Sixth Iteration

WHO: Clint Barton
WHERE: Area behind the inn/police station, fields/forest, and behind the boathouse (all in 6I)
WHEN: October 1-3
OPEN TO: Anyone
WARNINGS: Nothing yet; will update if anything changes

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( October 1 - Archery Lessons )

The leaves are starting to turn colors, everything except the needlers going gold or red or brown, and it's getting less comfortable to wander around in shirtsleeves although he's still doing it most days. But back home that cooling and color changing means something specific to him that it doesn't mean to a lot of people he worked with - namely, hunting season. It's something he grew up with and still participates in, back home, and here it'll be even more important considering the number of mouths they're going to have to feed over the winter, even with the recent losses of a fair number of people, since among them were some of the regular hunters. In the latter half of September, Clint's switched his focus more towards food acquisition than construction and repair for that reason (and the fact that the scavenged wreckage is beginning to run out), but good as he is he knows he can't feed over fifty people alone. There's other hunters, but not enough, and not nearly enough equipment. It's time to get to making more and teaching other people to use them. Finding Baze trying to make bows and arrows a couple weeks before had basically forced his hand, and Clint had offered to teach him exactly what to do, both in crafting and in actual shooting.

Now, the fruits of their labor are ready for testing. The four bows aren't that great, they were all done in too big a rush and probably nothing's going to last longer than late spring, but they're even and basically smoothed out and Clint figures even getting some basic weapons out into the community will help and he'll have the winter to really get down to crafting some good bows. The arrows are much better; there's a huge box of arrowheads in the inn storage, more than even he could ever possibly need in a year, and he'd liberally helped himself to them and feathers from some of the geese he'd brought down to make quality arrows. They're more likely to break than the bows simply because they're thinner and they're the things making direct contact with whatever's being shot at, but they'll shoot straight and true until then, and their non-wood parts can likely be reclaimed and used again.

He's also taken five of the abundance of snuggies from the inn storage (why would there be so many snuggies?) and rolled them all up to make a target that he'd balanced on a tree stump and weighed down with some rocks so it wouldn't go rolling off into the sunset when it got shot. The blue of the outer snuggie is eye-catching, and he's carefully testing each bow and its cord of tightly twisted duct tape with the new arrows. They work... well enough. Not what he's used to, but they'll work fine for anyone with some sort of skill at aiming - and he's willing to help people find out if they have that skill. He might even make this a real thing every few days until it gets too cold for any but the most dedicated hunters to be out seeking a target.

He looses an arrow, which pierces his fluffy target, then speaks to whoever's watching him while reaching for the next one and not moving his focused sight on one bit. "If you wanna try it out, come on over. Just don't get in the gallery."

( October 2 - Dastardly Tricks )

In the vein of archery, Clint's taken to roaming the forests looking for good slim branches he can cut for arrows for about an hour a day, and today's no exception. Archery lessons went decently well and he's cautiously optimistic about their chances at finding enough game. If the bows don't break. If they don't run out of arrows. If there's not another natural disaster. If- So, yeah, looking for more supplies is always good. He also keeps his eyes open for any branches he could use to make another bow, but those are harder to find. He's debating binding reeds together to give them another one, as makeshift as that is.

It's almost harvest time, so he's not taken aback when he sees the apple hanging from the tree in front of him - big, red, bright and shiny, like the tree had been tended by the foremost gardeners in the world from the time it was a sapling. Their own fruit output looks pretty good, but none of them are as perfect as that sample. Clint doesn't even try to stop himself from reaching up and picking it, not realizing any significance in the fact that it's just inside his comfortable reach, and-

-it vanishes in a little puff of apple-scented air, prompting an outburst of дерьмо́! and him nearly dropping the small bundle of sticks he'd gathered to season for arrows. "I was looking forward to that," he mutters, regathering the sticks he'd fumbled and continuing on through the trees. Without realizing that he'd come away with something even if it wasn't a nice, juicy apple: a set of soft gray, fluffy bunny ears and a matching white-tipped tail smashed flat under his scrubs pants.

( October 3 - Under Construction )

Did Clint want to go outside and face a few dozen people who were probably still laughing at the stupid ears and tail? No. Is that what he's doing? Yes. Well, sort of.

He's gone out after breakfast at the house, sure, but even though he's not hiding, he's not exactly hanging out in the middle of the village tempting everyone to tease him. While he's still one hundred percent not happy with the trick played on him, the snow that had dusted the ground when he'd woken up had lit a fire under his ass on a project he'd been working at off and on for about a month. The days had been getting chillier, hunting season was coming, sure, but snow? Whatever hands are controlling the weather, he's pretty sure they're about to fuck with the residents again. Over the past few weeks, Clint - and lately, Baze - have been forming mud bricks with some plant fiber mixed in, leaving them to dry after being shaped in a wooden frame Clint had lashed together from branches and paracord. It's something they can only work on on days with no rain, since the bricks need to dry in the sun, but they've manufactured a respectable pile of bricks that are more or less 12"x6"x4".

Today's all about putting that together. Using the mud technique, Clint had cleared a small swath of grass and moss and other ground cover from a small area behind the boathouse and mixed it up to form a concave "dish" of mud in the ground, which he's now piling the bricks around in a square formation, leaving space for a door that he's planning on stealing from one of the damaged homes. He's also got a few thick, more or less straight branches piled off to the side, chopped down to matching lengths that are clearly for some latter step in the process. But the smokehouse he's been planning is finally being assembled, and hopefully soon it'll be ready to start preserving their meats.