sixthiterationlogs | The Next Animal Find

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The Next Animal Find

WHO: Riza Hawkeye & Open
WHERE: Near Fountain
WHEN: November 12
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Animal Violence, Death, and Mutilation
STATUS: Open

As usual for an evening, Riza was returning from a walk in the woods. There was perhaps an hour of light left and after some of the stories she had heard, she was more than willing to be home before dark. She found a strange comfort swell up when her eyes spied the fountain. It was just a reassuring sight all things considered. Ironic, considering it was the very thing that brought her here.

Riza didn't see any new faces lingering nearby so she figured that meant she could just walk on. Maybe she could even help a little with dinner or make some tea. She was just starting to plan what she might do with her evening in detail, but a dark streak caught her attention. She frowned, thinking the spot on the ground looked familiar. It took a moment and then it clicked and Riza's eyes grew wide. "Blood," she muttered. She rushed to the other side of the fountain. It could mean someone was hurt or in trouble.

Right away she found that it was no human bleeding near the fountain. Instead, the sight that greeted her was somehow worse than she had anticipated. Black and white fur matted in red and a single paw outstretched towards the fountain. It was chewed beyond recognition and some of its limbs were eve torn off. Riza gasped because the black and white fur made her think of her dog back home. They couldn't possibly have---no was it even a dog? Riza's body shook with the mere implication of what the creature could be. There was no way someone could do that--and yet--she knew there were creatures out there that cared little for the lives of others, let alone pets. She noticed, then, that there was a strong smell coming from the creature. Was it a skunk? Was that why there were tears in her eyes? Skunk, that was something she could handle, even if logically she knew there was no way of telling what the creature was. It couldn't be Black Hayate. It just couldn't.

She wiped it away and looked around before moving closer to investigate. For once, she hoped someone came along to find this with her but, more importantly, she hoped no one new came out of the fountain to be greeted by this atrocity.

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"I like to learn new things and inform my basic knowledge of how other worlds work," he protests, not quite 'innocently', because you can't exactly do that when you're talking about other people being terrible, awful, ridiculous human beings, but at the same time, he's just trying to learn about her world. "Sniper," he echoes. "Remind me never to piss you off and then stand underneath you," he says, only half-joking because she is a bit of a stranger to him.

Breathing out as she finds a curtain (and a distraction from his distraction), he nods and gestures for the front. "On we go, before another animal finds our little skunk for dinner."

She smirked, deciding it would be more intimidating if she didn't bother replying to his 'remind me never to piss you off' line. Riza had that effect on a lot of people, it was why Rebecca always admonished her for it and bemoaned that Riza would never get married. Of course, Riza knew there were those out there that could see past that. But honestly getting Rebecca worked up was half the fun of their friendship.

She walked out of the house with the curtain, "That would at least save us the trouble of clean up. On the other hand, we'd then have an even bigger animal near our front door to this place." She was referring of course to the fountain where everyone entered. Riza was past her shock of seeing the creature with the familiar black and white coloring, it was all business at this point. She paused when she was back outside, looking over her shoulder at Ravi, "Also, if you wanted to know about other worlds...you could have just asked that instead."

"I want to know about everything," Ravi points out, seeing as he could have started with that and asked it, but truthfully, it feels like the jumping off point when you're trying to jump into a gigantic ocean and you don't know where you're going to find something really cool and interesting to look at. "If it's other worlds you're comfortable talking about, then let's do that. If you have other interesting information, I'd love to hear that too."

"Really, anything is good," he admits. "Anything that helps shape my understanding of this place."

"Everything is...a lot. I'm not even sure what to begin with telling you about now," Riza admitted. Should she tell him about her home world. People tended to assume she was from one of the countries on their Earth. It wasn't until she started mentioning Amestris, thier government, or other nations that she started to get strange looks. Luckily, she was used to that. So she could also start with her time in the last place that had drawn in so many people from other dimensions -- that was usually where her conversations went around here. She had been very upfront with that information, hoping it would help people understand just how bad this could get. "Interesting isn't a very helpful qualifier either...depending on how much you've experienced that can vary," she added after some thought.

"Besides, my experience in the last place is still different from this one. The experiences have a few similarities, but there are also enough differences that make me think this is an entirely different group running things here." She frowned, "At least I hope." She honestly wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, considering how bad the last place had been.

They've returned to the skunk and Riza waits for Ravi to lay the plank down so she can start helping "clean up." At least talking will kind of take her mind off of this.

Ravi sets down the wood as he thinks about what she's said, but particularly the part that implies that this is a common thing and that there are somehow multiple sites that are running similar experiments. While Ravi has often been accused of being paranoid and mad when it comes to these things, he's never quite broached the line that makes him a conspiracy theorist so much as a hyper-concerned citizen. The notion that somehow there are many of these places, all running various experiments, sounds a little wild. It sounds like the sort of thing you talk about when you don't trust your government at all.

And yet, he's here in one of them, so does he really have the room to say that's not the case? "In your last experience, did you see any pattern with the people that were brought in?" he wonders. "Could there be some variable or solution they're trying to extract in different scenarios?" He moves closer to the skunk and grimaces as he looks around for a stick, finding a thicker one that he uses to start poking the thing along, doing his very best to avoid the place that will cause eye-searing pain for all of them.

That at least narrows down what to talk about. Riza considers it for a moment, running through names and what she knows about the people who had wound up in that version of Manhattan. Finally she shakes her head, "No distinct pattern I can think of. There were certainly more people there. I would say much like here there was a wide range of genders, ages, abilities, and backgrounds. We even had a few that were...well not human." She wasn't sure how she could explain there were a few dragons, a dog, and a fairy to name a few of the non-humanoids. "As for the variable, we found out eventually they were bringing in people at random, more or less, in order to get a wide-range of bodies to infect and probably to find just what kind of other worlds were out there to potentially attack or make deals with."

She watches him steadily nudge the skunk onto the wood. Riza decided she would do the messier part and, wrapping the sheet around her hand, started picking up some of the, well, pieces that had been scattered. It was not pleasant work and she might have grimaced a little, but she placed the pieces onto the board so they could dump as much of it as possible.

"I hadn't thought about it...but perhaps we're being selected as samples for our own worlds' inhabitants. The scrubs could be a type of color coding," she began, but then trailed off, shaking her head, "Except, based on conversations I believe some of the people here knew each other from before all of this and they are in different colors."

"It could be any number of things," he admits, his mind already racing through the possibilities, prodded on by the fact that she'd brought up diseases. "Maybe it's not about where we're from, maybe it's about something as inconsequential as blood type or some other medical aspect that groups us together. I'm B positive," he says, but he doubts that black scrubs would be noting that. He thinks that there would be some sort of medic-alert bracelet instead of the scrubs. "The number of possibilities of sorting us are staggering and I doubt it's as fun and playful as Hogwarts houses," he jokes wryly. He gets the last of the skunk onto the board and grimaces as he stares at his hands and knows that there isn't near enough bleach to get the feeling of dead skunk off his skin.

He's a big fan of experiments, given his history, but he doesn't really like being the one who's meant to produce results. "I don't see how dead skunks fit into any equation that has up being split up by colour," is all he says, with mild disdain.

Riza doesn't know her own blood type, but even if she did they had too many scrub colors for it to be that. Didn't they? She shook her head, deciding to let Ravi play with his theory. She had a feeling he was only half serious anyway. "I don't know what Hogwarts is -- but I'm going to assume that sorting in that capacity is probably a little more straight forward," she mused.

She dropped the skunk bits onto the main body and then draped the curtain over it. The less she had to think about what she'd just picked up the better. "It isn't like it's had much of an effect on our group dynamics anyway. We haven't split up into color groups and nothing has enforced or deterred interactions like that," she added. Riza knelt next to one end of the plank, "It shouldn't be heavy -- but it's going to be awkward carrying it. Where should we move it to? Just further into the woods?"

"Maybe somewhere away from a water source, with the hope that some other unfortunate animal is going to find it," he says, with a shrug of his shoulders. It's not like he has a better idea and the thing is mangled well enough to begin with to the point that he doubts anyone is going to stumble on it and think anything of it but an unfortunate road-kill incident without the road.

If nothing else, getting it away from here will give Riza the chance not to have to think of what it reminded her of. "Maybe it's just an inventory situation," he jokes. "They run out of a certain colour at certain points in time until new stock comes in."

"Right. We don't need any of our water sources getting contaminated," she agreed. It was a wise move and she points, "That should be a good direction to head then. The river is the opposite direction." Just as long as it was away from the fountain. That's all she cared about.

She considered that and, honestly, it was just as likely as anything. "First scrub color at hand. We could very well be over thinking it. Of course, either way raises disturbing questions about stripping us down and dressing us in the scrubs. I have no memory of something like that happening and there's no telling what could have happened in that unknown time." She wondered if they even bothered keeping their original clothes and items or if she'd now lost that stuff forever.

"Honestly, I have several experiences in my history of waking up without memories in scrubs, but I did go to medical school with a lot of people with ridiculous tolerances for alcohol," he points out, and the black scrubs is the part he doesn't understand. True, they make him look incredibly dapper, but they are a touch dark and evil and foreboding for him.

"I'm more concerned about the fountain and how we get there without any recollection," he says, bending down to heft up one side of the skunky flat.

Riza, carrying the other side, starts to walk in the direction opposite of town. They just need to get it away from the fountain and the main paths. So hopefully they won't have to walk too far. After all, most people head towards the Inn anyway, so as long as they are walking away from that they should be fine.

"Considering there are also no openings at the bottom of the fountain, I'm concerned as well. I feel like there should be more clues around it, but as far as I know any efforts to uncover the secrets behind it have been met with opposition or setbacks."

She tilted her head at him, "I'm curious. Do you have any theories?"

Ravi follows and gives her a shake of his head. "Honestly, my best theory is that we're some sort of medical experiment. Drugged before we arrived and given dosages of something to keep us on our toes. The boxes that arrive, they could be supplies sent to keep us alive, and maybe some of the stranger things we think are happening aren't actually real. Yet," he clarifies. "Maybe this is just some gigantic think tank and we're the rats."

"That said, I could be just paranoid rambling and who knows what on earth is actually going on."

"That wouldn't be too far off from the last time I was involved in something like this. Medical experiment would certainly be likely. Let's just hope that this one doesn't involve transforming people into monsters. That wasn't pleasant the last time and I was sort of hoping that was a once in a lifetime experience," she admitted. She would have rubbed at her arm if she hadn't been carrying anything. She could still remember waking up feeling weak and sick in that cell of the aircraft carrier. Sitting and waiting for the virus to run its course. She shuddered, "On the plus side, if it is a medical experiment we have yet to show any signs of fatigue or pain. I suppose some of the things we've seen could be hallucinations...but that doesn't seem like much of an experiment or reason to bring in so many bodies just to see what kind of hallucinations we might all have."

Unless she was going mad, that was possible, but there wasn't much she could do about that if she was. Prior experience told her though to treat this as if it were reality because the last time she'd thought she was crazy things had been all too real and dangerous.

"This is the kind of situation where paranoia might actually be helpful. It isn't like we can rule anything out at this point and I've seen enough crazy things in my life to feel like I can't even write off the really weird theories either." She'd met wizards, talking animals, dragons, and boys who wielded giant magical keys. What was weird or crazy any more really?

"That is definitely not something I'm aiming to replicate," Ravi guarantees, because he's been dealing with monsters enough at home, though for the most part, they generally stay the same until they're deprived of brains. Then, well, then Ravi has to think about that awful pit he'd nearly died in, if not for Liv's quick trigger finger. "Maybe we're just testing the area?" he suggests. "Maybe this place is all one big panic room in case something happens in the greater world."

It does seem separated enough and maybe it's been created with an apocalypse in mind, a way to keep people safe. Maybe the lack of technology is a hint about what they're trying to hide from. His shoulders groan as he keeps carrying the wooden plank, hoping they're coming up on a dumping ground soon. "What's your weird theory about this place?"

Riza isn't sure she buys something like that. Why were they brought hee then? What did each of them have to offer in the grand scheme of things from all around the multiverse that they would be selected for a panic room? It actually seemed sort of hopeful in the grand scheme of things.

"Perhaps. It could very well be a trial of some kind. Though I'm not sure about the panic room, bit," Riza observed.

She thought about the question for a moment. She hadn't exactly put her theories into words or discussed them much with others. "I'm still of the opinion we're involved in some kind of experiment. The specifics or reasons I couldn't begin to try and guess at...but that's just what it feels like. We're being used...for something." She looked back to see if they were far enough out yet and then returned her gaze to the walk ahead. "Think we've gotten far enough out?" She couldn't see the fountain from here at least and they had managed to get past most of the houses.

"I think so," Ravi agrees, sweating as the beads on his forehead start to accumulate to the degree that even if they weren't far enough out, he might consider lying just to make sure that their little trek had come to an end. "If this is a trial, I don't want to know what happens to you when you fail," he says, with a grave look on his face.

If they were getting feasts and presents when they were behaving, what would they be given if suddenly they weren't complying with whatever this place thought of as 'success'. He sets down the board with the remaining skunk bits on it, breathing out slowly. "Any clever ideas on how not to be used?" he asks hopefully.

Riza had already considered it, but if Ravi didn't want to discuss it then she could keep those thoughts to herself. The last experiment she'd been involved in had certainly involved death of a sort -- even if it was just death of the self and you'd live on as an abomination. Death was a very real possibility here, but that was hardly new to her.

"It's a little easier when we aren't so dependent on their gifts to us. They send us needed supplies or useful tools. We can't help but want things that will help us survive. At least last time we had a little more independence than that so we could work on not being used by them." She stopped and motioned for Ravi to lower his end so they could be done with this job. She shook out her hands once they'd set the body down -- the board had been pinching her grip a bit so it felt good to set it down again. "Otherwise, we just have to keep playing their game until we find a way to play against them."

"Well, if they want to have skunk pieces thrown in their face, that's about all I have to offer at this point," Ravi says, staring down at their makeshift little stretcher with the patient who's already too far gone for any help. He sets it down and wipes his forehead of sweat, giving her a longer look. "I think that's about as far as we should go."

"Shame we don't have a pub around here, that's the kind of thing you need after you haul a dead skunk with someone you barely know," he says. "Nothing like a beer to make fast friends, or skunk hauling duties."

"It's fine," she says. And whether she means how far they've come, her reaction to the animal's corpse, or something else is hard to say. She looks down at it for a second longer and then looks back to Ravi, "Thanks for your help carrying it. We'll have to find another post-skunk haul ritual then I guess."

The gesture is still appreciated. And, Ravi is right, there isn't much of a better way to make a new friend than hauling an animal corpse through the woods. "Maybe I'll just start keeping a tab and whenever we get out of here we can get the drinks then."

"Hopefully next time, it's not a skunk," he offers with a small smile, because it definitely could have been a lot worse, so he's grateful that he's been able to help and also get a better look at the body in the process. "We definitely need a drink the next time we meet up, if only to reminisce about the first time we met," he jokes.

"But until then, I'm going to go home and see if I can't soak up sore muscles."

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The Next Animal Find

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about close to wrap, I think?

yeah, i think so :3

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