Camp Darkness

As Gideon made a mad dash towards the fire in front of her, she wondered briefly if this had been a bad idea. As a small explosion erupted out and she was painfully pelted with shrapnel, Gideon cursed better than a sailor and knew this had been a bad idea.

She'd settled the kids in yesterday, not getting as much time to talk to them as she would have liked, but feeling pretty good about her little chat with Swiftfang. Did she believe the girl meant it when she promised to ask for help? Yes. Did she believe the girl would ACTUALLY ask for help next time? Not even a little. But still, the first step had been taken, which gave Gideon a foundation to work with.

Her premature confidence had led to today's little blunder. It was only their second full day here, and Gideon was hoping that maybe they were ready to actually start learning some survival training. Some groups go through their rebellion stage quickly, others drag longer and Gideon had hoped that this group was a fast one. As she scraped the boilin hot beans off her clothing and winced where a piece of the metal from the can had imbedded into her leg and it started to throb.

"I distinctly told you all that if you're going to cook over a fire, you need to always punch holes into the cans you're cooking with." Gideo stated, holding her temper at by and ignoring the blood that seeped down her leg.

There were six pairs of eyes trying to look innocent, convinced that she wouldn't break them and find out who had purposefully thrown the can of beans in to explode. They hadn't learned that she owned them yet, and it was going to be one of those days where she proves to them that there's a reason she was in charge.

"Which one of you disobeyed me and threw it in?" Gideon asked, voice calm. Her past pushed her to let the anger out, show them why they needed to fear her, but her own life lessons here helped her keep it at bay.

They all stared at her, unity giving them strength to resist her. Or so they thought. Gideon locked eyes with the convict, starting at the most likely suspect. "Did you disobey me and throw the can into the fire?" she asked, watching him smirk and shake his head no. Down the line she locked eyes with eavery single one of them and asked the same question, all of them shaking their heads no.

"Do you know who did throw the can into the fire?" she asked, not believing their innocence whatsoever.

"We don't know shit." Trinity called out snidely, the glittering in her eyes telling Gideon louder than words that the witch had used black magic sometime between going to bed last night and coming out here this afternoon.

Gideon looked at the triumphant faces of her intake and then in the next moment, every single one of them was on the ground, groaning in pain and bodies twitching weakly. "Now all six of you need to shut up and listen carefully. I did not tell you to punch holes in the cans to test you and see if you could obey. I told you to do it to keep you safe. This time, no one but me was hurt. A couple of years ago, a similar stunt to this killed one kid and permanently blinded another. Now when I let you all back up, we're putting out this fire and going back to the House. I clearly cannot trust you to do the simplest tasks without constant supervision."

Gideon curled her lip at her intake, hanging onto her anger by sheer force of will. It wasn't in her nature to be calm and forgiving. "Know this as well. Any other stunts, and when everyone else gets to go out of the Camp on sunday, you all will be stuck here. Because I can't trust you to take care of yourselves or each other. Now get up. We're going inside."

Slowly intake five got up, Swiftfang recovering first and automatically helping her intake mates up. Lycanthropes were social creatures to begin with, so it wasn't terribly surprising to see her learning the group dyanmic thing first. The last one to their feet was her princess, Virgil. The empath had tried to push the emotions of the group, giving them their strength and unity even though the group wasn't all that cohesive yet. Which meant that when they all got his with Gideon's 'sit down and shut up', he had felt everyone else's hit as well as his own.

"You're a c***." Virgil snarled in Gideon's face, limping as his body still moved weakly.

"Thunder c*** actually. And the next time you want to insult me, convict, just remember that if I don't deem you rehabilitated after six weeks, I get to keep you here longer. So try a little civility next time. Butter me up a little first." Gideon countered, leading the hobbling group inside.

She walked passed Lisa's intake, the only ones close enough to have witnessed intake five's chewing out and her friend gave her a sympathetic smile. The intake called out snide insults to her group, and neither Councillor silenced them, knowing that sometimes humiliation and ridicule were far better teachers than kindess and cushy, tender loving ever could be. Most kids only burned themselves once on a hot stove, but not a single one of them learned it simply from listening to mommy or daddy sweetly tell them not to because it'll hurt?

Xavier was standing outside her intake house, having been forwarned of what happened by Lisa. The farspeech spell Lisa loved to use had obviously warned the golem to grab a first aid kit. Gideon never went to the camp medic, and her friends had long ago given up trying to get her to properly take care of herself, instead shouldering the responsibility of keeping their friend patched together, sometimes even resorting to duct tape when necessary. His intake was probably either already inside her House, or on their way to group up with Lisa's intake. The three of them routinely shuffled intakes once a week anyways, so that their kids learned from different styles of teachers, so it was never a problem when they had to cover for each other in emergencies.

"You're bleeding." Xavier pointed out, as if she could have missed that fact. If the inch long twisted piece of bean can sticking out of her leg hadn't clued her in, the stinging pain that shot through her with every step probably would have alerted her by now. She did have more powerful skills of observation than the average garden slug.

"I needed to reduce the body fluids and since I can't have sex, I figured what's a little blood between friends?" Gideon shrugged, making the golem laugh.

Her intake just scowled at her as they trudged inside, egos and pride bruised by having the Night Shift laugh at them so openly. If her kids hadn't earned it, she would have defended them against it, but they needed to learn that she was trying to teach them skills for a reason. It wasn't going to be serious 100% of the time, but if they couldn't learn to work through their problems, this was going to be six weeks of Gideon riding their asses like it was derby time.

Like every other time there was everyone in the House, Gideon perched on the mantle, not needing to be higher than everyone to maintain her authority. The golem knelt down in front of her and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Then he taped them to his wrist and pulled on another pair of gloves over it. And then a third layer before he casually cut the pant leg off Gideon and exposed for all her intake to see the metal in her leg and the blood leaking out of it. From the paler faces and averted eyes, Gideon gathered that they hadn't realized she'd been this injured by their little prank. But this was a good lesson for them, that intentions that didn;t include injuring anyone could sometimes go awry.

"What black magic spell did you use?" Gideon asked Scrollson over Xavier's head.

The seventeen year old witch stared at her, eyes wide with horrified surprise. She honestly had thought no one would find out? To make the teen witch's day even more traumatizing, every single one of her intake mates turned to stare at her with shock. They'd already known she was a witch with a habit to break, but apparently they hadn't realized that her habit would continue while she was here.

Tears welled up in the girl's eyes and Gideon wanted to offer privacy and comfort for this moment, but she'd already been warned that this girl's emotions are a sham. She's used tears and tempertantrums to trick her family out of ever really disciplining her and even though they'd been this close to sticking her in rehab twice before, this was the first time the family had really gotten her help. "I know you didn't do anything really malicious or else the Punt would have punished you. But I need to know what you did, and you need to know that even something not horribly wrong, is still wrong. Black magic feels good to use, but it rots you from the inside after a while. Like mainlining pure cocaine."

When the witch saw that her crocodile tears hadn't fooled Gideon, her mood went from repentant sad, to spitting mad in a heart beat. "I don't need to tell you anything! I hate this place! What I do with my magic is none of your freaking concern!" she screeched, mistaking volume for conviction.

"You really are a dumbass." The convict scoffed. "She doesn't buy your shit for a moment. If you could feel her emotions like I can, you'd know that she's not angry, she's bored! This is our grace period guys. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, that's the honeymoon. After that it's their jobs to 'fix' us." he did air quotations.

All of them gaped at the empath as if realizing he had that advantage against all of them and not just their Councillor and Gideon just threw her head back and laughed. "Scurry my little pretties." she cackled, even making the golem look at her like she lost her marbles. And then he jerked the hunk of metal out of her leg and Gideon swore sulphuriously, barely withholding the urge to deck her friend.

Xavier cautiously cleaned the wound and checked it for other shrapnel while the entire intake watched in grossed out fascination at the not-quite-so amateur surgery going on their Councillor.

"Shouldn't she go see the doctor?" The incubus asked, eyes glowing as his demonic nature surfaced at the scent of blood. The vampire was gnawing on her knuckle, clearly distracted, the cat girl was staring at her feet and twitching all over and the necromancer looked like he was about to hurl.

"Gideon doesn't do doctors. She does duct tape and attitude." Xavier answered, and Gideon harumphed at him, and looked at her intake.

"The last day here, I'll tell you my 온라인카지노게임. What I am and what I do here beyond the obvious. Until then, it'll be easier on all of us if you just accept that the logical thing usually doesn't apply to me." Gideon said through clenched teeth as the golem wiped the wound clean and calmly taped it shut, bandaging over the dressing with long skill. "Thanks Xav." Gideon peeled the gloves off her friend, careful to make sure none of her blood touched him.

"There really is something wrong with you isn't there?" Virgil asked, tone serious. The others watched as the golem gave Gideon a comforting pat on the shoulder and walked out without a word.

Gideon hauled herself to her feet and carefully sterilized the area, making sure not a single drip of blood escaped her cleaning. She hadn't answered him and they were all waiting for her response. "Swiftfang, can you smell any blood left?" she looked at the startled lycanthrope.

Luna carefully crept over, sniffing cautiously, as if afriad of finding any. But her eyes flew wide and she tried a deeper, fuller breath in through her nose and snuffled around for longer. "No, nothing. How did you do that?" she asked, sitting back on her heels. She looked clearly astonished.

Gideon made a face. "I'm supposed to be reprimanding you all for disobedience, not playing twenty questions!"

"How about a deal? We each answer a question and in return we get to ask you one." Virgil offered.

"You guys haven't earned that right yet. Stunts like today will keep prooving you're not ready for it. When you guys can start talking about it, and taking care of each other, I'll tell you you're ready for stage two. For now, I want every single one of you to write out what you learned about yourself from today's little adventure." Gideon countered, handing out paper and pens to all of them. "You have until supper, when you can hand them in and go eat. Then when you come back after that, we'll talk about it."

"And we get no choice in this?" Bloodmoon asked, sounded so offended.

"For the love of peaches and cream." Gideon looked at the ceiling, then at the floor and twisted her lips as if she couldn't figure out which one of the ruling kings was screwing with her now. "You have been here for a day. On the second day you managed to injure your Councillor. I'm here to take care of you guys. I want to be here to help you through whatever shit it is you're going through so you come out on the otherside intact. When you pull stunts like today and when you misbehave like Scrollson did, I'm the one that has to account for it. I will go to bat for you guys if you show me you're worth it. But if you don't, I'm certainly not going to stand between you and the Senior Councillors." She had their complete attention and every single one of them looked some degree of ashamed. It had been a group decision to throw the can of beans in, and they all felt their part keenly. "Every Councillor is supposed to set their intake a Project, something for them to focus on and strive towards for the six weeks here. Other Councillors get real specific, but I leave a lot of it up to you guys. My Project for you over the next six weeks is to impress me. Find a way to make me proud of each and every one of you." she set the gauntlet out, curious to know who'd pick it up first.