so he nodded. "You were there for the Trojan Horse?" he said. "...On the Greek side?"

"We weren't on anybody's side specifically," Gabrielle said quickly. "I guess you could say we were on Helen's."

Scully grimaced. "Okay. This is why I'm not fond of the woods..."

"My best friend found a news story about some lumberjacks that had disappeared in the Washington redwood forest. No trace of them was found, and they were far to far away to just walk out of the woods. Their equipment was there. But no sign of them.

"When we got there, we teamed up with a local ranger and investigated; some of the equipment had been sabotaged by ecoterrorists." Scully swallowed. "We also found traces of an insect infestation from some of the downed trees. Some kind of termite, dormant in the core.

"And then we found the bodies of the lumberjacks inside cocoons, completely drained of all fluids." She winced. "The insects only came out in the dark. They were bioluminescent, and didn't like full light. We spent most of the night in a cabin with one generator, praying the lights wouldn't go out. When it was dawn, we drove out.... and got most of the way out."

She paused. "Fortunately, we'd radio'd ahead, and the emergency rescue team found us on the trail before we lost all of our blood volume."

"So. Take huge flashlights. Really good hiking boots. Extra batteries. And if possible air-tight sleeping bags with you, if you got into the woods."

"I tend to get rescued," Rinoa said, one hand slipping to her necklace. "Even from situations where no one expects me to survive."

Handy perk of having a knight.

Discuss waiting games, preparations you can make in case your friends are hurt, or just ways to keep your mind off of things.

All two of them.

Dolf was there, and he was trying not to worry. After the past few weeks, he was quickly slipping back into the habit of just weathering whatever insanity was going on, though, so he was less antsy than last time.

Tara ... was going to spend a lot of the meeting staring at her phone and reminding herself she actually *wasn't* supposed to text Kennedy every ten minutes.

Good role model. She could do this.

[OOC: I have very limited access through a proxy server. Please expect extreme slow-itude.]

Mmm, Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream. ETA:

life_inshadow just found out that LJ is blocked at her place of employment for the forseeable future. She'll pick up pings later.

Edited 2010-11-17 13:40 (UTC)

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Magic Reserves & Support Services, Wednesday After Classes

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