sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Wendi-go-go to the inn

[MINGLE] Wendi-go-go to the inn

WHERE: 6I Village and Inn
WHEN: 27-31 July
OPEN TO: ALL - Mingle
NOTES: The Wendigo threatening the village will be killed mid 28 July, with a Blue Lily, per these threads. Plot details here. Note: The final fight is close enough to be seen from the upstairs inn windows.
WARNINGS: Wendigo attack mingle, please warn in comment headers if discussing violence, gore, or related trauma. Possible mentions of character death.

The urgent warnings come from villagers returning south from the lake: a creature twice the size of a man, antlered and voracious. Larger than any they've seen on the plains, stalking its way to the main village. Some might have their own names for this hunger in a skin of shadow; others might remember that it was the first to claim a life, in their village's short history.

Whatever context one has for it, best to secure all pets and loved ones before it arrives. With weapons and food stores at the inn, the call goes out to gather — And to bring back any tools, because there's no telling what doors and windows can do to stop such a creature.

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Danny watched her carefully, his eyes piercing and deep. "Yes but you're assuming that death is the end. It cycles and a circle has no end." His voice was very firm, confident and unquestioning. He knew the way the forces of life worked, he had felt them.

"It doesn't take a pulse."

He'd give her points for trying not once again it felt as if Sam was getting in her own way. Danny tried not to get angry but he'd learned under harsh conditions were you were disciplined if you spoke out of turn. After the mess at Colleen's Dojo he didn't want to do that here.

He doubted that anyone here was familiar with the abuse that Danny had endured.

"You'll have to believe me and try. It takes some people years to master this." Meditation might seem easy but like everything in life it took dedication and time.

She gave him a wry smile, grateful that he wasn’t giving up on her just yet. In time, he probably would. Everyone inevitably did. They got their fill of Sam’s attitude and washed their hands of her. They left. Even someone as Zen as Danny eventually would. But at least not yet. So. That was cool. Kinda.

“The funny thing is, I was always the top of my class. With science. Math. Even fucking gym. I could always figure shit out right away. I led the pack.” Not always being the smartest person in the room was still an art she hadn’t gracefully managed yet.

Sam picked a blade of grass, tying it into a ring around her finger. “I’m not good at failing.”

It was more of an admission than she’d been prepared to make. And she wasn’t sure why she had. Just something about Danny’s puppyish demeanor, she supposed. He wasn’t like the Kindred. That was for fucking sure.

“Is there something physical that could help?”

As long as Sam took his lessons seriously, he wasn't going to give up on her. He'd only give up when it was obvious that she'd given up on herself. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.

"That isn't success." He leaned forward and gently pressed two fingers beneath Sam's chin so he could guide her gaze to his. "Failure, the things you have to fight for, those will be your success. Failure teaches you and if you want to learn then you'll also have to learn to fail and never stop moving forward."

It was easier said than done but that was how Danny had become the first outsider to obtain the coveted position of the Immortal Ironfist. He hadn't let anything stop him.

He had failures, things that weighted on his shoulders, but he tried hard every single day to move past them.

"Okay, what do you suck the most at? In a physical sense." He was going to make her face failure and over come it.

It suddenly occurred to Sam that she had her very own personal Yoda. Less green and ugly. But every bit as much a teacher. Hell, a rabbi. It meant teacher too. She’d always romanticized herself as Luke Skywalker. The abandoned child with so much inside of her. True, her call to adventure had been the most epic of fail. But there was absolutely no denying her parents were evil Sith Lords. And now she had a teacher.

So that was heady.

And maybe that motivated her to give his question a moment of super serious consideration. Of course, the answer was pretty obvious. There was something she was surprisingly bad at—not counting sex. “I can’t throw a punch,” she said.

Not for lack of trying, of course. In high school, she’d tried to punch a classmate spewing pro-life garbage science at her. And she’d bobbed and weaved through a bar fight or three. But when it really counted, she tended to rely on weapons. Guns, knives, broken glass. Stuff of mettle stronger than herself.

Danny toyed with the idea that Sam had mentioned punching because she wanted to learn how to punch. Then he remembered their earlier conversation where she had claimed to really suck at fighting. That was probably okay. That and she looked like she was finally taking this seriously.

He nodded his head in a quick bob and then pointed to the nearest tree. It was a thick oak with its lower branches torn off, likely from animals or storms. "Punch that tree as hard as you can."

It was probably going to hurt her arm or break open her knuckles if she had enough strength but Danny knew that he wouldn't really hurt herself and it was a valuable first lesson in punching.

In spite of her attempt to take things seriously, Sam gave him a deeply incredulous look. Punch a tree? No way she could do that. “I’ll turn my hand into a maraca.” Not to mention expose him to her blood, possibly.

That was an awkward conversation waiting to happen.

Unconsciously, she started to rub her knuckles, already sensing the pain. “I could fake a boxing glove, maybe. I mean, we all need our hands, around here.”

The last thing she wanted was to be useless if more monsters attacked.

Her expression turned uncharacteristically earnest. “Does your philosophy require a person to break?”

"I'm not trying to break you. It's the first lesson and don't worry. One punch, that's all I'm asking for. You might scratch up or bruise your hand but it'll be healed fully in two days. I'll even grab stuff from Claire if you think you need it."

He really wasn't concerned about her blood.

Danny's voice softened as he rose to his feet. "I don't want to hurt you Sam." Though a little bit of pain was part of this exercise.

It was a monumentally stupid idea, the type that was typically accompanied by a flashing, neon sign in the back of Sam's head that blinked 'Mistake!' over and over again. There were about a thousand good reasons for why she really should have thought twice (or thrice, maybe?) about punching the tree. And not a damn good one for just out and out doing it.

But maybe Sam was tired.

Tired of the logic and reason. There was no place for it in her life. And definitely no place for it here.

Which was why Sam squared her shoulders, walking over to the tree with her head held high.

The thing about Sam was that she had plenty of raw potential, fueled mostly by rage and determination and probably some innate understanding of physics. But for all of that, she had no training, no form. So when she hauled back and slugged the tree, she did it gracelessly. Accompanied by a crack from her knuckles which couldn't be anything good. The pain was almost immediate and she knew before she even looked that she'd broken the skin.

An artful string of variations on the word 'fuck' came out, each one more elaborate than the last.

Danny has watched people punch harder things with more severe results. The crack likely wasn't a break in bone but something popping out of place, it would hurt, but Danny could easily realign the bone for her. She'd be sore but her hand would be useable.

It wasn't completely unlike when Danny popped Colleen's pinky finger back into place.

"Lesson one." He spoke as he came up from behind her. "Punching things hurts."

Danny gestured towards her hand to let him see the wound. "There is a way to punch to make it hurt less but it will never stop hurting. A lot of fighters build up a tolerance to the pain or kill the nerve endings in the hand to be able to punch through the pain."

"If you're going to fight. You need to be ready to get hit."

His methods might have seemed excessive but it was important. Telling her that it hurt and that she'd have to live with the consequences was different than making her live with it.

"Let's head back to the inn and get that wrapped up." Danny would think of other, less damaging things for her to do, assuming she still wanted to learn.

Sam gave him a dirty look. Not because she was mad at him, exactly. More just because she hated that whole 'lesson one' game. Karen used to do that to her all the time. And her lessons hurt too. Although more in a psychological sort of way.

She looked down to assess the damage.

The knuckles on her pointer and middle finger were split, shallow cuts running vertically along them. They didn't gush blood, mostly because she didn't have a pulse to pump it through her system. But they were definitely oozing a little bit. It was a deep, dark blood. The color of the last embers of a sunset. As she twitched her fingers a little bit, it started to lighten, turning rustier, redder.

"Well," she said, curling her fingers and holding her hand up against her shoulder, as far away from him as possible, "I you did ask me for something I sucked at."

"I did."

He could tell that she wasn't happy with him but Danny was fairly comfortable with that. They were friends but right now he was her teacher and she wanted to learn. "Don't worry. I'm not going to make you do anything like that again. I'm going to show you forms and-" He rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "How are you at fishing?"

Danny was trying to find things that she could mess up doing that he couldn't help her with because she had no idea how to fish, which meant it'd be up to her to learn and then teach him.

It caught her so off guard that Sam forgot to be angry. Anyway, she had plenty of things to be angry about without adding Danny's Yoda tactics to the list. "Fishing?" she said, looking up at him. "Like, castin' a pole down in the crick?" She tried and failed to affect an accent.

So there was another thing she sucked at.

She frowned a little, a line forming between her eyes. "I don't think I've ever tried it before?" Except a few times in a video game, she supposed, but that didn't really count.

Ironically, she'd sucked at that too.

"Why do you ask?"

"If that's how you want to do it, sure." Danny didn't force her to give him her hand though he did glance over at the cracked knuckles with obvious concern. He had asked her to punch the tree and he was going to take responsibility in fixing it.

"I want you to learn to fish and then teach me."

This was all to help her learn how to meditate... in a very roundabout way.

"I'll give you a month. Unless you think you need longer. You can use any resource you have available here." Danny was at least a good student so as long as she gave the task her best shot, it shouldn't be too difficult.

That felt a little less Yoda, and a little more Karate Kid. Sam couldn't exactly connect the dots from fishing to her lessons, but she decided to go with it. At least he wasn't ordering her to carry him around on her back like a toddler. And there was no harm in trying her hand at a semi-useful skill, she supposed...

Still weird. But she could deal with weird.

"Okay," she said, shrugging one shoulder. "Although the 'one month' part is going to depend on the jackasses in charge of this place. All I'm saying is, if I get hit by lightning again, I'm not going to be out the next day."

Resentful? Sam? Never!

Danny gestured towards the inn and waited for Same to follow before padding along side of her. "I'm not unreasonable Sam. Let me know when you feel ready. If it feels like it's been too long I'll ask you about it."

He flashed her a smile. "Good?"

This world was pretty messed up and he understood that things happened. As long as Sam tried, that's all that mattered to him.

Sam walked, still cradling her hand as far away from Danny as she could keep it. "Good, Monkey" she replied. "Assuming you explain the whole life lesson when it's said and done. Like Yoda lifting the X-Wing."

Because she wanted to live her life in Star Wars metaphors. It felt comfortable.

She glanced sideways at him as they walked. "You should probably avoid setting a precedent for punching too many inanimate objects around here, though. Our walls are pretty thin, it turns out."

That was at least a reference that he knew. "Don't worry young padawan. I'll get you lifting X-wing's in no time." He flashed her a smile and lifted his eyebrows in an eager upward head nod.

He happened to like Starwars.

What ten year old boy didn't?

"That so? You start punching walls to figure it out on your own?" Danny hadn't punched a wall since but he knew he could punch through the walls at the inn without the help of the Ironfist. It was just a piece of wood...

The Star Wars reference earned Danny a massive boost in respect. And one of Sam's ultra-rare, genuine smiles. She missed other nerds. There were so few in the Kindred world. And even fewer here. Ravi and Liv, she supposed. But they had their own, weird thing going.

Sam needed a thing.

She frowned a little at his question, though. What had happened with Bucky felt...well, secret. His demons were his to deal with. The last thing she wanted to do was tell someone else what he'd doubtlessly said in confidence.

"I threw a chair at my wall the other night," she said, figuring it was the path of least resistance. "The back went right through. Scared the crap out of my poor neighbor. I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm deranged."

Which, in all fairness, she was.

Danny looked over at her with a curious stare though he was instantly inclined to believe her. "I'm surprise I didn't hear anything." He was usually up and he would have likely went to investigate if he heard a chair going through a wall.

"And why did you throw a chair at a wall?"

He got punching the wall. It was a way to channel emotions through his arm and into whatever he punched but a chair was a tool and it didn't release energy the way a direct hit would.

It wasn't good for the flow of chi.

She thought about a clever retort, something along the lines of 'Because I didn't want to break my hand.' But maybe--just maybe--something closer to the truth was called for, here. Anyway, if Danny was going to train her, he really had to understand the full, fucked up picture that was Samantha.

"I get these real bad nightmares," she said. She was pretty sure he already knew that part, but she continued. "And sometimes, when I wake up, but I'm not completely awake...they feel more real. Like, I know they're just dreams. But in the moment, they feel like something I can touch. Or something that can touch me."

It was basic biology. Flight or fight. Sam had a tendency to alternate between her responses, depending on the content of the nightmare.

Oddly, it was usually flight.

But with Predators...

Danny listened and nodded. "I've had-" His voice paused and he exhaled. "-have dreams like that. It's why I punched the wall." When they had first met.

There were things in Danny's past he never forgot; the feeling of blood pooling beneath his feet, the cold unforgiving wind of the mountain, the painful lessons from the monks as they tried to test Danny's strengths and the cave... the trial had left its mark on him but even now Danny could feel the heat of Shao-Lao's fire against his skin.

It wasn't a pleasant memory.

"It might not be exactly the same but I get it. That's why I use meditation." Though sometimes it didn't work, even for him. "It helps and it can help you too."

If she worked at her focus and frustration. Danny was sure that if he could do it, she could too.

Sam had no doubt that meditation could help. The doubts were in her own self. In her ability to let her mind...go. But she suspected that Danny already knew, or at least had an inkling, about that.

She was a certain type. And she knew it.

"I spent most of my childhood in foster homes," she said, hooking her thumbs through her back beltloops. "When I was a kid, the nightmares would get so bad and...the families I lived with couldn't stand the screaming. Apparently, I was a holy hell of a baby."

It was tempting to flash a smile and point out that she was a holy hell of an adult too.

But she didn't.

"The monks used to tell me that the world doesn't give you more than you can handle." He looked over at Sam, his expression serious and thoughtful. "That sounds like it sucks. I can't understand because my experiences are different." He watched his mother die and found his fathers body in the snow.

"If you have these nightmares, then it means that you're strong enough to handle it."

She just had to find her own strength.

Well, the nightmares hadn't driven her off the ledge of a building. She'd grant Danny that much. As horrifying as they were, she was too stubborn to let them beat her. But she wasn't sure that holding her own was enough. She wanted to beat them. Eternity felt like an eerily long time to be locked in some kind of stalemate with her own unconscious.

But Sam didn't want to look down the end of that road today.

Not yet.

She nodded a little bit. "You do realize, of course, that saying shit like that isn't helping to discourage me from calling you 'Yoda,' right?" She grinned a little bit. "Unless you prefer 'Monkey.' I'm flexible."

Danny flashed Sam a sheepish smile as he ran his fingers through thick curly blonde curls. "I don't care either way." He had sort of gotten the impression that nicknames were a thing that Sam did and he should just roll with it. He'd prefer if she called him Danny or Ironfist or Sensei but he'd take whatever he could get. With everything else going on, what Sam called him wasn't at the top of his list of worries.

Unless it became insulting, then he might get a little testy about it. Monkey was annoying but so far it didn't sound like an insult, Yoda was definitely a compliment… even if he wasn't short and green.

"You could call me Danny." It was a shot in the dark. He didn't think it would stick.

When they reached the inn, Danny held the door open for Sam and politely waited for her to talk in fist. They both probably needed a shower and the inn was still in disrepair from the fight with the demon Wendgio thing.

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