2025-06-30 - What's That Smell?

Dodge pads over to the front door and looks through the peephole, then unlocks and pulls it open. "Hey," she smiles at Hayley, holding the door open and stepping out of the way to invite the blonde in. She's wearing a dark gray pair of U.S. Polo joggers, a slouchy white tee, and black socks, and her hair is up in a loose, messy bun.

"Did you stay much longer at the bake sale? I wish I'd been able to stay for longer, but I had so much work to get done," she starts conversationally. "What's that?" she asks, upnodding her head at the groceries as she walks into the kitchen.

Hayley tosses the chew toy to Koda immediately when Dodge steps away from the door, grinning as she does so, and going, "That's for you, buddy!" quite cheerfully, before she looks over at Dodge and shakes her head. "No, I'm the weekend worker, and I had to run off and get ready for work," she admits with a sigh. "I did get a bunch, though, and you motivated someone to try to one-up you in how much he paid," she says with a slight smirk. "So it was a good success, I think."

Then she adds, genuinely, "You look cute, by the way," as she strolls in and hoists up the bag. "This, Miss Dodge, if that even is your real name," (she knows it's not), "is a lasagna, in pieces. I want one. I cannot eat one alone. I wanted to hang out with you. The solution was obvious."

Hoot. Hoot hoot.

Dodge winks at Hayley when she says she looks cute, and pats the kitchen counter for Hayley to set down the bag there. "Let me know how I can help."

Koda leaps off the couch when he sees Hayley and gleefully retrieves the chew toy, giving it a few testing chomps and a little shake of his head to wag it back and forth. "He says thank you, he loves it," Dodge relays to Hayley, though she probably doesn't need to; it's obvious how much Koda loves his new toy.

"And great, then," she says of the bake sale. "I'm glad it was a success. Asher is good people. They fixed up my arm after I busted it chasing the Stormborn, and I only just met her roommate, but she seems like a sweet person."

She turns her head in the direction of the hooting at the window and wrinkles her brow. "I wonder what she's on about," Dodge murmurs, padding over to the window and opening it so that Poe the great horned owl can come sailing towards the window sill, landing nimbly and hooting again.

"Poe says there's something in the garden," she says, glancing over at Hayley.

Setting the bag on the counter, Hayley grins at Koda flinging the toy back and forth, cooing, "Kill it, you fierce beast, snap that neck," before she nods at the summary of Asher. "I like Asher a lot, I felt bad having to bail. They did warn Lex against trusting me, though. I don't think I come across as untrustworthy, do I?" she asks in a bit of obvious perplexment.

Her conversation would go on further, but then the window is open, and Owl Mail is delivering a message to them. She furrows her brow as Dodge relays what's up, then heads over to the sill. It's the closest she's ever been to Poe, but she has pretty good animal instincts -- she gives the owl distance, and when she lifts her hands up to lean over the edge and try to look down in the garden, she does so without it being sudden.

"I can't see a thing, it's getting too dark," she admits, chewing on her lip briefly. "You want to head down there and check it out?"

"What? No, you're not untrustworthy, babe, they might have just been teasing you," Dodge answers, glancing over at Koda while the dog flops the chewtoy around violently, having a blast. Then she looks back over towards the window and leans down on her elbows, with Poe standing about a foot away. Not even Dodge tries to pet Poe. Poe is a force unto her own.

The mottled gray-brown familiar has ear tufts distinctive to the great horned owl and is almost two feet tall with bright, wide tawny eyes that catch the light and a white throat patch. She stomps her talon on the windowsill in emphasis.

"She says something is up," Dodge adds. "Okay, Poe. we'll check it out," she promises the owl. "Better take some flashlights," she says towards Hayley, heading for one of the drawers and rifling around to pull out two small pocket flashlights. "The beams are just better and brighter than using your phone light," she reasons, handing one to Hayley.

"Also, I'm going to hate it a lot less if I drop it in the dark and it hits a rock," Hayley says agreeably, taking the flashlight, putting the beam against her hand, flipping it on to test it, then turning it off once she sees her skin take on that characteristic orange glow. "Batteries are good," she reports, before tucking it into her pocket. She takes the bag of groceries, quickly stuffs the entire thing in the fridge without sorting it, and then nods to Dodge.

"Alright, let's head down there," she says, giving Dodge just a moment to get her shoes on before heading down that way.

The community garden is oddly still. It's certainly less inhabited this late at night than it might be during the day, and the humid breeze coming off the lakes is normally there blowing the leaves, but both seem to have died down for now. Hayley gets past the last of the lights coming from the apartment building itself, then lifts the light, turning it on and sweeping briefly, seeing if anything pops out.

Dodge slips into her shoes and then walks after Hayley, and Koda decides to part with his chewtoy long enough to come with them to investigate, trundling down the stairs ahead of them with thunderous footsteps; he's a big boy!

When Hayley aims her flashlight into the darkness, so does Dodge. "I wish I could control dark by removing it sometimes, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way," she acknowledges to Hayley. "Still have to do it the old fashioned way," she adds, clicking her flashlight off and then back on. Koda stays by her side, almost close enough to wonder if the big dog is afraid of the dark. Of course, it could be out of a sense of protectiveness! Could be, could be.

Poe can be heard hooting overhead.

Hayley shines her light up, glinting off the large eyes of the owl and showing where she is circling, motioning with her head for Dodge and Koda to follow her in that direction. She also, of course, extends her hand out to pet the dog's head soothingly, ruffling him behind the ears with a smile as she says, "It's okay, Koda. You're being such a good boy."

They weave through topiaries and bushes, and if they just happen to bend aside in such a way to not bother them, maybe that's Hayley's magic, or the island's magic, or something else going on. Still, she seems pensive.

"Probably just some tourists that snuck on, right?" she asks.

"Of all the things it could be," Dodge murmurs, "I think tourists are the least likely." Koda stands right in between Dodge and Hayley, hovering so closely that his flank is brushing up against the side of Dodge's leg.

"I suppose it could be some Leafkin. I'd expect to see them hanging out in an area like this. What I wouldn't expect is for Poe to react the way she did. She's seen Leafkin before, dozens of times. She generally leaves them alone." At least as far as Dodge is aware.

"Do you smell that?" Hayley asks suddenly, pausing and sniffing the air, her hand held to the side. "I know this is gonna sound weird, but we used to get ants all the time back home, and they have this very particular--"

As she's saying that, the bushes in front of them, further down the path, start to rustle, and a trio of dog-sized worker ants push through, their antennae bobbing in the air as they sway side-to-side. Like so many things in the park, they're rendered far more cutesy, compound eyes changed to human, mandibles shrunk down, and they stop and look in the direction of the pair of humans and dog, antennae bobbing whimsically.

"... Aha," she says, once that suspicion is confirmed.

"Formic acid?" Dodge asks, wrinkling her nose and sniffing, stopping in her tracks as she does. As the bushes rustle, she turns towards the sound and blinks as she spots the giant, dog-sized ants.

"Oh," she reacts with a thick blink. Koda barks at the ants but doesn't leave Dodge's side, and Dodge shifts her flashlight from ant to ant, examining them all.

"Where do you suppose they came from? I mean, what happened to make them so...big?"

"That's what it's called," Hayley says, snapping her fingers briefly in recollection as the ants turn toward one another and have a conversation, antennae brushing against antennae before one turns its head to look right at the three of them.

"Do you remember that guy who shrank down the ball?" Hayley wonders to Dodge, taking an awkward step back. "I think it might be like that. Some source of magic probably blipped on them? I hope? Better than the alternative."

"Oh, that's not great," Dodge mutters, taking a step back with Koda at her side and summoning a miasma of shadows that wraps around Hayley like a force field of darkness.

Hayley has darkness shrouding her, and it's just a quick glance down at that before she reaches to the side, grasping a thorny vine that surges from the growth nearby, pulling it into a whip which she lashes toward the ant she sees charging at the unprotected Dodge.

The ants lunge forward, one on each of them. Koda chomps the air at one ant but misses and is countered harshly, bitten in the leg. He yelps and collapses, whimpering.

"Hey! That's my dog!" Dodge tries to soccer kick the nearest ant but also misses, and is headbutted full in the chest for her trouble. Poe, meanwhile, attacks from the air and claws at the ant that has had the temerity to attack Dodge.

"Koda!" Hayley cries out, a little despair in her voice, but her strike is true, and when the thorns wrap around the ant from her strike, she releases them, the brambles pressing right into the joints of the exoskeleton to keep it from moving.

Another vine is pulled, and she works on the one that had slammed into Dodge, moving quickly as she side-steps a bite.

Poe continues to harry the ant that attacks Dodge, and this one bites her hard in the arm, though it turns in the direction of the hissing and squealing when Hayley takes down yet another ant with the vines she's summoned.

Hayley quickly ties off another ant, her eyes fierce with focused anger as she tugs hard on the vine, pulling the creature off of its six legs and onto its back.

The sound of skittering approaches her, and she growls in frustration, both of her hands lifting and slamming together, just standing there with the shadows weaving around her as she and this ant stare one another down.

The remaining ant hurtles itsef in Hayley's direction and Dodge takes a parting shot at it, stomping on one of its retreating back feet as it charges at Hayley and her vines, coming up short in the process.

Dodge breathes a sigh of relief, looks at Hayley and gives her a "you alright?" and then turns to clamber over to Koda's side. "Hey, buddy, you were so brave," she soothes.

Hayley lifts her hands, and the vines wrap around the ant's neck and lift it into the air by the head, its feet wobbling harmlessly in the air. They breathe through their carapace. It's fine.

"Yeah," Hayley says, letting out a breath and touching the shadow on her curiously, before she looks over at Dodge and Koda. "But you two..." she says quietly, crouching down by the dog and then looking at Dodge with concern. "You're hurt," she says softly.

Dodge looks down at herself and rubs at her chest, wincing, with the arm that doesn't have bitemarks at the forearm and wrist. "Yeah, he knocked the wind out of me," she mutters, taking a deep breath. "And poor Koda got his leg clamped," she says, consoling the animal and coaxing him back to his feet. Koda walks with a little limp but he manages valiantly.

"I'm going to call the groundskeepers and have them deal with this," Hayley says, motioning toward the ants for a moment but reaching out to gently take Dodge's arm, then looking toward Koda with a devastated expression. "You poor things. Let me make you both lasagna and take care of you?"

"I'm not going to say no to that." Dodge leans against Hayley and allows herself to be helped, and Koda waddles after them.

Poe settles into a tree branch and hoots lowly from overhead, her work here done.

Back inside, Dodge exhales shakily and heads over to the couch, crashing on it. Koda crawls up on the other end and circles himself into a giant, floofy croissant. "I've had an unlucky week," she complains. "The Stoneborn stealing my camera, the topiary chess match, and now giant ants. I think I need a boring night."

"You've had a lot going on," Hayley acknowledges to Dodge with a quiet gentleness once they've both settled onto the couch, and she kneels and hugs Koda, then gives him quite a bit of love and attention as she does so, fingers scooching into the fur for a moment.

"Put something slow burn on," she tells Dodge. "I'll watch from the kitchen." Then she's disappearing off, washing her hands and, one quick call later, starting to layer ingredients into the pan, peeking out with a lean now and then, though this isn't the longest prep time thing ever. The hardest parts are the pasta sheets and grating the different cheeses in.

Oven preheated, she slides it in, then comes out to find a spot where she can join on the couch.

Taking another deliberately deep breath to test the soreness in her chest from being headbutted by one of the enlarged ants, Dodge nods her head at the instruction and plucks the remote off the side table, pressing a few buttons until Ozark starts to play.

Then Hayley returns to the couch and she leans over to put her head in Hayley's lap, dark hair spilling over Hayley's jean-clad thighs. "Aw, man," she realizes quietly. "I didn't get a picture for the Weird Album."

Hayley brings her hand down comfortingly on Dodge's shoulder, looking at the show with curiosity, apparently unfamiliar. Then she hears that, and brings up her phone. "You were dealing with something. Hang on," she says.

She dials a number, holds it to her ear, and waits. "Hey, Braden. You said your girl likes tulips, right? Listen, there were some ants that just came in, and I need a favor."