Pastor Duke stared at the tree. Gah! The demon-woman he was sure he could whip, certainly in her current state, but the senior pastor here had a knack for saying a lot in as laconic a fashion as possible, and he never seemed to lose track of his points, either. That would be enough of a job, but now he was a tree? He had been hoping an easy win would bolster the group's image (and his with it, coincidentally enough,) but even if he pulled it out over his new opponent, there was just no way to look dignified arguing with a tree!
He continued to stare for a long moment. Mike the camerawoman glanced at Jay, but the fox-woman nodded for her to keep rolling. Edward started to sweat just a bit; the cameras were on him! How could he get out of this? But...Maxwell hadn't spoken yet...
He began to sputter, getting a bit red in the face. "I was deceived!" he snapped. "I was told I would debate with the demon-woman calling herself a priest, and you bring me before this stupid plant? I will have NONE of this!" A rash of little red spots had broken out over his face, and he began to make a gesture at the camera before catching himself, yanking his arm back, and storming off.
"Does that mean...the debate is off?" Father Maxwell asked calmly. Mike barely had a chance to hit the mute button before she and Jay broke into laughter, little clouds of condensation drifting out of her mouth.
Lucas came back a moment later. "Did I miss something?" she asked. "Pastor McRacist just stomped past. Are you done already?"
"Before we even began," Jay chuckled. "Though that's not to say we didn't get some footage for the report."
"You mean he weaseled out on you?" the angel-girl said. "I guess that's not surprising. Still, I wanted to see them actually go at it!"
The fox-woman shrugged. "Well, that's just how it goes sometimes. As long as we've got material to work with, I can't complain too much."
Lucas shrugged. "Well," she said, "if I were the moderator, I'd say you win by forfeit."
"And a hard...earned victory it was," the tree-man said, dryly.
Robert sat at the foot of one of the other trees, staring at the ground. "I didn't want this," she said quietly. "Not like this. I...I was...infatuated with the idea of...of seeing a real conflict, between the forces of good and evil...I thought I'd found the villains. But...they're just people...and I tried to cast them in that role regardless."
The tree-man gazed down at her, his branches shifting in an approximation of a nod. "Many before you...have fantasized about a...holy conflict, an Armageddon. It is an epidemic that...comes and goes in the Church. When I was young...I knew people who believed...that the Russians would be...the armies of Gog and Magog, and...the tensions of the time...were simply the prelude to...the glory of the Second Coming. Some things...never really change."
She sighed. "But...this time it was me. I helped spur this; even if these people are ultimately responsible for their own actions, I contributed...I've been a false prophet, Father, these past weeks...and I never even realized until...until God allowed this to befall me." She chuckled bitterly. "Such a wake-up call..."
"You could have been...struck blind on the road...to Damascus, you know," Father Maxwell said.
The devil-woman smiled in spite of herself. "Yes, I suppose I could have. I guess you're still of the opinion that...I ought to stay with the church?"
He sighed, a creaking noise traveling from his roots up to his branches. "You ought to...go wherever the Lord...leads you, Robert. I believe that is here...and that you can still...be of service to our church. But...if you feel led elsewhere, brother..."
"No...not right now, anyway," she said. "And...I guess that's not 'brother' anymore, is it?"
"Is that...how you feel about it...now?"
She shrugged. "I...I don't know. I don't think...don't know if I want this, but...if this is how God would have me, for now..." She cringed as she thought of where this might lead, but...no, she would trust that this would work out as it ought to.
He smiled. "I would be just as...happy to have you...as a sister in the Lord, child. If you feel that...that is what He wants...of you."
Once she'd finally finished up a couple of things she'd been getting behind on, Jon headed out towards the school entrance, Karyn close behind, to find Mikey and Becca waiting there. Zoe, the young gynoid said, had gone over to Athena's house for the evening. They went out to the van - one thing Jon did enjoy about the day/night split was that she had more opportunity to use it, thought she was beginning to understand why parents sometimes complained about feeling like chauffers. Karyn accompanied them; they'd been carpooling for a while now, since they lived near each other. There wasn't enough room in the van for wheelchair seating, but the cecaelia-girl had little trouble hefting herself into the car and folding the chair up for easier storage. Jon was still impressed by how well her friend moved around, considering her lack of (bone-strengthened) legs.
They drove out to the grocery store in order to stock up. Jon was a little surprised that the girls in back were being so quiet; Mikey and Becca weren't exactly best friends, but they got along well enough that they were usually chatting about something, only now they seemed to be unsure what to say to each other, like there was something unresolved. It was odd...though with Karyn keeping up their own conversation up front, she found it a bit difficult to contentrate on the matter.
She was in the baking-goods aisle trying to remember which spices her mother had asked her to pick up when she heard a gasp. She looked up to see a woman, another slug-woman who seemed familiar for some...
Jon's eyes widened, and the woman cringed, looking ashamed. "I guess you recognize me," she said. "I...I just wanted to say that...I'm very sorry for what I did. I know it's no excuse to say I was stressed-out, and it wasn't fair of me to...to react against you because of what you'd become."
She felt her stomach turn as she thought back on that first day and everything that had happened. But...she was unharmed, and that...that was in the past. Not even a month and a half, but it already seemed like forever ago... And...for what it was worth, the woman did look penitent.
Jon tried not to savor the irony of her change too much. "Th-that's okay," she said. "A lot of people went a little crazy early on." She was just glad it was some stranger in the supermarket, and not her own parents like Sarah had had to deal with. "Thanks for...for the apology. I'm glad you didn't get hurt..."
The woman smiled sadly. "No, I guess I didn't," she said. "And...and don't let it get to you if people give you odd looks; you still look perfectly nice, uh...?"
"...Jon," Jon said. The woman thought for a moment, then blinked in surprise; Jon was getting rather used to this reaction by now. "Oh," she said. "Well, you make a lovely young lady, Jon; I'm sure you'll make some lucky guy very happy someday." She turned to go.
"Uh...thanks?" Jon said, as she watched the slug-woman go, meeting up with some big turtle-guy out in the main aisle. She tried not to think about that too much; it seemed like her life could get awfully surreal sometimes, since this whole mess had started. Still, she was glad to know the lady was okay; as upsetting as it had been to be randomly assaulted, watching her be dragged kicking and screaming out into the sun was pretty gut-wrenching, even just the little bit she had actually watched.
"Aww, how sweet," Karyn said, just a little bit of sing-song mockery in her voice. Jon was a bit startled by what her friend's unheard approach and whirled to face her, but failed to account for the heavy base of her body and was arrested in mid-turn; all she really got out of it was a minor crick in her back and the still-kind-of-odd sensation of her breasts continuing in their path when the rest of her had stopped, springing back as they reached their limit (would've been worse if she wasn't wearing her bra, she reminded herself.) She sighed; maybe it was a sweet thing to say, but she was looking forward to getting back to her old body...
