sixthiterationlogs | 07 { August Plot Opener: Primitive Weapons

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07 { August Plot Opener: Primitive Weapons

WHO: Jo Harvelle & Killian Jones
WHERE: The Inn, The Far Northeast/The 'Earlier Village'
WHEN: Friday, August 19th
WARNINGS: None as of Yet
STATUS: Closed for August Plot Opener

Jo's mornings start at the Inn & Pub every day. Almost always the earliest riser in the building, because it's rarely even begun to slink toward morning when she gets there. It's been a long time since she slept well and long. Even with this as the second world and, cumulatively, fourth month without monsters scratching at her door every day, four months is a paltry blip of a thing compared to all the years of them that proceeded this, or the legacy of them, forever beating, in her veins.

She likes having a purpose more than she likes waking from nightmares, and this morning and day have a even greater purpose. She's in a scouting team with Killian to cover an area that's been done, but since the log book got started they've had a number of more detailed things to start tracking, which means a little dancing.

Two steps back, to hopefully jump three or four steps forward because of it.

~ * ~

Her hair is pulled back in a braided ponytail that hangs out the back of her black, flame insignia, hat. She'd rather a bun, but it has to be in the nineties today and she wants the brim of the hat even more than she wants her hair to stop sticking to the back of her neck or her tanktop to stop sticking to her sides. Jo fishes out dried jerky, vegetables, and berries in strategic small handfuls, depending on how far the sun has moved since her last handful, as they walk further and further Northeast.

"Shouldn't be too much further off that way," Jo says, after swallowing her last, even though she knows he knows it just as well. It's the heat and the long jaunt with someone she doesn't know all that well. The pervasive eeriness of the place no matter how long they stay.

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Jo trailed after him, following in his actions, even if she only did it with her hat. It was a great sort of double standard, but it wasn't like she was about to go there. It was enough to scoop a few handfuls of water, down on her knees, and then to go about soaking her hat. It'd soak into her hair and trickle down her neck, shoulders and back, warming far too fast, but it would be nice while it was still cold and especially if there was a breeze.

"Pretty much yeah. Everyone else has come in fits and starts with no logic to it. There's no specific number of days, or pattern of types of people, who they are or what or why that I've been able to see any pattern to."

She was pushing back up to her feet, and looking back toward the direction they still had to go. Especially because the temptation of shade and cool water bit in at her want to rest longer and take more relief in it. But she had things to do and she wanted to be back before it was too dark.

He heads out along the river, in the direction of the waterfall he knows is there. That tends to be a good source of resources, he's found. "As far as anyone knows, all they're doing is bringing people here? There's nothing else happening? Someone's just dropping us here, against our will, and that's it?" That's plenty, of course, especially when they undoubtedly all had something other in mind than coming here, but he's trying to establish precisely what they're dealing with.

"Depends really on how you see it," Jo said, devil's advocate, even though she'd turned that over in her head a thousand times. Even though she really got tired of the existence and nattering people she was about to partially defend. "For some of them this is a bit toss back in time, and they hardly understand how to do anything here, even find food. While others have never seen anything as sophisticated as that dilapidated, falling apart, little village."

Really, that being 'it' was subjective. Even if what they did with it shouldn't have been, and a lot of people made it anyway.
It was why she had little patience with a lot of them. Especially the ones settling down and settling it.

Choosing to trust in the hand that had already swept them in and locked them away.

"And now there's the boxes." Jo added, with a frown.
"Playing with giving people things they need." Beat. "Or think they d--- what the fuck?!"

Jo'd stopped, midsetence and midstep, as the area opened up. An area that should have been utterly empty, except for the general floral and fauna of this perverse, little creepy, place. And it suddenly wasn't. There were suddenly things there she very much did not remember and that no one has reported on. Oddly shaped. Tall, and small, and covered in weedy, overgrown. But grouped together.

Edited 2016-08-20 02:48 (UTC)

Well that's...that's something. He blinks a few times to make sure what he's seeing it really there, which it must be because she sees it too.

"There's supposed to be a waterfall around here, isn't there?" Though if a ruined village can just appear out of nowhere, then perhaps a waterfall can just disappear too. It's not like this place is exactly normal.

"Maybe there's something useful around here somewhere." Personally he doubts it, what with the state everything's in, but the only way to tell is by checking. He steps between a couple of the buildings to do a little exploring and see what he can find. From behind one of the buildings, he shouts to get her attention. "Ahoy!"

It's old habit from all his years at sea. It's the most effective, and polite, way of getting a message across.

Jo walked among the ruin feeling suddenly like every hair on her body was standing on end, and every inch of her skin was trying to crawl to some other place on her body. Her eyes kept tracking everywhere around her, expecting something, anything to suddenly jump out at her. Or him. Especially as they ended up going different directions looking at everything there.

She keeps an ear out, but it's the creepy, crawling, growing by inches and miles, feeling clouding up her head as it makes itself all too clear. It's a village. Or it was. Not like the one they were dropped into. Just came from. Something old. Something so much older, than the old their village already is, forgotten and falling apart. This one is gone. Barely an echo of whatever the fuck it once was, and whoever the hell might have been here.

And whoever the fuck thought they should drop this suddenly in the middle of nowhere that people had already been.
Showing off. Fucking about. Giving them . . . whatever the fuck this was supposed to be giving them.

She can't get into anywhere -- it's heavily overgrown -- and nothing seems even present in the ruin except the decaying, ancient, covered structures. No signs of people. Nothing left behind anywhere in the branches and vines she hacks at with the knife she pulls from her boot. There's nothing here. Except that it is here, and the more nothing there is, the more Jo feels pissed. Feels like she's being played with.

Which is when she hears Killian call out and stops hacking at vines, calling out, "You got something other than crumbling walls and vines?"

"Aye." He had made his way behind one of the buildings in his attempt to find something, and that's where he is now. He had been hacking at vines with his hook (it's not quite as effective as a knife, but it will do, and it allows his other hand to remain free) and he has managed to cut a number of them away from what he found.

What he found is five crates, standing out from the rest of the ruins because of their obvious newness. Each one also has an insignia on the top that matches the ones on their hats, each in a different color to match the scrubs he's seen the residents of their village wearing. They're still sitting in a tangle of vines; he tore through enough of them just to see what the crates are.

"It seems that someone has left us more to find than just some old ruins."

He knows this place isn't supposed to be here. These crates can't have been here before either. Someone would have noticed them. He doesn't like the idea of being toyed with, and now there's more evidence that they are.

Jo moved toward his voice, giving up on the newest of the structures she'd been working on getting into. There'd been nothing of consequence, or even hunt, in the last ones and there'd probably be nothing in this one, so that Killian had found anything sent her that way. Quickly. Seeing what he meant. "Well. That's not fucking creepy of anything."

The boxes are still tangled in vines, but the unlike everything else here the paint on those boxes is pristinely sharp. New.

If they need an outright invitation to the fact this was put right here for them to find it's right there, jabbing at all of her nerves with a grand suddness. Making her look around, even as she flips the knife back up and starts helping him hack these vines to get to them under the overgrowth. "I've almost got the top of this one."

He hacks at the vines on the same crate with his hook. It's probably more effective to free them one at a time. While he works, he tries to shove away the nagging thoughts at the back of his mind. This village just appeared here, like it was built overnight. The paint on these crates looks like it was put there yesterday, yet there's several years' worth of vines grown over the top of them.

Someone can just construct ruined buildings in a few days. Someone can grow vines overnight.

"Do you suppose we should open them and see what's inside?"

"I'd love to say we could be about to blow ourselves up--" Jo muttered, staring at the top of it. A blue insignia flame, that didn't match either of their black scrubs or her hat, but it was just as familiar, just the same shade as all the people in blue scrubs in the village behind them. "--but that would be letting us off so much easier than I think any of this is going to anytime soon now."

Jo put her hands on the top and went for it. In the list of potentially stupid and deadly things she'd chosen, it was small.

You know. So long as she wasn't wrong, and it didn't explode right into her hands, arm, face.

Edited 2016-08-20 15:12 (UTC)

"If someone wanted to blow us up, there would be easier ways to do it than bringing us out here first." Since by this point it's pretty clear that someone knows they're here. Someone has to, or things wouldn't be showing up where there hadn't been things before. Anyone who wanted to harm them could do it quite easily, he figures.

He reaches out with his hand to help her open the crate. It wouldn't be right if she lost her hands but he didn't.

First, kidnapping. Then, supply boxes. Now, magic'd dead villages and colored crates.

Crates . . . with weapons? That tension in her shoulders and her neck only intensified as she counted a brand new bow, arrows, a harpoon, and then, took note of the fact one of the snares seemed broken. Everything else in perfect condition and then one broken thing, sticking out just as much a sore thumb as this decrepit village with brand new boxes. Something broken next to everything else in perfect order.

While her mind ran paces on why anyone might be sending them crates of weapons, and whether the rest of them were.

"Get those ones. I'll get these." Jo started on the box to her side of the middle one. First, the light grey flame insignia box. Then, the green flame. Both of them the same as the first one. The weapons were different, and the percentage of broken things to new things, to lightly used, to well used, was different, but that they were full of weapons the village hadn't had anywhere, in any of their buildings before now, was the same.

It's not good, and what it will bring, what it will stir up and cause, will be even less good.
Which she's pretty certain is exactly why they were given them.

Which had her subtly watching him as he opens the others.

He glances over the items revealed when she opens the crates. A harpoon. He could use one of those; it would be much more effective for fishing than the nets made out of vines that he's using now. Most of the rest of the weapons don't seem that helpful to him, with only one hand.

He opens another crate himself, and then the last one. He reaches in to pick up one of the weapons -- a bow, broken. "Some of these seem more helpful than others." He puts the bow back where it came from. Even if he were tempted to pocket anything, nothing would fit in his pocket.

He taps at the insignia on one of the lids. "What do you suppose the colors mean?"

Jo looked at the one he was pointing at, but her voice was firm and certain. "Trouble."
The colors were only trouble, and the colors were only ever meant to be trouble.

Since everyone started appearing in them, making people question from the beginning. What it meant. Why were certain people in this color and certain people in that. It's an interesting commentary of choice for Jo who hasn't worn a black top again, except while sleeping, since her first day. It's always been this white tank top and either her black scrubs or black overalls.

A medium grade between the black she was given and the white that is absolutely recognizably her everyday clothing choice.

She huffed, "--and a whole lot of it at that." Beat. Frowning. "We have to take them back."

Because there was no praying they'd just vanish under her hands as the place had appeared.
She did not pray to Gods or Jailers, even if they were about to draw lines in their fragile sand.

Edited 2016-08-21 03:35 (UTC)

"I meant the ones specifically on these cases, but..." He nudges one with his foot. "I suppose so did you." It could potentially be trouble to attempt to figure out what these cases are for. Is this some sort of competition? Separate them into groups, give each group a cache of weapons, and see what happens? It wouldn't surprise him if that were the case.

"Aye. How do you suppose we can get them there?"

A muscle in Jo's cheek twitches. Maybe like, if they were in any other situation than this, she might have smiled or smirked there. Him puzzling out for himself, without her saying it again, that she had answered the question. But they are, right here and right now, and it's only the twinge of a muscle, and the flicker of relief, and maybe even respect, without her lips moving in the slightest. The question though is a good one. Especially given their size.

"The most we could move is two at a time by hand. If that." Depending on the size and what all exactly was in each of them. "It'd be easier with less boxes." Not that they'd all fit in one. "But they should see all of this, shouldn't they?"

Edited 2016-08-21 05:04 (UTC)

"Maybe we could make some kind of straps for pulling them behind us." It wouldn't be perfect, over uneven terrain, but that way they could get more than two at a time, and there's his lack of a hand to consider. He hasn't made a net that large yet, but there are plenty of vines, and two of them. If she can get the hang of knots they could probably get it done fairly quickly.

"That would probably be easier than trying to get everyone to come out here and take a look." Plus he doesn't want everyone to know where he likes to fish. He depends on trading some of that fish for other items.

Jo was staring at the boxes and frowning, running through too many possibilities.

What was to say the village or the boxes would stay put here if they left them here. What was to say the weapons and boxes they left, wherever they left them in their village, would stay untouched and unpilfered from, if they left there to come back for more boxes. She hates this. She hates it so much. She doesn't want to doubt anyone here, and she doesn't want to trust the people who put her here.

This is how it starts. Even in her own head. Jo shoved the thoughts hard away. Focusing on Killian's suggestions. Thinking.
Her eyes fall to the ground, and then she looks over at him, asking, "Maybe we could use the vines, somehow? Tie them together?"

"Aye, that would perhaps be better than trying to make a net for them. Ropes are easy enough. I've done that before." He's made nets too, but just tying them together would work better, and they shouldn't have to worry as much about something snapping as they drag it along.

He goes over to the tangle of vines where they found the crates. "There are plenty of vines, of varying sizes. We could rig something up with them. I know several knots that would work."

"Me, too. Thought it's been a while. So together--" If he could get the vines and she could tie them (unless he had a way to tie thing with that hook of his, and who knows, he really might), they could get these back and start down the drop side of this rickety, click, click, click of the roller coaster reaching the top of its summit and about to plunge down into the free fall. "--we should be able to make some short work of this."

Jo closed the two crates she'd freed and opened for the contents search, then started sizing up vines for hacking them down into a pile for tying. At least they didn't have thorns. She was probably going to be grateful for then when her hands were blistered red from pulling these back, even without them. But it would have definitely been a steeper kind of hell with thorns.

He tugs a couple of the crates into an area that's more open than the area around, to give them more room to work.

"I think we'll need some sturdier vines for the heavier work, and some thinner ones to hold it all together." So it's a good thing that there are a variety of sizes around.

He reaches for vines and starts pulling them free.

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07 { August Plot Opener: Primitive Weapons

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