keep that fury deep inside you: primitive weapons plot

[thenewways]

WHO: Kira Nerys
WHERE: the Inn
WHEN: Saturday,
OPEN TO: All (August Plot, part 2)
WARNINGS: none at present
STATUS: Open

---

When Nerys heard about the boxes that Jo and Killian Jones had found, she was surprised. When she heard what was in them, that they were all marked with intent, the surprise lessened, and now was turning into sinking overwhelming tunnel vision in her head, her gut. The physical sensation of knowing, knowing that someone had plans for you, and those plans were likely ugly--oh yes, she knows it. Just because it's familiar, though, doesn't make it something she enjoys by any stretch of the imagination.

No, it's the kind of feeling that Nerys had learned at a very young age to transmute into anger. The kind of anger that fed her family, then the kind of anger that blew up Cardassian weapons depots, then the kind of anger that kept her focused on her job and kept her people safe.

She knows that if she's feeling this way, things are just as bad or worse for others. While she hasn't been entirely candid with everyone about her past, though she certainly hasn't lied, she's pretty sure she's seen complexity (let's be frank, darkness) in some of the people she's met, and like fuck did they need a full-scale civil war on their hands here.

It's a good way for them all, in the not-so-long run, to die.

Clearly, they all needed to have a gods damned talk before this boiled over, and as Nerys sees no one else volunteering, she steps up, roaming through the village like an old-fashioned crier. "Hey," she shouts at the people in the field, around the town, using the rather powerful pipes the Prophets had seen fit to give her. "Hey. Meeting at the Inn, fifteen minutes. We need to talk."

She gets to the inn in a few minutes' time, then clambers up onto one of the tables in front of Jo's lists, and sits, cross-legged, to wait. Folks filter in, a few at a time, and Nerys taps her jaw with her fingertips, counting out the seconds (she'd like a chronometer, but that'd be like asking for latinum dust). Once enough time's passed, she clears her throat. It doesn't really do much, so she rolls her eyes, then turns up the volume a little--not aggressive, but enough to catch people's attention. She's accustomed to walking the fine line between too much and too little leadership, because unlike her Starfleet colleagues, she doesn't expect the hierarchy of rank and linked formality of sometimes-grudging respect. Makes it easier to actually talk to people.

"Hey. My name's Nerys, for those of you who I haven't met properly yet. You've probably heard what was found out in the forest," she starts. "I figure we should all sit down and discuss it, because the last thing that's going to be any good for anyone is us starting to distrust each other and get into fights. So...let's hash it out, right?"

If she has to scream the 'this is what they fucking want, they want us to hurt each other, fuck them' message into people's heads, she's willing to do that. Eventually. Hopefully someone else will agree.

Comments

{ Main Discussion }

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's sitting on another table. Again. This one not too far from Nerys. Or Thorfinn.

She's good at this, and it happens often enough. She'll choose a chair on her own, and while working in the mornings, but she likes to be a little higher in a group. It has to do with her height, and it has to do with vantage, but today especially it has to do with being fucked with, and being fucking pissed about that. With how this is the last place she wants to be, and this is the last thing she wants to explode, and it's exactly why she'll be right here, watching exactly what every person in this room says and does now.

Because it's going to tell so much about who they really are, and what kind of people they are.

More than any week and any interaction they've had before now. Because this is where the real game begins.

[notabirdcostume]

It's funny how even in a small community like this there are still opportunities for rumors and gossip. At first when he heard someone mention boxes being found he assumed they were more of the small packages that had been delivered sporadically to people around the village. However, as more news started to spread, he came to the understanding that it was a little bigger than that. The final straw was Nerys shouting for them to come in and talk at the inn. Sam had been taking his turn at the garden and knew he wasn't going to have time to get cleaned up before joining the group. He wiped his face off as best he could on a dirty towel and headed in.

The atmosphere is certainly serious enough and Sam pulls his hat off as he enters the inn, eyes darting across the faces that have already gathered. He gets the feeling that whatever is talked about and decided here is going to change how a lot of things are done around here. "Quick question...what happened exactly and how are these different from the weird packages we were already getting with our names on them?" He wants to make sure he understands perfectly what they've found and what's going on.

[itchtokill]

Kol's one of the first handful of people inside, quiet and eyeing everyone around, waiting for the rest of the lot to file in, for questions to start and figure out where things stood.

Sam speaks up first and it's the best place to start. So for now he adds a quip, "Yeah, what's the fuss?" and waits for a proper answer before he makes any further comments or judgments.

[lastofthekellys]

She'd been scrubbing the floor when the meeting had been called. Her hands are still dirty, still wet in the creases. But she's had enough time to put the bucket of water away, to finish drying that part of the floor.

"Where were they found? These crates?"

Hardly the front door of anywhere. They'd gone exploring, had Captain Jones and Miss Jo. Exploring. Somewhere far from here. This Place.

But the crates had to have been place somewhere... Findable.

Predictable.

{ Colors: What do they mean? }

[itchtokill]

Kol has heard the buzz about boxes being found floating around and he's not happy about it. The first, immediate thought he'd had was of the less than fun packages that Lucifer had sent around. Elijah had gotten one personally. He even remembers a kid getting a copy of his own death certificate, just to let him know what awaited him back home. There were cursed items in some of them, nightmare fuel in others. So boxes? Not high on Kol's list of things he needed showing up suddenly.

But once Nerys calls the group meeting, he makes damn sure to be one of the first few trickling inside the Inn. He wants to hear what other people have to say about it before he speaks up, but he certainly will put in his two bloody cents before anyone starts doing anything stupid.

The initial chatter has died down a bit, and the contents are being viewed and discussed and there's one thing that keeps bothering him. "The colors, though. There's got to be something to that." he squints in the direction of the box nearest him. "The bloody hell are they trying to put us in groups for?"

And who are they, what do they want, where the hell are they? Or is it something less physical, but still sentient, magic like the Seal back in Lawrence? He has so many questions and no one to actually get answers from, and it's frustrating beyond belief. At least this is something they can focus on, theories can be formed, even if it means nothing in the end, it feels like progress in the meantime until proper progress can be made.

Re: { Colors: What do they mean? }

[tobeclosetohim]

Division. Strife. Separation. The doubts. The pondering. Grouping up. Talents. Tribes. It was easy to jump to a hundred assumptions, but it was as equally obvious, if one had just watched since they arrived, that so far no one had formed up groups along those colored lines. Which made it easier to question if this was a rod prodding them harder, seeing if subconsciously anyone had, or would, or wanted to. A demand to pay those colors mind.

She knew who the others in her color were -- Killian, Nerys, Kylo, Jon -- but she felt no stirring of possession or greater loyalty to them. She felt no particular loyalty to anyone here, in specific, save Thorfinn. who was, himself, in Gray. Really, though. The whole lot of them were so green it made her teeth ache in a daily way, but it pounded in her head today. When they weren't aware of the million things this might be.

(When she didn't know what it was yet either, and had instead of 'too few' all the too many bad options it might be.)


It's quietly that she watches this next start, though, uncertain if she wants to voice her thoughts yet.

Re: { Colors: What do they mean? }

[teen_angst_bullshit]

"It's a form of control," Veronica says before she's quite aware of speaking. It surprises her a little to realize that she does, in fact, know a little bit about this type of social separation.

"Maybe there's more to it than that," she hastily adds, surveying the group. "But this?" She motions to the boxes with their varicolored emblems. "This is somebody fucking with us." It's Heather being made to wear green to put her in her place.

[notabirdcostume]

"Isn't it like everything else? Just more questions and no real answers." Sam knows it sounds extremely negative as soon as he says it and continues. "We have no clues to go off of here," but that's not right, obviously the clothes, crates, and everything else are a clue. They are just clues to a puzzle way too big that you can't even begin to guess what the picture will be, "or we do but we don't know what they mean. There's no context for them."

Sam's mostly just thinking aloud at this point. He wants to see if anyone has come to the same conclusions or had the same thoughts. If this meeting is for brainstorming then he's going to put his two cents in. He may not have multiverse experience like some of them, but he's not going to let that stop him either. He continues, "Sure, the colors could mean something, but they could just as easily be randomly decided on and slapped on us before we get here."

He shudders, thinking about the implications of being stripped, having his clothes replaced with these scrubs, slipped a pack with a bare minimum of supplies before sending him on his way, and all while unconscious. "Or they could know stuff about us that determined our scrub colors. We don't know how long we may have been out before waking up in that fountain."

Sam tips his head towards the girl, "Either way it does boil down to what she just said. It's another way of fucking with us."

[specialise]

Raven stands against the wall, leaning her back against it. Left leg lifted up to press her foot to it, she relishes in how she doesn't need to sit. It's a quiet sort of enjoyment, given how meek the atmosphere is in the room.

Her expression's pensive, arms crossed against her chest. "The colours probably mean something," she says. Considering the nature of how the Ark had been split into stations, the people born in them believed to be skilled in that specific talent, Raven doubts whoever's in charge has a completely different mindset to that.

"No one does anything without reason. Either it's to mess with us, or it's to divide us up. It's not a completely new concept it could be both. Two birds, one stone."

[thekittenqueen]

"Perhaps it is grouping us into particular factions?" Margaery suggested. The idea of color coding everyone wasn't too surprising. Given the different sets of scrubs colors around, some of them shared by a number of individuals, it had seemed evident that they were being paired into different groups.

"It might not be relevant, but in my world, certain households had particular colors that were theirs. There was a family that had red and gold as their defining colors. My home had blue and gold, as well green."

She looked around the room, "Those of us with grays or greens or reds, perhaps whomever brought us here wants those groups to band together?"

[king_in_the_north]

These last weeks, Robb had kept largely to himself. Small steps had allowed him to leave the safety of Jon's cozy little home, to toil long hours in the field beneath the clean sky, to quietly visit with Margaery and allow his broken mind to begin to knit itself back together again. He'd arrived to this meeting with no small measure of trepidation and had sat away from most of the others, beside the open window, a silent observer to the increasing discord.

He arched a brow at Margaery and cleared his throat. "But what is the connection?" he asked. "Not family, clearly, since Jon wears black and I green. You're wearing my house colors and I yours."

[thekittenqueen]

The urge to flirt was there, especially upon the comment that she and Robb were wearing the colors of each other's houses. Forcing down her coy smile, she focused instead on the matter of hand. She would tease him about this later once they were alone where such things could be discussed properly.

She met his eyes instead with a level of seriousness that she didn't otherwise display. "I think the colors that we are in here aren't related to home, but a system put in place by these. I don't know why certain people are assigned to one group and not to another, but with these separate crates by the colors we wear, it's rather obvious they are placing us in different factions."

{ Weapons, and what to do with them }

[lastofthekellys]

Kate's been agitated the whole bloody time.

This isn't nothing what she knows, and she knows being fucked with. She knows twistings of laws and petty pedantry, she knows insults and rough hands and smiling judges in business deals with the bobbies. She knows being held for weeks without trial, without a charge. She knows blacklists and the spoken black marks that follow you into the grave and beyond.

She doesn't know this. She doesn't know kidnappings to strange areas with stranger people. She doesn't know magically appearing boxes. She doesn't know about crates of tools. Weapons.

Thinking of them as weapons makes her feel sick.

(She knows this, too, horrified whispers of a Dutch shipwreck on the western coast, of murder and wholesale slaughter.)

As the talk about the colours gets heated, more conspiratorial with each breath, Kate gets up and starts to move around the room. Opening windows, doors, to let in the cooling afternoon breeze. Kneel by the fireplace and get that lit because the talk is going on and on, and they are all going to bloody well need to see, aren't they? Particularly if people insist on carrying on worse than a collection of bitter ex-Chartists and Irish agitators on a Saturday night just before lock-up.

Walking back to her seat - she's trying so, so hard not to limp, and she's grateful that she finished this skirt, it makes her movements easier to hide - and she doesn't sit. Not yet. Height can be useful.

"We still have the items," Kate says, loudly. Clearly. Stage-presence turned on like a bright gas-lamp to get people's attentions. "We can ignore the crates and colours horseshit all we want. But we still have this collection of... Tools."

She refuses to say weapons.

"Which begs the question, what do we with them?"

Re: { Weapons, and what to do with them }

[tobeclosetohim]

"Who says we have to play their game and do anything with them?" That's Jo.

Jo who helped find the boxes. Jo who said they had to bring them back.

Jo who has been sitting on that table, taking more mental notes of the goings-on in the room, the actions, reactions, fidgeting, and talking, more than doing any of it herself. Her anger is present. The way dark clouds are, but it's a cold anger. Quiet and still. Absolution that is more logic than emotion, because there are too many people who have too many emotions in this. There are too many pieces and they are all being pulled at among the edges now.

"Our kidnappers give us nothing in the way of weapons for defense, or for feeding ourselves, for fifty-two days," Jo says the number, because it's drilled into her head daily. She carves a sliced mark into her closet back every day, as well as records it in the logbook by the map now. "--and when they do, they put them in various conditions, in color-coded boxes, in a decrepit, overgrown, village that appeared overnight, and happens to be far too like our own."

"If these are the powers our jailers have, pulling us up through fountains, and granting us helpful little boxes from the sky like pets, and making whole settlements appear where nothing was, without a single rumble through this place, what makes you think these weapons, inside their boxes, inside their earlier village, left specifically for us to find, and be driven to this--" There's a gesture with a finger to the room. "--are somehow free of the taint of all that?"

[notabirdcostume]

Midway through one discussion Sam catches movement out of the corner of his eye. It distracts him and he finds himself watching Kate move around the inn to open windows instead of listening to what is being said. He thinks about her injury and frowns a little. He's admitted often enough that he has no medical experience, but he's pretty sure she hasn't healed enough yet to just be wandering around the inn. However, it's also due to his medical inexperience that he doesn't say anything. He just keeps an eye on her while the conversation continues...at least until Kate derails that too.

It's a valid question, but he's a little surprised when the first person to answer is Jo. Of course, it's not her speaking that is surprising but her answer. She's passionate about this, perhaps more passionate about this than about anything else he'd heard from her. Weren't they all wanting weapons? He remembers that being one of the first things he'd looked for upon arriving, but had also talked Kylo out of taking a broken stool leg out as a weapon on the first day. Since then he knows he and several others have shaped crude tools out of what they could find. It seems odd that someone would want to immediately dismiss a gift like this.

But then Sam thinks about it again. Weapons in crates, boxes divided and labeled by color, and left on their doorstep. Not literally, but just about. They'd been desperate for weapons and tools and now there is a gift of them...too good to be true.

Sam thought he had something to say, but after considering Jo's response he's at a loss. There's a part of him that wants to utilize the tools to somehow prove the people sending them the boxes wrong. But how do you do that when you don't even know what they want?

So, instead, Sam crosses his arms and decides to move closer towards Kate to keep a better eye on her. Also to get a better idea for where this conversation is going to go.

[thekittenqueen]

She doesn't want to argue with Jo, especially when she is upset, but it seems a bit foolish to dismiss what could be a helpful means to survive. It was natural for others to be angry and upset with whatever brought them here, but there was something more at stake than grudges and anger. They couldn't let something like that risk their own safety and survival.

"Are we so certain it's a game they wish us to play? We shouldn't be rash about this and throw away some luxuries that might be useful for us. We have in these crates a form of protection against the creatures of this world. We have tools to help us hunt, a skill not all of us can possess. I know nothing about snares or tracking, but I know at least how to fire a bow. It wouldn't be wise to simply ignore these weapons because we don't trust the powers that brought us here. Sometimes we must use the tools they give us until we find a better advantage to turn the tables against them."

She gave an apologetic look to Jo, "I want to be able to eat and not worry about how to manage."

[markwatney]

"Here's the thing," I begin, stepping forward and leveling Jo with a careful look, "I don't care about what is or isn't tainted. I care about making sure that we all survive."

The whole situation has everyone's hackles raised, and I can't help but wonder whether that was intentional. Even operating under what I feel is pretty ironclad logic, I can still feel the irritation like a bit of grit in the heel of my shoe. I'm trying to ignore it, but it's making me a little sharper than good-buddy Mark that all these people here know.

"We are, quite literally, on the brink of starvation on a daily basis. We can barely feed ourselves as it is, and more and more people are climbing out of that fountain. Most of the people here are on a steep learning curve when it comes to fending for themselves. We're pushing a damn boulder up a hill here. And does it suck that our asshole overlords waited this long to give us a break? Yeah. But you know what? I can't afford to be emotionally tied up in all that. I'm trying to make sure people are fed."

[specialise]

Though Raven's one to speak up when she's riled into anger, or in a desire to uncover the truth someone's deliberately hiding in front of her, she'd been content to lean against the wall and let everyone else's mouth do the walking. Steer the conversation to where she needed it to go to get her answers, but nonetheless observe, take it all in, and decide who was worth shadowing and who wasn't.

The weapons debate is one she hates most. On the ground, with those damn kids, and now here.

"A weapon's a weapon," Raven shrugs from her place against the wall. Her arms remain crossed against her chest. It's Mark's words that give her the confidence to speak up, believing her story is one that's worth providing, if only for the context it provides for her own perspective. The ground had been toxic, and Raven had eaten up everything it had to offer.

"My people dropped one hundred kids onto Earth to test whether or not it was survivable after one hundred years of being soaked in radiation." The way she recounts it lacks any emotion. It's a professional recitation of something Raven stands against, and will, always, despite how returning to the ground had lead them to surviving without needing to cull people to ensure oxygen would last a few extra weeks. "You think they cared whether or not it was tainted? Those berries they ate, the animals they killed — they were putting that taint in themselves in order to survive."

She shrugs her shoulder, and her response turns more flippant, "So I say we take them, and we tell these overlords to go float themselves."

[booklegging]

The moments he hears there's going to be a meeting about the crates, Jess sets aside the firewood he's collecting and heads inside. He'd be stupid not to--getting a firsthand account of how these crates were found will help him when he goes out to see these ruins for himself.

He stands among the others at first, expression cool and composed but listening while the debating grows more passionate. He doesn't volunteer his thoughts unprompted; there's enough of that going on already. Eventually Jess turns his attention to the reason they're here--the cache of weapons. They were meant to be found, that much is clear. Why else except as a test? It's the only conclusion that makes sense.

The contents of the crates--what amounts to literal sticks and stones--are a pitifully small bounty that they're obviously not going to toss aside on principles of pride. The real question is, why these things? Why these people? What pattern is he missing? Intently, Jess looks over each item arrayed on the tables. Then he moves on to the crates themselves, turning them over and feeling along them for anything a casual eye would miss.

_{(OOC: Gonna be a rebel and say tag orders are my friend. If you feel like tagging Jess, go ahead and either tag in for a solo thread or pile in together and we'll establish an order. :3)}

[specialise]

Raven remains by the wall, arms crossed, back leaning against it as she listens and tries her best not to roll her eyes. She's seen this all before, but hadn't been privy to the discussions about what to do with a few knickknacks that may or may not make much of an impact on the way a civilisation functions.

She wonders if the Council ever had heated debates like this. She recalls the ones she's had with Bellamy and Clarke, with the kids who thought they knew better when they were letting pride instead of sense talk. None of these people are teenagers hellbent on surviving and outlasting the fear that unbalances them every single day they spend on the ground, but she feels the need to stand back and let them organise how to use weapons she has no interest in trying to snatch for herself.

It gives her an idea, though. She has the pieces and the creativity and the drive, but lacks the tools, and she wonders if those crates have little bits and pieces none of them would think are of any use that she can use.

Watching Jess move toward the crate, she kicks herself off the wall, arms still crossed, to peer inside of it. She hadn't felt welcomed to do so before, instead listening to everyone throw words around, hoping to cling onto some little tangible slip of a fact she'd missed over the last few weeks she's been here.

With a slight quirk to her lip, she cocks her head toward the box his hands are sliding over. "Thinking about crawling inside?"

[seekingvinland]

Thorfinn had something on the edge of a headache forming. He had gotten used to everyone around him speaking English, and by the gods he was learning it and learning better than he had ever expected to learn another language. Though, Danish, his second language had not been hard, it was not far off from Norse, and men in the band spoke both, so he learned both. He had been a boy then. A small child soaking in everything around him, words, curses, weapons and ways.

The boy had grown into a man who wanted to me more than a rabid killing machine. A broken solider trying to start anew.

What he did know besides, the fact that everyone arguing and talking around him was making his head ache since he couldn't keep up, was the fact there was axes and tools. Both of which were useful and needed if they were to survive winter. He could tell for some crazy reason Jo was fighting against their use, he usually trusted her judgement but on this one he kept casting her weary looks. He knew a mutiny when it was brewing. This felt like that. The village was about to split in half.

He pushed off his chair while they were all still talking, moving quickly towards the inn door. He wanted some fresh air, to get away from the noise that to him was useless. He had nothing to offer them, no opinion that someone else hadn't already had, so he choose not to bother. Rather he just went outside and sat by the door to wait till they made a choice.

[itchtokill]

Kol isn't far behind the other Viking--other, because somewhere underneath all his modern adjustments, he still utterly sees himself as he was, back when--when he steps out. He can only imagine most of the discussions going over Thorfinn's head. He only barely grasps the new language he's suddenly so immersed in now.

He doesn't join him immediately where he's sat, just sort of wanders out of the Inn and shoves his hands in his pockets, squinting into the middle distance. All of this has him on edge in ways that are oddly, equally new and familiar at the same time. He knows the games these places play, but this place is new, and the games are only just starting and there is no prior precedent to be eased into, no locals to answer the basic questions. They, the ones here of the first rounds, will be the welcoming committee with the answers later on for future arrivals, assuming any of their lot were here long enough.

After a bit, he does wander to where the other man is standing, slipping easily into his own native tongues when he speaks to him, "How much of that did you catch at all?" Because he figures he can at least fill in blanks for him if he needs to.

{ Disappearances }

[teen_angst_bullshit]

If the goal was to get everyone arguing, then Veronica has to hand it to the folks in charge: Mission accomplished. Her own desire to be part of the discourse surprises her, too long playing second fiddle and forced to watch the people around her do and say terrible things. She knows she's not wise, but she's a smart girl, an observant girl, and it's satisfying to use her voice.

She's been so caught up in the debate that it takes her awhile to pinpoint the source of thin, niggling worry at the back of her mind.

Frowning, she holds up a hand in an effort to try and quiet the room and is only partially successful. "Hey," she says, and then louder, "Hey. When was the last time any of you saw the guys from across the river? You know, the moody one with the dark hair and the redhead."

She'd never caught their names, and has a sinking feeling she's about to be sorry for that.

[lastofthekellys]

"Not since before I buggered up me ankle," Kate allows, after running her memory back. "But it'd been a couple days of neither comin' to eat dinner."

Which, in of itself, isn't odd. The midday meals are hardly compulsory, either to work, to supply, or to eat, and it's not unusual for people to skip a day or two here or there. Particularly loners, particularly if they can handle themselves.

"General Hux is the redheaded gentleman, with the red clothes." Like mine. "I didn't catch the name of his companion. Kyle somethin'?"

The names are important, suddenly.

If they have just upped and vanished.

[teen_angst_bullshit]

"I didn't even think about it, but... Yeah, it's been days," Veronica agrees with a small, slow nod. Every, single day she gets out. She doesn't wander too far -- She's got too many people who would give her a load of shit if she did -- but Mark's taught her a little about what plants to look for, and she likes the excuse to skirt the edges of the village, to take note of what new there is to see.

Except, it's been what wasn't there that should have stood out.

"Maybe they're out hunting or something?" she tries, ignoring the way her stomach wants to twist with anxiety.