sixthiterationlogs | keep that fury deep inside you: primitive weapons plot

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keep that fury deep inside you: primitive weapons plot

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.

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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?"

Anyone who thinks to get possessive or superstitious over a bit of ancient weaponry and make some feel unwelcome to inspect what affects all of them can swagger over and make their case to Jess' face, as far as he's concerned. (Although he'd hope everyone in this group is smart enough not to.)

Until then, he's interested in examining it all for his own peace of mind, to be absolutely sure nothing was missed before they start making use of the find. He's already thinking the crates could be useful for storage or breaking them up for their wood once they're scraped bare of clues. It's sad but true. Beggars can't be choosers.

He's feeling inside of one, looking for any hidden compartments or aspects of its design that are out of the ordinary, when Raven appears on his side. With one ear still tuned to the Great Weapons Debate of 2026 (or whatever years it's supposed to be...), Jess returns her hint of a smile with a humored, if grim, one of his own. "Considering it. Wake me up when someone starts in on color superiority or we get proof of hexed slingshots." It's been a long day already, and the discovery that they have missing people and that their captors are making a move against them is tiring Jess out with the hot air being blown about.

His glance cuts to her and holds there. He hadn't missed Raven's contribution to the dialogue while everything else was going on. "So. Radiation? That sounds unpleasant." At least he could say he had a reference for what magic is, but radiation is new to him; Raven and the things she talks about are out in far left field with the others discussing "growing" villages and alternate universes.

Could the reason why they remember different years and grasp different concepts be because they're from different worlds? Is that he really the basket he wants to put his eggs in? He doesn't know what he believes, but there's definitely something impossibly strange about this all.

It's easy for Raven to not get caught up in the alternate world theory. She simply divides everyone into a category: space people, ground people, and weird as fuck people. If she thinks of them like the ground has been divided up at home — Sky Person, Mountain Man, and Grounder — then it makes it easier for her to accept other people have different experiences, even if the more finer of details don't quite add up to the overall picture of the world having gone boom in a nuclear attack.

It's easier. She's never claimed this logic to be anything but a headache blocker.

She drops her gaze at his comment. There's a ghost of a sting in her leg where the Mountain Men had drilled into her bone for marrow, but she doesn't reach down to rub at it. Radiation immunity has come at a cost, and it's a story she doesn't want to tell, not with all of these people around, at least.

"World was bombed one hundred years ago," she says, it sounding like a recitation. She determinedly doesn't look at him. She focuses on the box, on his hands and his attempts to find something inside of it. "The radiation's still in the air, in everything. If it was unpleasant for anyone, those floaters deserved it," she says, a touch too acidic for it to be ignored.

Jasper may be torn up over the loss of Maya to radiation poisoning, but Raven hasn't shed a single tear for any man or woman involved. Good riddance. It's a thought she has over and over whenever she thinks of that damn mountain.

But she thinks of it now, of how their skin had blistered and popped. It'd been quick. The poison in the air, the taint of it, had crawled under their skins and suffocated them from the inside out. She recalls that damn biowarfare of the Grounders, how it'd been slow and steady, piercing her skin silently and unfeeling, and had almost knocked her off her ass.

She looks at him and arches her brow. Her voice is low, "If these weapons were tainted with whatever, don't you think we'd be experiencing it right now? Poison can be slow, but considering how it was lugged over here, the two who did all the heavy lifting look pretty fine to me."

"But it must have been livable or you wouldn't be here talking to me."

The bombings--she'd mention that her first day here. The radiation she's talking about must be a kind of toxic fallout, not unlike the residue from Greek fire.

What's staggering about her story isn't the unfamiliar terminology, it's that she remembers a global catastrophe from a century ago, meaning she would have had to be born in space where everybody knows there's no life and no air, nothing sustainable. "I thought you were kidding about coming from on high. You don't look what I'd imagine a real, live alien to look like."

Jess can't decide what's more unimaginable: children being born in the cold night sky, or children being dropped into a war zone to spare more important men and women from risking their lives.

Actually, Jess already knows which it is. The latter is a sickeningly common occurrence. Oxford had been exactly that: a challenge to sink or swim. Had the Library gotten its way, Wolfe would've sunk and dragged them all down with him, and they would've lost more than just three innocent lives.

He looks down, too, not slowing down in his efforts even while his mind chases around impossible thoughts and cheerless memories. "Whoever went through the trouble of bringing us here didn't do it to kill us by opening the wrong crate. They want us for something. Something that requires us alive to find the 'gifts' they leave out and scratch our heads over their color divisions."

Raven curls her fingers around the edge of the crate and leans in, eyes scanning for anything that could be of use to her. A screw, a bolt, anything that belongs on the bench of her workstation. Unsurprisingly, the crate offers her no such gifts.

Her fingers remain curled around the edge. She thinks of the Mountain Men, how they'd offered her friends food and clothes and comfort and companionship. The crates are almost the same gesture, if a little less enthusiastic to gain their trust in one sweep. It's merely a small token, almost like the Grounders and their bid for peace with many stipulations that showcased their paranoia and distrust of Arkadia.

"I'm not an alien," she opts for. She looks at him, still somewhat bent over, fingers around the lip. "The space station I was born on was a part of an evacuation plan the world had in place in case of a nuclear attack. There was an underground bunker on Earth, too, where people survived. Space has radiation. I can deal with living in a world where there's radiation. People who haven't been exposed can't."

Though it's more of a lecture for him, conversationally given to him in hopes of seeing him finally accept what she's saying, she's trying to piece it altogether. Looking at these Crate Men similarly to the Mountain Men, she wonders what it is she has in common with the people in this room.

It isn't radiation immunity. She doubts Jess Brightwell has it.

Standing at her full height, she flexes her fingers. "But I doubt that's why I was almost drowned in a fountain." She looks at him, then drops her gaze to his scrub top. "You're not grey because you're immune to radiation like me."

Edited (i didn't like my sentence leave me alone) 2016-08-24 13:28 (UTC)

Well, she doesn't have antennae poking out of her head or green skin that he can see. He'll take her word for it.

"Never heard of those kinds of weapons," he says as he finishes with his current crate and moves on to another. Nothing out of the ordinary has turned up so far, but at least he'll be able to rest assured knowing he'd been thorough. "But we're exceptionally good at inventing bigger and better ways to hurt each other without considering the impact. Poisonous gases. Toxic soil. I get the idea."

He appreciates the explanation as much as he wishes he had a Codex on hand to research what she's talking about to shore up his understanding. Khalila had been right; he misses Scholar work. He'll always want to take in new things.

Yes, even the inexplicable, alien things that throw him for a loop.

He joins Raven in looking at their scrub colors. "And I doubt we're grey because we're from the Viking era and speak ancient Icelandic like Thor over there. I've heard it said grey means indecision and a lack of confidence in color theory. Sounds just like you." His smile is clearly joking.

Her smile is brief but still amused at his quip, but she doesn't rise to it as he may have been anticipating. Her brows furrow as soon as the amusement fades, which is quickly, as she looks at him as though he's said something she understands.

"Acid fog." She looks away, eyes narrowing slightly as she lets those cogwheels in her brain spin. She doesn't understand half of what he says of his own experiences, speaking of The Library, of books, Alexandria, Egypt, but the weapons he lists she easily attaches to.

This town hasn't had a bout of acid fog. No toxic soil. No poisonous gases. Nothing.

She lifts her gaze to watch him, remaining bent over the crate before she stands at her full height, and narrows her eyes. "You've never heard of a bomb?"

"... Acid fog, sure." That, along with radiation, sound absolutely horrible and best avoided at all costs.

Once Jess has emptied the crate of its contents, he turns it on its side and continues the efficient, businesslike frisk from one side to the other. The question almost gets him to stop and laugh a little if he were prone to giving into distractions (or laughing). Does he know what bombs are?

Could a world exist without bombs? Where there are people, there are wonderful inventions, and destructive inventions. Blessing and curse.

"Yes, I know about bombs. Radiation, though, that's not a term I've heard used. I've never heard of anything that would last a hundred years like that, but then again, before you and Carter came along I hadn't heard of sustainable life in space, either. Take that how you want."

Keeping an open mind comes with some growing pains, but he can at least admit he doesn't know everything.

It's wrong, but she's glad he knows about bombs. It means he isn't so alien to her.

Jess speaks of things she has little context for, and it's because of the nuclear attack that had struck all those pieces from the board of Earth one hundred years ago. But she's been trying to align what he says with what she thinks they could mean when it comes to what she knows. The Library is the Council, Egypt is Earth and sometimes space.

"Radiation's the energy a bomb leaves behind," she says, voice even. Raven sometimes has taken the role of a tutor to some on the Ark, encouraged by Sinclair to share her expertise, if only because she was a wealth of knowledge and if something were to happen to her — It's not a thought she likes to have, but it's one that drives her to be recklessly stupid in her false belief she has invincibility.

She watches him search through the crate, offering none of her assistance. "You let one off, I think it isn't that bad. I heard about a place that was bombed in history, and it didn't really affect any other portion of the world. One bomb doesn't wipe out the majority of mankind. A hell of a lot of them do. And they leave a big, deadly footprint."

Raven doesn't bend down again, declaring the crate she stands before to be useless. Her lips quirk upward when she teases, "For someone so obsessed with some place that holds books, you really should read up on stuff."

"I'm not 'obsessed', that's just how it is. If it existed, I'd have heard about it," he returns.

She sounds like Brendan in that moment, and that's always a mixed bag of emotions, a nostalgic draught with a bitter aftertaste. He'd give almost anything to be out of this place and hear his brother's sharp jibes again, but at the same time Brendan hadn't seen the value in reading as Jess had. Sticking his nose in history books too much and the family ledger too little had become a point of contention between them.

It might even, upon closer examination, be the last conversation they'll have had if things here go sideways. ... you're just a spear carrier. A nothing, dead in battle a year from now.

Brendan would hate to know he'd been wrong about that, too. There's a chance Jess will be dead much sooner, the cause nothing so noble as battle.

"One side of a war bombs the other--that's the basic tenant of all wars. But how does the entire globe end up being bombed to the point of an extinction event? That I can't figure out."

"Simple. Greed."

Raven doesn't know how the world had been one hundred years ago, but she doubts it's changed much. The landscape may be pocketed with craters, contaminated with radiation, and completely spare of anything that had once existed to make the world the thriving, hungry beast it'd been a century before, but she believes human nature never changes.

The Grounders are greedy for land. The Mountain men had been greedy for air. The Ark had been greedy for home.

"Think about it. If you have a collection of bombs, who's going to want to piss you off?" She glances toward the crate she stands beside and taps her hand against it. "I'm thinking these guys have given us the shit weapons. Where's the guns? You can't do much damage with a crossbow, like how someone who wants to threaten to kill the world can't do it without having more than one lousy bomb."

"You have to be alive to enjoy having power," he points out, glancing her way. "Whole countries don't just start wiping their neighbours out when it's mutually assured destruction on both sides."

Who would escalate a conflict when the price for it is a habitable planet?

But then he thinks of Burners and their willingness to sacrifice themselves and everyone around them to make a point. All the same, even burners have limits. They want the freedom to have books in every household, and they can't do that if they bombed said households off the map, poisoning the land to the point people have to fly to the moon to find a place to live.

The idea is enough to make Jess' spine tingle uncomfortably. Imagining leaving behind all of the feats of human ingenuity behind and watching it be destroyed is too sad.

"The Library exists to prevent that very thing from happening. Preserving knowledge comes before everything else. That makes a book worth more than a life, and protecting culture and history more important than a war." His movements slow as gives into the thought and follows it to its conclusion. "It's supposed to be anathema to attack a library--it's been enough to stop battles mid-conflict if the Library feels moved to intervene. I'll be the first to say this sounds impossible, but... the way you describe things makes me think of what the world would be like if the Library wasn't there to arbitrate. If it was left to chaos."

It's eerie, if he's being honest. Raven's hints about her life have always been eerie, but the more he hears, the stronger the impression grows. He sighs.

"We're the chimpanzees and these are our tools," he says finally, looking down at the slim pickings on the tables.

"That's stupid."

Perhaps it's easier for a girl who cares very little about the state of books to believe it. If she's gleaned anything about Jess Brightwell, it's that he's afraid of this library. The Library. Like it's some force that'll come and strike him down now, and maybe he's a little afraid by her always talking it down, stripping it away by not being afraid.

She'll easily admit she hasn't taken the time to understand where he comes from. His own inability to understand the world's been decimated for over one hundred years withstanding, it's almost like he refuses to believe the very thing he's afraid of and has been taught is all encompassing and powerful had been wiped out.

Assuming it had. Raven's head's been thumping every time someone opens their mouth and speaks to her about what they know of culture.

Though tempted to look away, she doesn't. Matter-of-factly, she lectures, "A book's only worth more than a life if you let it. And you don't think the world's chaotic? Anyone who's hungry for power and exerts their influence with fear tactics is chaos in the making. Just because it's more tightly controlled and looks pretty on the outside doesn't mean it's not chaotically ugly on the inside."

She folds her arms against her chest and arches her brow challengingly at him. "I'm not anyone's chimpanzee. Are you?"

Jess works on the crate without saying anything for a moment. She's not wrong, but what she brushes off, he's seen up close, in uniform on every street corner. Experience has taught him to be more careful with sharing his beliefs. "It's not that simple," he says evenly. It rarely is with these things.

The absence of a healthy sense of fear is precisely why he can tell she doesn't fully comprehend what he's talking about. If she'd seen the wasteland the Library had made of France, she'd know why some things are easier said than done. He looks over at her. When he does, what he sees in place of her flatly defiant gaze is how quickly the Library would strike her down for that stance, like it had Wolfe and Thomas for sharing an idea. And Morgan for daring to run. And Prakesh for asking questions. Danton... even his own brother...

So many people crushed and swept aside like insects under the fists of a behemoth. Sealing her death would be easy as scribbling an order in a Codex, and she doesn't see it.

She really is a lucky girl.

"I think you don't have a world like mine. That you remember, anyway, that's my point. Regardless of what the Library is or isn't, that tight control means starting a war of that magnitude would be out of the question without overtaking the Library first. And that doesn't happen. So I'm thinking that's where the difference lies."

But Jess doesn't want to be held responsible for a debate on the Library's philosophy, or global catastrophes that have or haven't happened. Time to get back to what has them all assembled at the inn.

"Never mind that, it's apples and oranges." His gaze dips back to the primitive tools. "I'm definitely not here to play slings and arrows, and neither is anyone else. If they're after something, they'll get the message across somehow."

"Uh huh."

She watches him. She knows what he's doing. It's a tactic Finn had used on her several times while growing up. Whenever she ventured too close to something he didn't want her to discover, or he felt she'd push him out of an airlock with her stubborn refusal to let it rest, he'd always change the subject.

Finn was better at it than Jess.

"Look, the crates are useless, and so are those weapons. Unless you know how to use a bow and arrow, the only thing I can contribute here is fixing some of that shit up, and this doesn't really interest me. We've got weapons, we've got crates, and we know those guys who are looking on us are watching."

As far as she knows, this delivery means little to her. It's already sparking so much paranoia she could almost build a brace out of it, and she doesn't want to. Building that sort of contraption means that they're unable to repair themselves, and Raven doesn't have that much of a defeatist attitude anymore.

In fact, she disregards any comfort he may be seeking by changing the subject. Dismissing it, she picks it right up where he drops it, and she refuses to let it go.

"Did you ever think maybe it's the same fruit? I may not have a world like yours, but did you ever think maybe I'm from a world where this Library either took everyone out or someone took the Library out?"

Folding her arms against her chest, she arches her brow, lips curved slightly, and appears stubborn and challenging and as unmovable as any boulder. "So let's talk about those damn apples and oranges and berries. We've got a weapon, and we should use it."

Isn't this Library of his so powerful because of knowledge? It's right in his hands, and he's not even seeing it.

Finished with his current crate, he steps down the line to the next one, pausing with his hands resting on lid. Raven's description of radiation and mass evacuation had sparked a thought, and he'd been musing out loud by bringing the Library up--he has only himself to blame for her taking his words and running with them now.

"All right then, let's talk. You hadn't even heard of the Great Library before I brought it up, and I definitely don't remember nuclear weaponry or travelling in space," he replies for the sake of argument. "Where does that leave us? Time travel? I'm so far back in your time that all of what I know is a distant memory or the future? Or we're not from the same world at all, but alternate worlds that diverged somewhere?"

This is what he'd really meant by apples and oranges. This inescapable difference of perspective. Jess is at a loss for how to resolve it between himself and the other people assembled in town, and over the month he'd begun to think it's an 'all or nothing' choice. Accept everything's possible or nothing. He's still on the fence.

"And that's just us. We have people who believe in magic and other universes that trap people like honeypots. If that's true, our abductors aren't just sending a sign with these crates, they have the ability to bend time and space like it's nothing."

"It's 2149 for me."

Stating the year won't make any difference, not when they're so far removed from their own worlds. It's a concept Raven can't quite dive into. Science is the basis of everything for her, but she tries to extend her imagination, let herself fly on it even if she worries she'll fall.

"If it's the same for you, that makes this even more messed up. But we're all focusing on the wrong parts." The conversation at hand has been, if anything, an eye opener for Raven. Always capable of fixing things, she's been looking at everyone in the room like they're a piece of technology or machinery. Everyone here has been brought to be a part of a machine, and she's been trying to piece together who's what part.

It's easier to break it down, look at the individual pieces, learn what they're used for and how durable they are. She's already started with herself, but it's difficult to expand on her own observations without a sounding board.

And that happens to be Jess Brightwell.

She lets out a breath, and drops her gaze to look at the crate he stands before. "Everyone's looking at the pieces that don't fit, and they're rubbing them together to start friction. I fixed a one hundred year old pod and shot myself down to Earth from a space station with no guarantee that I'd survive, and I didn't kick major ass by focusing on the negative differences."

2149. His eyebrows rise and then fall. A part of him had been expecting as much, given Raven's insistence that futuristic space travel is possible, but another part of him is still surprised. "It's not the same for me. We're about a hundred and twenty three years apart."

If 2026 is difficult for some of the others here to contemplate, the twenty second century is off the map. And then some.

Jess looks at her calmly for a long second, expression indecipherable. Then finally, without warning, he cracks the faintest smile. "All right, but consider the evidence: that could be explained away by you being a crazy adrenaline junkie."

A bit of the pot calling the kettle black, but she doesn't have to know that.

She's come a long way in a short space of time, no longer bristling whenever Jess Brightwell happens to say something that feels and sounds and is shaped like a criticism. If Raven Reyes is anything, it's an adrenaline junkie. She doesn't throw herself into one hundred year old pods and hurtle to Earth because she's a cowardly cat.

Looking at him, she rolls her eyes, and teases back, "And you being a hundred and twenty three years into the past explains that stick up your ass."

He's all serious and no play, and Raven's seen that in a few of her good friends. It's going to be the end of both Bellamy and Clarke, and Raven's always hoped there'd come a moment, even if it lasts for just a breath, that they'll settle themselves back down on the ground and give someone else the responsibility and burdens they bear.

Or Bellamy does. Raven doesn't know what to make of Clarke anymore.

"You're focusing on the frivolous stuff. Which makes sense, you're a nerd." She shrugs her shoulders, letting the comment slide off of her with a warm kind of note. "But mechanics can't take in all the crap lying around. You find the pieces of something else that work, and you apply them to your project. What doesn't work is you and me focusing on you being old and me being young. You following me, grandpa?"

"Sorry, I didn't realize jokes have gone out of fashion in the future."

Frivolous. Not many people have applied that word to him in his lifetime. His smile turns insular, amused by the inside joke.

"You say that as if I can't do both. We nerds are quite good at multitasking. Our project is escape, but theirs is keeping us right where we are. The more we know about why we were chosen and why our memories don't line up, the better we'll understand who we're dealing with. Besides, aren't you curious?"

About 'other worlds'? What it all means?

The intensity of her curiosity is chewing her up inside, but Raven doesn't let it consume her. It doesn't become one of her projects, tangible between her fingers as she investigates until they're bleeding. Her interest lies in her leg, and how she can feel everything, from the cold wooden floor of the inn when she kneels to when she sits on her leg for too long and summons pins and needles to take hold of her.

"I am," she admits. "But I have to stay focused. This isn't something you can multitask, even if you're a big nerd." She looks at him pointedly, a joke, if you will, before she shakes her head and sighs. "I'm pretty sure where we're from is important, but there has to be a common link between what we all know. I doubt there's much in common with our worlds. Considering yours thinks a library is important and mine doesn't, I can't see a common denominator yet."

Far be it for this big nerd to contradict her approach, though inwardly Jess disagrees. The larger puzzle at work isn't one he's able to turn away from; until he can figure it out, no clue is too frivolous.

Them. This place. The scrubs, the boxes... It's all too well-planned. Until he understands the game in motion, he'll keep asking questions. If his friends were here, Jess thinks--no, he knows--they'd help tackle the issue as they'd been doing with the matter of Thomas, and a pang of homesickness constricts his chest at the thought. He'd take their help right about now. Even Dario's. Even Glain's, if just to see her smash a crate and yell at everyone to get back to the matter at hand.

But they're not here. He is. And Raven's right about one thing--the debates raging about the scrub colors and what to do with the weapons are leading them around in circles.

"For now we'll have to wait and see," he says. "Eventually they'll make a move. Then we'll have our chance to learn more."

But he hopes they can make their own move before that happens.

She exhales deeply, but her shoulders don't sag. It's what Raven's been afraid of. She doesn't want to wait for whoever's out there to make a move. It's what's struck so many of her friends down to their knees and the reason why she's had to pick up a shovel and bury too many of them.

But it's all they have. With the conversation circling down the drain, evoking paranoia and unhelpful suggestions that seem to be piling up in a corner of being spoken but not quite discussed, it's what needs to happen. Something needs to explode, and Raven's fearful of how far the shrapnel will fly.

Arms against her chest, she leans the elbow of one against the back of her hand and presses her fingers against her chin. "I just hope it's not a big move. There has to be a way to prepare for it."

Feelings tucked back behind the screen of casualness that usually comprises his demeanor, Jess watches her think, his sidelong glance lingering on her longer this time. They share the same concern. Everyone in this room shares the same concern--it's a heady feeling of anticipation.

"I don't think we'll have to worry about nuclear attack or acid fog just yet." If Raven's expecting the worse, she hides it well.

With the last crate checked, he sets it back in its row alongside the other five. Nothing unusual to speak of there... if one ignored the fact that everything about the crates is unusual. He'd had low expectations about finding evidence leading back to their captors to begin with. They're too efficient to leave behind something obvious like a fingerprint, and too mysterious already to need hidden compartments to add to their mystique.

"As much as I hate to say it, any way we choose to respond now that we have these weapons is playing into their hands. But spears and a new axe only help us. We're better equipped than we were two days ago."

She's not worried about either, because Raven Reyes can stop it.

If she has to believe in anything, it's herself. She's only ever had herself to depend on. When Mom had turned her back on her, Raven had learned to become self-sufficient. She knows where her talents lie, and she knows, despite his tease, if there was a threat of acid fog, there were steps that needed to be taken, and she possessed that knowledge.

A part of her wonders if the best way to plan for a possible attack was to keep their heads screwed on, but she doesn't so much as say it.

Glancing at him, her gaze settles on the box he stands closest to. "They're shit," she says, and glances over her shoulder to look at the weapons that aren't in top shape. The Grounders had better versions than what they'd been provided here, but they were also handmade and stronger for it. "I'll have to fix them."

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