thequietyear | GAME OPEN

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GAME OPEN

The storm ends at some point during the night and with it comes a restful, almost enforced sleep. There's still a chill in the air when the morning comes, but it's being chased away by the warm spring sun. There's even birds singing, of all things, as if the view outside the cave wasn't quite idyllic enough. Almost too idyllic, some might say, but being paranoid never got anyone anywhere, right?

Immediately outside the cave is a broad valley. Not as green as it could be, much of the grass is brown, but there's a few tufts of proper, lush vegetation poking through. Immediately outside of the cave is a large stone head, almost Olmec-like in design, with an oddly contented smile. A sign leaning up against it declares that it's 'open for business'. Nearby, tossed carelessly onto the ground, are a few tools. Shovels, axes, saws, and the like. Rusty and dinged up, but serviceable.

Off a ways is a large forest. Opposite of it is a river, and the grass is definitely greener on the other side. And, a few dozen feet outside of the cave, are the Blank Men. Tall, pure white, smooth, and the instant the new residents lay eyes on them, they know what they're for. How they know, no one can say. They just do. Whether that makes them trustworthy, that's up in the air.

Far off in the distance, there's a massive lake that the water runs off into.

The sky's blue, the air is clean, and there's a whole year before Winter comes. The world is theirs to make of it as they will. How will they start?

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Well. Isn't this just dandy? Tenten's in a strange place, surrounded by people she doesn't know, and presented with... What? Tools? A labor force? She shivers, residual chill from the cave lingering, and shakes her head. This was just too weird. But it wasn't another genjutsu, of that she was certain.

First things first. She glances around and steps forward, fingering one of her scrolls. "I've got some supplies, enough for four people, but not a lot. We're going to have to do some scavenging, whether we plan on sticking around or moving on to see if we can find someone else." She glances around, frowning just a little. "Sorry, I'm Tenten. A Hidden Leaf shinobi. I don't think I caught everyone else's names?"

"I'm Larkin," he says, looking around. "There's... well, at least there's tools here. Enough to make some sort of shelter, probably."

He unslings his long-las and leans it against a tree, picking up an axe. It's not the best axe he's ever seen, but it's not unusable. Faint blessings, given the weird Blank Men hanging around, but he'll take what he can get.

The fidgety man in the green ruana speaks up hesitantly, as he moves to inspect their assortment of available tools. "...I'm Bruno. Madrigal." He's not sure if his name will mean anything to his companions; they're all complete strangers to him.

"A shelter's a good idea... something for tonight, but also um..." He motions sheepishly towards the Blank Men. "We have a construction crew. I think we're supposed to be here a while. We should figure out something for the long-term too."

His name doesn't mean anything to Larkin, but that doesn't really matter. "Are you sure they'll do it right? Iron men... I don't really trust them. I'd rather do it myself."

"I don't know - I know what they're for, somehow, but not whether they're good at it - it's more that... we have a time limit. We have to be ready before winter. ...I don't know what for, exactly..."

Bruno shrinks in on himself, looking awkward. He's not sure how he knows these things - he doesn't remember any visions about this place. He glances around at the others, wondering if they have similar ideas sticking in their heads, or is this another weird Bruno-thing. He kind of hopes that, for once, it's not just a Bruno-thing. If they all mysteriously have this information it'd be harder to explain the how, sure, but it'd also mean he doesn't get singled out as especially peculiar yet.

Edited 2022-02-03 02:27 (UTC)

"Winter's harsh," he says, "but... oh, we'll probably have to use them, won't we?"
He knows that winter's coming, too, though he's not sure how. He's not getting spots in his vision, though. No headache. This isn't a seizure coming on. What it is, he's not sure.

"There's a long time between now and winter," she points out. "But there's only a few of us here now. There's a lot more in there," Tenten jerks her thumb towards the cave, "still frozen. If they're going to wake up any time soon, I don't have supplies enough for that." She shakes her head, giving the Blank Men a pensive stare. "Those things creep me out, but I don't think we're going to have a choice but to use them, y'know?"

"I agree," he says, grudgingly, "If we're to build anything suitable, we'll have to use those things. It's... inevitable, I suppose." He's not going to be the first to approach one, though.

Bruno listens to the others as he looks around, taking in the lay of the land. When the others finish, he gives the Blank Men a wary once-over as well - he suspects they all find the things a bit creepy. He clears his throat. "Well, we don't have to build anything permanent yet - we probably shouldn't, not before we've got a better sense of what's a good location for a base. Like er - Tenten, was it? Like Tenten said, there aren't many of us yet. We don't need anything elaborate right away."

He looks to the others for direction. "Do you think we should scout around first, or get started on some shelter right away? We'll need food and water..." He gestures towards the woods (there's probably something edible in there?), then the lake and river; and then something occurs to him. "...I, uh, don't know how to cook." Does someone else? He hopes at least one of them can do more than boil water.

They'll have to give them names or something. Tenten doesn't have nametags on her, but maybe they can make signs for names. Maybe find some way to get them clothes, too.

"The 'yet' part is a bit worrisome." Just how many people are in those pillars, anyway? She'd been too cold to get a decent count going. "If we're serious about preparing for more than just us, we'll need shelter, yeah, but also some sort of food storage." Tenten can keep food, sure, but she doesn't want to have her entire day spent giving people something to eat. There was a difference between being useful and just being... convenient. Ugh. "I can cook. And store food, for that matter, but I don't want to be the one handing out food to everyone. We'd have better luck drying whatever fruit or smoking whatever meat we can find to preserve the stuff."

"I can... well, I can cook, but not more than basic things," Larkin says, "I can smoke meat and preserve things. And I can hunt for meat." He's got a good eye for that, at least. "For starters, we can probably just do whatever amongst ourselves, but as more people start... coming out, we can assign duties. Make a roster."

Bruno nods along. "That's good; that you both know all this stuff about food, and storing it... and hunting too..." All things he's no good for. Oh dear. What can he do? He needs to contribute. "I, uh... I've got some experience with building... we just rebuilt our house - or. we had, at some time. before this place...."

How'd any of them get here?

"- Ah, well, anyway! I can help with structures, and upkeep. I know about those."

"Great," Larkin says, managing a smile, "I don't know much about building beyond emergency shelters. If I tried to tell them," he nods at the Blank Men, "what to do, we'd end up with a pile of bricks or something."

"Bricks are good." Random piles of them, less so. "I don't know much about construction, so I'd be taking your lead on that." She grins and flexes a bicep. "At least I've got youth on my side."

No one other than her is going to find that funny, she thinks, but who can begrudge a private joke?

Drifting back to a more serious expression, she bites her thumb and glances at the Blank Men again. "So, Bruno's got buildings down. Larkin and I can handle food. I can do basic first aid stuff, if something unfortunate happens. And some scouting around. Um." She taps her lower lip, then shakes her head. "It feels like I'm forgetting something."

Bruno smiles a little. Sounds like they've got a handle on where to start, at least! "Bricks are useful, it's the placement..." He also gives a quiet chuckle At Tenten's youth-comment. He and Larkin do both seem to be on the older side of things, don't they, heh.

Hm, she does have a point about her list missing something though. He can think of a couple things. "Well, we'll have to do something about more clothes eventually; but more pressing is water. We'll need a regular supply of it." He indicates the river and far-off lake. "We're got sources, but I can't tell yet how far off they are. When we build, we should pick someplace that isn't too far for lots of fetching... Or else build some sort of pipe system..."

Hm! He pauses to consider the logistics of that. He's done a fair bit of DIY plumbing at home, but he's never tried starting from scratch - the house had had pipes already, just not necessarily where he'd needed them... Hmmm. "...An upriver source for drinking water, and downriver for bathing..."

Larkin's certainly on the other side of fifty from Tenten. Hey, they've got youth and experience on their side.

"Some broad, flat area near water," he says, "like... there." He points a ways off, to a flat area near a river. "I'd like a spring nearby, but I don't think there's any here."

He goes over to the pile of tools, dropping the axe next to it. There's a saw, shovel, pitchfork, for some reason, a hoe... All things he's seen people use and a few he's used himself. But he's always been more of a hunter than a farmer.

It's okay, they can just admit that they're old farts. Not that Tenten would ever say as much, not to their faces.

"Could we... I don't know, dig a little channel?" She squats and traces her finger in the dirt to illustrate. There was the river, then she draws a line shooting off diagonally from it, then curves that line back around to meet with the river again. "I mean, I'm no engineer. Would that be feasible enough as a spring replacement? Or should we just be digging wells?" She stands, brushing her hands off against her pants, and frowns. What if the river flooded? Well, there were things they could do to prevent that. "If we had more tools, I'd think about a water wheel or something, but..."

Piping. Plumbing. Talk about subjects she had no clue about. She wishes Yamamoto were here. After he practically rebuilt Konoha, it'd be nice to have his skills available. She groans, rubbing at her forehead. "I'm bringing up too much stuff, sorry. We should keep it simple for now, keep from overcomplicating things."

Bruno agrees with Larkin's judgment on location; he nods, still half-thinking about the plumbing issue. While Larkin returns to their tools, Bruno watches Tenten sketch in the dirt and listens to her suggestions. "...I don't know. It might work; but I've never tried anything like that before..."

After she seems to give herself a headache, he tries to smile reassuringly. "One step at a time, right? Heh, maybe by the time we've got a roof over our heads, someone with more water experience will have woken up back there." He gestures towards the cave behind them. "As long as we have a way of collecting the water somehow, we'll manage..." Er. Actually...

Bruno turns back to the tools as well, looking for buckets, wondering whether they have any at all, and if they do have any whether they're rusty like the other tools. Step one might be 'construct a bucket'.

Edited 2022-02-05 03:33 (UTC)

"A well's better as a spring," Larkin says, coming back to them, "I bet the Blank Men could dig one. But starting with four walls and a roof is best. We can haul water for ourselves if we have to."

Haul with what, though, he's not sure. He didn't see a bucket, but maybe they can make one? They're fairly simple to make. Just a round thing with a handle, right?

"I've got water transport handled," she says, patting a scroll at her hip. Thankfully, there'd be no need to make a bucket. Well, not until there were more than the three of them, at least. "But you're right, one step at a time. Let's get a roof over our heads before we start worrying about digging ditches."

She's not going to argue housing placement if they're happy with it. "I can get started on breakfast for us, then move on to chopping and moving wood." Bamboo would be a little preferable, but they'd work with what they had. "No sense starting the work day hungry, am I right?"

Hell is definitely not what Jackie had expected. Sure, those Blank Men are maybe kinda like goengsi, but he hasn't been judged for his sins or whatever. He hadn't paid a whole lot of attention, he just occasionally prayed at shrines and whatever. ...a lot less occasionally after killing Yung. He'd felt weird about it. Dirty. That was why he'd wanted to leave, in the end. He knew you didn't just leave the Sun On Yee, though. Once you were in, you were in. 'Til death, and after.

He shivers and crosses the arms of his bloodied hoodie, finally deciding to speak up. "Hey, I, uh, I don't know a lot about this stuff, but I can be muscle or something. Chop wood. Maybe cook a little." He's a city boy, not a survivalist. He'd never been off the main island in his life. Hong Kong had been all he'd ever needed, his whole world. This was...some Lord of the Rings shit, and he didn't care for it at all.

"We'll need muscle," Larkin says, "for carrying and chopping and all that. I don't suppose you know how to butcher things?"

Larkin takes in the blood on his clothes, but he's not going to say anything about it. He's not sure he wants to know the cause of it and whatshisface here doesn't look injured.

Bruno's about to ask about what Tenten means when Jackie speaks and he looks up, startled - oh, right, that guy. He smiles apologetically. "Heh, sorry - you were so quiet I forgot..." He then trails off as he finally takes in the blood.

His expression instantly switches from sheepish to concerned. "Oh no, are you hurt?" Sure, the guy doesn't seem hurt, but why else would there be blood? What possible other reason could there be?

Tenten had honestly forgotten there was a fourth person there. She practically jumps out of her skin when Jackie does speak up, then promptly tries to play it off. Nope, nothing out of the ordinary here.

Jackie gets a long, measured glance as she takes in the blood. There's quite a few reasons someone would be bloody and, apparently, uninjured, and almost all of them bring up warning bells in the back of her head. Then again, he could just be a hunter. "Don't worry about not knowing much, we can share knowledge easily enough. Y'know. If you're okay right now." Gotta have their bases covered.

"Yeah, uh, I can...do that. Kinda grew up in a restaurant." In a manner of speaking. Not to mention that the whole gang ended up getting corralled to help with kitchen tasks periodically, because Mrs. Chu'd said if they were going to take up space in her kitchen they'd damn well better earn it. She was scary enough to be a Red Pole herself.

He doesn't want to use the word 'butcher' right now, though, since that was basically what had happened to him - hung from a pipe like a side of beef and cut open, and now here he is, stomach wound gone but blood all over his clothes all the same. (The least Hell could do was clean him up, like, c'mon.)

"Haha. I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine? Everything's fine." He says, his voice raising an octave. Jackie Ma is a poor liar. Jackie Ma has also never been okay in his life.

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sorry for tagging in late!

Re: sorry for tagging in late!

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cw brief murder description