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There was food. Then there was burping, and then, there were sleepy babies.

So it's been decided by consensus to sleep right here in the park, with Sokka curled protectively around his sleeping nieces, Sokka not far off, and Jack keeping the first watch.

He likes keeping watch on his own. It affords him time to sing softly, two eyes, two ears, a Reading sense and his brain otherwise focused entirely on his surroundings.
Then there is a flick, and a girl in front of him. And with a flick she's gone.

It's enough though, for Jack to see what he's dealing with. A Secret Keeper.

He scrambles to his feet and nudges the un-babied Sokka with his foot.

"Wake up. We're getting company."

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"Aaassguuurgleebzuhhgwhauh?" says Sokka, elegantly, rocketing to his feet waving his scabbard threateningly. "I'llgeddit!"

Jack's cutlass is out now, but not for the Secret Keeper.

There's movement in the bushes and other dangerous plants are climbing out.

"Would it be worth wakingthe other you to fight plants, do you think?"

"Plants?" Sokka blinks.

With care, he exchanges the scabbard for the actual sword, shakes his head a few times, and squints at the plants.

"Oh. Plants. Nah, let him sleep. We can take them!"

There's just enough time for two women to grab a third woman's hand (http://community.livejournal.com/shatterverse/15810.html?thread=1365186#t1365186), and then

(flick)

all three of them reappear in the spot from which Marie vanished just before.

"Sokka!"

No time to fight plants now, ponytail boy! You're being attacked by a running glomping Slayer with crazy hair!

"AAAAUGH!"

Why does stuff keep happening to him!

"Not that you're not pretty, lady, but there are cannibal plants! Worship me later!"

The nearest and most dangerous plant is dealt with when Jack spins and cuts it neatly in half through the stem.

His other hand has his pistol out, though, pointed down while he looks firmly at Marie.

"What do you want?"

Steph spins around at a sound behind them and flings an arm up just in time to catch a whip-tentacle on her jacketed arm; the crack and the pain is enough to make her very glad it hit her arm and not her face.

"Guys! Talk later! Fight first!"

... is that ... two Sokkas?

"She--" Marie points to Mel, unerringly accurate without looking "--wants to be reunited with them." Again with the accurate pointing, this time at the babies. "I'm just the transport."

True, all of it.

She flicks out of the way of a triffid sting, then another.

"Kind of--" (flick) "--didn't mean to--" (flick) "--flick 'em into a war zone, though."

The wrong Sokka again?

Mel backs away, shaking her head and nearly panicking, when a noise makes her look towards the prone bodies on the ground.

"Ohmigod," she says, and rejects the wrong Sokka for- well, not the right one, but for Hana, who's beginning to stir with the disturbance.

Skidding onto her knees, Mel gathers the baby up and pulls her to her chest. "Hey, Hana."

Sokka pouts. After he's caught his balance from being energetically rejected by a Slayer, anyway.

"What is it? Do I smell bad?"

-- slice, and a triffid is in two --

"Do I have fleas?"

-- boomerang out, throw, and two more have lost their stings --

"What?"

Jack moves conservatively, ducking a sting from behind and cutting it off without turning.

"Seems to be true," he says to Marie, acknowledging the touching reunion.

"We talk later, aye?"

"Sure," she says lightly, and the one word comes from about three different places, chopped-up and broken.

Marie is an excellent distraction for the triffids, even if she's not a combatant in the strictest sense. They tend to lash out at her, and inevitably miss.

"Either of you fine-- fellows," and there's a detectable pause before she gives them both that label, "want a ride to Kansas?"

Sokka snorts with laughter when two triffids lash at Marie and get their stings tangled together, yanking each other off balance.

"What's Kansas?"

Jack smiles widely at Marie.

And cuts those two triffeds in two in an arc that would have gone through her middle were she still there.

"What he said."

"Someplace," she says, moving smoothly from one side of the last triffid to the other without passing through the intervening space. It stings empty air where she was when she began speaking.

"Not here. And here doesn't look too hospitable to me."

Pause.

"Someplace safe."

"Safe," Sokka says eagerly, "safe is good. I like safe."

The last triffid's sting is removed almost scientifically, the meteorite blade cutting through the stem as if it's butter. Sokka peers at it, slightly disappointed that nothing more dramatic happened, and then slices a few more times through the bole and shaggy roots of the thing just for good measure.

"You like safe, right, Jack?"

Jack sheathes his cutlass, but keeps his gun in his hand, peering at Marie thoughtfully.

"This means trusting your casting, no?"

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Steph drops to the ground to avoid a whip, jumps high to avoid the next, and contemplates the wisdom of rushing off to teleport into strange battlefields without so much as a knife, let alone a batarang.

"...coming to join family reunion," she decides hurriedly, ducking past the Sokka-in-Red (giving him a terribly, terribly bemused stare) and rolling towards Mel, the babies, and their sleepy uncle. "Hi!"

The Sokka not-in-red doesn't notice Steph right away. But it's hard to, admittedly, when there are babies and sister (real sister, not a new version, she's really here, he's not alone) to be glomped and steal the breath from with tight hugs.

Over Mel's shoulder, Steph gets a grin and an extremely, and very surprisingly cheerful, "Hi!" from Sokka.

Before he slaps a hand on top of her head to get her to crouch, so his club can swing at the triffid behind her. It doesn't do much more than make a disgusting, wet smacking sound, but it does disorient the plant and give them another moment for hugging.

Mel, unfortunately, doesn't have enough hands to hug Sokka with, because she has a baby in each, now. Babies who are awake and laughing.

And there are a lot of 'Mama!'s being said.

Mel leans into Sokka's hug, but her attention is divided between the girls, showering their hair and faces with little kisses.

"I'm sorry," she's saying, beginning to choke on tears. "I'm so, so sorry."

Sokka's getting an arm around her shoulders, if nothing else, pure relief on his face.

Those who know him better might be a little disturbed that he isn't more desperate, that he isn't crying himself, that there is only relief and no thankfulness or remorse.

But those thoughts can come later, after Mel and the girls and everyone else is out of danger. Which can only happen when Sokka kisses the top of his sister's head, hands Steph his knife, and lets his boomerang fly into the thick of the triffids.

Mel's not looking up at the triffids. Not right now. She trusts Sokka, and Sokka, and Steph.

And herself, should it come to that. She's at least partially shielding the babies with her own body, and can grab a stake if she needs to.

But the triffids are thinning out, and she doesn't need to look, now.

"I never thought I'd say this, Socks," Steph says, her grin enormous (and real, for the first time in days, there's nothing even slightly forced about her good cheer) -- "but I'm actually really, really, really glad to see your ugly mug."

She slides around to crouch in front of Mel and the babies, just in case a triffid should come at them that way, and stays there; the things have a range that's far too big for her to use a knife effectively.

There's only a couple of green monsters left, anyway; and Mel has her daughters back. It's impossible not to be a little emotional with the reunion.

"If your brain weren't so tragically sick," Sokka points out, as calm as he is very sad to say these words, "you'd say it a lot more often."

And then it's time to plop down beside Mel again, as the monsters disappear. He doesn't need to look at her or smile at her or say a word - it's enough to sit down and know she's beside him.

...and also that she can change her own kids.