sixthiterationlogs | 03. (Not) Shooting Things

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03. (Not) Shooting Things

WHO: Baze Malbus and OTA
WHERE: Outskirts of town, 6I
WHEN: September
OPEN TO: Any and all
WARNINGS: Look out for flying projectiles

After a couple weeks of being too sick to do much, Baze is getting back into life in 6I, despite the lingering cough and occasional shortness of breath. He's checking his traps in the morning, offering to fix anything people need that's broken and that he can figure out... and attempting to shoot things.

Two weeks of being confined to one building means he had a lot of time to try and carve bow staves and whittle arrow shafts, and to try and twist strings out of cloth, leather strips, and guts from fish and rabbits, anything he could get his bored fingers on. So he has three bows put together, and he spends at least some of his time every afternoon attempting to shoot things. "Attempting" is the operative word, there, because only one of the bows is remotely serviceable and that one was an experiment with bending the staff the other way when he hadn't really intended it to work, and his arrows-- merely sharpened and straightened sticks, at this point, since he wasn't going to waste stone or metal on tips when he's just learning-- don't fly very well.

There is a lot of cursing going on, when one catches him at it.

Of course, he's also available at the normal places: the inn, helping in the kitchen or attempting to whittle some better arrows; around the village, carrying things or pausing to cough or catch his breath; up on a roof battering down leaks; or peering across the divide into 7I, though he doesn't spend much time there. He may be attempting to shoot foxes sneaking across the border, but again, he's not that great at it.

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Wanda bit her lower lip to reel in her anger. It wasn't his fault but she was on edge and pissed at those damn foxes. There were thin scars on her arms where reminisce of her last encounter with the creatures were visible.

"Talk to Clint." He was the one who knew everything there was about bows and arrows. As far as Wanda knows, he made his own arrows. "He can help."

She moved to reset her trap before taking the fox back to the inn to be skinned and eaten. "Help me with this." She waved over to the trap. Since he was the one who broke it, he was going to help fix it.

"If I ever run into him again, I will," Baze says grumpily, but he does put the homemade bow down and come to join her, crouching at the trap site. "What do you want to do with it?" It's probably fixable, with a little twine or bark to hold the fabric together, but she might want to take it apart and turn it into two, since it was halfway there already.

Wanda looked over at the ripped snuggie and sighed. "Finish tearing it. We'll use it another way." The way she had it set up now used the arms and a series of large rocks to anchor the fabric and roll away, tangling any fox that accidentally slipped into what appeared to be harmless fabric.

"There are more over there." She pointed to a bag that was tied to one of the nearby trees. Wanda hadn't trusted more of those stupid things to get through her stuff and so she tied them up where they were safe.

That, he can do. He pulls it out from under its rock weights and neatly tears it the rest of the way, in a straight line down the fabric, and pushes back up to go collect her bag of supplies, without verbal comment. He's too annoyed at the kriffing arrow, just now, to make polite small talk. Give him a minute and he'll get better.

Wanda was content to work in silence as they reset the trap. Once he had fetched another snuggie she set it back up and shoved the damaged material into the pack. Her mind was racing, thinking of ways she could use it. For now she had to focus on the fresh kill.

"We should get that back to the inn or cook it." She nodded at the fox. Otherwise it'd have been pointless killing it.

"Are they good for eating?" Baze asks, skeptically. He'd been of the understand that there was something akin to being Force-sensitive to them, from Bodhi's explanation, and that might make it a little weird to eat them. "Or will it exact revenge by making us all ill?"

"It's a fox." Wanda didn't see what the problem was. It was another four legged fuzzy animal from the woods that they would turn into food. "Why would it make us sick?" Eating humans didn't make people sick and they were sentient creatures, Wanda wasn't sure if his caution was reasonable or not.

She looked down at the creature looking unsure.

Baze shrugs. "Bodhi said there is something unusual about them. Like being sensitive to the Force or more intelligent. Apparently they do not like singing?" Then he shakes his head. "I don't know. I have never seen one of these before." They don't have foxes on Jedha, apparently.

"If you're more comfortable we can bury him." She pushed past Baze and pulled an ax from her bag. It wasn't a shovel but it would move the dirt enough to dig a shallow hole for the fox.

"What's the force?"

"A fable. A myth. The force that draws all together and has a plan for the universe. Supposedly a good plan." He snorts, stooping to pick up the fox's corpse and examine it. If there's nothing special about it, he supposes they can eat it, but he had been under the impression that they weren't normal animals. "There are many religions that follow it and study it. I was part of one for half my life."

"You think that's here? After all of the powers were stolen." She spoke candidly, despite the fact that she had never told Baze that she had powers. It was a moot point now. She had nothing.

Wanda began to dig a hole.

"No, I do not think it exists, at all," Baze says with a shrug. He doesn't believe in powers, either, really, though he supposes her planet might be different, or her species might have abilities his doesn't. "I was just told these were not natural animals," he reminds her, a bit irritably. "I am willing to believe I was told wrongly." After all, it was Bodhi who told him, and second-hand to begin with.

Wanda lifted her shoulders in a brief shrug. "It's safer this way." She had already dug the whole and he fox was going in it unless Baze gave her a compelling reason not too. She didn't know what it could do but she's seen enough things be poisoned that she didn't want to take those changes.

With the whole dug she tossed in the fox and began to kick dirt over top of it.

And he's willing to give up the potential meal. Rabbits and ground birds are more familiar and safer, as far as he's concerned. He hands it over. "What powers were taken away?" he gets around to asking, helping her move the dirt back over the hole with his foot.

Wanda was silent for a few moments before deciding that she didn't care if anyone knew. It was part of who she was and while it was taken away from her here, she was proud of her abilities and never regretted what she went through to get them.

"I can move things with my mind." Among other talents though she didn't advertise that she could go into peoples heads since that generally made them uneasy.

"Yeah?" Baze doesn't sound particularly surprised. After all, Jedi did that. (Honestly, a lot of her skills resemble Jedi nonsense. If the Jedi were still around, he might still have some sort of faith.) "Must be useful. Could you catch a fox with your mind, then?"

"If they hadn't taken them away." She spoke in a brisk tone as she fished covering the fox. Wanda knew that something would most likely dig up the dead creature. So, for the sake of completion, she rolled a decent size rock over the dirt to prevent it from being dug up and eaten by something else.

It also marked the grave in a rather elegant way.

"We had people who could do that," Baze offers, stamping his foot down on the rock to press it into place. "Not on the moon, the Jedi didn't bother with Jedha much, but in the galaxy."

"Who are the Jedi?"

She had obtained her powers through experimentation and knew that the technology was alien. She was forever connected to it's source and not at all surprised to hear that there were people in the galaxy who were able to do the same things though she wondered if it was on the same large scale that she could usually work.

"One of those religious orders following the Force," Baze explains. "But they had powers like that, and other powers, and were considered warriors. They are extinct now," he adds, "losing a war with the Empire." He'd only ever met one once, when he was much younger, before the world turned on its head.

Wanda wasn't surprised to hear about a war. It felt as if war was the natural state for any civilization, no matter where they were from. "I'm used to war." She paused before deciding in a rare moment to elaborate.

"I was created and trained to be a weapon. My abilities defined me for years and now they're gone. I'm not sure how to see myself."

He glances back over at her, brows up a little, but expression... maybe a little sympathetic, once he processes what she meant there beyond "created and trained as a weapon". "That is hard. Redefining yourself as something new. It can be done, though." He did it once. He's still trying to manage it a second time, without Chirrut to center himself on and a rebellion to perpetuate.

"I know." She had done it twice now.

Wanda was stubborn and while the world constantly beat her down she constantly rose up to fight it. She didn't give up. She had too many reasons to keep trying, for herself and for her brother. She wouldn't let his death mean nothing.

"Everyone seems to be at war." In one respect or another.

Baze shrugs. "Someone always decides they want more power than everyone else." He doesn't get it, that thirst for power. But he knows it exists, and hates it, because of what it did to his home. "Those people are never happy. Not everyone is like that, but it only takes a few."

It only took one person to push the world into total chaos. Wanda didn't think that it was something as simple as a single being wanting power. Yes, power was usually the cause of most struggles but there was more to it than that. Money. Control over freedom. Pain, loss and revenge for the loved ones and situations that had been stolen from you. The most terrifying foes and the ones that believe that they are doing the right thing. Not for power or lust or greed but because they believe in something above themselves.

Those people are truly terrifying.

"I have learned. . ." She began speaking in a soft tone, the ax that she had used hanging limply in her hand. ". . .that peace is only the time between wars." Wanda didn't believe that there was a thing in the world known as peace. "This canyon. Whatever its purpose. Has been peaceful." Probably the most peaceful time in Wanda's life.

"I don't expect it to stay that way."

03. (Not) Shooting Things

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