Wild Growth [6/7]

[19:39] Leni is not the very perceptive sort. Especially not when it comes to cities. She meanders around for a while, down the streets that all look the same. A series of drab gray walk ways all tied together. Who even wants to live like this?

She looks left, she looks right, but does not look behind. Which might have been wisest. The druid starts reaching into her coat for something.

There's several bright sticks of chalk that she fumbles through, picking out all the right colors.
(Leni)
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[19:46] Walter droningly paces behind the druidess in a mostly coordinated waltz. His feet lift and plunge in synchronization with Leni's own steps, which causes her own barefoot pacing to be adorned by a gentle though reverberating metallic thud in every inch of the stride.

Eventually though, as they come across a familiar residence, the colossal kitsune accidentally stumbles over a garbage can. It's his own garbage - they had accidentally ended up right in front of Walter's apartment building.

"Shit." He curses. Some habits died hard.
(Walter Docro)
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[19:52] Leni had been, for all intents and purposes, ready to perform some vandalism. Technically speaking, anyway. In her mind it's 'art', but in the same way that she views the growth of wildlife a beautiful and necessary thing, it's probably regarded more as a nuisance to the people of this city. Not that she cares.

She wanders along, more or less carefree and unawares of the brute creeping up behind her; that is until he bungles right into a trashcan. Her head whips around, eyes wide.

Shit. She's been spotted. The druid freezes, like a deer in the headlights, and stares at the dog-headed official with her chalk in hand.
(Leni)
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[20:03] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1MfL1oGN0E

Walter, much like Leni, feels as though he's the one who's been spotted. All he does is stare with a widened, flickering stare of peas from his half prone position. There's a heave of legitimate fear once their eyes make direct contact - the dog remains not idly immobile, but actually shakes somewhat upon being exposed.

Rapidly, his head shifts to the side, as he begins to reorganize his wastes tidily. He continues to side-glance Leni from time to time, however. Were she about to vandalize the streets or building? This would be the perfect moment, while the Kingpin Commander is clearly vulnerable.

His throat clears from time to time in pure awkwardness. Pieces of trash fall off to the side clumsily. Big oopsie.
(Walter Docro)
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[20:09] Leni stares for a while as the gigantic brute fumbles awkwardly with his trash. 'Vulnerable' is not a state she sees him in often. He's busy trying to pick up his refuse, lumbering about. So Leni takes this as her opportunity. And she gets an even better idea.

Chalk was one thing. It was fun. Drawing, making art, scribbling words. Instead she opts for something more meaningful and close to her heart. The druid takes a fistful of acorns from one of the pockets of her coat.

She infuses them with mana, a great deal of it, and with a flick of her wrist she scatters them at the foot of the building. As soon as they strike the ground they split open, like tiny bombs, and they take root.

They grow rapidly right there and then, seating themselves like weeds between the cracks in the stone and growing up the side of the building. They spread like fire, though without its immediately destructive properties.
(Leni)
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[20:32] A plethora of mana-fueled vegetation erupts from within the handful of mast, which immediately causes Walter to grunt and coil upwards. It rapidly spreads over and above the height of what once served as the makeshift location to the church of three before the chapel saw repairs through.

"STOP!" It's not a severe or authoritarian shout. In fact, it far more resembles a plea or cry for help. Yet, even in spite of immediate intent of stopping being shown or not, Walter's figure jumps in the trajectory of the multiplying radius of plant life, in an attempt to protect the integrity of the building. Were it made collapse, he'd likely be caught in the rubble.

His strained, injured and tortured figure does not answer with magic, but muscle. Each limb attempts to block growth's path desperately, tugging and pushing away instead of unleashing disintegrating currents of triggered phosphine to do the hard work for him, which would be the notably easier manner of stopping the act.

Plants pull and sip over and around him, coming into contact with the searing taint of occult spread across several corners of his silhouette. Walter can only grunt, struggle and bare it.

"Leni! Stop this, stop this right now!"
(Walter Docro)
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[20:39] "Stop it? Why!?" she shouts back, scowling. Leni is absolutely no architect. She can't tell that the building's integrity might be at risk. Nor did it ever really occur to her. Such is a consequence of how she lives her life.

The druid has no intention of stopping the wild, rampant growth. Why would she? The best she can do, that she might desire to do, is suggest to them where to grow. She doesn't care to be controlled- it follows that she doesn't care much for exerting that control over plant life either.

A few still sprawl up the side of the building, digging into nooks and crannies wherever their tendrils can reach. Several swarm over Walter himself, coating him in vines that begin to sprout strangely colored thorns.

The rest spills out into the street, eating up every inch of ground they can find.
(Leni)
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[21:06] Walter continues to wrestle the parasitically engorging flora by virtue of size and physical girth. Though his efforts are not short of sacrificial, the multitude of vines are quick to overwhelm him. Each one of them finally goes around and through, as they'd begin to wrap over the roof of the building complex. There's a decisive overbearingness to the rate at which they multiply and strengthen, as if they were claiming the urban area to themselves only.

He can no longer bare it. His muscles squeeze and tense up in violent cramps, biceps sprain and succumb to severe lethargy. It would be clear to see Walter was no longer as strong or imposing as usual. His durability had been compromised by ulterior motives, thus making him capable of enduring less than half of the habitual punishment or challenge.

"GHYAAAAAAH!" An agonizing wail of frustration finally erupts from beneath the crushing weight of Leni's thorn-laced cirri. Ultimately accompanying it is a long-reaching spray of dense phosphine that rapidly sprays across the atmosphere. From within his imprisonment, a flickering orange light is cast around Walter's vaguely discernible silhouette.

...click.

With a thunderous roar, a blast of glow irradiates over the entire area, finding its source in Walter's picturesque new weapon. The mechanical angel swings once. Following this, the multitude of plants are rapidly assaulted by a sea of invisible currents. Their molecular structure is immediately compromised, causing them not only to wither, but disintegrate altogether.

There's no dust in wake of Walter's magic, but vapor where vegetation once laid. Amidst the destruction of the frontal spread of plant life lies a bloodied, trembling Walter. His green stare stabs forward in pursuit of Leni. Past the eye sockets of the bull terrier, a river worth of tears.

"... why?" He beweeps. "Why must you... be so cruel?"
(Walter Docro)
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[21:07] Walter Docro says, "spreads* not sprays twice"
[21:18] As is becoming typical, he doesn't have a ready or satisfactory answer to her question. Of course, he's busy fighting off the vines, which is probably fair in some respects. That was his choice. She had not wanted them to hurt him.

Yet they did. That was the drawback of a wild magic such as this. It couldn't be controlled so much as it could be directed. The attempt at vandalism had begun perfectly innocent. Some harmless mischief. It had evolved and grew rapidly into something far beyond that.

Walter remedies the nuisance. Fabulously. In a flash all the new, untamed growth is gone. Not even dust is left. The rampant display of life is met, unfalteringly, by equally rampant and unequivocal destruction. All there had been was a hum of energy. Then nothing.

"I...I didn't...I didn't mean..."

Leni falters, blinking, looking around.

"...You got in the way! I was just growing stuff on this building! I wasn't hurting anyone!" she defends shrilly. "How am I cruel, huh!?"

Her argument doesn't hold a lot of water or terribly much logic. Walter is there, bleeding, and she faces the weight of what she's done. The consequences.
(Leni)
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[21:40] Walter has no concise answers to her question just yet. The only solution he can immediately bring to the table implies fighting back the obscene ringlets from spawning infinitely. His figure shakes, being only supported by the length of the length and weight of the chic saber, Yahoel.

There's a shallow air of penitence about the way in which Walter emotes, as if he's attempting to level their misdeeds in the playing field. Guilt rolls down his throat in a tense gulp, his eyes narrow in effort from the gesture alone. He'd been incomparably miserable for long, yet a certain air of lucidity projects from his every word.

"... had you destroyed this building... you would have hurt more than just me. People live here; they breathe, eat, sleep and fight to see the sun raise the following day." Inevitably, he calls back to his own intervention in the Coalition's war with the Royalist Army. The military institutions he had demolished own his own accord, the recoil damage, the casualties. "You're cruel because you knew this... yet made no effort to stop yourself."

He coughs and heaves, which makes his already leant-over posture to compromise its balance further, nearly causing him to stumble over once more. A sharp, intrusive buzz rings around the general area of his temples. Walter aches and strains in more than just the physical level.

"Leni - why?" His masquerade seemed to bare no weight or tangible obstacle to his true emotions. Leni could always see right through in any shape or measure, thus making his efforts to contain opacity all but meaningful.

"I planted... so many trees. Saw each seed grow and nurture itself... spent every day waiting for you to notice." Sudbury had never looked more green and prosper.

"Why? Why must you attack the fruit of my passions? Why are these things not important to you!?"
(Walter Docro)
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