He felt himself blushing even deeper at her laugh, but he didn't pull the hood back up, no matter how badly he wanted to. Besides, he was sure she'd just pull it down again. Honestly...he kind of liked her. She was a bit....brash. And very bossy and loud but...she seemed to have faith in him, and she was showing him how to do all kinds of cool stuff!

He gave a slow nod, getting back into position and WHOA SHE WAS TOUCHING HIM...

He felt his face grow even hotter as she positioned him like some sort of mer-mannequin.

He took a breath as his hand started shaking, but once again, he closed his eyes, imagining he was back home. This was definitely the kind of thing his dad and brother would have taught him back home, if he hadn't have had to come here. His hand steadied again, as did his breathing, and he drew back, and released--a little too early.

The knife went high, but it did sink into the tree. Sadly, it sunk about a foot above his head, and despite all of his attempts to jump, he couldn't even come close to grabbing it, and he blushed even more profusely.

"Uh...Sorry...I think we can get it back if...I don't know I stand on your shoulders or something? Or...Hm..."

"Wahoo!!" She clapped him on the back at his victory. Even if he had gotten it stuck all the way up there, he had still managed to sink the blade into the tree and that was an accomplishment!

"See! I told ya you'd get it!" She headed on over to the tree with him, staring up at the knife that was out of reach. He blinked at his suggestion for how to get it back, considering that he was taller than her and probably weight more... Then again, she admired the balls that took and she was probably stronger than him anyway given his temperament.

She could probably just climb the dumb tree, or take a shoe off and throw it at the knife, but meh. A feat of strength it was!

"Sure!" She peeled her coat off, not wanting to get dirty foot prints all over it and shifted her feet into a wider stance. "Go ahead and hop on up. Just don't step on my head."

She also flipped her braid out of the way to prevent that from getting stepped on as well, and in doing so showed off a circular black tattoo that looked like a moon with a howling wolf in the center.

"Yeah! Maybe next time I won't get it stuck...way up there..." he said, thinking. He knew there was no way he could hold her up because he knew he wasn't known for his strength; in fact the only way he'd been able to save the clone--that eventually melted anyway--was because things were lighter under water.

Only when she'd gotten the jacket off and took her stance did he start to question the validity of this idea. Well, it was too late to back out now, right? He removed his hoodie and set it to the side, not once thinking about him once again being in nothing but his swim trunks, but he'd need his full mobility for this and a hoodie worn by his 16 year old, over twice his size brother probably would do much more harm than good.

Taking another breath, he stepped over to her and prepared to climb."Cool..." he breathed under his breath, noting the tattoo. He wasn't going to ask, but he did have to wonder how someone her age came about one of those. Not that he wanted one, he was too chicken anyway.

It wasn't as easy as he'd thought to climb onto her, but he managed it, and stood on her shoulders, grabbing onto the knife. And then he was just...hanging from the tree, hanging onto the knife. But he'd made it this far. He wrapped his legs around the trunk--they didn't totally fit because he wasn't a tall or lanky lad, but they provided him the leverage to pull on the knife. But it still wouldn't budge, so he pulled harder, and finally it popped free!

And then...physics took over as his legs simultaneously lost their grip and Beau found himself tumbling from the tree and landing with a dull thud as his head smacked against the ground and everything hurt. The knife fell from his hand when he hit, sticking into the ground not far from him.

"Owww....." he groaned, short of breath and just looking up at the sky as the world around him spun a little. Okay....maybe that wasn't the brightest idea.

Hoo boy, he was heavy! But, nothing she couldn't handle. She assisted the climb when she could, making for easy access to foot holds and keeping as still as possible.

Her back and shoulders were screaming at her by the time he was fully in the tree, but it had been worth it.

... worth it to watch the spectacle that was him falling on his ass right back out of said tree.

"PFFT AHAHA!" She pointed and laughed at him because she was super mature, doubled over and everything.

"Ohmygod, that was great. You should have seen yourself!"

Wiping a fake tear away, she headed his way to help him back up and retrieved the knife from the grass. It went right back into it's leather sheath.

"Maybe next time when I have my bow back I can teach you to shoot, too." She mimed drawing back the string of a bow and aimed it at him with her tongue poked out and one eye closed.

"They're similar enough that you just might catch on quickly."

He was in too much pain to blush anymore, but the sound of her laughing practically engulfed him as he lay there on his back. His eyes closed for a moment, and he could feel a few tears coming on as he caught his breath, but no. Couldn't cry. Not in front of her, nope.

"Didn't...feel....great...." he groaned, opting to not even try to get up. At least the tears weren't threatening to come out anymore. Though everything still hurt, including what was left of his pride; though he was pretty much resigned to humiliating himself in front of her. At least she still seemed pretty accepting.

When offered, he grabbed her hand and forced his way to his feet. "Thanks...though I don't think I'll be climbing anymore trees," he admitted. "Like an actual fish I think I'm better off in the water..." He grabbed his hoodie off the ground and dusted off his back, managing to knock off a stick and a rock that had embedded themselves in his back upon landing.

Then, he leaned against the tree, still collecting himself. "I need to rest a minute....everything hurts..." he said, rubbing his head. He was surprised there wasn't a Beau shaped imprint, though he was sure there was a line where his fin had hit. "Falling sucks," he said dumbly.

Oh...

Crap, he was actually hurt?

Elke froze, looking awkward and uncomfortable. She wasn't used to that reaction. Usually when her brothers and her would play and someone tripped or fell or got shot or whatever everyone would laugh it off.

Or get mad an tussle about it.

She was not used to... this.

"Er...."

She shifted awkwardly on her feet and thought about running away and leaving him to it.

"Don't have, like... a nurses office or something here that you can go to?" The kids scratched behind her ear a bit and didn't look at him. "I'll go with ya if you want."

"I think...I think I'll be okay. Just sore. Nothing's broken," he said as he pushed himself off of the tree, bending his different limbs and stretching some, his back giving a cracking noise as he did so. "Ow! ...Actually...I think that helped," he said with a shy chuckle.

"Mostly just...took the wind out of me. And my headache is starting to go away. I also landed on a rock," he said with a nervous laugh as he rubbed his back and then pulled the hood of the hoodie back over his head.

Oh good! He wasn't broken or all upset about it! Her grin returned and she pondered on what to do next. How else could she help such a shy kid break out of his shell some more?

...

Oh, She had a great idea!

"Great! C'mon!" Without any explanation, she reached out to grab for his hand again and took off running.

Back past the pool they had first met, around the side of the school and through a garden. She knocked over a lawn flamingo as she went, heading for a patch of tall shrubbery against the wall that surrounded the school. Hidden behind the bushes was a little rope ladder she had used to climb in and out. It worked well with the spikes at the top of the fence keeping it in place.

"c'mon! Lets go have some fun outside of this boring place! I'll even show you my lair if you promise not to nark on me!"

She started climbing without waiting fir a reply.

He still hurt all over, but he did feel like he was going to be fine; nothing long term, anyway. It'd prolly ease off soon, and he'd probably be feeling it again tomorrow, but after that it shouldn't be anything to sneeze out.

But as he thought about this, she was suddenly saying something about an idea and grabbing his hand again. And running. He did an okay job at keeping up, though sometimes it felt more like he was being dragged than running. He paused a moment when they got to the fence.

"O-outside?" he said, looking kind of dumbfounded. Beau bit his lip, then nodded. "I...I promise. I won't tell nobody," he said, raising his right hand solemnly as if swearing an oath. And then, against his better judgement, Beau started up the ladder behind his new friend.

What awaited him on the other side of the wall was Elke settling herself on a pretty beaten up Troyota motorbike. She patted the rest of the padded seat behind her.

"Hop on!"

Once he was on she would kick the bike on, knock the metal stand out of the way, and start rolling the two of them out into the city.

In a move that was very unlike herself, she decided to actually obey the laws of traffic as they puttered away. She didn't speed, and she only road raged at someone once, kicking a big dent in their door and taking off between two cars while they were stuck at a red light.

Eventually she had taken him a good distance from his school off into a poorer part of the city. Eventually they rolled to a stop just outside of what looked to be an abandoned building. Elke slid off the bike and waited for him to dismount, before starting to roll it toward the building.

She paused a moment to glance around the seemingly empty streets, before nodding her head towards one side of the building and heading in that direction.

Off to the side hidden in some over grown bushes was her makeshift parking spot. She jerked a thumb toward where a knotted rope was left dangling over the side of the roof and then began busting her butt up the rope to the top.

Once on the weather and sun beaten roof, she would edge her way over to a large caved in hole that led straight down into the living room of the one story house. That same length of heavy duty knotted rope was nailed securely into the exposed wood up on the roof, and another end dangled down through the hole into the house.

She started shimmying her way down that length too.

Once inside Beau would either find himself surrounded in a magical land of different collected items, or he would think he had been brought into a junk heap.

Elke had been staying in the place for a while, ever since she had ditched the Pedo a week or two back. She had collected a lot of things that she tended to like- different kinds of weapons and relics from open markets and such. There were a few things with ties back to her heritage scattered about, as well as some odds and ends. She has lovingly places a taxidermy deer head above an old wood stove in one corner, which had at least three arrows pokes out of it's forehead.

Elke tossed herself onto a fluffy looking blanket on a less than fluffy looking couch and swung her arms out wide.

"Welcome to the club house!"

That--that was a motorbike. And they were going to ride on it. On the road. And he was pretty sure he was older than her so there was no way this was going to be legal. Everything in his brain screamed at him to just run back inside, open up his book and forget any of this ever happened.

But his body and muscles wouldn't listen. In fact he found himself walking over to her, climbing onto the bike and wrapping his arms around her like he'd seen them do in the movies. Surprisingly, she drove sensibly, though she did end up kicking a car once, which led to Beau instinctively holding onto her a little tighter.

Before long they'd made it to some sort of building. Frankly it didn't look safe, and they were a long ways from the mansion, which worried him, but...Elke would take care of him. Definitely. Yeah...

While a good swimmer, Beau was not good at climbing ropes, but after what seemed like an eternity, plus burning arms and residual pain from his fall earlier, he managed to make it up without dying, so he just lay on the roof for a second. Just a second because there she goes again. Forcing himself up, he heaved a sigh and attempted to shimmy down the rope.

What he did instead, was end up sliding down way too fast and getting a healthy dose of rope burn for his trouble. "Owww--oh...neat...." he breathed as he looked around at all the neat stuff he'd never really seen before. Some of the weapons he recognized, but alot of this was lost on him. And it was all so neat!

He sat down close to her, still looking around. "You've got....this is some cool ****!" he said excitedly, his voice squeaking in a very uncool manner as he tried out one of the words she'd taught him.

"Welcome to the chateau de la Elke!"

She hopped up again, pleased with his reaction. "You got it, buddy!" She headed past him, moving to lightly punch him in the arm along the way. She stopped at a large box that had pushed in one corner and dug around for a bit. When she finally turned she had a pile of spray paint cans in her arms in assorted colors.

"Follow me this way!" Excitedly, she headed back through a dark, dilapidated hallway and into another room in the back of the house. The room they ended up in was empty save for a makeshift table and a partially destroyed carpet. one of the walls as partially covered in colorful art, though it was clearly from a beginner.

"Wanna give it a try?" A lot of the art seemed to be politically motivated and heavily leaning towards anarchism. Elke bumped her cans off on the table and started shaking a white one.

"It's really cool," he complimented; he hadn't felt this happy to be included since the day his siblings showed him their tree house. He fell out of it, but...that wasn't the point. It was still fun, and he was fine. Besides, Elke wasn't related to him, so there was more to their hanging out than Mom and Dad said so.

Eagerly, he followed her, his hood still down as he picked up a can of green paint and shook it. He found a blank section of wall and attempted to draw a fish, to signify that he was there. It...wasn't great, the paint itself was runny, and on top of that, some of it came back on him, speckling his face and hoodie with green flecks, but he was too giddy to notice; he was just having so much fun.

"L-like that?" he said, looking over at her.

Elke turned from her own patch of wall to look at his. "Kinda! Try putting a lighter color under it though, cuz it'll make it stand out more!"

She pointed at the crude doodle of a hand giving the middle finger, all in hard to see white. Switching out her can real quick for a virbant red, she tradled it- just a tad wobbly. It stood out pretty well instead of soaking into the wall paper behind.

"See? Give it another try!" She cast a thousand watt smile at him before turning back to her section.

It felt like hours passed, and suddenly it was dark outside. What time was it?

"Whew..." The Native dropped an empty can at her feet, wiping her forehead and smearing wet blue paint across her skin. "It's lookin' real good now!"

In the time they had spent together, there were now many more drawings scattered across the walls. Elke had done some mock up designs of what she wanted to tag government buildings with, as well as practicing how to get just the right piggy shape down. She was currently looking at all the things Beau had made and providing commentary.

"Hey, that ones a pretty good shark! Super cool."

She didn't own a watch, mostly because she tended to break them pretty quick. She did have the phone she had woken up with, which beeped to signal that it had a low battery. She went to check it where it was laid out on the paint splattered table.

"Whoops." A nervous chuckle left her, "Hey, you don't have like a... curfew or anything do ya?" She didn't need a whole mansion of goody goodies coming after her because they thought she had kidnapped one of their students.

Beau took Elke's advice to heart, trying picture after picture, and taking up more and more of the wall. He was slowly improving, though all of his pictures involved more fish and less political stuff and middle fingers. It made him feel relaxed, and while meeting Elke and hanging out with her made him nervous and even scared him at first...he was a lot more relaxed now, and was really enjoying this time with her. Just a couple of kids, graffiti-ing an abandoned building.

He was now covered in paint, and there was a cheese-eating grin plastered on his blue lips as he looked at her. "Thanks! Yours are looking good too," he complimented, looking back at his last picture: the aforementioned shark. It actually did look like a pretty decent shark picture.

"Hey uh....you don't have a curfew or anything do you?"

Beau pulled out his phone. "Shit. Well, uhm...I did? But I'm already gonna get in trouble now," he said sheepishly. "I almost don't wanna leave. I mean...you kinda scared me when we first met but...today's been a lot of fun," he admitted, still smiling, his face turning purple as he blushed again.