Chapter 12: Josh

"What the hell are you guys doing!"

Josh is-well angry is an understatement really: he's pissed, he's furious, he's, he's. Shit. He can't even remember any more adjectives for angry. Maybe all the drugs have fried his brain like his dad told him they would.

But still! He likes to think that he's a pretty laid-back guy. Always the centre of the party, handing out ahem mood enhancers, making sure that everyone has a good time. That's his motto, right? Hakuna matata, no worries.

Only idiots exist.

"Look Todd," he continues, "You're a good guy. I like you. And you're hilarious when you're high. But what you've done? It's stupid. It's suicidal!"

Josh gestures towards the remains of his private lab. His usually neat bottles are a mess: Todd's really fucked up his system and it's going to take him hours to get everything back into place. The worst thing though… the worst thing is that there's a steaming bowl in the middle of the table, one of his nice silver ones that he uses when he's working with a fiddly potion so that the container doesn't affect the active components. That bowl was expensive man.

And Todd has just dumped a load of his carefully made brews-which are also super expensive by the way-into them haphazardly taking nothing like proportions or potential explosions into account. He's lucky that he hadn't accidentally made poisonous gas or something.

And Josh still hasn't got to the worst bit.

The worst bit is that when he had carelessly entered his lab a few minutes ago, ready to get some prime baking time in, Todd had had the bowl raised to his face ready to take a drink out of it. Which is wrong on so many levels! Hasn't Todd heard of toxicity tests? Trial runs? How has this kid lived this long?

Yes, he realises the irony of what he's saying. There should really be more readily available information about the dangers of lycanthropy: who knew that it could be sexually transmitted?

Todd looks… he looks apologetic which is a nice first step, but now he's raising the bowl to his mouth again and what the fuck dude?

Josh leaps forward (really impressively he thinks) and knocks the bowl from Todd's hands. It clatters to the floor and where the liquid touches the wood smokes starts to rise.

"What the fuck dude," Josh says blankly.

"Er, shouldn't I be asking you that?" Todd replies, stumbling back slightly to avoid the liquid burning a hole in his shoe, "I mean why have you got the ingredients for acid lying around here?"

Josh narrows his eyes at the little bastard but ignores him in favour of performing a quick spell. The liquid rises into the air, and he hastily finds a glass jar to store it in until he can dispose of it properly.

"What were you even trying to do," he asks despairingly.

"I'm really sorry man," Todd says, "I was just trying to make a potion."

Josh looks at the mess of his laboratory.

"Yeah," he replies, "I think I got that!"

Todd looks worse, and Josh suddenly feels like he kicked cancer puppy or something.

"Hey dude," he says, "It's fine really- "it's not "but maybe if you tell me what you were trying to do, I could help you out?" of here before you can do any more damage, he finishes silently.

Todd seems to slump.

"I was just trying to help," he says. "I mean Margo's been super stressed recently because of Eliot being in an alternate dimension and being tortured, and I think it's not just the worry, you know? I think it's the fact that she can't even get in contact with him. Like I know that he's probably got some bad shit being done to him, but it's even worse because we have no information? And your mind naturally jumps to the worst-case scenario?"

Josh hums an affirmative noise: he has no idea what this kid's on about. Has he missed some drama? He figured that the recent lock down was just the school's latest ploy to stop students sneaking off campus and actually study for finals: business has been booming lately with students bored out of their minds.

"And I thought I could find something to just help her calm down. You know, nothing crazy. But I knocked and you weren't there, and I don't have a lot of time because I'm supposed to be meeting Margo in an hour, so I thought if I just tipped some of the calming things into a bowl, I could make a rough potion up for her."

Wow. This kid is dumber than he thought.

"Ok, several things going on in that sentence," says Josh, "One, if Margo wants relaxing drugs, I'm pretty sure Margo can get her own relaxing drugs. Two, poppy? Angel's trumpet? Snowdrops? Were you trying to kill her?"

Todd bristles.

"Hey poppy's got opium in it!" he protests, "I know that."

"I mean yeah," says Josh, "Apart from you used my poppy concentrate which has enough opioids in it to kill a small elephant. And you used all my nice vanilla!"

"I wanted it to taste nice? And snowdrops are always so cheerful! Like who doesn't feel better after seeing a snowdrop after winter? And anything called angel-something has to be good for you, right?"

Josh groans.

"Ok Todd, tell you what. I've got a couple of things that might help Margo out. Like, I could combine my recipe for my DimensiON cake, add a bit of Somnacin, mix with my special GPYes! cake."

Todd looks blank.

"You have out of body travel experience when you have it," Josh explains, "I though the name was-never mind the name. Inception jokes are ruined on you," he mutters under his breath.

"I'll bake them in a brownie for you: classic. Although maybe not as tasty as usually as someone used all my vanilla. It should let you travel to Eliot's dreams even if he is in a different dimension or whatever. Hell, I'll bake you a whole batch. In return you never step foot in this room again. Deal?"

Todd bounces-literally bounces.

"Ohmygod thank you Josh!" he says, "That sounds perfect. Like Penny in a cake! In fact," he hesitates, "could you maybe make enough for like six, seven people?"

Josh can feel a headache coming on. He looks longingly at his bong in the corner.

"Yes fine whatever. I'll get it to you before the end of the day. Now get out!"

Todd leaves thank Bacchus, and Josh smokes almost an entire ounce of weed, he's so frazzled, before getting on to making the promised brownies. Really Todd, did you ever stop to think that maybe you only needed a small amount of things with the label 'concentrate' on them? The brownies wipe him out of a lot of his stock-what's left of it anyway. It's fine, he's going to take a break for a bit, do some self-care: it's not like he can replenish anything while the lockdown is still in effect anyway. And he maybe does feel a bit bad for Margo, who's been rough recently.

He regrets his kinder impulse later that evening when he delivers the brownies to the Physical Kids' Cottage and find an alarming amount of people staring at him as he enters.

"What?" he says defensively. Has he got something on his face?

"This will really let us visit El's dream? I mean speak to him properly?" Shaggy hair asks.

"I mean I haven't tested this particular combination yet, but in theory yeah," says Josh.

"I don't know if this is a good idea Q," Alice Quinn-oh my god Alice Quinn!-says, "I mean we still aren't ready. We could be tipping Ember and Umber off."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Alice," says scarily-hot-East-Asian dude.

Margo stands.

"Shut up Penny," she growls, "El's my best friend and I haven't been able to be there for him. It's easy for you to say: you're the only one who's been able to see him regularly."

Penny snorts. "Yeah, but it's not like I can tell him I'm real! I just have to stand there uselessly and gather information."

Scary chick with curly hair-and what is it with the amount of scary and/or hot people in this group?- places her hand over Penny's.

"I know it's been hard for you," she says, "And we appreciate it Penny, you know we do. And if any of us," she glares around the room and Josh attempts to sink into the wall, "could help share your burden we would in a heartbeat."

Penny scowls.

"Fine," he says, "But we only take them just before we make our move. Don't give them too much time to prepare."

"Actually," Josh says, "The best time to eat them before they go stale would be-" he trails off. "Never mind," he says.

"We've nearly finished the spell," Alice says, "A couple more days."

Q-is that actually his name? -nods.

"So we're agreed," he says, staring at Margo. "We wait for Julia and the others to do the draining spell, and then we eat the brownies. And then we rescue El."

Yeah ok this has got crazy intense. Josh places his plate of baked goods on the table and edges his way out before they start an orgy or something. Physical Kids man. They throw the best parties but have the worst fuck ups.

Behind him the room explodes into noise as Margo decidedly doesn't appreciate Q ordering her around. But hey, not his problem.

He hopes they're ok though. Eliot's a cool dude. But Hakuna Matata. Can't concentrate on your life philosophy if you're caught up in someone else's shit.

So he leaves. Josh has another ounce of the good stuff waiting for him back in his room and it's calling his name.