smash_logs | Your hair grows like weeds

Entry tags:

Your hair grows like weeds

Who: Cress and you.
What: CRESS'S HAIR IS GETTING WEIRD. He's transforming and it won't stop growing.
Where: Anywhere but he's reluctant to show his face, or more accurately HIS HAIR
When: Backdated to June 28th.

For most of the day, he had been diligently attending to the bake sale he had offered to help with. After speaking with Pulse, who had developed strange issues with his body, Cress began to notice some of his own.

At first, it was negligible. Catching his reflection in the window and having an eye for minute details, he could have sworn his hair looked a little... longer than he was accustomed to? He chalked it up to him being due for a haircut soon and only realizing it just then, dropping all suspicions of there being anything wrong with this picture. But then, time stretched on into the afternoon, and it became such a nagging distraction to him that he really... really needed a haircut because every time he ran his hands through his hair it felt like it was dragging down longer and longer and it was super uncomfortable, so once he got a break in customers, he rushed over to the same window to take a second review.

...Needless to say, he flipped. Cress excused himself from the bake sale with a thousand apologies and hurried back to his room to try making amends. Maybe giving himself a quick cut would work? He trimmed off the hair that had managed to grow in a matter of hours and breathed a sigh of relief when his locks were in check again.

But he wasn't in the clear yet. In fact, an hour later, his hair was already down to where it was since he last cut it. This was insanity! How many times did he have to do battle with these unmanageable lengths?! This was not normal hair growth. The creepy changes didn't stop there, no. When he brandished his scissors a second time, he dropped them with a metal clatter on the floor, breaking into a scream as he noticed his nails take on a bright red hue. Furthermore, his fingers were looking rather blue-green, like he wasn't getting enough oxygen or something. This was bad. It felt like he was starring in his own horror B movie, only this was actually scary.

If you happen to catch Cress, he's currently looking incredibly fearful and self-conscious, with varying lengths of hair often bordering or past ridiculous. You might find him in the bathroom trying to tame it or fleeing from Point A to Point B in his attempts to figure out what in the world is the matter with him. Or maybe he's even...

discovering photosynthesis

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After Chili visited the infirmary and received some horrifying news, he decided to look for his brother. The fever wasn't wearing him down nearly as much as it was all night long anymore, which was surprising, considering it was in the hundreds and rising rapidly. It seemed that way, at least. He still had a weird kind of headache, but it wasn't fever-induced anymore.

Instead, the burning sensation took place all over his body. It felt like the air was acid against his flesh. Maybe his headache didn't go away at all, but faded in comparison to that feeling. He wasn't sure.

He wandered the school on a hunt for Cress until he found him out in the courtyard. Luckily it was still morning, so Chili wouldn't have to sit under the sun on top of his own self-produced heat. When Chili saw Cress, however, he stopped. His hair was very long, and it wasn't like that yesterday.

"Cress?" he asked, running up to him. "What's up with your hair...?!"

The water specialist pouted upon being prompted about his hair. "It won't stop growing!" he cried, tossing his hand mirror to the lawn beside him and the tree he planted himself against. Immediately after his complaint, he found himself wincing. Since when did the heat scorch so badly? In the shade, no less? It felt like the sun had been tucked beneath the treetops. He began blinking rapidly, holding an arm above his head to protect himself from wherever the heat was, sending his eyes to the leaves to try and find this source of intense heat.

"Have you tried cutting it?" he asked, wanting to reach out and grab onto the long blue locks of hair. He restrained himself; he knew how the school nurse responded to even touching his forehead, and he wondered if he might damage Cress's hair by laying a finger on it.

"Yes..." He wanted to keep describing his dilemma and vent his increasing frustrations to his brother, but the heat was too unbearable to ignore. "Why is it so hot all of a sudden? It feels as though I'm about to melt into a puddle. It's abnormal; we are in the shade and yet..."

Oh, so his heat could even be felt out to where Cress was? Chili took a step backwards, trying to keep away from him.

"Um," began Chili, though he didn't know how to say it. "So your hair's growing, but something's wrong with me too! I don't know what it is yet, but I'm... I have a fever?"

That was an understatement.

Cress tilted his head slightly to emphasize the confusion his understatement brought. Then, it sunk in, slowly but surely. Fevers were hot, the weather was hot, his hair was strange, and other people were strange, so Chili must be hot and strange. Now his eyes widened.

"So, you mean to tell me that your fever is radiating this heat?" There was doubt in his voice because that claim sounded so ludicrous it couldn't possibly be true. But at this point, he could definitely stand to suspend the doubt.

"I didn't know you could feel it from there, but yeah. I think it is." He looked around them in the shade, wondering just how cool it was supposed to be this summer morning. "Just don't touch me, 'kay?"

His fever was cooler when Rhys touched him. And if it was cooler when it was over 300°F... How hot would it be now? Probably enough to burn on contact.

His widened eyes became more stupefied. His jaw came unhinged. He just stared for a spell.

"You..." The sentence died on his throat. He mustered up the sense to try again. "Your fever is THAT hot?! How are you not dead?"

"That's what I wanted to know!" shouted Chili, his fists balling up as he stared at Cress in the eye. "Probably for the same reason your hair is turning into a crazy tentacle mess even if you cut it: something's really wrong!"

And he had a point.

The stupefaction morphed into deep concern for Chili's well-being, even surpassing self-pity, which, by comparison, felt petty. He rose from the roots of the tree, backing up a few steps to save himself from the sweltering wavelengths he emitted. It was comparable to standing just inches away from a blazing campfire. "Well, I'm grateful for that at least. But you're so hot, you're like a second sun..."

Even though one of his eyes was always keeping sight on some portion of his hair, he did not yet notice that his mane was loosing buoyancy and volume. It was darkening, almost crinkling, in fact. Drying up. It had been gradually losing life since Chili stepped onto the scene.

Chili was just about to say something when he noticed Cress's hair. He knew it: just being around him would cause some sort of damage. But specifically to his hair? Why?

"Uh... Cress? Your hair's being weird," he noted, pointing at his long locks of hair. "I think... You're going to have to cut it this time."

~~No, he was getting a mean tan as well~~ "Yes! I am more than aware of this!" he spat indignantly, lisp going wild. When he pulled up a long strand of hair up for emphasis, he glanced down at the strange, brittle texture between his fingertips and frowned deeply, eyebrows creasing in worry.

"Why this? It must be your doing..." And this worry transitioned into something more akin to fear. One more step backwards.

Chili frowned. "No way..." But was there any other explanation that could justify what was happening to Cress's growing-but-shriveling-up hair? No, not that he could think of.

"Cress! Send out Panpour, will you?!" he begged, balling up his fists. "Maybe I can make my temperature go down if he just..."

Cress flashed a smile and an energetic snap of his fingers. "An excellent notion! Panpour is cool, so maybe..." Knocking his wrist out, he sent the aquatic monkey Pokemon from his capsule, directly in front of his trainer in case precautions needed to be made about Chili's fiery temperature.

"Panpour! Use Waterfall on Chili, if you please! Be gentle, though." Panpour glanced up at Cress as though checking whether or not he was mentally sound, then cut straight to the chase, dumping a generous stream of water right on top of Chili.

Chili prepared himself for the cold of Panpour's attack, balling up his fists and tensing up the way he normally would when anticipating such a shock to the system. Panpour's waterfall fell over Chili, and...

...evaporated almost immediately into a hissing cloud of steam upon contact. In hardly made any significant damage save for his hair dripping down into his face. His hair quickly dried off and snapped back into shape.

Chili was speechless. Was it really that hot? So hot that water couldn't even tame his temperature?

"...Incredible..." uttered Cress, spellbound. "Water has no effect. Just how hot are you? It looks so uncomfortable."

"When I went into the infirmary this morning, I broke the first thermometer and had to use a special one," he explained, placing a hand on the back of his neck and rubbing downward. "After that, it was one-thousand or something. It doesn't feel that hot to me, but it still feels like a fever, and the air burns."

Chili rubbed his hand against his skin. "And actually, that water really hurt... Maybe I cooled down a little bit?" But not nearly enough.

All the color drained away from his face. "A... A thou...sand... degrees? Surely, you must be joking!"

Even though he said that, he kind of felt like he'd believe it if it were the truth, no matter how ridiculous it seemed.

"The nurse was changing into something, too!" he proclaimed, his fists balling up defensively. "It's not just your hair or my fever, it's happening to a bunch of people! I don't know what we're going to do about all of this, but it's definitely happening! We're all going to find ourselves turning into something, whether we like it or not...!"

Chili found that, as hard as it was to embrace that notion, it made it a bit easier to just distance himself from his slowly changing body. The pain of the heat kept within his body would surely get to him, he knew, but he had to accept that this was happening. And hope that it would go away.

"Me being around you... It's making you uncomfortable, isn't it? Do you have any idea what you're turning into? Any ideas?!"

Truly, his presence did cause him discomfort. It was enough to make feel as though he were being shriveled dry. He didn't know this, but his hair had already begun to restore itself from the roots, being prolific as it was. Cress held up his hand, the red nails prominent, a swampy blue-green spreading across the skin.

"Something with long appendages," he replied. "And whatever it is, Cress's hand has already begun to change as well. The hair is the most noticeable feature, although upon taking closer a account of my body..." He closed his eyes. "...Growing pains? No, what is this..."

Bending down, he hooked his finger into his shoe and removed it. He had to withhold a gasp, because his feet were turning red as well. They appeared irritated and swollen. It knotted him up inside just to view it. "This must be a symptom as well..." he moaned.

Panpour sprayed a stream of water on Cress's hair experimentally. The mane of tentacle-like locks visibly began to plump. And Cress... could feel the rejuvenation. Not like hair, but like skin. Like they were parts of his body with nerves, not just keratin limply hanging loose out of a follicle. Cress never ceased looking amazed.

"Chili, my hair feels strange. I can feel with it." He combed his fingers through them, once again popping into another level of surprise and fascination. "Feel with it."

Chili wondered for a moment as he took another step back if Cress was turning into a Simipour. That wouldn't be so bad, he imagined: Cress knew a lot about Panpour and Simipour, so he would get off pretty lucky right there if that were the case. But the red tipped fingers and incredibly long hair... It was giving Chili a different mental image, something with wild locks - no, that wasn't right. Vines? Vines.

"Cress... If it's a Pokémon, do you think..." He wasn't sure how to say it. He looked down in thought. "Tangela... What do you think?"

Or Tangrowth. But that would be Tangela on a whole new level.

"A a a a a a ccount"

"What?" Chili stared at him funny. "Cress, are you okay?"

"No," he said and melted.

"Dammit." CHili whipped out his phone and called Conner. "Can you clean this up? It's like a puddle of blue out in the courtyard, and it's gross. Realy gross. Yeah bye"

Cress's ghost haunted Chili forever.

"It could very well not be a Pokemon at all," he reminded. "But when you mention Tangela, I feel as though you might be onto something. These "vines" are growing wildly, and, well... I can't say I know what having vines feels like, but I can easily imagine them having feeling in them. There is no sensation of pain, however. It's difficult to describe."

"But they're blue! Not the same blue as your hair, but close!" exclaimed Chili, pointing excitedly at Cress. "That sounds like a Tangela to me! I don't know what vines feel like to have, so I can't help you there, but the way you talk about them sounds like what I'd think."

Chili tried to imagine what that felt like, and he reached up to touch his hair. It felt... Different. Oh god. He could feel it. Was he getting vines too, in that case? His heart rate picked up, but he tried to calm himself.

"Maybe you should call Cilan and ask him how to take care of Tangela!" he suggested, not once considering that Cilan wouldn't want to hear about his brothers shifting into weird creatures.

"Are you stupid?!" broke Cress. "Cress is not taking care of a Tangela! He's becoming one!" He folded his arms up close to him and glared off to the side, thought it was more akin to emotional scowling than anything mean-spirited. Panpour did his best to show his trainer that he was here for him by patting his leg, but it went mostly ignored.

"Call Cilan to ask how to take care of yourself as a Tangela?" he suggested, a rather stupid smile pasted onto his face.

"Chili? If I could touch you without getting third degree burns? I would smack you."

"Hey! It was a real suggestion, you know!" Chili frowned, and with his newly found negative emotion...

An eruption of bright fire ignited on the surface of his skin from his elbows. Chili hadn't even noticed it yet.

Pulse was beginning to prefer the open space of the outdoors to the cramped hallways. Although he wasn't a claustrophobe in the least, he was getting worried that he might accidentally break something else besides the computer lab with his clumsy body, and simply wanted to avoid inflicting more property damage on the school. Besides, the warm June sun beating down on the campus felt very welcome on his scales.

He was beginning to feel a bit lethargic, however; knowing that some reptiles could charge up energy from absorbing sunlight, he decided to experiment with laying out on the courtyard lawn, finding a place to bed down that was getting full sun exposure. He was just starting to get comfortable when he happened to notice the blue-haired fellow some distance away. He looked familiar to Pulse; wasn't that the nice guy from the bake sale who had sampled his poffins? His hair looked a lot longer than before, though. He also looked a lot more... upset.

Hoping he wouldn't frighten him away with his hulking appearance, Pulse raised up his head and attempted to address him in a calm manner, although he was probably just as nervous as he was.

"Mister Cress, sir... Is that... you?"

Edited (wrong word) 2013-07-05 17:18 (UTC)

This reptilian creature... It was speaking to him because he snatched the word Cress out of the sentence. Oh, he understood what it was saying perfectly fine, but lately he seemed to feel almost... absentminded. The boy cloaked thickly in vines perked up from his spot near the flowers and felt an instinctive caution take over. The ruddy coloration of this dragon-like creature could mean fire, after all, and it was foreign to him. He had no idea what it could do, but it must be a student he knew.

So laden with vines was Cress that the cloak was obscuring everything on his face but one eye and a portion of his darkening face. His arms had fully taken on the appearance of Tangrowth's, dipped at the tips in red and long and flexible, boneless, the rest of it the color of the vines, which wasn't a shade far from Cress's cerulean. His legs had shortened some but were difficult to make out beyond this pile of prehensile plant matter. Keeping his eye locked on the Dodongo he swore he could just about recognize, he raised a floppy arm in a slow wave, the gesture looking much like waving with too big of sleeves on.

Pulse wondered if his sleepiness was getting the better of him. The fellow he thought to be Cress had responded accordingly--he thought--but that arm he used to wave at him with was awfully long. He blinked, trying to get a better look despite the sunlight in his eyes.

"...Sir? Are you all right? ...It's... It's me. Um... Pulse."

Carefully pushing himself back up onto his feet, he took a gentle step toward the figure, realizing that his eyesight was definitely getting weaker, as he had feared.

"There was a report on the Network, sir, about the... mutations. ...It turned out that... that when I felt that itching on my armor, sir... It turned out... I was growing scales, sir."

And, well, Cress could probably see how things progressed from then on.

If he hadn't professed his name outright, Cress could have been able to tell solely by the amount of times he said 'sir'. That, and now that he was looking at him from the angle of understanding as to his identity, there was a striking resemblance.

Even knowing this was Pulse, his approach made him a little more apprehensive. Logically he should be fine. But logic wasn't very strong with him right now, and he took a step backwards where Pulse took forward. He wanted to reply somehow, but he knew that his capacity for forming coherent sentences had diminished so far that he could be considered nigh incomprehensible. What was the use?

But he wanted to know more about this network post and possible reasons why this could be happening. So, he tried, even knowing how useless it would be. "Waablaabladeeseebloobabouutaacabbloowoobation?"

Whoa.

Pulse stopped moving for a moment.

He could tell that Cress had said something, but... Was his hearing really that bad? He hadn't understood a single word.

"...I-I'm sorry, sir, I... er... I don't think I... heard you correctly. ...I... ...I think I may be losing my hearing, sir."

What he hadn't noticed, however, was Cress's retreating movements.

"If I get closer to you, sir, I think... I may be able to understand you..."

Glancing down at the ground to make sure he didn't trip on anything with his big clawed feet, he took a few more steps closer to the pile of vines that was Cress.

The pile of vines scrambled further back, tripping over itself and falling over. Feeling alarm sear through him at being rendered in such a helpless position, Cress shot out a stretchy hand and smacked Pulse upside the head.

...In hindsight, he regretted doing that. "Woobly!"

It happened so fast that Pulse honestly couldn't tell what hit him. His scaly face was forcefully knocked away to one side, the weight of his head pulling the rest of him with it; the momentum of his steps was still carrying him forward, and he could no longer maintain his balance with his tail. He ended up flopping over onto his side, slamming hard against the ground.

The sudden excitement he was feeling from the assault, however, caused that strange burning feeling to well up inside him again. In his confusion, he was unable to muster up the concentration with which to hold it back. His middle was bulging somewhat as the fires blazed up in his stomach; though his mouth sprang open when he fell, allowing for release, it was the impact from the fall which forced the energy out from his jaws in a veritable explosion, sending a massive fireball into the air, fortunately missing Cress, though the formerly clean and light-colored courtyard wall behind him would not fare so well.

Thankfully, that single blast had used up all of his fuel. Pulse remained where he lay on the ground, dazed, a stream of smoke rising up from his mouth, which remained wide open with his tongue hanging out. His not-yet-fully-shielded throat was currently burning something awful.

The wild Cress fled! Sorry bro, no hard feelings. It's just... careening fireballs and nervous grass-types don't really jive together, ya dig?

Pulse could hear the commotion from Cress's retreat, though all he could do for the moment was lay there and wait for the searing pain his throat to subside, rubbing at his thick neck with his proportionately tiny little hands and moaning quietly.

That was a fireball that just came out of my mouth.

...I can breathe fire.

Though, not very well, since it hurt him to do so.

Eventually he felt it starting to get numb, and he began to work on getting back up onto his feet. He didn't need to scan the courtyard thoroughly at all to know that Cress was no longer present. That creature he was turning into... Tang... Tang-something... Argh... ...Pulse could only remember that it was weak to fire. Naturally, it wouldn't have been safe for Cress to be anywhere near a fire-breathing creature such as Pulse. Add him to the list of people Pulse was looking out for by having to keep his distance.

...I'm sorry, Mister Cress.

His throat still burning a little, he trundled over towards the nearby fountain, feeling a bit eager to experiment with drinking water.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Your hair grows like weeds

29th, morning

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

MEANWHILE, WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED:

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

30th maybe?

Okay! But he's progressed quite a bit since the 28th.

Whoa no kidding

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

I realized earlier that I missed an opportunity to mention being Touched By His Noodly Appendage