revivalproject | Two Weird Planets

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Two Weird Planets

WHO: Dustin, Felwinter, Tony, the Palm Cottage crew, and OPEN
WHERE: The Charcoal Star Map Roof in Temba, crew quarters on the Palm Cottage, various crafting guilds, the Eorzean wilds, and the Gold Saucer
WHAT: Curiosities, Crabbiness, Collecting, Crafting, and Cards
WHEN: First prompt is backdated to an evening in early July; the rest take place throughout the Eorzea event, July 17th - August 10th.
WARNINGS: Dustin is mean and uses mean words. Also, there might be violence/injury if monsters (or guards??) get involved on some of these quests.
NOTES: An outfit for the event!

1. Northwestern Temba Rooftops [Closed to Felwinter]

It's been a week. And, just like they'd agreed, Dustin is here - specifically, on the roof he and Felwinter had previously met. The familiar campfire has been lit to signal his presence, though its base is a lot neater than it has been; it rained yesterday, ruining the residual charcoal pile and washing away nearly two weeks of star map work in the process.

The boy who'd spent so much time drawing these maps is, perhaps, understandably perturbed - but not actually for that reason. Rather, as he paces agitatedly around the perimeter of the roof, the only thing going through his head is how he won't be able to keep up his end of the deal.

So fucking stupid. Dustin viciously kicks a piece of loose pavement in his path. Making promises I can't keep. Dumbass. I don't even know if he'll be pissed or not. I just wanna get this shit over with and go to sleep.

He pauses, casting a harried glance over the roof's edge.

Where the fuck is he?

2. Palm Cottage Crew Quarters [Closed to Palm Cottage Crew]

When the Palm Cottage and her crew slip into orbit around Eorzea and receive their directions for planet-side, Dustin does not leave the ship. Instead, he grabs the items the Agrii have left for him in his labeled chest, glances at the note with glassy eyes, stuffs it in his pocket and stomps his way back to crew quarters in silence.

In fact, Dustin's been pretty quiet the whole trip. Too busy sulking. His first time in space--fucking space--and he can't even enjoy it because the Agrii forced him here. They really do seem to have a knack for pissing in his cereal. So Dustin spends his time thinking about the best way to get back at them, and by the end of their journey he's settled on a protest of inaction. Any precious seconds he can spend not doing what the Agrii want him to do are victories, by Dustin's estimation. They can get some other sucker to go fuck around for their 'Seek Rats' or whatever. Not this guy.

He wastes the whole first day like this. A lot of it is spent just laying on the top bunk he's claimed, long since devoid of sheets that he stole on day one, tossing the bundled shawl of the outfit the Agrii provided him at the ceiling.

Thump. Thump.

That's definitely not going to get annoying.

3. Gridania Crafting Guilds [OTA]

Thankfully, Dustin's fit of petulance doesn't last long. By the second day he's on the ground like most everyone else.

He's surprised at how quickly he's able to find a place here. The concept of having to massage a population of strangers into giving him intel is daunting, to say the least, which is why Dustin immediately notices how ready the locals are to give him work. They peddle quests like merchants, flagging down passerby, talking loudly about their misgivings, never seeming to care about supply of potential applicants. They even have honest-to-god quest markers. To call the experience 'surreal' would be an understatement.

Dustin ends up having to turn down the first few requests, realizing quickly that he's not equipped to handle the monster-slaying or rumor-mongering needs of these people, but it doesn't take him too long to find something much more achievable: Apprentice woodworking. And from there, the whole world opens up to him.

The biggest hurdle is the tools. The Eorzeans don't use the same sorts of equipment that Dustin is used to for probably obvious reasons, though that equipment also appears to operate with different laws of physics, too. 'Magic,' apparently. All he knows is that this saw he's been given is too light and big to handle the whittling work he's able to squeeze out of it, yet here he is, gently shaping the curved end of a longbow with it like he's handling a precision carving knife. This shit just works and it's incredible.

Dustin does most of his carpentry (and eventually leatherworking) outside, on the small terraces facing the large, dark forest that surrounds Gridania. People wander past, but they don't bother him. The locals go about their business with a silent dignity that Dustin appreciates; perhaps they, too, just want to be in their own head, appreciating the simple beauty of this untouched wilderness.

His fellow spies from Agra-10, on the other hand, are probably not so quiet.

4. Ul'dah Crafting Guilds [OTA]

Dustin does not find Ul'dah nearly so pleasant.

Yes, it has more crafting professions for him to volunteer at. Yes, one of those is motherfucking alchemy. But also it's loud, full of little greasy merchants, and his customers keep riding his ass about meeting deadlines and cutting material costs and other stupid shit that Dustin does not have the patience for. However, for everything that Ul'dah lacks in decorum, it makes up for in quality of information. Dustin cannot fault the locals for their respect in coin and their diligence to follow up on debts paid. His crafting quests here have paid out twice as well as the ones in Gridania.

That being said, he doesn't want to spend any more time around them than he absolutely has to, so most of his days in Ul'dah are spent in the guilds proper. He finds that the Alchemists' Guild calls to him moreso than the others. The underpinnings of basic chemistry spun with something else is absolutely mesmerizing, enough that it helps to block out all the noise of the bustling stalls outside. Or the fact that he's in the company of someone else from Agra-10. Face down over a mortar and pestle, partially-made health potion bubbling over a flame nearby, Dustin reaches out a free hand to where he knows he set aside that water shard. It's missing now. He frowns at the table and, not looking up, snaps his fingers in the direction of the missing ingredient.

"Hey. I need that. Give it back."

5. Limsa Lominsa Crafting Guilds/Markets [OTA]

Limsa Lominsa is a unique blend of exciting jobs and absolute chaos. Dustin settles into being both an armorer and a blacksmith very well - especially so with blacksmithing, a job that he doubts he would ever have the constitution to perform without the assistance of magical tools - however the company that he finds himself in when he tries to sell to the market, or find an isolated place to work by the docks, is...questionable. Something about being surrounded by pirates makes him feel nervous. Sure, they're all very friendly and helpful pirates that he knows are being strong-armed by the local government into cooperating, but they wouldn't stick with the name if they didn't at least partially adhere to the definition, right?

In any case, Dustin is very paranoid at all times here and he constantly feels like he's being tailed. Maybe he is? He hasn't been yet, but today could be the day. It's the primary thought running through his head as he deals with the vendor currently trying to haggle a price for the set of simple leather armor he's trying to sell them. Dustin knows he's being scalped at the current offer and he couldn't care less. He feels so many eyes on the back of his neck right now.

"Yeah, sure, whatever," Dustin hisses at the hapless merchant, shoulders hunched as he quickly pushes the roughly-bundled armor over the booth's counter. "Just take it, would you? I'm--I'm in a hurry."

6. Eorzean Wilds [OTA]

Alongside crafting stuff comes gathering stuff, and Eorzea provides on this front, too. There are plenty of people Dustin finds that have quests related to finding unique items out in the wilderness, with just as many willing to let him keep any extra materials he comes across along the way. The related guilds even loan him specialized tools for the job. He supposes he should be thankful for all of this generosity.

But there's a catch.

All of the best gathering spots seem to be inevitably patrolled by monsters. It makes a kind of sense, Dustin has to admit - these materials wouldn't be so sought-after if there wasn't a risk involved in procuring them, else everyone and their mother with a basic pickaxe would go out and dig the mountains dry. Problem is, Dustin is one of those people; he has made plenty of weapons and armor, and is even wearing some of it right now, yet he has no confidence in his ability to protect himself if he's attacked. A couple of daggers and a studded leather jacket will only get him so far without any kind of combat experience.

The only real solution to this problem is to bring someone along that can fight. Regrettably. So here he is, at the edge of town, shuffling his feet and anxiously looking around for faces he recognizes that might be headed in the same direction. Finding one, Dustin meets their eyes and tries to wave them over as subtly as possible.

"Hey! You. Where are you headed?"

Other times - well, most times really - Dustin lacks the patience to wait and tries his luck on his own. It works out well enough at first, as the simpler materials are not far off the main paths and the monsters he catches sight of are generally small and preoccupied with their own business. All he has to do is stay quiet and take his time so he doesn't draw any unwanted attention.

The first few solo ventures leave they boy emboldened. So when he goes out just a little bit further from the trail to park at an isolated pond, rumored to have rare fish in it that some merchant or other wants to cook for his fiance, Dustin is maybe a touch too confident that the local wildlife will leave him alone.

He is mistaken.

Diving out of the way from a swiped tail, Dustin abandons his fishing pole and scrambles for the rocks bordering the water. He's being menaced by some kind of giant, very angry salamander, either territorial or hungry or both. Honestly Dustin can't be bothered for those sorts of details right now.

Shit shit shit! He skids to a stop and presses his back to the cool stone, desperately trying to control his panicked breathing. Way too close. Fuck! How am I supposed to shake this thing?!

On the other side, Dustin hears the heavy footfalls of the salamander following his path up the slope.

Fuck!!

7. Gold Saucer [One thread for Tony, all others OTA]

For Tony

A casino is the last place Dustin expected to find himself. He'd never be caught dead gambling - it's a statistically ruinous waste of money, and the games that can be exploited are often a ruinous waste of time, besides. There are more useful ways for him to make money.

It's not until he gets some intel that the Gold Saucer is selling a few strange, wooden boxes as grand prizes that he starts to reconsider. Now this is something Dustin can justify sinking a bit of time into.

The unpleasantly loud and busy atmosphere is oppressive, enough to drive Dustin to look for the familiar. Scratch cards, racing, costume contests...nothing piques his interest at first. But then he stumbles on a small table in a corner, one of several like it, green-felted with a semi-circle of chairs and a dealer. Dustin slips into the crowd to observe a few hands and finds that whatever game they're playing works remarkably like blackjack. It only takes a round or so for him to memorize this foreign game's rules and card composition, which is enough for him to recognize that he could easily cheat.

Worth a try. Drawing his shawl further over his face in case this massively backfires, Dustin shuffles out of the crowd and takes a seat at the table, signaling for a hand by tapping two fingers to the velvet. As he unconsciously glances around at the rest of the contestants, one of them sees the writing on the wall (and likely his coinpurse) and returns his cards, scuttling away to the bar as the House scoops up his coin. Another man takes his place - some flashy asshole in shades. Dustin narrows his eyes at him briefly before returning his attention to the cards.

Don't need to focus on anyone else, he chides himself. Just count the cards and you'll do fine.

OTA

Later, Dustin settles on playing a game that requires a bit more hard strategy - without needing to cheat at it, anyway.

He's learned the rules of Triple Triad from various inhabitants of the three cities and, inevitably, won their cards off of all of them, so it's a pleasant surprise when he finds this deceptively simple card game being played in a tournament structure at the Gold Saucer. Easy money. It helps that the local custom is to give away one of your best cards if you lose a match, so each win Dustin accumulates makes the next one even easier.

It's starting to get a little boring, actually. Slumped back in his chair, Dustin waits for his next opponent at the gaming table, languidly scratching his head through his hair until he suddenly realizes--

--This is someone else from Agra-10. Dustin's expression shifts rapidly from boredom to surprise to blanket irritation. Looks like the fun's over.

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Goddammit. He's not dropping this one. For someone else Dustin might try to force it - deflect with anger or insults, tell them that it's none of their business - but this is Tommy, a person that not only has superhuman abilities of his own, but also makes food for him and just helped him fight off a pack of monstrous arachnids. He owes the guy some more direct answers.

Pushing aside every paranoid instinct screaming in his head, Dustin wrenches his eyes back to look at Tommy. "It's, ah...a thing I can do," he mumbles. "My brain works different. I notice stuff, I think fast, I remember things. Helps me put puzzles together quickly."

Well now he looks excited.

"Can you text fast? Like, can your fingers even remotely keep up with how fast you think?"

Even if not, even if he can only do a LITTLE faster, he'd be so happy.

Ah - so that's what this is about. Dustin stares at Tommy for a couple of seconds before he breaks, chuffing a small laugh.

"No." A beat. "I mean, there's evidence to suggest that my peripheral nervous system experiences a lot of the same--"

Dustin cuts himself off with a shake of his head. Too many details, Tommy doesn't care.

"--Never mind. Point is, my reflexes suck. Sorry to disappoint, I guess."

Damn. Tommy actually does look a tiny bit disappointed by that.

"I was hoping I could finally have someone I could text with at somewhat like reasonable speeds. Oh well, guess I'll have to accept it."

Dustin rolls his eyes. "If the tablets can even keep up with your version of--"

He pauses as they walk past one of the last diremite corpses. It's...oozing something from its mouth? Like silk, or webbing. Dustin grabs an empty vial from his satchel and kneels down to scoop some of it up.

"--'reasonable speeds,'" he continues, popping back to his feet and shaking off the sticky excess from the stopper. "I'd be surprised if you didn't outpace the hardware. Second left, about thirty feet up the path."

"They get closer to my speeds than talking does."

So yes, he's absolutely outpaced the tech. But it's better for him, closer at least. He wishes it was like that.

"Alright, let's keep going then."

Dustin passes Tommy a quizzical stare as they continue down the path, leaving the diremite corpses behind. That should be fun for whoever comes through here later.

"I don't believe that you can't speak as quick as you type," he quips. "Especially if your thoughts move as fast as the rest of you. Is it just a matter of people not being able to understand what you're saying?"

He presumes the corpses will survive. Some worlds act weird.

"Seriously, dude? You gotta understand, speech is limited to the speed of sound."

And clearly texting can go a good bit faster than that.

Dustin's quizzical stare grows deeper. This is...admittedly not a problem he had anticipated, but by now he's more curious than he is bashful about it - enough to stop caring about how Tommy doesn't appreciate his science babble.

"I mean, sure, if you're relying on your lungs to push the air through your larynx fast enough and you don't want to cause sonic booms every time you open your mouth," he says, tilting his head and shifting his gaze upward in puzzlement. "Even if you weren't, being able to reconstruct the resulting particle soup into words with some kind of voice modulator might not be the most efficient solution...Could just skip it entirely and read the vibrations of your voice box? The technology already exists for that. At that point you'd only be limited by the end user being able to understand the output as fast as you generate it. Now if it's instead a matter of the node frequencies being too high for human hearing..."

Dustin might go on like this for a while, if Tommy doesn't stop him first.

"Doesn't exist in my world," Tommy answered with a shrug. "And there is limitations in Mach 1 speech in that you still need air for the sound to pass through."

There isn't much he understands about physics on a smart person level, but he knows that much for sure.

Dustin's eyebrows arc. "I could make it for you," he says. "A digital interpreter. Although you're right in the limitations on your end, and I doubt those would make it strictly practical for--we're here."

Abruptly he stops walking and turns, glancing upward. A copse of three trees that look otherwise identical to the surrounding old forest line the side of the path - identical, except for the strange, crystalline growths protruding from the crooks of their branches. Even the smaller plants and fungus growing alongside them seem unnaturally bountiful and vibrant. Dustin paces around the base of one to size it up.

"Well, there's my crystals..." he murmurs - totally abandoning their previous conversation now that the goal of his mission is in front of him. Much more important. "Some mushrooms growing on the trunk. These look like what your guy was asking for?"

A digital interpreter? Tommy actually has to pause and look at the guy. It’s… interesting to think that it could happen. That there could be adaptive tech for him. Except…

“Have you considered that there is also a problem in reverse? How long it takes for me to hear things when I’m accelerate? It’s just easier to just slow down and try and exist at other people’s speed.”

Easier for them. Not for him. Oh, but there they are, actually at their destination. And there are his mushrooms. Tommy smiles and moves to gather them.

“Well then, we can get you back to safety.”

Dustin nods absently, still staring up into the tree. There are some smaller crystals sprouting from the bases of the trees, but they have the appearance of immature fruits - brittle-looking and lacking color. The more impressive ones are growing higher up, well above head level. Dustin chews his lip as he assesses the distance. About twenty feet...Easiest path would be if I could climb it. Route?

A couple seconds of mentally estimating branch diameters and safe load weights later, Dustin determines that such a path should exist. He starts rifling through his satchel with his neck still craned upwards. "Yeah, okay," he murmurs, fishing out a bundled length of short rope that he slings over his shoulder. It's not the one he would've brought for a mining job, and it's certainly not long enough to get him all the way up in one go, but it should at least keep him from breaking his neck on the way down. "Ten minutes?"

Rope? Tommy eyes the guy for a moment, thoughtful.

“You want me to just go up there and get things for you?”

There are advantages to being on a speedster’s good side.

Dustin returns that look. Getting Tommy to just run up there and grab what he can would definitely be the more efficient option, even if he spent the time to explain how to harvest the crystals and the safest branches to take to get to them. But...

"No." Dustin looks away, hitching one end of the rope to one of several belts that inexplicably came with his outfit. "I owe you enough already. I can do it myself."

Alright then. Tommy can respect that. He nods and takes out a knife.

“Get on it then. I’ll stand guard.”

Dustin gives that knife an unconscious, but nevertheless wary glance, before he mentally shakes off his instinctive paranoia and returns to the task at hand. Tommy will not try to hurt him. If he wanted to hurt him, he could do it whenever he wants and probably would have done it already. Betrayal at this point is as unlikely as it is absurd.

The 'fifteen minutes' estimate is a surprisingly accurate one. Dustin has the path up already mapped out in his head and a good idea of how long it will take him to hoist himself from branch to branch, with a bit of wiggle room given for crystal harvesting, verifying rope integrity, so on and so forth. Someone else his age might have just clambered up the tree without treating it like a professional rock-climbing excursion. Dustin would have called them reckless. What if he miscalculated and a branch broke? Or he slipped? Stupid mistakes like that are easily compensated for with proper planning.

At the end of it, Dustin is rewarded for his tenacity with a satchel bulging with air and water crystals, and isn't even too winded thanks to his climbing equipment. He hesitates at the top, though, glancing down and squinting to make sure nothing's happened on the forest floor that he was too distracted to notice.

"Everything okay down there?" Dustin calls to confirm.

If Tommy wanted to hurt Dustin, he’d probably be able to do it well before Dustin realized what was going on. But the thing was that he didn’t hurt people. He tried really hard to avoid it actually.

That said, he kept looking up, watching Dustin. Yeah, he looked moderately impressed. He hadn’t expected the guy to be so good at this. It was interesting to watch.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Tommy might look impressed, but Dustin meets him with a small frown before he starts cautiously rappelling himself back down, branch by branch.

"Really?" he quips. "No movement? Would've expected those bigass scorpions to rally by now."

"Unless they're just animals, Dustin. Why would animals seek to approach what they know caused them pain before?" Tommy asked, chuckling. Don't be silly.

Tommy can't see Dustin's expression pointing skyward, but his tone mirrors it - dead serious.

"There's a lot we don't know about shit here," he says. "What I do know is, they ambushed us in a pack and had the presence of mind to not fight to the death. That shows some strategy, instinctive or otherwise."

With a soft hup of effort, Dustin drops the last few feet down the side of the tree from the lowest branch and starts to pull down his rope, circling it around his arm. He passes Tommy a raised eyebrow.

"Hope I'm wrong, though."

Oh come on, it's not that serious. And they don't need to know how all of this works for it to just work.

"Did they ambush us, or did we come upon them minding their own business? And yeah, not fighting to the death is what happens with things that are scared."

So basically, he thinks the guy is wrong. Seriously wrong.

"Only because they had a way out," Dustin objects. His satchel is too full to fit the rope now, so instead he loops it around the strap and clips it in place with a carabiner. "Think about it. They had the coordination to attack in pairs, and to flee as a group. If they're not operating on a pack structure, then it's just as likely - more likely, I think - that they're scouts for a larger hive. The fact that they escaped means that they've had the opportunity to go back for specialized units."

He shrugs, adjusting his now much heavier pack to more comfortably sit on his shoulder.

"Either to guard that existing route for them that we stumbled on, or to come back to a potentially lucrative food source. Both explanations are likely."

"Could just be their behavior patterns as a species?" Tommy suggested. Dude, just chill out. Don't assume bad. Prepare for it, but don't assume.

"Seriously, don't think too hard aboout things that dont' need it?"

Dustin shoots Tommy a deadpan stare.

"Easy for you to say," he mumbles - and leaves it at that, before striding back onto the trail. Don't think too hard? What a laugh.

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doubled_speed - 2022-09-16 21:12 (UTC) - Expand

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