#plantman plot development!

[verduresapiens-archive]

Just a little... ‘talk’

Hershel couldn’t help but feel a mote of pride when he watched Randall enter Misthallery. Awe. Admiration. Sure, the immediate outer territory was a little wild-looking, but it was just to help keep people out - once past the barrier, it was meticulously cared-for garden plots wherever Hershel had been able to fit them. It never got old, seeing that amazement, in their faces.

But then he remembered who this was. This was Randall. The bastard himself, second only to Bronev in regards to how much Hershel hated him.

“Wow... Did you do all this yourself, Hersh?” Hershel twitched slightly at the nickname. Ignored it.

“A good portion, yes. Much of it was done with help. I’ve some workers helping me out - some employed, others are volunteers.” He began walking - Randall following behind. There was a bit of small talk - Hershel could tell Randall was a bit nervous. A shame that Hershel didn’t care.

Randall could be nervous all he wanted - it would earn no sympathy from him.

Hershel led Randall to a little area out of the way - a section of garden that initially looked like it was designed for somebody to relax. Which it was, partly. It was also one of several little sequestered areas designed for specifically this - isolating an unseeded person so he could get them alone for just long enough. But first...

“Sorry about this, but I trust you about as much as I do Bronev, so~!” Vines. Surging in from the underbrush and clinging to Randall as he made an attempt to run. Failed. The young man babbled then - desperate to get his once-friend to listen, but Hershel had long since had enough of listening to people he’d been betrayed by. It only took a moment, filled with wildly confused noises and an amount of struggling - bookended with sounds of disgust and demands to know what had just happened. He’d been seeded, not that Hersh was in the mood to explain how all that worked.

“Be quiet.” Randall obeyed. There was a fascinating amount of confusion and distress on his face, and Hershel would have loved to experiment a bit if he didn’t have other, more important plans. “I have questions, and this is the only way I’m willing to ask them, as you don’t have enough willpower to lie to me like this. Understand?” A pause, a delightfully irritated glare, and then Randall nodded.

Good. Not that the man had a choice. He could say no all he wanted, Hershel would just make him change his mind. He would have his answers.

“Alright. Question one; how did you find me, and was Targent involved?” A few moments pause - either fighting the seed’s compulsion, or genuinely trying to figure out the best way to word the response.

“Tangentially. I was contacted by a man named Simon Foster who said he was looking for you. He said he was caught up in a lot of things and had only just recently realized you weren’t safe. Sounded like he was beating himself up over it.” Simon. Descole. It tracked - Simon-slash-Desmond was usually quite busy with his own life until adulthood. Hershel had gotten into trouble as a teenager - Descole wouldn’t have had the means to find out until years later. Until that point he’d likely have assumed Hershel to be living a happy, safe, comfortable life with the Laytons. “Simon had me investigate leads in person while he dug up information from afar. He’s pretty paranoid about Targent finding him, but managed to track when Targent took you to the point where you... left, pretty quickly. After that things got real hard to find. Eventually we determined you’d been to London at least a few times, and... here I am.” Well, that all made sense.

Descole didn’t track him down because the man wouldn’t have had the resources to know his brother was in anything but safe, happy conditions until well into adulthood, at which point everything had been done and over with. No Targent influence here, at least yet. Not in the way Hershel had assumed, at least.

“And Simon isn’t a part of Targent?” Hershel didn’t think he was, but you never knew.

“No. He hates them. Won’t tell me exactly why, but it’s not hard to tell that he does. Gets a specific tone of voice when he talks about them. Real angry. Like you, when I talked to you in your store.” Hershel couldn’t help but huff. Of course he was angry at Randall.

Really, Hershel only had the one question he wanted to ask. How Randall had found him wasn’t nearly as important to him as what had happened in the past. Randall was the only one that could answer that. Well, Bronev could, but Randall was significantly less armed than Bronev was at a given time.

“Did you contact Targent when I was forced to live in the forest?” Randall’s expression changed from irritation to horror. Or at least as much as it could, under the seed’s sway.

“No! I would never do that! They came into town a few days before they they stormed off to find you, maybe a week or two. Poked around the whole damn place for ages until rumors about you started circulating - I overheard them talking, and people at school, well... Gossip about the strangers stomping all over town was popular.” This surprised Hershel, and he took a second to collect himself. Pull it all back into the tight little ball surrounded by anger and rage.

“So what, you heard them talking then sold my location to them? For what, to get me out of your hair? To get Targent out of town?” Hershel hissed, barely holding himself back. Randall’s expression remained horrified, if slightly insulted.

“My family is rich, why the hell would I need to sell my best friend out for more useless cash?!” Randall spat back - probably just as irritated that Hershel was assuming that, as Hershel was at Randall in general. “They came into town badgering people about the Azran, and then when they heard rumors about you they wouldn’t stop badgering people about you! I didn’t know they’d track you down until the day of! I figured I’d get to you faster than them since I knew where you were, not that I’d stroll in to watch you be kidnapped!” Stress, anger, an amount of sadness, it seemed - Randall was clearly feeling several things.

And now Hershel was too. His seeds didn’t lie. Randall, under the persuasion of Hershel’s seeds, still said that no, he hadn’t had any affiliation with Targent whatsoever. No. No, that... No.

“Get out.” Hershel hissed quietly, telling the vines to let the man go. Randall sounded like he wanted to say something, sounded like he was struggling against the seeds in whatever way he could - but Hershel spoke again- “Get out! Get the hell out!” Randall, under the seed’s power still, did as he was told. He darted off in the direction of the entrance, hopefully back to London, hopefully far away from him. Hershel wanted...

Something else. Anything else. Anything that involved Randall staying as far away from him as possible.

#sev writes things #plantman plot development! #this is about ten miles long ough