whistle while you axe

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whistle while you axe

WHO: Johanna Mason
WHERE: Outside the Mill
WHEN: August 11th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: n/a

The last few times that she's been out in the woods have been silent, solo jaunts, which means that her temporary friend had been just that -- another person who left, whether of his own volition or not, but isn't that just like home? Everyone goes away, no one sticks around. Whatever, it just means there's more for her, which is why she's working with a lot of firewood, to the point that she eases back on the cutting and starts to look at other uses.

She doesn't build with them, doesn't know any tricks to make them into a floor or a roof or anything else handy, but what she knows is making a weapon or two. She's been whittling using her axe, turning a large slab of redwood into several well-turned staffs of about six feet tall, careful to keep her work clean. She could (and should) put a point on one end, but she'll save those for hunting, for later. Some of these, she's just working on because she misses fighting and keeping her anger hot and boiling. Fists are fine, but no one wants to come after her with the axe in her hands, so she's been thinking about evening up the playing field with a few good blunt instruments.

Twisting the second now-finished staff, she eyes the handiwork with all its errors and flaws, shrugging when she doesn't really care how perfect it is, so much as it's done.

Tossing it into the finished pile, she reaches down for the remainder of the log, using the axe absently to throw all her weight into the strike, cutting it clean in half so that she can pin it down with her boot, prying it up to start on a third. Even if she doesn't end up finding someone who's willing to practice, at least Johanna intends to be well-stocked in weapons for whatever comes next.

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Isabelle is frustrated.

On the one hand, she got herself a package yesterday, one containing a pair of metal hair chopsticks, sharpened at both ends. The only the she loves more than cute accessories is cute accessories that can be weaponized. They're not as nice or as handy as the whip she wore coiled around her wrist at home, but they'll certainly work in a pinch, and she's taken to wearing her hair up with them every day. But on the other hand, Clary has shown up, from a point in time way before Isabelle, somehow. She's not alone, but now there are two of them stuck here.

She's frustrated. She's looking for a fight.

That's why, when she sees Johanna outside of the Mill while she's on her daily run, she smiles. Not only does Johanna look good wielding an ax, but it also means she's more than capable of being a good fight. Isabelle already knew that, though. Coming to a stop on the other side of the pile of staffs, she tips her head, a little out of breath when she talks. "What're you up to?"

Johanna glances up and shares a pleased smile with Isabelle as she approaches. It's not like they're going to be best friends anytime soon, but after the time they've spent together, Johanna is fully ready to admit when she appreciates someone's company the way that she does with Isabelle. It's not like she has friends apart from Finnick anyway, so she can slot Isabelle into that nebulous in between.

"Making weapons," she replies, working the axe to start whittling off a layer or two of the wood, wanting it to be small enough that it won't make her hand hurt when she's working with it. "Don't need the wood for fires, not anymore, I figure I can do whatever I want with it," she says, with the air of someone who's claimed it.

They're not friends, but they've come miles since their initial meeting. Isabelle had been spitting fire and Johanna's not the type to take it laying down. The fact that they're to a point where they smile at each other in greeting after all that is a miracle.

It probably helps that they fucked. That tends to soften people up a little.

Isabelle's smile only brightens when Johanna says weapons. She doesn't ask for permission before leaning down and snatching one of the sticks up, twirling it like a baton in her hand in front of her with well-practiced movements. It's thicker than the staff she usually uses, rough wood instead of smooth metal. She'll probably end up with splinters, but she doesn't care.

"Fancy yourself some fighting practice?" She asks, looking up again. "I'm in a mood."

"Fighting practice comes after," Johanna clarifies, because she wants to get there too, but the last thing she needs is for the staffs to end up shattering in the middle and leaving them both with more splinters than a place like here is equipped to handle, especially without the drugs that they might need for it.

She gestures to her pile. "We need to test them out, first," she says. "I sanded down a few, but I don't know how strong they are. Basically, just bash the fuck out of it against one I'm holding, see if it breaks."

Isabelle's mouth twists, more of a half-hearted pout than anything else. She misses laying other Shadowhunters out on their asses, controlling unruly Downworlders with a crack of her whip. She misses real sparring and training and fighting, the kind of life-or-death stuff that comes with her job. But this is still better than practicing Judo on her own.

"Alright," she agrees, twirling the staff in her hand again. "I guess that might settle my mood." She takes up a stance against Johanna, testing the weight of the wood in her hands. Holding it properly in the middle, she takes a smooth, well-practiced swing at Johanna's own staff. She might not have her enhanced abilities anymore, but she still has years of coiled muscle in her arms, making it a hard hit.

Johanna leans down to pick up one of the thicker, untreated pieces of wood from the pile she hasn't touched yet, hefting it up and standing to give Isabelle an actual target to work against. Maybe she'll convince her to switch positions later so that Johanna gets a turn, but right now she needs to make sure they don't splinter from weakness, because that's the last thing she needs when she's using a weapon to defend herself.

She challenges Isabelle with a raise of her brow, forcing the weight of hers back against Isabelle's. It's not an axe, but then, you don't need an axe to defend yourself. "Not bad," she says. "Harder," she demands.

Bodhi's absent meanderings bring him to Johanna more often than most of his impulses. He's pretty sure he's stumbled on her more often than he's actually sought her out on purpose. With not much to occupy his mind just now, he's far away in a fog and doesn't even notice the regular ka-chunk of her labors until he's practically on top of her, leaving his smile a little more sincerely surprised than usual. He hasn't chatted with her since his return from the other side of the canyon, though, and his look is decidedly new. The scraggly hobo-beard Kira despised so much has been shaped back into the natty, stylized goatee he arrived with, the undercut spots back at his temples, and the traditional Jedhan dress that arrived in his second mysterious box, layers and layers of sweeping lines and loose drapes all topped with a janty headscarf, definitely change up the effect from ratty scrubs. Not that Bodhi's thinking of it much. He's just in the mood to bug her. "What'd the log do to you?"

She glances up momentarily from her work to give Bodhi a long onceover, raising her eyebrow when she notes that he's dressed like a person and not just a morphling who managed to stumble out into the sunlight by mistake. It's impressive, she'll admit, even though she's not sure anyone should be wearing that many clothes when it's this hot outside.

The thing on his head alone must be making him sweat like a demon.

"It existed," she replies, twirling the thick, rough cut of it, giving him an amused look. "It's not cold enough to need a fire, so I'm taking my last downed tree as a victory conquest and doing whatever I want with it. In this case," she says, sweetly and fondly, like a person talking about their child, "weapons."

"Sounds fun." He shrugs mildly. It doesn't, but the part where she's clearly indulging herself does, and he's willing to use his imagination about the rest. "Do you, um, do you want a hand with that plan, or is the conquest more of a solo thing?" He doesn't know what exactly he could do to help, but he has picked up enough about how wood works here and there to be able to provide very general support. He can hold things pretty competently, anyway. After Baze's blistering disdain, Johanna's seems perfectly weather-able.

"It actually is," she replies, a touch of sincerity in her words. Most people might find it annoying to have to do everything by hand here, but there's a peace in it. When he offers help, she perks up, because she could use a hand, but she's not sure that Bodhi's the right guy for this.

"Depends," is what she says, giving him a critical look. "I need someone to help me test out whether I've built them round enough to withstand strikes. It means you're going to need to fight me," she says. "Can you manage that?"

Bodhi stares at her for a moment and then laughs. "Absolutely not, no, not in this or any galaxy." He says it fondly, but he can't imagine her being serious. Has he thrown a punch or two on a bar fight? Yes, and even landed possibly more than one of those. But he was bad at it even then, and Johanna is not a drunk pilot in a sleazy bar. "I can't... I don't even know how to describe how quickly you'd roll over me."

Johanna rolls her eyes, because she's not asking him to hurt her. She honestly doesn't think that he could. "I promise not to beat you into an early grave," she vows, irritable and annoyed, but willing to give him that much. "I need to know if they break," she says. "So just, smack it as hard as you can at the one that'll be in my hands," she guides, trying to point out how simple it will be.

"Or are you too scared of that, too?" she deadpans, shooting him a disbelieving look and tapping one of the finished staffs into the dirt, gesturing with it out to him. "Come on, Bodhi."

"It's not really... scared." But he knows full well that if he tires to take a swing at her, it won't land. Possibly at all, possibly just pathetically. "I'm not good at this kind of thing. I was thinking more, um, if you wanted me to hold things..." He feels a bit bad, but she'll probably be more annoyed with him if he does attempt and miserably fail at the task she wants to set him.

"If you want to be the one to hold a stick while I try the staff against it, be my guest," Johanna replies in a deadpan, seeing as she feels like she'd been the nice one to offer him the chance to get some of his aggression out, but it looks like Bodhi doesn't feel like taking advantage.

Levering herself to her feet, she gestures for some of the uncarved, untouched wood, giving him a nod. "Go on, pick one of those up, I'll come at you, see if I break my staff. If I do, it's not thick enough to withstand the force."

"See, I can actually do that," he says cooperatively. "The other way there'd have mostly, um, I'd have probably just dropped things." It might say something about him that he's much more comfortable being swung at by a violent weirdo than do the swinging, but he doesn't really know what that would be. Nor does he wish to find out. He picks up one of the pieces, checking gingerly for splinters before moving it into his hands.

Well, at least he's not going to end up being completely useless. It's still not the best outcome, but Johanna figures that she can live with this. Pushing herself to her feet, she nudges one of the thicker pieces of uncarved wood towards Bodhi, reaching for one of her finished staffs.

She'll have to sand it down to prevent too many callouses, since she doesn't have gloves, but it'll do for the purpose it's intended. Grinning at him wickedly, she tries to coax him forward. "C'mon, lift it up."

"I'm lifting!" He's not alarmed, exactly, just... Aware of everything. It's impossible to be otherwise, willing as he is to help out. Johanna's just a force of nature. He assumes nothing like a combatant's stance, his feet planted more or less at random with only the most general sense of his center of gravity, and he holds his arms out rigidly, but he does do his best to follow her directions.

Johanna finds the staff she wants to test, thinking that it's a little thicker than some of the others, so it probably won't splinter so easily. She watches him to make sure he's ready, since she doesn't actually want to hurt Bodhi in the process of any of this. Rolling her shoulders back, she gets herself prepared.

"I'm going to bring this down on that," she says, gesturing to the plank of wood that he's got. "Don't flinch, or I might accidentally break your face," she says evenly, half-bored.

"Well, this is the academy all over again," he says in that forced-chipper way that's half tongue in cheek self deprecation and half serious. He does try and set his weight a bit better, but he doesn't honestly know how to do that. His face may wind up being a casualty.

"Academy?" she echoes, twirling the staff with the ease of someone used to doing this with much sharper edges. She doesn't even have to worry about this cutting her because she's gone too fast or clumsily, not this time. "What kind of Academy do they send little boys like you to, back in that strange world of yours?" Strange, she says, which is a lot of pot calling the kettle black, she's aware, but she never went to any fancy school for victors or even a school at all.

She got an education befitting of Seven, teaching her how to work amongst the tall trees, the ones who had seen every single one of the Games and so much more before that.

"For... pilots? Well, when I was actually little it was just temple school, but, um, flying is actually kind of hard." The Academy means more than pilot school. It was an efficient machine of the Empire, tightly controlled, neatly propagandized, encouraging competition and ambition among the best and brightest and perfect obedience for all. None of which seems that relevant, and much of which Bodhi hasn't really consciously come to grips with.

It still sounds like something from Panem. She's sure that if Snow could manage to segregate the districts even more and boil them down into their functions, then he would, but he's already got that to a degree with the peacekeepers and the pilots and his soldiers. "Well, good thing you didn't suck at it or you might have crashed," she says, hefting the staff and giving him an expectant nod.

"Okay, brace the wood," she instructs. "I'm going to swing as hard as I can." She means it, too, seeing as she doesn't foresee herself going easy on Bodhi anytime soon, which means she's going to enjoy the heavy thwack when it comes.

She doesn't give him time to protest that he actually is a pretty good pilot, but it probably would have just gotten him made fun of some more. Instead he tries to hold himself steady enough to take the shot.

The good news is he doesn't actually fall over, and the thwack is pretty satisfying. The fact that he drops the wood as his hands seem to vibrate and he takes a few inadvertent steps back is... Well, probably at least a little bit funny. Not necessarily bad news. He doesn't seem too upset, anyway. "So... is the stick, um, doing what you want the stick to do?"

Johanna studies it when she steps back, twirling it with ease as she looks at it with a small, impressed smile. "It didn't break," she says, half in response to Bodhi's question, but also a little in praise of herself, pleased with that fact. Of course, that's only the first one to try and she's got two more. Gesturing for him to lift up the thicker wood again, she gives him an expectant roll of her eyes.

"We're not done," she says impatiently. "Come on, Bodhi, get with the program."

There, that wasn't really bad at all. Uncomfortable, but that doesn't really count as bad in Bodhi's book. You wouldn't complain about mere discomfort. "Yes'm," he says with a wry smile. He braces himself a little better this second time, now that he knows what to expect.

"Good boy," she drawls, all faux-simper, but real pleasure. "You're finally learning your manners," she says, bringing up the second one and screaming as she uses all her strength to bring it crashing down on the wood. This one literally crashes though, splitting it half, which means she worked it down too thin. "Fuck," she bites out. "Damn it."

Shaking her head, she tosses it aside like it's kindling. "Why did no one ever teach me this?" she complains half-heartedly, even though she knows the answer.

"They wanted to keep their faces?" Bodhi suggests good naturedly. Given the nature of his chats with Johanna, he doesn't find himself so sharply aware of the gap between his world and hers as with some people, but he's pretty sure not wanting to have a stick swung at one's face is probably universal.

Johanna snorts when Bodhi makes the comment he does. "It was more important for us to meet quota, that meant that lessons tended to fall by the wayside when school was less important than warming the Capitol hearths," is her bitterly sarcastic remark. Her family had done it, though, just like the rest of Seven because they wanted to keep their lives.

How little they knew, all that was waiting for them was poison and sharp edges because Johanna refused to sell her body. All that time, they could have just ignored the orders, because they would've reached the same fate.

"Oh, that," Bodhi says. Quietly. They aren't from the same world, but some things are the same everywhere, and children of Bodhi's generation didn't grow up in the tiring but honest world of their fair share and school and lessons at whatever temples their parents preferred. Bodhi's still guilty over his escape to the pilot's academy. Because it was cowardice, because it was honestly what he wanted to do, because he gave up the right to be considered really Jedhan in the process... Because it was a lot easier than joining the bulk of the extraneous population in the mines.

"That," she echoes, the word somehow devoid of all emotion and joy and anything at all but the bitter taint of the tired rage that she's been carrying around with her for so long. She hates thinking about it, but if she's being honest, Johanna never really stops with thoughts of that. "It's fine," she says dismissively. "I'm still here, still alive," she points out.

"It means I learned the lessons where it counts," she points out with a mild, disbelieving huff.

"You definitely did very well at your hitting things lessons," Bodhi agrees blandly, not sure how to match her shift in tone. Most of the time with Johanna his impulse is to go for a joke, but...

That.

It puts a bit of a damper on levity. So he's as careful as he knows how to be, hoping she'll take it the right way. The right way being whichever way she wants to. Bodhi's not one for sharing secrets and feelings (well, not sober he isn't), so he hopes he's not missing a cue.

"I'm from Seven, we use axes there," Johanna says, as if that explains everything about why she's so good with blunt objects and sharp ones. She reaches for the next one, spinning it and hefting it up a bit as she watches Bodhi, gesturing for him to hold it up. Making people uncomfortable is just part of her DNA and she's used to it, now, doesn't even think it's so bad.

Maybe that's also because she likes keeping people at arm's length, which is why she's willing to do it. "Better than your flying school that landed you here with, what, what skills carried over?"

Everything makes Bodhi uncomfortable. It's why she almost never bothers him, and when she does it's because of the ways he's broken, not anything particularly to do with her. He cooperates, and now that he feels a bit more grounded in the conversation, he sounds like himself again when he takes a stab at bantering back. "None whatsoever for the flying, so, well, there's that. Some of the extra classes, well, and just things you pick up if you don't feel like dying. I know some first aid, bit of charting and navigation, can figure out, well, the machines here are so simple I'm sure anyone could manage..."

She raises a brow about the machines, because it's not like they ever talk about this part. "You can work the machines they've got here?" She can't, but Johanna isn't rushing to say that too loudly, mostly because it's not something that she really thinks is necessary to say. It's not her fault Seven didn't teach you about this until you're older.

"Could you show me them?" she wonders. "It's not like you have anything else to do, right?"

"Any time you're done technically not hitting me with sticks," he agrees amicably. "Furnace trouble?" Though now that he's offered he's a little worried. He's never been very good at teaching people things. Younger pilot candidates groaned about being paired with him, since his explanations tend to be either overly technical rambling or sort of twitching his hands at the relevant piece of equipment and expecting the next step to be clear.

"No," she replies, though apparently now she knows who to go to in the event she does have trouble with that sort of thing. "I just figure, I might as well shore up on knowing how to fix all kinds of things," she says. "Unless this is going to be like our little trip to visit the rocks, where you just talk a lot and I don't get much out of it," she deadpans, mostly poking fun at him.

"Is that all they taught you? Furnaces?"

"No, there's just one in all the houses, so it seemed likely." They seem like the most common mechanical problem here, given how primitive everything is. "I think that's how Kira got me to move in, actually," he says absently. Furnaces just do a lot of annoying things, and it's not like someone's going to turn up with a decent generator or engine for her to fix. It might just be a good thing to start her on.

She gives a mild huff, deciding that she could say something unkind and untoward, but it'd just make Bodhi react in the exact same way he always reacts and when someone gets predictable, then they're just no fun. Raising a brow, she can't help the amused smirk. "Is that all he did to get you to move in?"

Whoops, looks like she can't help herself after all. Oh well, at least she's going to enjoy the reaction out of this.

The look she gets makes it quite clear he gets it--too much exposure to Johanna has killed his ability to stay honestly oblivious to this stuff. He makes the ill-advised choice of trying to retain his dignity. "Well, originally it was having me keep the furnace going while he was gone, and when he came back I just sort of... kept the room." Which, he realizes when he's said it, doesn't sound nearly as dismissive as he wanted it to. Kriff.

Johanna can't help the amused snort, seeing as she's seen worse ways for someone to suddenly decide that they live somewhere, though she has to give him points for being helpful, at least. "Well, lucky for me, I can keep the wood chopped and the furnace going, but what about the other stuff? The mill, things like electricity, are you any good at making those work?"

"The mill, sure, that's simple. The problem with electricity is... There's no machine shop, there's no system for distribution, I mean, I know how it works, but we'd have to build everything from the ground up if we wanted, well, working lights and radios and... Well, anything." He's thought about it, sure, but how do you start from nothing?

"What about walkie-talkies?" Johanna could live without electricity, truthfully, but the problem is that she's grown used to a few other creature comforts as a result of being a victor and she's just a little unnerved by the length of time without. "No radios, huh," she replies evenly.

"No entertainment, no radios, no communication, Bodhi, you're disappointing a girl," she replies, light and breezy.

Sometimes a shot's so easy even Bodhi takes it. "Well, that sounds familiar." He shrugs, carefully deadpan, and goes on. "You just... even on a very simple scale, you need the right metal and someone who knows how to make it into parts. I could fake the first half of the second of those things? Um, maybe. It would take forever to get one unit, and then even a second one so we could reach between the canyons..." Though the more he thinks about it the more tempting it is.

She snorts at his reply, annoyingly charmed by his friendship in a way that always makes her wonder how the hell he managed to get under her skin like that. She waits for him to reason it all out in his head, then aloud, listening patiently and tipping her head to the side to study him.

"Well? Is that a yes, Bodhi, you're brilliant and can do it?" She's not even sure she cares that much, but at this point, she's not about to let him off the hook so easily.

"It's more of a... it's, um, maybe technically possible, in a very simple way, and I could, well, honestly, probably not me alone." He hasn't run into a lot of mechanics around here, either. Probably because half these people seem to come from realities without space travel, or, in some cases, basic sanitation. He can only assume those cultures are pretty backwards.

"Don't worry, I don't really want it," Johanna promises, because she'd mostly been poking and prodding to wind him up because it's just so easy and she's so good at it. Giving him an amused look, she gestures for him to raise up the wood again. "Okay, come on, let's work on number three." Maybe after this one, she'll work on something else, because who needs that many weapons?

Especially when she's got the others, but still, better safe than sorry, right?

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whistle while you axe

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