Hypothermia and You: A Guide No One Ever Reads

[andrend]

WHO: Kylo Ren
WHERE: Near the fountain
WHEN: Evening, November 15th
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Incoming angry wet former Jedi with family issues
STATUS: Closed

---

It took almost no time at all for Kylo Ren to realize he had been submerged. The unfamiliar clothes that clung to his skin were heavy with the weight and chill of the water, and stuck uncomfortably to his skin while he fought to find the right orientation to kick and push himself upward. Everything on his body fought against his upward movement from the thing strapped to his back to the heavy and unfamiliar boots on his feet. When he breached the surface, both hands gripped tightly to the edge of the fountain and he hoisted himself out of its watery depths, rolling over the edge to the hard ground on the other side with deep, gasping breaths for air.

His thoughts were spinning wildly, and a chill clung as tightly to his skin as the over-saturated cotton pressing against him so uncomfortably. His mask and uniform were gone, and although he could feel the weight of the pack resting against his back, he could not sense his weapon. The air was frigid. His wet hair, skin and the drenched cotton and fabric clinging to his body did nothing to hold back the below freezing chill in the air. Rather than sit and gather his thoughts, Ren immediately began to remove his shoes and socks and set them to the side with his backpack. The scrub shirt followed, until Ren was left barefoot with only a tank top and the trousers.

Anyone out in the cold could come across Ren carrying a dripping backpack and bundle of foreign clothes as he deliberately makes his way barefoot into the town. His primary mission: find shelter before losing any of his digits or limbs to the cold. If not encountered in that state, Ren can be found eventually breaking or pushing his way into the first building he comes across in search of shelter from the elements. Especially if the building is giving off smoke or light.

Comments

[womanofvalue]

"Here's the only tricky thing," Peggy says, "When we arrived here for the first time, it was as if someone had been here before. Someone had been living here and whether it was the people who set this up for us or simply another group of unfortunate people, it wasn't empty. "There's another alternative, of course," she points out.

"We're not in a place that has any ships or anything of the like," she says, which is just as likely as any of the other possibilities, isn't it? "If all the evidence around us suggests we're in the 19th century, wouldn't it stand to reason there would be no starships or space travel, because it hadn't existed at that point?"

[andrend]

Ren stares at her long and hard for a moment. Her dates make little sense but the general idea gets through the barrier of timelines enough for him to understand.

"Are you suggesting we're in a different time?" He sounds incredulous, but he keeps his tone mostly in check. Everything about the village seemed some version of tricky. Space Travel was as commonplace for him as walking. It was just a fact of existence. The idea of being in a time before that seemed so distant and insane it was difficult to wrap his head around.

"The distance into the past that would require this to be-" He trails off with a frown, raking his mind for instances or rumors of any such event occurring. "It seems much more likely we have been banished to the far reaches of the Outer Rim or beyond than to travel back ancient ages to a time when no race has yet managed to travel beyond their planet."

[womanofvalue]

"I honestly can't see how we're not," is Peggy's blunt response, given that every piece of evidence goes to the fact that they're not in the future that so many people here are from. If they were, then someone has done an excellent job to rid the world of every last vestige of modernity, to the lights that ought to be in the sky, and all evidence of a population that the current day would boast.

"If we were on a planet, somewhere, wouldn't there still be ships?" she reminds him. "If someone brought us here, wouldn't we see something in the sky?" Strangely, to Peggy, time travel seems far more plausible than space travel.

I'm so sorry Peggy.

[andrend]

Ren doesn't take well to the response, a frown deepening on his face. Of course it hardly makes sense to deposit their prisoners in a fountain, but for the moment he's running on the assumption that whoever stranded him on the planet was a coward unwilling to kill him themselves and left him there in the hopes he would drown without having to get their hands dirty or deal with having his blood on their hands.

"Space is endless. We could easily be in wild space or the Unknown Regions. Even the Outer Rim can't be ruled out. Technology levels vary all across the galaxy and density of travel does as well. The lack of visible evidence shouldn't lead to wild theories of unproven technologies like time travel." For Ren space travel was far too common to dismiss and time travel nothing more than a myth and a legend. No one had ever actually managed it and until he had proof the notion seemed even farther into the unknown than wherever they were.

"The civilization of this planet hasn't even reached an industrial level if what you're telling me is accurate. How do you propose they would have come about something as inconceivable as time travel?"

[womanofvalue]

She's nearly a full foot shorter than him, but that doesn't stop her from puffing out her chest and raising her chin up when she's accused of being next to mad for suggesting time travel, as though it's somehow 'inconceivable'. She's taken on men twice as stubborn as this one with words and twice as wide with her fists and she's not about to back down now.

"Space may be endless and technologically more feasible, but then we would have evidence, such as your streaks in the sky," she points out. "I have the evidence of the surroundings, not to mention actual people I've known who can vouch as to the fact that they're from the future while I'm from sixty years in the past. So if that's possible along with any manner of strange things with undiscovered elements and alien technology, then why not time travel?" she snaps.

[andrend]

"There are plenty of ways to conceal those traces. Including cloaking or restricting travel to the far side." He isn't impressed by her posturing, and he stares her right back down, raised chin and all. Evidently still unconvinced.

Whatever her friends might say, time travel makes far less sense, and Ren has no intention of taking a stranger's word for anything in this place that he can't find his own evidence for. Trust isn't something he easily gives.

"You and your friends can chase your wild theories. I intend to look for answers of my own." His own tone is nearly as sharp as hers. He hardly intends to take the word of others over his own experiences and knowledge. He knew nothing about them or their worlds, other than already glaring contrasts presenting themselves.

[womanofvalue]

"Your wild theories," she corrects him. "If mine are wild, then yours are in the very same stream," she says, overly polite and sweet as she gives him a charged look that begs him to take action and start a fight. "And you can look for all the answers you like, just the same as I've been. Perhaps one of us will be able to prove the other wrong." And stubbornly, blindly, Peggy is convinced that she'll be the one to get to do that.

[andrend]

Rather than angry, her challenge is exactly the sort of thing Ren needs, and it makes a small smirk cross his expression where incredulous irritation had been before.

"Perhaps one of us will." He agrees, just as blindly and stubbornly convinced as she is that it will be him.