Summary: If two pixies sneak into Foop's private greenhouse to steal a rare citrus and no one is around, do magical alarms make a sound?

Characters: Jardine, Rosencrantz, Sanderson, Foop, assorted pixies

Rating: K+

Prerequisites: None

A/N: I need to apologize- I wrote this prompt specifically to help me study for my horticulture exams. Looks like today's dose of fanfiction will be super extra funducational.

Posted: February 1, 2017

35. Name (~500 years post-series)

Third Monday of Early Spring; Aurora 8017

Year of Leaves; Spring of the Invaded Garden

Hirschi slammed his palm down on the intercom button. "H.P., Jardine filled the coffee mixer with potato bugs again!"

Jardine wrapped both hands around the shorter pixie's mouth and pulled him away despite the flailing of pale fumbling arms and whirring wings. "Boss- Boss, I think I'm justified, you know? It's 8:52 in the evening, and the holiday season is over. What could he possibly need the coffee maker for? Lick me all you want, you phototropistic little cretin- I dig in Earth mud for most of my days. Ow! If you start a swarm at this hour, I swear-"

"It's decaf," snapped Hirschi. He wiped his mouth with the end of his crumpled tie. "I always have decaf when it gets late- You know I work the under-2,000-year babysitter shift Mondays, and Verona and Finley don't go to bed until some forsaken hour of the morning."

"Fair, but I did wait all day to use that coffee maker," Jardine argued. Hirschi wrenched his hand away from the intercom button and shoved him through the door of the break room. It sent him stumbling, hands falling one after the other after the other and again against the opposite wall before the door slammed. Still, he squared his shoulders squarer as he backed up and started to turn around. "I-I read a few months back that spreading their ground-up bodies over the leaves keeps off the living bugs-"

"Oof!" Hot liquid splashed across his stomach. Millennia of training prevented Jardine from flinching at the touch, but he felt his left eye twitch behind his shades. His fingers, though still down by his sides, flicked at the wrists. A startled, stung pixie glanced up at him, one hand hovering over his now-crumpled paper cup. Several droplets of dark coffee dribbled from his collar. He took in the flustered, trying-not-to-be flustered figure in front of him, his mouth slightly parted as he tasted the imprint in the energy field. After he'd identified the offender, a crease crossed his upper lip.

"Juveniles."

"Sorry, Sanderson," Jardine whispered. He fought to maintain a calm expression, but inwardly, he was mortified. He looked up to Sanderson greatly, in a manner of speaking meant entirely in the metaphorical sense (no one over the age of 114,000 could actually look up at Sanderson the physical way). Not knowing what else to do with his hands, he floated over to the hallway corner, where a grayscale coleus (a Sprigganhame variety he'd spent millennia producing himself) was just leafing out, and began plucking off the terminal buds.

Sanderson put his head thirty-one degrees to his left side. "Did I hear a disagreement about insects in the coffee grinder?"

"I, er, was trying to perform my job to the best of my capabilities?"

"H.P. sent me down here to remind you that with this being the night Mother Nature and Father time dub the name of the new Leaves year, he's very busy at the moment and is not to be disturbed. It's already tomorrow in Luna's Landing, and he was hoping he wasn't too late to catch Anti-Cosmo or someone before roost. Such things lead to paperwork, and paperwork leads to busyness, and that means that if Longwood doesn't catch you first, I get to punish you if you pull anything like that again. You would be surprised how creative I can be with my punishments."

"I didn't do it," he mumbled, glancing back.

The older pixie remained expressionless. "Yes, I can see that. However, I like delivering punishment, and if you give me the chance, then I will. That coffee maker is on the fritz as it is. A week ago, Rosencrantz convinced himself it would be a brilliant idea to plug the thing into one of the outlets on the cubicle floor- forgetting, apparently, how much pure magical energy is coursing through the wires in there. Fried it to its last legs in a wingbeat. Dear dust, Rosencrantz…" Sanderson shook his head. If he were one of the pixies who shared Jardine's apartment, he might have removed his shades to pinch his nose. Instead, he set his empty hand to his right hip. "Rose hasn't been waking up on time. Recently Hamilton, Newman, and Faust have taken to pinging his bed above the pool in the TFE building and dunking him. I have noticed he comes in here soaking, and he drips on all the electric cords. He's been warming himself up with coffee, and now his work is becoming less efficient and more jittery than ever."

"Oh. I… see." Jardine rubbed the largest button on his suit's jacket between his thumb and forefinger. "Um. Shouldn't you help him look into that? Rosebud, I mean. There has to be an alternative…"

"No longer my intern, no longer my problem." Sanderson raised his brows over the edge of his shades, the coffee cup concealing most of his mouth and nose. "Now, it's almost nine o'clock. I have retinue duties to perform for H.P. Don't cause any more trouble. Don't ring up the boss unless it's really urgent. And frankly, Rosencrantz can bite my buns."

Jardine wrinkled his nose, but stayed silent. Sanderson wasn't the type of pixie one argued with. So the younger one watched his coworker drop his cup lightly in the hallway's corner trash can and speed off towards the elevator without another word. Then he tapped his chin with a dirty nail.

"An alternative… I wonder…"

Still pondering absently, Jardine floated back and opened the door to the second-floor break room again. It slid without creaking. Hirschi hovered by the far wall, flipping through a stack of coffee filters as though they were the terms and conditions of a P.A.W.S. update.

"What?" he asked without looking up.

"Hirsch, did you say you're sleeping in Snowy, Rosencrantz's, Verona, Finley, and Southmark's apartment tonight?"

Hirschi spat an unground bean into one of the dirty filters and wrapped it tighter. "Yep. I'll tie them to their beds if I have to. My hope is that they're exhausted after yesterday- Did you hear Keefe walked in and found them surrounded by smuggled Halloween candy?"

"Eh, if they were willing to trick-or-treat with Hamilton, Newman, and Faust out and about, they're welcome to it, I say." Jardine continued floating, keeping his hands clasped behind his back. After a moment, when Hirschi had tossed the filters aside and instead taken up an electric cord with two knots in it, he said, "Let me make this 'potato bugs in the coffee grinder' incident up to you. I'll chocolate shell out for a new one, too."

"Don't. And here I thought you just made plant puns."

"I make all the puns. Not one of my best, though. Listen, you can watch the others, but I'll take Rosebud all night- punch out his card and everything."

"Where's the loophole?"

"Erm. If I'm buying a new coffee grinder, I want the old one. And if you bring this up with the boss again and get me in trouble, then I'll be forced to tell him about that time you and Caudwell snuck off to meet Anti-Wanda at Jorgen's Pizza and Duck-Zooka Parlor Parlor without permission."

Hirschi scratched at his neck. "That was a legitimate business transaction, before we were so rudely interrupted- Did you see her dive over my head to get to the door when H.P. and Sands burst in? It just so happened that we also got pizza out of our trip. Pizza is low-key my life. I like to think that I'm the piece of H.P. that got a kick out of the refreshments at Princess Vyanda's bowling ball party all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. Okay, I'll allow it. Rosie's yours tonight and any other time you feel like being generous. But you'll probably want to get out there like, now. N., H., and F. were after him by the fountain."

"Aw, complete fertilizer." Not wasting even the time it took to draw his starpiece from his jacket pocket, Jardine pinged away. The world flashed. A second and a quarter later, he materialized above the central Inkblot City plaza, with Headquarters at his back and the Pixies Inc. welcome sign across the freckled, almost pixelated pink and purple clouds in front of him. Beyond it, the Bit Bridge arched downwards to the second plane of existence. Jardine had probably slid down and scaled that Bridge more times than any of his coworkers, even though he was the 81st of them and barely 215,000 years old. Transplanting daisies and other interesting flora from Earth was kind of his job.

Sure enough, even though it wasn't yet nine o'clock, Hamilton, Newman, and Faust were already making their rounds tonight. They made it their mission in life to chase their straggling brethren back inside after hours, and usually stayed out to keep guard for will o' the wisps and other intruders (unless Longwood told them otherwise, but for dust's sake, Longwood). The three muscular pixies were brilliant at the annual Olympics and indispensable during business talks to potentially dangerous foreign ambassadors, but an absolute nightmare for their fellows to deal with. Jardine still ached from the last three Halloweens.

And today, they had their sights set on one of the smallest pixies of all. Rosencrantz tore down Lavender Street, covering his head with a manila file folder. Loose papers and crumpled notes spilled in his wake like Jorgen and Gretel's trail of breadcrumbs in the old fairy tales. Hamilton was close behind. Gaining fast, too. His two ham fists were clenched in front of him like a cup, obviously clutching something large and alive, and Jardine was able to guess what it was as he listened to Rosencrantz's pitiful howls.

"Stop! That's not relatively amusing in any form! I hate bugs!"

"You are literally a third of a bug, you smoof-headed moron," Faust hollered after him, his heavy feet pounding like bricks of iron on the cloudstones. Newman, easily the fastest of the trio, swept Rosencrantz off his feet and flipped him backwards into the air. The scrawny pixie flailed his arms and beat his wings rapidly. That steadied him somewhat, until Hamilton jumped and made a motion as though to slam dunk the little guy to the ground.

Jardine simply dove forward and caught him before they could connect. His momentum was enough to bring him rolling up to a crouch in the road, holding the shivering Rosencrantz to his chest. Instantly, the three larger pixies jerked away and backed off with their enormous palms facing forward.

"We were just leaving, Jardine!"

"Yeah, no need to break out the poison ivy this time."

After setting Rosencrantz to the side to kneel and wipe at the snot leaking from his nose, Jardine slowly pushed himself to his feet. Newman and Faust cringed away. Amused but not surprised, the smaller pixie locked his fingers behind his back. His lip twitched in the right corner. "H.P. may have retired to his penthouse for the evening, but I have no shame in pinging him a report about the unsafe workplace behavior I just witnessed here. I'll have four hundred springing sprites out of the two of you. Not you, Hamilton. You'll do six hundred."

As Faust and Newman hastened to comply, jumping up and down and moving their arms and legs like scissored 'X's, Hamilton leered forward. The dark purple sky darkened slightly further. "You don't have either the authority or the strength t' boss me around, punk."

"Maybe, but I did at least get Dad's brains."

With nostrils flaring, "Didn't I use your face t' clean half my mirror maze last Halloween?"

"All the more reason not to upset me here. Now, do your springing sprites or so help me, you can do them with a gingertie log dangling from your neck."

Hamilton clenched the front of Jardine's suit in his fist and hoisted him up to eye level. His effervescence stank of old peaches as he opened his mouth and growled, "Only. H.P. Tells me. What. To. Do."

"Y-y-y-yes, Hamilton."

He was released. Jardine hit the violet bricks hard on his rear, his wrist twisted in a strange way beneath him. With a final grunt, Hamilton buzzed his stubby wings and marched off. Newman slapped his shoulder and followed, with Faust tailing behind last of all, tripping over his oversized feet.

The sniffle behind him reminded Jardine why he had come out here. When he turned, he found Rosencrantz on his hands and knees, pulling his notes back together and laying them one by one in his file folder. He kept pausing to push his wrist across his face, scrubbing off wetness that every pixie had long learned to pretend was never there.

"S-someday I'll get them back," Rosencrantz muttered, never meeting his eyes. "If I weren't stuck on laundry duty, if I just had a real job, if I could pass my s-stupid placement test, if I studied harder, if I were big like them, if I were born earlier, if H.P. l-liked me, if everyone didn't treat me like I'm still a nymph…"

"Um, Rosie…"

Rosencrantz groped for the fallen zinflax wand he'd been left with after shattering yet another cell phone fifty years ago. It was chipped and chewed all down the handle, and the black stain had worn away in long strips to reveal pink wood underneath, in addition to the natural spines along the bark. His fingers clenched with his teeth. "Th-they were scared of you. I wish they were scared of me like that. Someday, maybe. I'll sh-show them. I'll show everyone."

"Well. Uh. Not really scared, but someone who studies as hard as you do probably knows how weak their immune systems are, yes? They can't fly and can hardly manage to ping, let alone fight off sickness fast. Hey, they're huge, but they're just playing cats and mouse. The size of their brains was cut down in egghood to increase their muscle mass." He reached over to dust the young pixie off. "Um, are you all right?"

"Yeah… Who are you?"

Jardine almost blinked. "It's me, Rosebud. Jardine."

"Who?"

"I work in the gardens?"

"We have gardens?"

"On the north side, by the Stadium, where we grow H.P.'s favorite falak beans? For his coffee?"

Rosencrantz did blink. "You can grow coffee?"

"Never mind." Deciding not to pester Rosencrantz with questions about what he was actually studying, the older pixie crouched up on his heels and slid off his sunglasses. "Listen, Rosebud. I've been talking with Sanderson, and I think I can solve your sleeping-in problem."

"You know about that, huh?" Rosencrantz fiddled with the vapor-stained tie that never stayed tucked in his suit jacket. "Sanderson told?"

"He mentioned it. So hey, have you heard of the jatican citrus? Orange fruit? Grows on trees in bunches? Produces more ethylene than any other plant known to our quadrant of the universe? Thrives in cold temperatures and direct moonlight?"

"Um. No. Wait. Just maybe once. Hawkins likes jatican juice, I think. H.P. said that in his book."

Jardine held out his hand and pulled the small pixie to his feet, then into the air. "Well, I was thinking jatican might help stimulate you in the mornings, so you could drink it instead of coffee. Which you're supposed to be too young for anyhow."

"Please don't tell H.P.," Rosencrantz stuttered, wings shaking at the apexes. "I'm just trying to increase my p-productivity."

"And it's not working, is it? Personally, I don't think coffee's for everyone. It just makes you nervous…er. And since I'm the resident expert on plants, I'd like to help you obtain some jaticans. What say you, Rosebud?"

Rosencrantz shuffled his papers against his chest. "I don't know. Th-this might go against protocol. I don't want H.P. to be mad at me."

Jardine patted his back. "You're with me, at least. I promise, if something happens and we get caught out after hours, I'll tell Cupid and H.P. and Jorgen that it was all my idea."

"Well, if you promise."

"Of course. Isn't it Pixie culture to always keep our word?" Jardine reached into the inner left pocket of his dirty gray jacket and pulled out his phone. He unlocked the screen and opened his long-distance teleportation app, then stopped. "Oh. By the way, since the war and the quarantining of the anti-pixies happened, now jaticans only grow in two or three accessible places in the entire Deep Kingdom. Well, for us, only one."

Rosencrantz's wings went so stiff, he dropped to the pavement. "I really hope you don't mean the A-Anti-Fairywinkle family's private gardens."

"It's the Anti-Fairywinkle family's private gardens. The moonlight greenhouse, to be precise. It's four in the morning in their time zone right now, which means I think they and the camarilla are all asleep." He threaded his fingers through the curls at the front of his hair as he sized the trembling pixie up and down. "Look at it this way: by showing up unannounced and inviting ourselves inside, we're pointing out to them what's wrong with their security system so that they can fix it in the future to protect themselves from more threatening thieves and rivals."

"Sounds mint," Rosencrantz said instantly, apparently not too put-off by the fact that this plan involved breaking and entering into the private property of someone who had on multiple occasions attempted to both dissect their kind and hold them for ransom in exchange for unreasonably high prices and cornbread.

"Now your wings are whirring! Next stop, Mount Olympus."

Getting through the Divide gate and into Anti-Fairy World was easy. Jardine merely flashed his Pixies Inc. ID badge at the camarilla member on duty (Anti-Kathy, Rosebud informed him quietly, since she was Anti-Cosmo's seat of Sky and in their zone it was already Munn's day of the week). As he put the badge away, the infinite-foot tall iron gate swung inward into the land of Hy-Brasil. The air temperature dropped fast. Warm curls of magic glinted in the air around their mouths and right hands. The murky sky faded from purple to red. "Whoa," Rosencrantz said, tailing him so closely that their wings clipped, "I've never seen anyone except H.P. get in that fast. Not even Sanderson!"

"That's because Sanderson isn't the one responsible for maintaining the cloudland economy by teaching the Anti-Pixies how to manage their greenhouses and pollinate their gingertie trees." Jardine veered in that direction as the gate shut with a clang and the locks went back up, just to throw Anti-Kathy off their trail. After they had moved out of the range of her echolocation and sensitive ears, Jardine changed course again. "Now, you've never been to Anti-Fairy World since you're barely a thousand five hundred" - a politer thing to say than "stuck on eternal laundry duty" - "but, I mean, Sanderson taught you Anti-Coppertalon v. Marmot, right? If nothing else, you've read Origin of the Pixies more times than any of us."

"Pixie starpieces don't even work in Anti-Fairy World. That's why when you were on the t-team to guard the fairy baby the boss and Anti-Cosmo stole, you had to borrow Anti-Fairy wands."

"Yes, exactly."

"I told you I study."

They flew on, dodging two-headed bats, spindly trees that rattled, and geysers spurting puffs of green-gray steam. Eventually, after half an hour, the Blue Castle with Anti-Cosmo's famous sign shimmered into view.

"'Welcome not', it says. Unless, of course, you're me."

"Look out for the arrows," Rosencrantz squeaked. "They're automatic. They shoot if they sense Seelie Court magic coming too close."

"I know. Anti-Cosmo told me when I started showing up with deliveries centuries ago. I also know that they're not very sensitive. The arrows and alarms will trip only in the presence of hot and dry magic. AKA, our Fairy friends. Pixie magic is too weak to trigger them." Jardine circled the castle widely and, on the west side, flew lower to ease open a wooden gate painted dark red like dripping berry juice. It smelled of lilacs, though. "This is where we'll find the private gardens. The moonhouse is just inside, to the east. I mean west- I always get my Earth and cloudland directions flipped. It's to the right, farther from the castle walls. Follow me, and don't step on the aggregates."

"The what?"

"Those groupings of sand, silt, and clay. Basically, the ground is lava. Keep to your wings."

Rosencrantz nodded. As Jardine skimmed lower to examine a handful of ashy soil, he stayed well out of the way himself.

"Do you see that beauty?" the older pixie asked after a moment. Rosencrantz hovered closer to peer over his shoulder, and he pointed towards a blue, rooty plant slumped over like some sort of slimy tentacled lump. "Because Anti-Fairy World is permanently under the Red Skies, it gets enough moonlight to grow blindweed year-round. One touch, ten minutes, and that plant will dissolve your skin to the bone."

"That's awful!"

"Oh, it's not its fault. It's written in its germplasm." Jardine kept moving between rows of scrubby vegetation, bobbing slowly, and soon paused again. "Hmm. This is interesting."

"Why?"

"Look. Anti-Wanda's old moonhouse is labeled 'Foop's Garden'." Jardine leaned his hands against the acrylic surface of the small building - one of the only transparent surfaces in Anti-Fairy World, he thought - as he squinted. Then he jabbed a finger forward. "Ah!"

"Did you find the jatican citrus?"

"No, but according to that sign over there, Foop's set up a series of acid scarifications to wake some Earth seeds from dormancy. You don't see a lot of that under the Red Skies, with how cold it is here. I'm not sure how I feel about that. He must be preparing to transplant them to a real hot house soon enough. He even has Earth dirt by the looks of it. I guess he's growing something that won't sprout in either Fairy World vapor or Anti-Fairy cinders. What's that there at the end? I can't read his handwriting, but I think it's supposed to say 'Boudacian imports'. Huh. That must have cost him a pretty lyn. I wonder how upset he'd be if I cross-pollinated his razitawart with his killfeather…?"

"Um." Rosencrantz glanced over his shoulder. "I don't think that's what we came here for."

"What? Oh, right." Jardine lifted the latch on the moonhouse door, tossing the razitawart a glance to let it know he'd be back for it later. "I haven't really been here in a decade. I wonder if there's much else that's new."

Inside, four long tables stretched entirely from one end of the moonhouse to the other. They were set on wheels for ease of movement (complete with handles like little pulleys to slide the tables from one side to another), but packed in tightly enough that there wasn't so much space for them to be slid. A low hum filled the air. The Anti-Pixie greenhouses trapped the heat better and required more fans blowing the cool air in. Having only a single one leaning in through the window, clicking and clacking, made Jardine set his teeth. He placed his right hand around his upper left arm.

The first table on the right - the one with the scarifications - was made up of heated shelves that sparkled lightly with the touch of recent magic. As Jardine prowled around the edges of the moonhouse, he skimmed his eyes carefully over each one of the many plants set out. Four. There were four whole plants he didn't recognize at all. Five. Six! … Faintly, he noticed that Rosencrantz kept his wand drawn, even though in Hy-Brasil its powers were locked down.

And then Jardine squealed. "Look!"

Rosencrantz straightened his wings and set his small hands to his hips. "Cheese and crackers, Jardine, I thought you were dying."

"Just look at all these seminal roots! Ooh, and these bromeliads! Yes, these ones over here in the corner, sprouting from the trees! Those little white flowers- aren't they gorgeous? Holy dust, that can't be! A pineapple! He has a pineapple dunked in one of those new heat baths I invented! Although, I didn't design it quite like… this. Hmm. That's a clever way to keep it warm, although I hope he's using supplement packets to combat the side effects of long exposure and direct contact. Oh wow, he even has my Spriggish variant of brandispin; Bryophyllum are my specialty, you know. This stuff can be turned into an energy source, and that's actually what powers the ever-burning torches they use here in Anti-Fairy World instead of electric lights." Running his hand over an array of purple, succulent leaves, Jardine couldn't help but gush. "I don't remember giving him this. I think he stole it from my greenhouse when my back was turned. Golly, that kid certainly knows how to flatter a fellow."

"Jardine, um, the citrus."

"We'll get to that. But first, look at this old charmer." Even though he was supposed to hate the guy he'd practically helped raise, Jardine couldn't help but let out an appreciative whistle as he touched the cacaquark. "I must admit, Foop's learning rapidly every day, and he knows his stuff. Come here and take a look at these flats. All these sprouts. You know, when you perform crown division, you divide the plant into multiple parts. Each 'plantlet' needs crowns and roots, which need to be kept moist, and the transplanting thing has to be done when the plant is in its dormant stage."

"What's this?" Rosencrantz asked, reaching out towards an enormous black flower blooming in the middle of the second table, beside an elf cactus.

The older pixie swatted his wrist away. "Don't touch it. That's cometbloom. Its gibberellin count is off the charts. One touch of it to your blood or stomach and it will promote cell elongation like you wouldn't believe."

"What's that mean?"

"It will make you grow too big too fast."

"That sounds okay," Rosencrantz said with a shrug. "I'm small and I'd like to grow up to be tall like Bayard. Except I don't do mustaches."

Jardine patted his head. "Well, it sounds cute, until you realize that it also speeds up the development of your reproductive areas. Too much of it will make you hit your menstrual cycle early. And explaining what that is isn't my job, so ask Longwood. After all, he's a gyne."

"I know what a menstrual cycle is," the smaller pixie insisted. "I read everything."

"Oh, and this tasty treat," Jardine said, squatting down and pointing to a creeping vine across the path, "is thickly laced with abscisic acid. I mean, a lot a lot. It will stunt your growth. It's also the reason why plants can survive the winter. Without ABA, buds and seeds would sprout in warm winters. Plants would 'wake up' from their dormant state and start to shed the protective coat that kept them alive, and once the coat was gone, a late bout of snow would strike them down."

"Like diapause?"

"I don't know what that is. Aha! What's this now? Carrowroot? In the Deep Kingdom? Where did they even find this? I don't ever remember seeing these on the checklists of the trade ships that've come back from the planes of existence beyond 12. But Anti-Fairies can't legally fly cloudships… Rosebud, Rosebud, see how the stem is girdled? Foop air-layered it; he's trying to induce root formation. For carrowroot in Hy-Brasil? Curious choice." Jardine bounced one of the branches against his palm. "This is really interesting. I'm going to have to take a cutting of this for one of my own flats back home." Bringing the stem to his teeth, he nipped it three nodes down.

"Oh!" Rosencrantz bobbed past him as Jardine wrapped the cutting in his handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket. "Jardine. Look."

Not much further along the third table stood a short, wide, scruffy-looking fruit tree, tucked in a large brown pot marbled with swirls of black down its curved sides. Long, orange fruits glistened along its twisted branches.

"The jatican. A jatican with thin rootstocks, hence its stunted size, but a jatican nonetheless- I can sense all that ethylene from here. Good eyes, Rosebud."

Rosencrantz shot him a beaming smile. He whirred over to the tree and gave one fruit on a dangling branch a yank. It snapped back with a comedic twang.

"I got it! I got the citrus!" He thrust it triumphantly into the air, humming his wings. "I feel like I'm in one of Finley's video games."

"Very nice. Now, are these nine-petaled flowers spit-orchids? I've never seen a black and yellow variety before, just red and white…"

"Um. J-Jardine?" Rosencrantz brought the fruit to his chest. He turned his head one way, then the other. "I just got really cold."

"Mmhm, you're in a moonhouse. All these plants thrive best in cold temperatures. That's how it works. Ceiling panels perform moonlight conversion. Upper school stuff. Huh, check this out, Rosebud. I didn't realize Foop was smart enough to know how to-" He stiffened on the last word.

Rosencrantz was right. It had just gotten colder in the moonhouse.

"Jardine?" the young pixie whispered, slinking back to take a hold of his elbow. The lone fan whirred on in the background.

"Oh, aphids and whiteflies. Let me guess…"

"Keep your hands where I can see them," crowed a familiar High South Region accent at his back. "Unless you think you're fast enough, perhaps. No? Good. Now. Turn around, and give me the fruit."

Slowly, Jardine lowered his wings and rotated around on his heels. The speaker, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a lean anti-fairy child, barely five hundred years old and whose thick black curls, even while he was floating, barely came up to Jardine's chest. The two pixies dipped their heads to him nonetheless. Even so, Jardine kept Rosencrantz behind him by one arm. Foop held his glimmering plastic training wand (He'd finally ditched the ridiculous baby bottle, apparently) in their direction, scratching at the swirls in his hair with the claws on his right hand. He wore silk pajamas missing two of the buttons on the shirt. Light purple and decorated with grinning, snarling, or howling white skulls from neck to ankles. Shed tufts of blue fur fell from between the wrinkles every time he shifted his weight.

Foop cocked his tall ears forward. "Charmed to see you again after so many years of unexcused absence, Jardine. Did you bring me another supply of ladybugs? With sugar-watered wings just the way I like them, so they can't fly away?"

"I-it's four in the morning," Jardine stuttered. His wings chirped once. "You should be roosting."

"I should. And I'm not. So do forgive me if I come off a bit cranky. Now hand over my citrus, you pair of grubby thieves. Father always insists that you're so much better than that."

Rosencrantz looked to Jardine. "I have to?"

"Yes," Foop said impatiently, keeping his right hand extended, "and the carrowroot cutting. It won't be of much use to you anyway, if you can't keep it moist before sticking it in a supply of vapor."

Jardine balled up the handkerchief and threw it in the cinder-strewn wooden planks between his feet. "What is your problem? You weren't this picky and defensive back when you were fifty."

"My problem? Ha! Now I know why I'm always drawn to say 'That's rich' when I see one of you."

He was still waiting. Slowly, reluctantly, Rosencrantz uncurled his arm and held up the stolen fruit. Unwilling to let him get any closer should the anti-fairy choose to strike, Jardine took the citrus from his hand and tossed it over. Foop's claws closed around the jatican's tough skin. It disappeared into the pocket on the left side of his pajama shirt.

"Now march," he ordered, flicking his wand back towards the moonhouse door.

"Th-this is ridiculous," Jardine protested, but moved instinctively to obey as he spoke. "Foop, it's me. Mister Jardine! Caudwell and I have babysat you every time you've visited Pixie World. I used to read you my textbooks when you went down for your nap. I gave you earthworms to play with. We marathoned "Batman" cartoons for weeks. I thought we were friends."

"Friends, enemies- I require a wide sample to confirm my research. These days I'm trying to study the effects of diet upon the Fairykind. Not that you ought to care about it now. I don't yet have much to show for my efforts. Of course…" His eyes slid from the older pixie down to the younger and back again, and he started to lower his wand. "I may be in my 'working-with-plants' phase of life at this point in time, but I'm always in the market to study a more… pertinent type of asexual reproduction."

"You're sick," Jardine hissed back, still keeping an arm in front of Rosencrantz's chest. "If you think I'll let you dissect Rosebud like I watched you tear apart those white rats when Anti-Cosmo wasn't watching, you're jacked in the numbskull."

Foop smirked. "Actually, I was referring to you, Prince Charming. Your body is much closer to maturity than his. That should lend itself to a far more accurate study. You ought to be proud. How's about it? Just one night of you lying on my desk while I slice your head open with my knives."

"No!"

"Ooh, a pity." Drifting dangerously forward, the anti-fairy cupped Jardine's chin with his soft hand. With the left, he twirled his wand. "Shame this is my playing field, bubbles, and you're out of magic. Now, to business. That's what you pixies like, isn't it? This will be better for both of us if you don't struggle, old friend. You of all people should understand that plants are less hardy when stressed."

Jardine jerked back. Out of instinct, he whipped out the older of his two phones. Despite having its sharp antenna extended, the cracked casing and out-of-date technology made a far less threatening image, somehow, than even Rosencrantz's dented wand. "Wh-what the darkweed is wrong with you?"

"Ask your Mr. Caudwell," he said with a bored shrug. Jardine removed his shades and fixed him with a cold stare.

"Foop, I am over 215,000 years old. Are you seriously looking for a fight? Magic or not, I'm almost certain I can take you."

Rosencrantz tightened his fingers in Jardine's arm. "Me too. Oh, you have no idea. I-I can be pretty scary. I have to fight back a lot. You'd all be surprised at how strong I actually am."

"Mm." Foop massaged one eye socket with the heel of his hand, never once lowering his wand. "At this time of night? I can certainly take you down- that's not the question. However, I'm also functioning on three hours of sleep between the last two days, so I'm not especially confident in my control of my powers, which means I can't promise I won't accidentally kill you in the process. A pity. I'll have to go physical. I do so hate going physical." The wand went back in his scabbard. Foop took hold of his wrist and flexed it. His black claws flashed in a stripe of moonlight. The fan's low humming began to fade. "Might I inquire, what possessed you to ravish mine and my mother's gardens anyway?"

"I just wanted a jatican citrus," whimpered Rosencrantz. He still clung to his useless wand. The spines of the zinflax bark were wearing at his hands- he was bleeding beads of pink and green. "Jardine said it would make me more alert in the mornings. Oh dust, th-this is all my fault."

That brought the anti-fairy pause. He blinked. Four times. "Jaticans don't wake you up. They prevent scurvy. They make your limbs feel heavy. They were used to tip the blades of knives back in the days of war because their juice is incredibly painful if it gets into cuts in Anti-Fairy skin. If anything, they cause insomnia, but that doesn't have any effect when it comes to the morning. Quite the opposite, in fact. You told me this. What in Rhoswen's name made you think of trying that?"

"Because rosebuds," Jardine said, pushing his shades up his nose in slow motion with two fingers, "open in the presence of ethylene."

Foop stared at him. His ears flicked down. "Is… is that a pun? Did you just break into the middle of my private moonlight greenhouse in the middle of my family's gardens in the middle of Anti-Fairy World in the middle of the night and risk your lives for a pun?"

"It was a good pun," Jardine said defensively.

Foop looked at his claws, and then at the pixie. Then he reached into his pocket and tossed the jatican citrus to Rosencrantz, who caught it with a startled yip. "You know something bub, I'm not even mad. Keep it. This one's on me."

"So it works?" Rosencrantz asked curiously, taking a cautious whiff. His tongue flicked over the rough surface of the fruit. His eyebrows shot up, he twitched his shoulders, but he at least managed to hold a steady expression. Mostly.

"Heh heh… Oh, I can't imagine that it will, but just for that, you have my full permission to take as many jaticans from my moonhouse as you want. But at a reasonable hour of the night next time. I don't want to reset my alarm traps more than I absolutely have to."

Jardine giggled nervously along with the anti-fairy for a long time, holding Rosencrantz's arm and inching sideways in the process, until at last, Foop wiped a pretend tear from beneath his eye and flicked his wand in Jardine's direction.

"You do realize I'm still going to try dissecting you, right?"