Previously On: Apocalypse World Mean Green Machines S02

Cast and Characters: Allixandra as Battie Royale, Queen Gunlugger Extraordinaire (absent) Cindy as Eliza Fixit, Making Vehicular Manslaughter an Art Form Gina as Norma, Escapist With an Eye, Heart, and Home in the Clouds (absent) Candace as Marie Furie, Rubber Boots and Goggles, Because things get messy Heather as Ophelia, a Cool-Headed Babe with a Newly Obtained Bike Brooke as Gash, the Twitchy Stitch with the Rough-Wheeling Ambulance Warning: Foul language and adult situations likely lie ahead.

I-Beam's boy Brick knocks roughly on the tinplate door to Marie Fury's place. There are two too many locks compared to any other place in town and they take longer to undo as she secures, well, something downstairs. Fury's place isn't that unsurprising from the outside, but there aren't that many people talking about its insides. Brick is out looking for Ophelia who snagged Freezedry's ride the day before and, well, Freezedry isn't in a state any longer to go looking for it. I-Beam's hot about it but Ophelia has kept it cool and downlow. Brick wouldn't mind picking up something to trouble Ophelia or make roads in the Green from Miss Fury, but what she's selling is a little out of Brick's understanding. The market for cannonballs filled with angry lizard souls is somewhat... boutique as it turns out. With the hair high on his neck, Brick wanders away, looking over his shoulder a few times en route. Marie's made enough sales of her unconventional, and sanctioned if there were anyone to cast such prohibitions, gear to keep the turrets loaded and turbines greased. Meanwhile, Ophelia has been figuring out what to do with Freezedry's trike bike ride over in Not Fucking Yours with Eliza Fixit. Its heavy wheels are suited for the rough, rooty roads of the Green, but its blue lightning on matte gray isn't exactly Ophelia's style. Buzzsaw sides? A little extra kick in the pipes? Burners? Spike drops? Net guns? One of Marie Fury's oddity additions? Just too many choices. And Eliza's eagerness to get the hot bit of metal isn't helping, especially since she has work in the shop for I-Beam's gang at the moment. Of course, Ophelia's got enough clink in her pocket after meeting that troublemaking Bobby. Bobby isn't getting much in the way of chances for more trouble, now. Opelia, though is jumpy for fun with the contract fulfilled. Gash's jolly ride the Gash Wagon rolls up, a few empty bottles tumbling out as the good doctor secrets a jug of something clear and distilled in a busted out sedan trunk, handing off a second to Eliza. Gash may have been up most of the night taking care of I-Beam and the other busted up boys and girls back at Fucking Yours thanks to Ophelia and Battie's stunt ride. Their loss of blood is Gash's gain in coin, though. And with our mischief-makers within spitting distance and another beautiful day on the Skillet afoot, what to do? Well, their due diligence as good citizens of course! - Down at the edge of town the Green has been quiet. Definitely quiet as in the too quiet. Its 30 and 40 foot trees standing more like sentinels than an amassing army. And that has made good guy Spoke anxious. Unfortunately, it has made the rest of the Skillet complacent. Without aggressive vines and acid spitting frogs getting into people's beds, the Hack Crew is down to just the doughy, overalled Arlen and the facially ornamented, sketch chica Edge. Spoke has a barrel of sharpened bits of steel and hands one to Arlen when the charitable team ambles over. Spoke goes on a little too long about safety protocols, keeping it easy and simple, and Fixit starts zoning. Zoning hard. She blinks, once, twice, thrice, and the Green is there. Not just there, but really there. There there. Roiling waves of primordial green intelligence on a dun brown earth. Like a shallow ocean its waves moves, pockets of fleshy red animality hopping around. Growing too close to them to not give you the shudders is a massive mushroom of planty... well, planty awareness. Long tendrils descend from the mushroom cap, waving in the psychic breeze before extending, stretching, out toward Eliza. Blink blink blink as hard as you can when your body isn't there and you might just wake up. To find a vine snaking along a shaded rock fissure around Spoke's ankle, dragging him away and knocking his chin hard against a patch of rusty moss. Ophelia's was the first to move, but a second vine grabs her ankle and starts dragging her to that green army of too-quiet titans. Edge goes dashing in, backhand swinging her blades as Eliza gets a vine whip to the face and Gash cuts deep into the vine dragging Ophelia. Wouldn't a Royale Special be useful right about now? At the edge of the Green Ophelia comes loose with a little help from Marie Fury while Spoke is holding on for his dear charitable life thanks to a raised root. The vines radiate out from an eight foot plant bulb, raised like a middle finger to the Skillet, standing up on a squat mound. Marie rummages through her bag of tricks for a little sleepy time magic pills wanting to know where the mouth on this affectionate creeper might be. And then it opens. That big ole bulb stretches and opens into big red and orange vibrance, giving Spoke another tug tug close, hungry for his loving. Eliza buzzes up her weed whacker (a subtle name for the beast of belching diesel and spinning teeth) and charges at it, trimming through a pair of vines lashing at her. Ophelia gets in there to cut Spoke free while Marie and Gash gets some capsule cocktail together and lobs it into the hungry floral maw. Eliza, driving the fear of the mechanical gods into her compatriots, swings hard at the Audrey III looking for a kiss, severing one of its luscious, sticky petals. Edge liberates the vines that are lashing all the while at Spoke and allies in arms (as opposed to vines). Dopey Arlen helps the discombobulated Spoke, when Ophelia gets her longblade into the thing's guts and messes it all up. In a moment of quiet, digestive fluids dripping from Eliza and Ophelia, the subtle musical whirling of a chainsaw in the late morning air, they celebrate a moment, when the vines of three more floral maw seedlings start whipping up a terror. Edge moves to one, twin blades glinting in the dim light of the forest floor, leaps, and is unceremoniously wrapped up to her hips in hungry flower, getting a close look at the squirrel, rabbit, and coyote bones and fur inside. In a split moment, Gash gets to Eliza to treat lacerations and burns. Eliza, Mad Splatter that she is, goes after the blue blossom straight ahead, cutting deep into it. Gash and Marie, preferring wits to boldness, grabbed the slurry of half-digested pills and aromatic acids, and hauled it with rubber gloves and bloodied apron toward the third. Dancing around Eliza's buzzing blade dancing, Ophelia gets a few keen cuts in. The two leave a mass of colorful twitching blue salad. Arlen and Spoke wrestle with Edge's kicking feet as her blades find soft spots from within. Gash and Maria, eager to prove the brilliance of science, get the yellow bloom to gobble up the pharmaceutical stew, sending it into paroxysms before collapsing. It was Eliza, whose wider-than-they-ought-to-be eyes said more than her shouting did, who took to the purple blossom and cut its widest petal free. A grinning, mad-eyed Edge tumbled out, acid burns over her lean arms and face. A fresh canvas for more ink, after all. With burns and busted ankles between them, they stumble out of the Green. Those still more or less unbroken take the time to bottle up Nature's Own and bag a few petals. Those colors are something else and Battie will appreciate the new additions to her vanity. Under the sun and strolling toward the Gash Wagon, with Edge already in there, Eliza stops, turns back, and thinks, "Mushrooms mostly grow underground..." Image Credit: Little Shop of Horros Wikia at http://littleshop.wikia.com/wiki/Audrey_II