The next day everyone was permitted to do their own thing until around 3 pm. Everyone met in the dining room once more. The execution was the next day so they needed to discuss a game plan. Lana was sitting next to Vorden. Borden was on his other side. He was sitting opposite Quinn. The first thing Quinn did was tell everyone he was doing this alone.
Layla was furious because she came all this way to help him. Vorden told him there was no way he was going out there alone. Logan made the most sense. He told Quinn if it was about survival, without Quinn, they all would die so it was in their best interests if they went with him.
He relented and the next thing he did was to make sure everyone at the table wanted to participate. Timmy was sitting there but he said he was not decided yet so Quinn allowed him to be in the planning but decided not to assign him any roles.
Then Vorden spoke up. He looked Quinn in the eye and said Lana would not be present at all for the event. She stood up, her chair went flying, "Excuse me?" she turned around so her butt was against the table, "Look at m…" she practically screamed as she reached over and put her hand on his cheek and forced his head to move to meet her eyes.
She saw the pain in his eyes, fully expecting a bad reaction. She then looked at Sil's energy and understood why Vorden was acting this way. Her heart was breaking looking at Sil this way. Sil's heart was breaking watching her face. Even Raten was feeling bad.
Sil's energy told her he, or more precisely, they, would not be able to function at their best if they had her there. They would be too busy worrying about her to give it their all and it could jeopardize the mission, more importantly, their lives. She had tears running down her face.
Though it hurt Sil to see it, he knew it was for the best. Cia tried standing up for her and Lana shut her down before the first word fully escaped her lips. She felt the cloud starting to lessen around her as her negative emotions were eaten by Layla.
She took a deep breath. Without looking at the group, she asked them to accept the decision and not to come down on Vorden for this. She could feel the confusion in the room and inwardly scoffed. I think I'm destined to confuse everyone around me… Without saying another word, she walked out and went to her garden. Her tree would help her cope.
Not long after, her tree told her footsteps were approaching the wall. She was too lost in thought working everything through her emotions to notice. She was tossed up to the wall and sure enough, her delivery man was approaching with two animal crates. She attached a vine to a tree branch and slid down.
She greeted him and he responded back. She then looked at the beasts. One was a white rabbit-type and the other was the same crocodile-type. She attached the crates to a vine each and the branches swung up for her to attach the vines. As the tree pulled the crates in, she gave the man 2000 credits with a smile. "If you want to wait a few minutes, I'll get these crates back to you. "
He smiled, "sounds good to me."
"Were they hard to catch?"
"That white one was but the other was easy."
"Good he needs both types." As she climbed her own vine and vanished over the wall. She moved the beasts from the crates to the holding areas for each then had the tree return the crates over the wall. She popped back to the wall, "I want to thank you again for doing this. See you tomorrow!"
Back on the ground, she took Caser off her shoulders and sat in the corral. She closed the gate off making sure it was good and secure then released the crocodile-type beast and set Caser down near it. Time to see if his instincts kick in.
Caser sat on the ground looking at the crocodile beast as it slowly meandered out of the small enclosure it was provided. Caser seemed to think it more of a curiosity than food. Lana was sitting with her legs outstretched with Caser in her lap. He had been given two beasts a day the whole time they were in school. He wasn't necessarily hungry but he wanted to enjoy the delicacies of this planet while he could.
Lana thought he fit in right well with the strangeness of the rest of the company. The crocodile suddenly sped up and went for Lana's foot. Caser pounced on it before it got its teeth on her. The crocodile was dead in one swipe of his claws.
Caser then ate the body. He laid down on the ground and seemed to be going through some pain and Lana got concerned. After about 15 minutes of her trying to figure things out, she realized his body had gone through some changes. He was still small but he now had an extra set of tentacles totaling four and his roots looked more sturdy. His muscle structure looked more dense as well. She realized he must have evolved as vampires do and had become stronger.
She decided to save the other beast for before bed and do some tumbles, leaving Caser on the ground and see how he'd react. He started whining but his eyes were following her. He then decided to see if he could copy her moves. He did well for a first try but was very clumsy. Ultimately, the next time she tumbled past him, he reached out with his tentacles and grabbed hold. She laughed then put him back on his shelf. She was proud of him, though.
She decided those moves were quite hard with a pack on her back. It would have to fit snugly for it to be effective. It simply moved around too much to get the balance correct. Caser was a different story. She could pack the same things all the time to maintain that weight for her bag but he was going to keep growing. There was no getting used to his weight. She had to get him to willingly walk.
Her mind then switched to the fight coming up tomorrow from which she was excluded. She had an idea. She wrote a note and summoned Max to deliver it. She then spent the rest of the afternoon until dinner time planting medicinal plants where the vegetables used to be.
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