Ok, let's see if this can be the start of regular updates again….
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She grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair and angrily shoved her arms in the sleeves before yanking open the door.
The scowl plastered across her face startled poor Effie, who just happened to be on the other side. Anne abruptly stopped her flight and tried to rearrange her features into a less-frightening mien, but it was too late.
"What's wrong?" demanded the shorter woman.
"Nothing," she replied, eyes sliding down to the ground as she avoided her gaze.
"You don't look like that's a nothing." Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "Is it Knives?"
Anne shook her head, then stopped and shrugged. "He's part of it, but it's mostly Ace."
"What's wrong with Ace?"
Anne shrugged again, holding her hands palm up as she tried to find the words. Her mouth opened and closed a couple times before she finally settled on, "Aside from a childhood filled with medical torture, leading into an adulthood of sociopathy, not much." She stepped forward, crowding past Effie to continue on her way out of the plant. "She's planning on killing the entire human race," she said under her breath as she pushed past. In a slightly louder voice, she continued. "Knives knew about this and decided not to tell me. He was the one keeping tabs on her, and I was stupid enough to trust him."
"Oh." Effie stood in place for a bare moment, then followed after. "So what are we going to do about it?"
Anne stopped. "We?" Her voice indicated her incredulity.
She nodded. "What's the plan?"
"The plan is I go yell at Knives, then I go take Ace down a peg or two. And you stay here, where it's safe."
"Like hell."
"Excuse me?"
"You can't tell me to stay here. I'm going with you."
Anne laughed, one quick bark that was a measure of her inability to cope with the concept. "We aren't going to go have a delightful chat over tea. We're going to fight."
"Good. The brat needs it."
"And you need to stay here."
"No."
Anne shook her head. "Why do you even want to go?"
"I need to see how you fight. Half the people in the December Group are afraid of plants because we have no idea what you're capable of, and imagine pretty much everything."
"We can do pretty much everything," muttered Anne under her breath.
"I need to be able to report back on your capabilities. We humans need to know. And if it is as dangerous as you say it is, who better to see?"
"This is going to be out of your league. You could study for years and still be a toddler compared to what Ace and I are going to get into. There's just no way you can compete."
"I'm not going to compete. I just want to watch you take that brat down a peg or two."
Anne sighed and threw her hands up to the level of her shoulders. "I can't guarantee your safety. You could get terribly hurt and then what would I do?"
"You can do whatever you have to do. I'm sure that girl isn't going to throw anything at you that you can't handle, and I can take care of myself."
"But…" The words you can't died before reaching her lips. She stopped her egress long enough to look into Effie's eyes, to weigh the determination she saw there. She bit worriedly at her lip, gnawing at the flesh as she tried to find some way to convince her friend that this wasn't a good idea.
But she was old enough and had seen enough fresh young faces full of as much fervor to go out and do the dangerous deeds as Effie showed her now. Sure that there was nothing in the world that they couldn't handle, sure that they were competent, sure that life would not be so cruel as to end on them now. Sure of everything, because they knew nothing. If she knew the words to make Effie see that now was not the time to prove herself she would use them, but she didn't. She had never been able to find them, all her cautions withering in the light cast by that blind faith that the world could not be so terrible that it might throw more at her than she could handle. And that even if, by some remote chance that there might be some way that the danger would be more that she could face, why, Anne would be there.
The sigh that thought brought her managed to escape from between her lips, and with its exhalation Anne started to walk again. By not fighting when Effie fell in at her heels she was tacitly accepting her decision to follow along. She tried to assuage her conscience with the thought that Effie was likely right, that there was no way the girl could pose much of a threat. But a niggling doubt still teased at the corners of her soul.
She knew combat, knew fighting, and knew that things don't always go the way you expect them to. In fact, they rarely ever do. But this was hardly going to be combat. It was just going to be… punishment. A corrective action to get a certain randomizing element to act according to the group wishes. Shrugging her shoulders in her jacket to make it sit better, she lightly plotted out the confrontation.
Lost in thought, she nearly collided with Mark as he came out of a corridor. The close call did manage to knock her brooding thoughts out of her head as she danced away from the collision.
"Hi, girls. Where are we going?" he asked with a smile, head cocked to the left. The smile slowly faded as he took in the determination on their faces and he paced along beside Anne as she started forward again, waiting for her to fill him in.