(A/N: SET 3-4 YEARS BEFORE THE HUNTIK TEAM VISITS. Aka, Ket's 18 in this one, and its only a few months since she started living at HQ.

I haven't written much of anything beyond some derpy chapter attempts for the main body of 'Florida.' Some of this drabble doesn't make sense without those derpy attempts, but it was rattling around in my head. I wanted to get Mama Cat [aka Cathy] and Cor put out there a bit. Marko will come later, I'm still deciding on things for him.

To explain the characters a little so they're not totally unknown, here's their basic descripts.

Mama Cat has the Touch, which gives her higher control and influence over general animals and Titans, though it's much higher while in the Woven Zone where Huntik and our world overlap. It also gives her an extremely powerful healing ability. She's based off a woman who practically raised me for quite some time, and as she's a mild cat lady that feeds the local deer I've given her story counterpart an 'animal attract' passive ability in a way. Animals and the Titans and Titan Hybrids [again expanded on in a derpy chapter] basically love being around her and like to chill around or in HQ due to her calming influence. She mothers the team, especially the younger Ket and Cor, but doesn't put up with their shit either.

Cor, fully known as Corando, is based loosely on a very dear chat buddy of mine from Norway. He has Hearing, which I'm still fleshing out, but he can understand any Titan and is learning to understand animals. He's the 'Hears things' to Ket's 'Sees things.' Rumors of Titans, plans, and even the whispers of the regular world and the spirits of the forest go through him. He's a few years older than Ket, and they're fast friends with a hobby of watching the worst [or best in the worst ways] movies they can find during their supply house breaks. His signature Titan is Ratosk, modeled after the large squirrel that runs up and down the World Tree in Norse mythos.)

Excoriation

Ket suppressed a groan when she finally gave in and opened her eyes.

The soot-smudged whitewash ceiling greeted her, as it had nearly every morning for the last few months. Nothing appeared different, but today was very much a different type of day.

Despite being unable to leave the hybrid zone forest to live a normal life like everyone else in her senior class, the importance of senior exam grades and overall class grades had been pounded into her head since preschool of all things. She would never be able to attend university, even with one in the town closest to the forest and where she had grown up, but somehow grades still mattered in her mind.

Today was the day she would plod out to the supply house, Jirwolf at her heels for moral support, and receive her final transcript from the battered mailbox at the corner of the drive.

Ket was not looking forward to opening that envelope.

A bony fist banging against the door of her cabin drew a bleary glare. "Oi, Ket! Come on, Mama's getting ready to send T in here. It's nearly nine hundred hours!"

"It's just! Nine!" Ket yelled back at Cor's disgusting use of military time. Military time required math. Which she definitely wasn't looking forward to hearing about when she opened that envelope. She seized the far edge of her hammock and hauled herself up, not bothering to toss a shirt over her sports bra and basketball shorts in the morning humidity as she snapped a hair band tight to her fresh ponytail and stumbled out the door.

"Goddag, lazy!" Already bright eyed and scampy, Cor darted from behind the corner of Ket's cabin to enact his morning tradition of giving her ponytail a good tug.

Instead he recoiled, nearly tripping over Ratosk crouched behind him, with a cry of, "Hava Faen?! What happened to you?!" Ratosk chittered loudly. "She does look like a fucking horror movie!"

Ket didn't even turn around to respond, choosing instead to trudge over to where Mama Cat was busy ladling out oatmeal in the Chickee. "This is my morning face, string bean. Not all of us can wake up as fabulously beautiful as you." She tossed a casual middle finger of her shoulder at a second round of Ratosk's rapid chatter. Even without Cor's Hearing, she could tell the squirrel-like Titan was slyly insulting her. "Jirwolf is coming out later, Rat. Take it up with him."

The Floridian hadn't given her Norwegian counterpart's reaction a second thought. But when Mama Cat jerked back with a gasped "Oh, lord!" when she handed the teen her breakfast, Ket blinked. Either she really needed to brush her teeth with the mint leaves like Mama had suggested, or something was wrong.

"Jeez. Do I look that ugly today?" Ket smiled wryly. This wasn't doing much to help her anxiety. Instead of answering, Cathy hurriedly set the bowl she had been offering Ket down and took her charge by the shoulders. "Wha– Hey! Mama!"

The North Carolinian looked Ket in the eye and gently pushed her onto the picnic bench. "Ket, I need you to stay calm for me, darling, and answer me as best you can. Were you beyond the safe zone last night? Did you go after those hunters?"

Ket tried to lean back slightly, a little disturbed, but Mama's grip was surprisingly strong. Cor had heard two illegal deer hunters wandering around and camping the very outer edge of the woven zone the other day, their buckshot–laden shells sounding like fireworks to his Hearing. Despite desperately wanting to scare them off, Ket had promised to Mama Cat that she wouldn't even go close to their camp, and she had kept her word.

"No! I promised you, and I'd never break a promise to you! Mama, what's going on?"

Cor slid onto the bench on the opposite side of the table. "You're covered in blood and holes, that's what's going on! She thinks you're in shock!"

Ket's eyebrows shot up and she finally managed to jerk away enough to look down at her chest and arms.

In her anxiety clouded morning brain she hadn't even noticed that her arms and shoulders were covered in oozing sores. The pain finally registered and the teen could feel the sting of sweat in open wounds at the back and sides of her neck, all the way up to the base of her skull. She patted her cheeks and forehead, her fingertips coming back stained red with congealing blood.

With a frustrated and disappointed growl she hung her head and groaned, "Not again!"

"Again?!" Cor and Cathy shared bewildered glances.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!" Ket waved them off and put her hands together in a prayer like gesture. "I just gotta use Everfight, they'll scab up."

Cathy swatted her hands apart and pressed her thumbs to the bloodied girl's forehead and bare sternum, uttering the words of her healing Power. "You, missy, have some explaining to do!" The elder woman snapped as the last otherworldly heartbeat faded. She shoved a dampened cloth into Ket's hands. "And some cleaning up!"

Ket sheepishly took the cloth and began wiping the blood away from her now healed skin. "Thanks, Mama. And sorry about that. It can happen when I get worked up about something."

"You break out in leprosy?" Cor cracked a grin, swiping the oatmeal meant for the younger Seeker. His Hearing was still straining to chase the last ethereal strains of the Ancient One's pulse, and in his 'half here–half there' state he missed getting the spoon into his mouth and managed to jab the utensil against his upper lip and nearly snort oatmeal up his nose. "Cripes!"

"Whatchya get!" The Seer across from him stuck out her tongue. "I have Excoriation disorder. I pick my skin. It's usually a subconscious urge and I give in to it when I'm bored. But when I'm stressed out it can manifest at night."

Cathy scowled and fussed over Ket's bloodied forehead with a cloth of her own. "And you're telling us this now? I could have given you a remedy to calm you down last night and avoided this whole thing."

"It's not exactly something I shout from rooftops. People think it's gross." Seeing that Cor had nearly mastered the finer points of feeding himself unaided, Ket gave him a devilish grin. "I think it reminds people of the oatmeal scene in Braindead. Remember that one, dear Corando? With the mother's oatmeal? And the pus? Squirting into the bowl, and the people eat–"

The wooden bowl clattered to the table as the lanky Norwegian dropped it and nearly fell over trying to scramble to the brush outside HQ, violently emptying his stomach.

Cathy gave her youngest charge a disapproving look. "That was mean, Ket."

"He stole my oatmeal! And the leprosy joke wasn't even original. I heard much worse and more creative ones in school." Recovering her bowl, Ket tossed the remains of her bloody cloth into the firepit. "And he picked that movie."

(A/N: Very short but meh. I've got Excoriation disorder and I've picked holes into my arms and face for years. It's died down significantly since freshman year of high school, but it's a constant thing in my life and I've learned to adapt. Unfortunately most of my picking is done in my waking hours so I can't just blame it on my subconscious. It's too hard to describe so I usually just dump it into a story as a sleep thing. Whatever.

Do NOT look up that scene in Braindead. Cor picked that movie to watch and even though I've pulled shiny strands of muscle fiber from my fucking forearm without even flinching [and hey, it's kinda morbidly cool in its own way. Very satisfying. Don't do it though. Terrible habit. Hard to break.], that scene made me gag. It still does.

In a weird personal twist, I'll tell you why I wrote this one because I'm bursting to say it. Fall semester is coming up fast, and although I'm two classes away from getting my AA degree in microbiology, I had a bit of a mental crisis this past week realizing that I didn't want to spend my life over a microscope. I chose the path because I wanted to work for the CDC, but after a very terrible experience with a university based hospital at the place I was planning to attend for both bachelors and grad school, I was done. And I was freaking. Out. Like full on puking, shaking, 'oh my god, I've wasted so much time and money and life on this and I knew like a year ago it wasn't what I wanted and now I grow the balls to say no?!'

So, if all goes well, I'm meeting my advisor Friday to change my major. I just hope I don't go through this whole thing again when I get close to getting my AA in that!)