Loose in Badgerland

[runner_fray]

After leaving the other kids in the strange city, Melaka ends up wandering the park, alternating between panic and anger.

Occasionally badgers try to make something tasty out of her. She starts treating this as a minor annoyance, pushing entire blocks masonry aside ad occasionally yelling out:

"HARTH!"

Comments

[dark_ex_watcher]

Fortunately for Mel, she now has a Head Boy.

Who is even now leaping in terror from the bush he was hiding behind, because there are badgers about. Even if he hasn't seen one yet, he knows they are out there somewhere.

Academy training, you know.

The shriek, however, is entirely his own.

[runner_fray]

Mel's seen more than a few. She's even got a large blood stain on her pantsleg now, and what she had to do to deserve that is part of the reason her eyes are wet.

At the shriek she spins around. It sounded a bit like a small thirteen year old's, although Harth's shrieks are usually more manly. Whatvere it is, it sounds like someone's in trouble.

"You OK?"

[dark_ex_watcher]

Wesley has much too good a flail going on to notice Mel's question at first, but it eventually sinks in that he's losing it right in front of what appears to be a perfectly normal person.

At which point, the Academy's Head Boy abruptly straightens himself and puts on his very best air of calm, cool, collectedness.

"Why, yes!" he squeaks.

*ahem*

"Why wouldn't I be?"

As performances go, it might be somewhat less than convincing.

[runner_fray]

Mel doesn't answer the question with words. She answers them with a quick look.

Then, "you seen a scrawny looking kid around here? Black hair, glasses?"

[dark_ex_watcher]

[The narration resists cheap HP jokes. Barely.]

Wesley, obsessed concerned as he's been about badgers, hasn't been looking for scrawny looking kids, and probably wouldn't have noticed any short of being insulted by one.

"No, I don't believe so. From which academy is he?"

[runner_fray]

Harth, we'll have you know, has blue eyes.

Anyway, excuse us; Mel's just heard words she doesn't understand.

"...what?"

[dark_ex_watcher]

"Which academy?"

"Eton, perhaps? Westminster? Tonbridge?"

Surely the boy must come from somewhere. Doesn't everyone who counts?

[runner_fray]

Mel blinks slowly.

"Alright," she says finally. "I dunno what game you're playing, but my brother's got none to do with any of that. And I gotta find him 'fore the animals do."

[dark_ex_watcher]

"He's out here you say?" An innocent human in need of rescue!

Wesley puffs up. In the manner of a peacock. Or, perhaps more accurately, an addled chicken.

"How fortunate you encountered me first."

He gazes out over the park. "This is a task worthy of a Head Boy of the Academy."

[runner_fray]

"Uh."

Mel gives him a blank look, not even involved enough to be properly unimpressed.

"What?"

[dark_ex_watcher]

"Dulwich?"

Hmmm.

"...You wouldn't happen to be Australian?"

[runner_fray]

'What' three times in less than a minute would be uncool.

"Huh," Mel says instead. "What are you, historical?"

[dark_ex_watcher]

Now it's Wesley's turn to be confused. Even more than he usually has been in this place.

"I am not hysterical!" Wesley comes just short of yelling, managing to misunderstand her and fail to be convincing at once.

[runner_fray]

Mel folds her arms across her chest.

"Uh huh."

She doesn't sound like she believes him.

[dark_ex_watcher]

"And why aren't you hysterical, for that matter?" Wesley asks, bizarrely making the question accusatory. "A girl on her own, amidst an outbreak of bloodthirsty badgers?"

Or so he's heard. Wesley still hasn't the slightest clue how he would tell a badger from some other beast red in tooth and claw. But should one come for his head, jaws agape, he supposes the details won't matter very much.

[runner_fray]

Hey, did he just accuse her of...
...what did he just accuse her of?

"What the rut you want me to do? Throw a skitz, get myself killed? Ineed to find Harth. You haven't seen him, you're wasting my... down!"