While the blackberry bush was unassuming in that it looked like any other berry plant, it had an almost four foot diameter root system that had lots of little shoots broken off, likely where it'd already been eaten. The still large remainder of the bush with berries on it was still fairly impressive on it's own.

"Planting it outside here is just asking for the entire thing to get washed away in the rain. It's one thing in the woods where there's plenty of other plants to absorb the extra water." Karen was crouched down next to the bush as she stared between it and a tablet, Ash holding an umbrella over them both.

My hope that Karen's biology major would mean she knew plants didn't work out, but the internet makes amateur experts of us all.

"It's supposed to be a full sunlight plant with trellis or something for the vines. Canes." She read off.

I looked up to the sky while hiding under my own raincoat at the dark clouds covering up any sign of blue. "We can put it somewhere that should be full sun, but I doubt we're going to get that for a while. We'd still have the problem of too much rain washing it away though."

"Do we have roof access?" Ash asked.

"Maybe?" Melissa spoke up while sitting in the loading dock to stay dry. "I think I saw a locked ladder thing on the side of the building."

"Can we just put a planter up there then?" He asked. "Get one of those build your own greenhouse kits or something to keep it from getting drowned. Heck, maybe Lowes still has seeds, we could try a whole rooftop garden thing."

"Huh, sounds interesting." I looked up to the roofline. "Let's put this inside for the moment and see if anyone has that stuff. If it isn't all bought out or something."

~~~

As it turns out, growing your own food was a valid option to a lot of people and every planter box, two by four, and greenhouse gardening kit was completely out of stock, less likely to be restocked than groceries even. I'd gotten an apology from one guy because he admitted employees were buying things off the trucks before they stocked.

What we ended up with was several kid's plastic swimming pools, several hundred feet of PVC pipes and connectors, and the rest of the stock of clear painter's tarps. Danny donated a shovel from his place as well for collecting dirt but instead of heading back to the Seekers building, Karen nixed that idea.

"We're either going to the conservation or back to where you found that thing in the first place, Ash," she said while downloading more random gardening items. "There wasn't any potting soil or fertilizer, so we need good soil instead of the random dirt from the lot next door. Whatever's up with those blackberries, I don't want us killing it accidentally."

"We've been running around too much today already, so conservation it is. I don't have the charge left to get out there and back right now." Ash decided.

So the four of us climbed back into the truck and headed out with a shovel and a mission to fill three plastic swimming pools with dirt.

The roads out there weren't bad, but as soon as we got onto the conservation and had a good look at the trails, I knew we weren't going to be driving deep into the woods here.

Ash pulled off to the side of the road, looking down one of the markers for offroad driving. "Mark Twain's trails are a hell of a lot better packed, they hadn't washed out."

The mostly dirt trails had turned to mud in the continuous rain, slick and deep looking. I looked down at my sneakers and sighed. "Well, at least my feet will wash off quick." I pulled off my shoes and socks, tucked them under the seat of the truck, popped the door, and hopped out.

The asphalt out here was already cracked with rainwater pouring into it and I wondered how long before this washed out too.

Turning, the rain splattering against my raincoat, I looked at the others still sitting in the truck. "Walking thirty or forty feet into the woods isn't going to hurt anyone."

"Do you know how much a full swimming pool of dirt is going to weigh?" Ash, the mathematics major, asked.

I shrugged at his question. "About as much as it was going to weigh getting it onto the roof from a fire escape ladder?"

"That's a really good point." Melissa laughed sardonically. "How are we going to get it up there?"

I pulled one of the boxed pools over and opened it, pulling the collapsible plastic kiddie pool from the box. "Lift it? I figure as long as the bottom doesn't fall out of these, you hold on with one hand and climb up with the other."

"Uh, Nicole. Those things hold probably twenty cubic feet in them. I looked at Lowes, a cubic foot of topsoil is around eighty pounds. So, you're looking at around sixteen hundred pounds of dirt."

"Water isn't that much lighter, right? So it's not likely to rip if we're careful." I answered, before realizing what the complaint actually was. I grinned evilly at all three of them, still dry inside the truck. "None of you have made the third breakthrough yet, have you? It might take a handful of trips up then. It'll be good training, we can start here and you guys might push through. Come on!"

And with that realization, three groans replied as they started pulling off their own shoes and getting ready to be muddy.

We tromped out through the mud to the sounds of rain and mud squishing through toes as we easily sunk an inch or more in the almost overly saturated ground.

"Eww, eww, eww. Gross, gross." Melissa chanted under her breath as we walked. "We've only got one shovel, why are we all out here?"

"What, you expected to watch and provide commentary while I shoveled?" Ash joked.

"I was." Karen grinned as she nudged him under their shared umbrella. "I was going to just hold the umbrella for you and look pretty."

"Oh? What if I wanted to hold the umbrella and let you shovel for a bit?" Ash moved the umbrella off of Karen, letting the rain start to drench her.

She squeaked. "Hey!"

"Yeah, you're right. That's not fair." Ash closed the umbrella completely before she could get back under it, letting them both get soaked. "There you go."

"You ass." She jumped at him, trying to grab at the umbrella as Melissa and I laughed. Karen misjudged her strength though, taking both of them off their feet as she slammed into him, causing them to tumble into the brush and mud.

Which just made Melissa and I laugh even harder at the two of them, the umbrella now bent under Ash and probably unusable.

"Damn it." Ash muttered as Karen basically sat up on his chest, laughing as well. "Should have braced myself."

"Serves you right for taking the umbrella away." Karen laughed one last time before standing up. "Guess I can help shovel now."

Ash stood up as well, frowning. "Ripped my shirt. What'd I hit? Did it get me?"

There was a rather large gash down the back to side of his shirt, but not really any damage to him. Caught in some of the fibers of his shirt were wood splinters and looking at the pile they'd fallen into, I saw a snapped branch half impaled into the ground.

I whistled. "Well, that should have hurt a hell of a lot." I pointed the branch out.

"Yeah, really glad this power makes it harder to hurt us in general. I probably would need the ER if that'd got me."

The rain was already starting to puddle up where Ash had landed and I shrugged, pointing to the ground with the shovel. "Eh, since we've already started digging your grave then, should we go ahead and start loading up dirt here?"

We cleared a space to keep the plastic from getting ripped unrolled the first pool completely. Setting it up I rolled my eyes as the rain slowly started to fill it up. "Oh goodie, a timer."

I took a breath, cycling and drawing in the energy around me. I figured Ash or Karen would have said something if they noticed anything, but now that I knew there was weird stuff we might sense it would be a good habit to build.

Nothing found, I spiked the shovel into the ground, bending and lifting a rather large amount of soil up and tossed it into the pool. Well, what I thought was a rather large amount. It looked pretty paltry sitting in the pool, slowly dissolving into rainy mud.

"You guys want to help dig? Even by hand it'll be faster."

Ash, Melissa, and Karen all pitched in and within about twenty minutes we'd half filled the pool up before I called a halt. "Alright, we need to make sure it's not going to rip. Everyone in a circle around the pool, let's check."

Half full and with four people, getting our hands underneath the pool and lifting it was pretty lightweight. If Ash's math had been right, this was really only about eight hundred pounds split between the four of us.

The plastic stitching didn't seem to be pulling and while the center part sunk back towards the ground, it seemed alright so far. "Does anyone think the plastic is stressed or stretching on them?" All nos. "Alright, let's set it back down and finish."

Another twenty minutes and we had a pretty good pit dug and a full swimming pool of dirt was ours. We test lifted it again and while it was a little heavy, it seemed reasonably strong enough to hold up.

"Ready?" I asked, holding my end.

"Walking it back to the truck?" Melissa replied.

"You guys are." I smiled and slowly let go of my part, letting the rest of the weight split between them. Eight hundred pounds split four ways was only two hundred each, but splitting sixteen hundred between three people was over five hundred pounds, give or take a bit.

They staggered but managed to keep holding it up. "Hey!" Ash grunted at me.

"You guys need the stress here. I'm going to be the one hauling it up the building," I noted as I watched carefully, ready to help if needed. "I'll go drop the tailgate, how does that sound?"

"Like I should have tackled you earlier instead." Karen answered back.

It wasn't more than a few minutes back to the truck, but they were all straining by the time they got back. Melissa more so than the other two and she nearly had her eyes closed in concentration.

I dropped the tailgate and jumped into the back as they got the pool mostly situated on and slid it in a bit. I grabbed both sides and folded it slightly, lifting it slowly across the split between actual truck bed and the tailgate so the bottom didn't rip.

Karen leaned against the tailgate, breathing deeply. "Damn, slogging through the mud made that even worse."

I looked back the way they'd come seeing deep pits where they'd walked. "Why are there only two sets of mudhole footprints for you guys?"

"Mine aren't there." Melissa was sitting on the curb, just letting the rain fall on her as she rested. "Tried something dumb, it worked." She looked up at us. "That was more exhausting that just walking through the mud. Entirely less gross though."

She then held up a foot and I realized there wasn't any mud caked up her shins like Ash and Karen had.

"That whole thing when you jump down and the force is absorbed by your energy? I was trying to do the same thing with all the extra weight. It worked to the point I even was absorbing the force of my own walking. But damn am I tired." Melissa smiled in the rain.

"Explain that one better please. I want to know." Karen begged. "I don't want to walk in the mud."

"I think we're going to have to do this in multiple trips anyways." Ash eyed his truck. "That's heavier than I thought. We'd probably push past the max safe weight on my truck with two of them and us. So head back and Melissa tries to teach us a cool new trick?"

"And all three of you get to do enough dragging stuff up the building to have an honest attempt at your third breakthrough." I added. "You guys need to keep pushing too."

"No worries there." Melissa shook her head, still catching her breath. "I was pushing so hard I managed it, then blew all the extra energy that gave me almost immediately as well."

"Well now I'm doubly interested in learning it. If you can push through a block with it, that's definitely something we want to publish to everyone." I grinned excitedly.

"Whee. Alright, let's get back then." Ash commented as he closed the tailgate up. I pulled the other two pools out of their boxes and unfolded them, trying to cover up all the soil so it didn't just turn into mud too.

We basically let the rain clean the mud off of us and got into the truck and headed back.

~~~

Back at the Seekers building, Ash pulled back around to the loading dock again as Danny had been called and had it open for us. Thankfully there were plenty of towels even if we didn't have any changes of clothing here.

Once we were dry, all attention was given to Melissa who had retrieved one of the heavier rubber weight plates from the gym.

"OK, first thing, I don't even know how well this actually works," she started. "I've been somewhat messing with it for a few days now on the balance beam run more than anything else to try to help my jumps."

She hefted the fifty pound weight. "So as Nicole found out, if you fall from a height the impact is absorbed into your energy, spending some of it. I've been trying to manually do that for normal falls and steps. The extra weight we were carrying just made it more obvious what I needed to do." She jumped with the weight, getting about four feet in the air. "Every step is like a jump down, but just enough to negate that force. Apparently, negate it enough and you don't impact the ground at all."

"That's it?" Karen looked confused. "Just jump instead of step?"

She shook her head. "No, each step is like a tiny fall. You have to purposely ripple your energy to absorb all the impact. That's why it was easier with the weight. I had more impact I could feel, even if it took more energy to negate."

I was about to say something and noticed the blackberry bush we'd set to the side, already drooping. "Let me get this thing on the roof first, then I want to try."

We had to split the soil between two pools because of the weight for one person to lift it, but I got the soil up on the roof within a couple of trips and we quickly set up a makeshift greenhouse. "Alright plant, please don't die on us."

I took a deep breath, cycling in. Feeling the energy around me for a moment.

Energy seemed to flow into the blackberry plant like it was cycling too, and the sense of wood energy around it thickened.

"Lots of new things today. Hopefully we can get you some friends, or grow some more of you."