sixthiterationlogs | [ MINGLE ] MINING EXPEDITION

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[ MINGLE ] MINING EXPEDITION

WHO: Tony Stark & Co.
WHERE: North West Mountain Range
WHEN: November 5th - 8th
OPEN TO: Open to all
WARNINGS: Language, canon typical violence

The Hike Up/Down

After sending a message out the day before to meet him in the fountain park at dawn (daylight is important) Tony packs up. Supplies secured and a path found mostly by working himself up (not that difficult) and following the blue path only he can see (still weird) Tony guides his modest expedition up a winding way over rivers and to a promising stony outcropping at the base of the mountains before needing a moment to 're-calibrate'. AkA get stressed out as to where to head next for optimal ore extraction. It takes a minute but- again, he's got a lot of anxieties to kick into gear and it should be easy enough to nudge their rag tag little group further up until they find the right spot. Making an easy walk down- well. That's also a trick. Finding a quick path back to the village before they lose the light- marking the way they've come so they can find it the next day? Kind of important.

Digging a Hole

Breaking ground is a matter of staring, trying to think back to what little he knows of geology (not fucking much), and waiting for the anxiety to get to the point where it'll hand him something specific. They need ore, they need a good starting location, and once they manage to pinpoint it? Pickaxes are handed out, a nearby cave explored, and Tony strips down to get to work. Crack stone, haul it out, rinse, repeat. Anything usable gets put in sacks made from stolen sheets to be hauled down- not the best system he's got but they're just getting started. Regular breaks are A thing, canteens of water passed around- he's pretty sure there's a stream somewhere that should help with the 'not dying of thirst' issue in the future.

Encounters With Natives

Somewhere on the hike up, during the dig, or taking a rest on one of the craggy boulders surrounding the cave where they're chipping away at stone, signs of native fauna linger. There's a patchy nest looking thing where one can hear the mewling of peakittens, blue eyed, tiny, and abandoned by the looks of it. Loping about the slopes a few curious mountain elk that bound in at the sign of food, keeping a cautious distance but wandering close should anyone appear friendly. Near the woods, though, just as they wind their way up- or make their way back down at the end of the day? Dust Moths have taken to the air, shimmering wings leaving powder in the air.

Environmental Effects

During the hike up in the predawn there's lying mist clinging to the sides of the mountain in thin curls, swirling in the air as they hike through it. Careful not to inhale too deeply, otherwise you might find yourself a little more honest than you'd like for most of the morning, and that could make the rest of the hike pretty damn awkward. In the caves proper there's stone and ore enough- and a dark, black powder that tastes of licorice and ash. Shadow dust. Maybe the next few swings don't do as much damage- or do any at all. Maybe they picking up stone becomes impossible till you're in the light.

In Too Deep

On the second, maybe the third day all their activity and digging catches some aggressive attention. A pickaxe sunk too deep, cracking through a cave wall and finding a den of snarling, hungry cave wolves that spill through the hole all snapping teeth and snarling claws, bursting out of the tunnels to scatter whoever's dared to come close to their home. A tree felled to mark their path startles a giant boar into charging, bellowing in the night, turning tusk and muscle to clear it's own way through their weary line.

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Rinoa knows that technically she's not the best person suited for this. She's walking with people who are clearly warriors, but then she reminds herself she's fought a lot of monsters and survived as much as her friends. She's trying to bolster up her confidence, but she is determined to be in on these community events if she can be. And since she doesn't want to simply glue herself to Squall's side, she purposely hikes up toward a stranger.

She's in all blue as usual, not her own clothing but what she scrounged up, and it's such a simple thing to give her comfort but it works. She's full of energy and excitement, some anxiety too, for the unknown, but she's not going to sit behind at home and wait. Being a teenager used to fighting a lot, she's in great physical stamina form at least, so she's having no trouble with the hike. She looks around and takes in the surroundings eagerly, glancing over at 7.

"Hi, I'm Rinoa!" She smiles. "This is exciting, isn't it?"

7, a warrior type from a different kind of world, is dealing with a little fog of sleep deprivation and attempts to suppress a yawn when Rinoa makes her way to her side. She struggles a little, caught in mid-yawn, and tries to play it off and answer the girl.

"Hi, I'm 7. Yes, it is very exciting. Have you been on many hikes before?"

Rinoa doesn't mind the yawn or the attempt to suppress it either. It's early, although she's been up for a time, thrilled about the journey they were going on. It probably isn't a big deal to others, but she's choosing to embrace the enthusiasm. She'll be enthusiastic enough for everyone if she needs to be.

"Hi 7. Do you spell that like only the number, or with s-e-v-e-n?" It must seem like a random question, but it's good to know how to spell names in case they message each other in other ways. She wants to get it right. The least someone can do is get the name right! "Oh yes, many. At one point we hiked so long I was pretty sure I might be stuck as a nomad permanently." Not the best option. "How about you?"

That is entirely too much enthusiasm for 7 to process right now, but she tries smiling regardless.

"7 - just the number. I haven't been on a hike quite like this, with so many people. I did get around on my own, though. It's nice out here."

Nice, because everything is alive here. It's a lot nicer than the 'hikes' she took in her own world, tracking the Beast among the rubble and debris.

"I was always with a group. There's a lot of monsters where I'm from out in the open, so going alone isn't the safest option." It isn't that it stopped her, but Rinoa's not the strongest fighter of her group by a lot. Even Selphie is excellently trained in comparison, which you wouldn't know to look at her, all tiny and bubbly. And if she could go alone, she probably wouldn't. Rinoa is the first to admit she's a little needy and prefers being around people.

"I can't wait to see what Mr. Stark makes from all of this. Apparently he's a genius inventor."

"Yeah, he's pretty good." She gives her spear a swing and then brings the tip down for Rinoa to see. "He made this speartip for me."

It reminds her of 2, workshop scattered with supplies, eager to work on the net project, she smiles with a little bit of fondness. "Are you hoping to have him make something for you?"

Rinoa admires it openly. "That's so great. I don't know what we'd do if someone around here didn't have those skills. The weapons are pretty dismal, even if there don't seem to be as many monsters roaming around." She hasn't come across a single monster so far! Animals, yes, but no aggressive monsters.

"Yes, I used to have wrist mounted ranged weapons? Projectiles. I'm not sure he'll be able to do precisely the same with our level of tech here, but I'm not that choosy if it's anywhere near what I'm used to." Rinoa's not as picky about weapons, mostly because she's not at heart a warrior.

7 was created to defend; the fight is her very being. But the weapons she crafted from the broken world around her had been simpler than some others. She used them to great effect, though.

"I have a feeling he'll be able to come up with something useful." She's not going to make any claim to know Rinoa's world in comparison to Tony's, but seeing what was in his workshop she's confident he's the kind of person to be able to figure something out.

"He seems determined. It's nice. I'm kind of hoping we won't have to do a lot of fighting though." Rinoa is able to fight, she's willing to fight, so she's not afraid. But she wouldn't mind an option where she doesn't have to. Maybe she's merely worn out from so many months of constant danger.

She smiles wanly. "We just went through a lot of fighting, before we got here, and it was a very brief amount of peace that I was looking forward to." Rinoa knows it wouldn't have lasted. SeeD still had to work and the world still moved on the way it was, but they had a party and there was dancing. It felt like they could have a little time to not worry about breathing another day.

"So far, it hasn't been anywhere near what I dealt with before." Dodging war, being hunted, maybe not a fight every single day but things were always tense; something was always out there that was primed and ready to take you out.

She doesn't want to talk about the final moment she remembers before showing up in the fountain.

"I think it has the potential to be a bit more peaceful here."

"I'm crossing my fingers." Rinoa smiles and does exactly that, showing them to 7 with a wink. "I mean, honestly we might have our hands full just keeping everyone fed and alive for however long we'll be here." She's never been in a survival situation like this before. Fighting for her life, definitely, but they always had tech and places to live and the day to day things were taken care of. She knows they were privileged in that way.

"The book in the inn said that some people have been here for years. And that they all thought they were in a computer simulation or something before?" That sounds far fetched to Rinoa, but so was all of this. And she'd been through enough strange things to just brush a theory off.

7' life was a survival situation, but a unique one that didn't involve a dependancy on food or protection from the elements. Mostly, it was the things lurking in the rubble that she always had to be on the guard for.

And while yes, some of the animals here could be aggressive, you could also avoid them if needed; they weren't specifically hunting you down as their singular purpose.

"Years? Who? Are they still here?"

"Oh, I'm not sure exactly who they are, but they are still here. You could probably ask around. I wonder if they must look at us and think we're naive to believe we could go back, since they must have given up some time ago." Rinoa's only guessing of course, but she thinks if she was there for a few years, she'd just come to accept this was her life. She doesn't want it to be. She wants to go home with Squall and with their friends. Maybe find closure with her father now that she understands they could lose each other in an instant.

"Sometimes people disappear, possibly to go home, and then they come back having never experienced being here. Honestly ... I'm not sure how that happens or what it means. It's not my area of expertise." She's young and inexperienced, and this is a topic way over her head. She's parroting what she's read, not speculating on her own.

"That all sounds .. very confusing." She walks along, frowning slightly as she tries to make sense of what Rinoa is telling her.

"I guess it doesn't make a lot of sense to fuss over it, right? Better to just take each day as it comes." At least, that's her own heart talking. If she dwelled and on every little thing That Could Be, she'd drive herself crazy.

"It is. I'm not even sure what the purpose is. I know all of the ---" Adults, she was going to say. "Scientists are talking about why it's happening. I kind of leave that up to them. The rest of us probably should focus on living." Not that the scientists couldn't! Just that they were thinking on a few levels, and she was hoping to stay on the one level.

"It's not like we can change anything. Not as far as I can see. Things could be a lot worse." Rinoa bites her lip, knowing how much that was tempting fate by saying it! She moves over to the nearest tree and knocks on it before coming back to 7.

"That sounds like the best course of action, really."

She watches with a confused expression as Rinoa walks over to knock on the tree. When the girl returns, 7 looks back at the tree for another moment before glancing back to Rinoa, "Okay, so ... what was that about?"

"Oh, is that not a custom ... of course it isn't! I have to stop assuming people know the same things." Rinoa will get used to it eventually. She smiles. "It's a thing you do when you say something that you don't want to come true. You knock on wood. So like, I said things could be worse. And if things then got immediately worse, it feels like saying that could be part of why it would. Even if it isn't."

Rinoa chuckles. "Wow I never realized how superstitious that was. The general idea is, I say something I don't want to happen, and to make sure it doesn't happen, I knock on wood. Which ... makes no sense." She can't help it, she laughs. "I don't think I've explained that out loud before, what a weird custom."

7 lets out a little chuckle with her. "Yeah, that is a hard one to put together." She'll certainly be thinking on it for a bit, but she won't come to any greater conclusions even then.

"What other sort of customs do you have?"

Rinoa thinks about it. There are a lot of sayings and phrases that are common language to them, but she's not sure which ones are general or specific to her home. "There's cross your fingers for luck." She crosses them to show her. "I guess a lot more are superstitious than I thought! There's getting the jitters, I don't know where it came from, it means you're nervous. And calling someone a chicken means they're scared. I'm not sure why, chickens get scared but so do a lot of animals."

She taps a finger on her chin. "There's a lot to do with the monsters we deal with on the road every day. You have to walk super carefully. It kind of makes sense, we're so worried about luck all the time, when it'd be easy for it to go wrong." She is so used to it, but she knows now that not everyone walked around waiting to be attacked.

"Huh, I guess it would make sense to have a lot of superstitious habits if you're depending so much on luck."

Some of that could have applied to her own world, too; it wasn't like any of them had the benefit of following a plan.

"What were the monsters like?"

"Ohhh we have so many kinds! Let me think of where to start!" Rinoa made a list in her head of the most interesting and bizarre ones as they kept walking toward the mines.

[ooc: okay to wrap? Figured they'd just chatter back and forth forever lol]

7 will listen intently, learning what she can about this odd little habits humans had.

[[ooc: okay to wrap! :) ]]

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[ MINGLE ] MINING EXPEDITION

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