revivalproject | In the Deep Dark Hills of Eastern Temba

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In the Deep Dark Hills of Eastern Temba

WHO: Cobb Vanth & Mining Expedition Team
WHERE: The Mines
WHAT: Mine exploration
WHEN: First Week of Event.
WARNINGS: Cursing. Blood/Injury.

Mining Expedition - for Mining Team

It had been a long time since Cobb had worn the armor he bought on Coruscant. He stood outside the entrance of the mines in the polished slightly gold colored durasteel with no cape. Last thing he wanted was for that to get caught on something while underground. The armor would protect from minor cave ins and small falling rocks but a part of him wanted to take it off. If the ceiling came down, Cobb would honestly preferred to be crushed immediately instead of survive.

A few had happened while he worked underground and he'd been lucky not to get caught in them. He had seen what happened to slaves who had been and those images haunted him as he looked at the entrance to the darkness beyond.

As the little team started to gather together Cobb pushed those thoughts from his mind. He needed to focus to keep all these people safe underground.

"Here's the general plan," he said when they had all arrived. "Drake's probe, Mini, and this guy here will go first. The probe should be able to tell us the air quality which should be your number one concern. Anyone who breathes starts to feel light headed, you walk out immediately. No pretending everything is fine. We're here to map this place and see what needs fixin', not start digging around."

Anyone who toughed it out and then passed out would put them all at risk. Cobb's tone was very stern and grim. This was not a time to fuck around like this was a walk around talk. Luckily, this group didn't seem like the type to do that.

"Second thing to look for is the ceiling. You see it bowing down anywhere that's a good sign of a collapse. Should be even all along the way." That was how it was back home, at least. "And it might get tight in there depending on how the Agrii build their mines. No one goes off alone. You always have a buddy. Any questions before we head in?"

The mine's entrance was big enough but Cobb felt once they got inside and got under they might be in for a tight squeeze.

---

Cave In - for thesepreciousthings

It was surprisingly easy to get comfortable underground again. Cobb was all too willing to explore around with Starling when she asked. Apparently, she came from mining people too. She felt more useful helping out in the mines than exploring the new city.

"I can't tell much of what they were doing down here," Cobb said as they walked down a side tunnel, intending to map it. They had a pretty decent map taking shape with marked spots for the strange place they found and the holes to the surface. "They didn't leave any mining equipment behind so who knows what they got from here? Haven't seen crystals or coal or oil. Not even salt. Just the stone walls."

He was a little bothered by that. This was an extensive mine and clearly served a purpose at one point. There was no real clue what the purpose was however. Not to Cobb's eyes, at least. They had some hope once they understood the panel and all that, it would become clear.

Cobb was about to say more when he noticed something in the glint of his flashlight. A piece of metal hanging down from the ceiling. He had half a second to realize it was a roof bolt meant to hold the roof of the mine in place when a stone slipped.

"Starling!" He grabbed her just as more stones start to slip and the roof broke apart. Cobb dragged her out of the way but they were caught in the fall. Not the worst of it. Cobb pressed her against the wall as what felt like the whole of the earth came down around them. It was his worst fear come to life and it hurt as the stones bounced off his shoulders, his back, and his head while he tried to keep her from the worst of it.

When the rumbling stopped and the air went still Cobb blinked in the darkness. His flashlight was somewhere but they were in complete blackness now with the mine closed in around them. Well. Damn it all.

---

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hey, hey, you with me?" Cobb used his grip on her to find Starling's neck and check her pulse. Yeah, there she was. "Stay here."

The cave darkness was complete. Cobb had experienced it a handful of times in his life when the power failed in a mine. He had to go in the darkness to fix things like that with just a little headlamp.

He kept a hand to the smooth wall of the mine and then found the rubble of the collapse. Listening hard he could hear through it and there was some breeze against his face.

"Good news, we're not buried. Probably a little rubble between you and me and freedom. Gonna take me a minute to clear a path though." Something not much bigger than them to just slip through.

"Check the comms. I know we can get through this rock. Might be our only light. My flashlight is somewhere in this."

"Stay - ugh, like hell!" She snorted, starting after him. On her second step, though, she faltered, biting down on a cry of pain. Okay. Maybe she wasn't going to follow him just yet.

"Alright, alright, hang on. My flashlight's probably right next to yours, crackin' jokes about how dumb we both are."

She pulled out her phone and turned it on, immediately going to the settings to adjust the brightness. If they wanted it to last, she needed to turn it down. Their eyes would get used to it soon enough.

"Not much signal down here, in case you were wonderin'."

"But there is signal. We were able to communicate with the surface before. We should still be able to now." Cobb could pick up on a few things now with the low light of her phone.

He had his own aches and pains. Something in his left arm hurt like hell every time he moved it. Probably something fractured given he could still use it. Just had to ignore the sharp pain each time. And there were a lot of bruises he could feel. Probably some cuts leaking blood given the wet heat he felt on the side of his face.

"Gonna move some stones, things might shift," he warned as he started testing the wall blocking them in. "Shouldn't bring anything else down around us."

Because Cobb was going to take his time with this. Hopefully, Starling wasn't bothered by the dark.

"Alright, just don't overdo it and hurt yourself." She trusted him to know his limits, and sat down with her back against the wall to feel out her ankle and judge how bad it was. There was a little swelling, but nothing felt broken. Probably just a sprain or twist. Thankfully the cave was cool enough that it wouldn't get too aggravated.

The dark, however, was a different story. At first, she thought she'd be fine, turning her face away from the phone to try and let her eyes adjust more to the dark. But the cold damp, the stone ... the slight smell of dirt and mildew ... it was all bringing back a set of memories she wasn't exactly fond of.

Clarice wasn't oblivious: she'd seen the new girl, Moonshade, advertise something called a Howl for people to go and share their stories. She could have gone and shared some of her better FBI yarns, but the successes were all pretty mundane, and some people on Temba weren't keen on wide-reaching authority. No, the stories that held value to her weren't always fit for varied company. But she knew Cobb had a stronger stomach, was used to a harsher life and environment. Maybe he could take her sharing this particular memory. It might help chase the demons away.

"... God, this reminds me of the worst place I ever had to hunt someone down."

"If you can't raise Reeve, see if you can get Merrin. Don't know if she went to the new city or not." But she had powerful magic that could tear out walls. Cobb figured she could hold back the earth long enough for them to get out of here. And he trusted that girl with his life. Reeve too because he would be careful and considerate with each move he made to clear the wreckage.

He grunted as he shifted some rocks taking a big step back as they tumbled to the ground at his feet. In the dark he worked by touch alone and paused to give the stones time to settle if they were going to move.

"Yeah?" he said, "Wasn't exactly a pleasant time in my life when I worked underground."

And he thought he wouldn't have to explain why. Mining was not a pleasant business. He'd let her assume that gladly instead of the truth.

"You make it sound like you're a bounty hunter. Thought you were a law type."

"Never met Merrin, but I remember Reeve. I'll try 'em both."

She fiddled with her phone for a moment. "Reeve? Reeve, are you there? It's Starling. Do you copy?"

While she waited for a response, she said quickly, "Sort've. Branch of the law that went specifically after serial killers."

"She's helped me a few times with the houses."

Cobb looked through the dark back at Starling in the light of her communicator. Looked healthy enough and kept it together even though this probably wasn't a great situation to be in.

"What's a serial killer?" That wasn't a term Cobb was familiar with. He could make some guesses but wouldn't because he didn't want to look stupid.

((OOC: Please let me know if there's any of the CW content you want me to leave out/gloss over!))

There was a terrible silence from the communicator, one she really didn't like. She wondered if there was some sort of ore that interfered with the signal.

"It's a term we use for someone who makes a habit and a real sick hobby out of killing one particular sort of person, in a very specific way. Normal folks like to make birdhouses, or customize things like, eh - speeders." She adjusted her metaphor to suit so he'd be able to follow, careful to not make it sound patronizing in the least. As she finished her definition, she spoke slowly, giving the subject the gravity and disapproval it deserved. "Serial killers, they ... make a series of corpses just the way they like them. This one ... he liked killing young, overweight girls."

[ ooc: ... i listen to true crime for fun... should be good with anything. ]

"I've heard of crimes like that, not on Tatooine but some of the Core worlds." Tatooine had crime. It had murder but in all of Cobb's fifty years he hadn't heard of someone killing like that. With a pattern.

Cobb took a moment to catch his breath. His left arm hurt like hell and it felt worse the more he moved it. Something was definitely wrong there but he couldn't stop.

"Doesn't sound like a fun job but you've got real steel in you to take it on." He went back to shifting rocks slowly. There was a bit of a breeze coming through. It meant they weren't buried deep. He just had to be careful.

"Sure do. Most of it came from the case I'm thinkin' of. It was my very first one."

She crawled over to his side so that she could help move some of the rocks without putting weight on her bad ankle. "Here, lemme help you with that. ... I was still in training when the head of our division called me in his office. Said he'd noticed I was a good people-reader, wanted my help getting a profile on one of the serial killers already in jail. What he didn't tell me until I'd already put a few visits to the asylum under my belt was that he was hoping to use the guy's profile to catch another killer still at large. The press called him Buffalo Bill, but his real name turned out to be Jame Gumb. Right after I started helping Crawford - my boss - Gumb kidnapped a senator's daughter. We knew we could save her, but we had to work quick. So I had to use every trick in my brand new book. Eventually ... I found him, but Crawford's team had already followed another lead and they were a whole state away with my backup. I had to go in alone."

"Hey, hey, take it easy." If she couldn't walk something was definitely more wrong with her than him. Cobb didn't want her to make anything worse. Never mind he was probably doing the same thing to himself.

"Well, assholes usually behave like each other. I can see some sense in that." At least, in Cobb's experience people who liked to hurt others for fun were all the same. He could see the sense in her boss's actions.

All they needed to do here was make a hole big enough to crawl through without the hole collapsing on them. Cobb had to, in some parts, build up the wall blocking them in to make sure it wouldn't fall on them.

"I'm guessin' going in alone didn't work out well?" Cobb wouldn't make her talk about it. They could skip right over the ugly parts.

"It did and it didn't," she replied, helping him by shifting some of the loose rocks to form more support for the hole they would eventually be clearing. It was something she could do while sitting, a compromise for both of their stubborn natures.

"He had the girl down in his basement, in an old dug well. I couldn't get her out until I knew he wasn't a threat anymore, but the place was a maze of rooms and - well."

She looked up into the dark, at the ceiling she could no longer see.

"He turned out all the lights down there once he realized I'd followed him down."

"Hey, I promise you the darkness here is only as far as these rocks," he said firmly and with absolute confidence. Cobb wasn't going to let the two of them spend forever in here, in the dark. "On the other side is light. You and me, we're gonna get out of this."

After getting out of mining and getting out of slavery Cobb did not plan to die underground. There was a hell of a lot more he wanted to do. Din was going to give him a hard time for this one too after they'd promise to be safe.

"I was ten when I started mining," he said with a heavy hint of bitterness in his voice. "Was whip thin back then and fit in a lot of small places. Perfect for drilling holes for explosives. Got into fixing machines just so I could stay at the surface but sometimes I'd have to come down to fix them in the mines."

And sometimes, he went down to try and rescue trapped miners that masters didn't care.

She gave him a genuine smile. It was good of him to reassure her: true, her rational mind knew that there was no Buffalo Bill lurking down here: he'd been dead and gone for a long time. But the trapped feeling still lingered, making her heart flutter like one of his prized death's head moths.

"Ten. Jesus. You didn't have a choice, did you..." She heaved a sigh. "My family ... they used to be miners. West Virginia Starlings, we were. As my beau was fond of telling me once, before we got close: I was only a generation or two from what they called 'poor white trash'. Grow up where the money's thin, you don't have much choice but to work to help your family, even when you're young. I think my daddy was the first Starling who hadn't had to."

"You do what you gotta survive." Cobb wasn't going to touch on just how little choice he had. Now was not the time to get into the real ugliness of his past. Maybe when they were safe, maybe over drinks. Right now, the focus was on getting out.

He shifted enough rocks to make an opening big enough to let a rush of air in. Now they wouldn't have to worry about suffocating. Good. But it wasn't big enough to crawl out of.

"What's West Virginia? Your peoples title?" There was a lot in there that Cobb couldn't quite grasp from context alone. And he figured the more Starling explained to him the less likely she'd be to fall back into panic.

She recognized the tactic, one she'd been trained in herself for dealing with victims, hostages, shell-shocked bystanders. And she appreciated the hell out of it.

"No, not really. On Earth, things get divided up first by continents - the land masses in the oceans. Then countries, and some countries have states. West Virginia's a state in America. And the states are split up in counties and towns. ... The FBI covered all of America, so I got to see a few different places before I left." She paused. "Like that basement."

She moved the rocks he'd shifted, continuing her tactic of shoring up the sides of the wall to keep it from falling further, making more room for him to move more if he could. It was still easy enough to do while remaining seated.

"Honestly, it wasn't the dark that bothered me most: it was knowing he was out there." As she spoke, her voice was level, calm. Having Cobb close by her side had taken the edge off the story. "He had these goggles that let him see in the dark - so I was looking for him blind but he always knew where I was. It felt like forever, walkin' around in all those rooms. He raised moths. They'd flutter against my face and I'd think it was gonna be him - every draft, every little noise."

"One of these days, I'd like to see a planet with oceans." Cobb could picture that a little easier now that he'd seen lakes and the water filled fields here but an ocean had to be so much more water.

That sounded like a real miserable time. Cobb had never run away but he knew the fear of being hunted. It lingered in the back of his mind all his life, even once he was free.

He reached out in the semi-darkness and squeezed her shoulder gently. She was calm, steady, but fear like that didn't disappear. Being hunted like a thing, like an animal, never really went away.

"What he'd raise moths for? Food?" There were plenty of insects back home that Cobb ate. Moths were rare but could be good eating if they could be found and caught.

"No," she said, the psychology behind it and how much it had fascinated her drawing her out of the fear just as much as the touch to her shoulder. She closed her hand over his and gave it a brief squeeze in silent gratitude.

"He identified with them: their natural habit of cocooning themselves and emerging as an entirely different creature. That was why he was killing the girls ... he did something with their bodies that ... well, it's pretty horrible. I don't know how squeamish you are about violence against women in general. Some men really don't like to be privy to it." Clarice blows out a sigh. "To put it pretty obliquely ... He coveted them. Wanted to use them as a vehicle to be a woman, himself. But only on the outside."

"So, he made a woman skin suit, huh? Wrapped himself up in it?" Cobb wasn't squeamish about violence against anyone. His life was full of it. He'd seen men and women whipped and beaten since he was a young kid. "Sounds like a guy I knew who wore severed ears on his belt."

An overseer who cut them from slaves and wore them to remind other slaves to behave.

"Sounds like the kind of shit you put a blaster bolt through and leave in the desert for the sandswimmers to eat." Cobb grunted as he moved a large stone and a nice burst of air came through. "There we go. Hey, can you fit through this? Will go faster if we work on both sides."

"Yeeeeah, that's pretty much it to the letter." She gave a heavy sigh. "That guy with the ears, he sounds like a real piece of horseshit himself. And yeah, that's exactly what I did. Minus the sandswimmers, of course. I heard him move behind me, turned on a dime, took a literal shot in the dark. Pretty sure I got him in the lung, the bastard."

She reached up and brushed a fingertip beneath the dark spot on her cheek that most mistook for a beauty mark. "Left a pretty decent powder burn at that close range." She took an indulgent lungful of the fresh air and sighed in relief. "Mmmh, nice goin' That smells damn sweet. Lemme give it a shot. I've squished under smaller, but... that was years ago, when I was still trackin' his sick, sorry ass."

Starling swallowed, reminding herself that she was with friends, that this was no abandoned storage unit and there was no threat of rats to scuffle across her legs or arms while she crawled: at least, not that she'd seen yet. Bracing her good ankle against the rock, she crawled forward and put her head through, then her shoulders, knowing her hips weren't much wider than that, if at all.

"Yeah, it's lookin' good. Gimme a sec."

"Some folks deserve to die." Cobb absolutely believed that. There were people in the galaxy that should be put down and no one should shed a tear over them. He was mostly thinking of the people that had owned him during his life. Oh, he'd love to draw fast on them.

"Hang on, hang on, before you go crawlin' through." Cobb crouched down next to her and yanked his bandana from around his neck. It wasn't his lucky red one - which was probably why they got caught in this cave in - but a forest green one. "Let's wrap up that ankle so you've got a little bit of support for movin' around on it."

Normally, he wouldn't risk taking it off in front of another person. His brand could easily peek out from his collar and he did not want anyone to see it but he trusted the mine's darkness would hide it.

"You smack me if I'm bein' too rough," he said with an easy grin as he started to wrap her ankle. It wasn't his first time doing something like this though he wouldn't call himself an expert.

"Ooh, that's a little saucy of ya, Cobb," she winked, her shit-eating grin making it clear she didn't mean a damn thing by it. She didn't wince or cringe - he knew his stuff, and soon enough she was giving her ankle an experimental flex. It didn't budge much, but it didn't fight, either.

"Nice work, partner," Starling smiled. "Better'n an Ace bandage, just about. Thanks." As she began to slowly worm her way through the hole, not wanting to dislodge anything vital by hurrying, she chattered away to keep her nervous mind distracted.

"I think you're right, there well and truly are. Not many, but some overstep the bounds of human decency without even stoppin' to check where they're at, and those're people I'd gladly ban from the gene pool. Two fellows that caused the train wreck've my career were right up there, too. But I'm guessin' a place as wild and rough as Tatooine breeds 'em like rabbits."

The knot of her ponytail dislodged a shower of loose gravel and she froze, her breath hitching in her chest. When that was all that came down, she let it out with a sigh of relief.

"Never a dull moment. Almost got it..."

"Sometimes. But Tatooine also breeds a tight knit community. You've got no one to rely on except the people around you. Makes you real close." Cobb knew there were good people on Tatooine. Most of the population was just folks trying to survive. Some turned to crime and hurting others. Some banded together like the folks in Mos Pelgo.

He gave her leg a little pat. "Easy there, you're fine. Just keep goin'."

Cobb had a good hold of the stones around her to keep anything from falling down on her. She'd get through easy enough. As easy as anything else was around here.

"You live in a harsh place and you know the value of kindness. Custom is in some places back home to give what you can when you can and others will return the favor when they can." Everyone looked after each other as best as they could. He missed that sense of community real bad in this place.

"Sounds a lot like the town where I grew up," she said stiffly - more out of exertion than any lack of feeling. The obstacle course was bearing its fruit, and she wasn't out of shape by any means. Soon enough, she gave a shimmy of her hips and wiggled through the hole, carefully pulling her bum ankle in behind her.

"Awright, I'm through. Walk me through it, you startin' on your left or your right? ... but yeah, West Virginia was a lot of miners, too. Most of us dirt poor. Where I'm from they called it 'white trash', which I always thought was pretty rotten. What did it matter what color a poor person's skin was? Wasn't like they could help it. We never felt the sting of any lack of money, though. My mama and daddy made things comfortable as they could, and we were pretty happy, 'cuz we had each other. Daddy had his work friends and they'd sit on the porch, play cards when the sun went and it cooled down. Mama taught me how to sew, how to go to the farm stands and pick out what was ripe. And when you were bored you could kick down a dirt road and look for wild flowers and little frogs. It was a little world, but it was ours, and a good one."

"Startin' on my right."

And they were free. Poor but free. Cobb could hear it in the way she talked about growing up. He was glad for that. No one should have to know the weight of chains. Mos Pelgo was like that these days. No one was really wealthy but they were free.

"There's a story back home," he said as he worked, distracting them both from the pain and the semi-darkness. "About a rare flower that blooms on canyon edges at first dawn. Story says if you can pick one with five petals before the second sun rises you'll be granted a wish."

Cobb shook his head. "Not many wild flowers back home. Or frogs. Got a lot of insects. Sometimes catch those or dig 'em out of cactus."

In the Deep Dark Hills of Eastern Temba

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going with Reeve bc I think Merrin's mun is on hiatus

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Buffalo Bill talk starting. cws to follow: flaying, serial murder, entrapment, torture

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