SystemofEleven

Banding Together in Halloween Town

"Oh, I'm not. I'm sure you could have thought of it on your own. Eventually." She smiled sweetly. "I just thought I would remind you that you don't have a monopoly on creative recourse."

She rolled a bleached knucklebone across the fingers of one hand. "So you might like to start thinking of a way to convince me not to tell my sister what you did with her broom."

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Aggie returned to her place behind the counter and set both brooms out of reach, near each other. ""I'm surprised you didn't just get one of those little four-propeller helicopter toys and remote drop it in. No chance of getting caught in the fog radius if you're already fifty yards away when it goes off."

Banding Together in Halloween Town

A slight shift in the position of Aggie's hat showed a significant rise of her eyebrows. "You managed to fly the broom over the fountain, pour in a bottle of fog juice, and get away before the fog caught up with you?"

She supposed Shock could have just flown the broom to an area with fewer eyes, dismounted, and then booked it on foot. But in that case, it would have been easier to simply dump it in manually and then run from the start. If anything, a non-witch would have been slowed down by the broom.

...Well, Shock had said it had been really difficult for something that was supposed to be simple. Perhaps she just overestimated how complicated broom-flying could be.

Or maybe she had stolen it for something else, and was trying to cover up that using something she'd already been caught for as an excuse.

...And in either case, how had she managed to escape the fog in the first place? The witch wasn't sure whether to be impressed, or suspicious.

Banding Together in Halloween Town

"Oh, nothing so simple as that for someone as special as you, dearie."

Aggie stepped out from behind the counter and casually walked over to pull the fake broom out of its hiding place. She chipped at the glue residue with the long crooked nail on her thumb.

"Would you like to wait and find out, or would you rather answer my questions now?"

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Aggie smiled at her icily. "If things stopped mattering just because they were done, there would be no need to receive punishment for any sort of misbehavior after the fact. You're already in hot water for the forget-me-lots. You do not want to find out what Agnes could and would do to you if she finds out you used her broom for trouble."

The witch let out a quiet cackle that did actually manage to be a little bit creepy in a not-good way at Shock's second comment. "Perhaps you should keep that in mind the next time you consider 'borrowing' one."

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Aggie leaned forward against the counter. "And what simple job might that be?"

She didn't suspect that Shock had any actual magic, else there would be a lot more of it involved in their various pranks. She did, howeverm suspect there was something else going on with it.

Banding Together in Halloween Town

"I see." Aggie dropped the ignorance act. She set the broom down behind the counter with a raised brow. "And why would you have borrowed it? It's pre-spelled to stay up, but it takes a certain amount of magical talent to actually control. You three shouldn't be able to fly it in a steady, straight line, let alone do any fun tricks and maneuvers..."

She put the slightest emphasis on "tricks". She could easily picture the trio attempting to take a joyride while everyone was foggy from the forget-me-lots -- if they were capable of it. She imagined they had might have taken it hoping to do so, without knowing the limitations, but she was not beyond assuming they needed it for more... nefarious purposes.

Banding Together in Halloween Town

"So I see." Aggie held up the broom to examine it. Surprisingly, it was Agnes's real broom. Which meant the one stuck to the ceiling for the last several days had been a fake.

The older witch ran her fingertips along the handle lightly. "I'm impressed you've managed to get the glue off so cleanly," she commented innocently. "Without the heavy duty glue remover, I would have expected chunks of the wood to be torn off with the residue. Or at least the the residue would be soaked into the grain and have to be polished over to hide its permanent presence."

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Aggie was heading downstairs to retrieve a binding agent from the spare stores when she heard a sudden crack just as the bell rung above the front door. She didn't hear her niece comment, so it wasn't likely anything had been broken, but she did decide to poke her head in to check anyway.

She was just in time to see Shock's back as the trickster drop off the bottom rung of the ladder, Agnes's broom in hand, shove it into a nook, and then pick up another broom off the floor. As Shock spun to take it to the counter, Aggie stepped into the shop properly.

"Hello, dearie," the witch greeted her. She wore a friendly smile, but there was a knowing glint behind her eyes. She waited to see if Shock would make an excuse or try to pretend she wasn't up to anything.

Banding Together in Halloween Town

Carver snickered. "Mostly he just threw slow and hard, and couldn't aim for crap with how much force he was putting into it. Boy has a decent amount of muscles under his chub and sweats, I'll give him that. But he gets just a bit too involved in what he's doing."

Agatha's eyes glazed over just a bit at this description. She quickly shook herself out of her reverie and looked between the hoodie and Carver. After the whole incident with the fog juice and the sundew sap, she really shouldn't take any chances selling them anything...

"You know, I don't really think that the good doctor would trust you having it," she said, "but I can... quickly assist."

She motioned for Carver to come with her -- no way was she leaving two tricksters in the shop unattended -- and headed for the door. She would be back before Shock would have a chance to do anything. This really was the most... reasonable, option.

Carver shrugged and followed after, as if this wasn't entirely part of her plan. As they left, she shot a vine backward to grab the broom and throw it into the shop before the door closed. It would be up to Shock to find a way to get rid of the wedding broom.