Camp Darkness

Making Waves

A/N: Pic to the side is Ebony, played by Keke Palmer. I love how colourful this girl's wardrobe is! :D

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In one week Gideon had endured her Fury going into a growth spurt, one of her intakees trying to corrupt the Punt and the vampire lighting her ass on fire, twice. Ever since the attack on Luna, all of the kids in Gideon's intake had been trying to adjust. And since this is a Camp for Portentum kids with adjustment problems.... the pyromaniac vampire was relapsing. In a big, bad, ball of fire way.

The first incident had seriously been a matter of bad timing. Ebony had gotten her hands on a scented candle from one of the other girls, and then someone smuggled her a lighter. Gideon once again suspected Trinity; the witch seemed to thrive on conflict and dispute, but there was no proof. Instead Ebony had lit the candle and was simply sitting, watching the flames dance when Gideon had walked into the girls' side of the House. Knowing she had been busted, Ebony tried to put out the candle and hide it all at the same time, and instead lit her hair on fire. Gideon helped douse her out and now Ebony had a drastic new hair style, but was otherwise alright.

The second incident Gideon suspected to be attempted murder. Not that she had any proof of it, but it just seemed too... carefully planned to have been entirely accidental. Gideon had made sure that there were no lighters or anything flame inducing available. Someone had to have brought Ebony the lighter to use, she'd been isolated all day but it wasn't impossible to accomplish. Like giving a rock and a pipe to a crack addict, whomever had given her the lighter was helping her kill herself.

Ebony had tried to flick the lighter on to stare at the flames when apparently the entire thing erupted. The girl had severe burns to her hands, had lost her eyebrows entirely and had a first degree burn to her face. Nothing that her vampirism couldn't fix eventually, but the fact of the matter was that she had gotten lucky this time. She had been alone, the area around her was relatively flammable as well, and Ebony was aware of how differently things could have gone. As it was, the sprinkler system in their House had saved her life. The honest truth was that they had been installed for just that reason. Ebony was not the first pyromaniac this Camp has had to help rehabilitate.

What enraged Gideon was that she spotted the tampering on the lighter right away. Ebony wouldn't say who had gotten it for her or to her, but that person had given her a lighter that was carefully tampered with to make it as dangerous as possible. First the usual fluid had been replaced with the much more volatile butane. Second, the control gauge had been put to the highest setting and then ripped off so that it couldn't be lowered. The third tampering was what made Gideon so mad though; someone had scored lines into the lighter, purposefully allowing it to leak and coat the person using it in fluid before lighting. They had wanted Ebony as flammable as possible. Trinity had been nearly inconsolable once her friend was hurt, so the girl was either a great actress or actually innocent and that left Gideon with no suspects, no clues and an intake that seemed to be under attack.

Lisa's intake had won the top spot this past week, and to everyone's relief, picked the waterpark. The temperature was hitting the high marks, sitting at an uncomfortable 42 degrees after humidity. (A/N: 42 celcius is 107.6 degree Fahrenheit) The only ones seeming to do well in all this heat were those Portentum that dealt with heat and fire. The lycanthropes, skin walkers, shape changers, pyromancers and a few of the Fey were just loving it, the rest of the Camp was melting, and Doctor Cyr thought that it was mighty fine weather. Gideon and her Fury were both in accord, it was beyond time to get to somewhere cool and wet.

Splashworks Water park was more than just a few slides and a big pool. There were high diving pools, wave pools, sea water pools, tubing, slides, cool down zones, hot tubs etc... Anything water related seemed to be in the park, up to and including a learn to surf pool. Xavier was dragging his feet, knowing that he was going to spend the day sitting on the sidelines (golems and water are not the best of friends) and Lisa was already in the pool, before she remembered to take off her pants. It was rather amusing to see her try to pull the sodden jean shorts off and not drown at the same time. Gideon watched as the other Councillors stripped and jumped into the pools, the intake kids wandering around in groups and pairs and poor little Xavier sulking on his lounge chair. Ankou was over by Ebony, the bandaged vampire restricted to sitting pools. Gideon could see the layer of UV repelling spellwork hovering over the vampires and other photophobic of the Portentum species so that they could frolick and play as well.