revivalproject | Beat Your Plowshares Into Swords and Your Pruning Hooks Into Spears

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Beat Your Plowshares Into Swords and Your Pruning Hooks Into Spears

WHO: Lord Felwinter and yooou
WHERE: Temba
WHAT: Never send a warlord to do a gardener's job
WHEN: During event
WARNINGS: N/A

I. Pruning

Whatever's happened in their absence, it's an annoying setback. Clearly it's more than a case of overgrown weeds.

Stepping outside of the hangar, the warlord looks almost distastefully out at the transformed landscape. His hand curls into a fist before he forces it to loosen. No, he'd have to go about this more cautiously or he'd wear himself out.

"The Agrii were foolish to have us leave everything behind," he says lowly. Yet he's unsure what good any weapon that he currently possesses would do, but he'd still feel better having something.

Without looking back, he begins to step right into the midst of the overgrowth. He'll rip things apart by his hands if he has to, if it'll help to keep the hangar entrance clear for others. Carving a way back to the city and more importantly, the security tower, will likely take more creativity.

II. Trimming the Hedges

Night falls, and not all is peaceful. He can see the movement below, the strange plantlike creatures that prowl. He's unsure who else has become aware of these things, but then that's what brings him out along the rooftops. It's not something he needs to do, even though Tony's words come back to him like some unbidden mantra, but he wants to. Plants cannot stop metal, nor can they stand against fire and void. He has no great designs to think that he alone can drive away these invasive growths, but if he can whittle them away or keep someone from falling prey to these particularly threatening plantlife, then that is good enough for him.

III. Connect the Blocks, La-la-la-la

"I've seen this before..."

As much as he disliked troubling the Exo Hunter for something more suitable than a sidearm, Felwinter hated feeling indebted to him. Or maybe it was the grin that the other always wore whenever he came to ask about a weapon, an expression that came enviably easy to the Exo's face.

Just as quickly as the look of surprise when Felwinter took up the strange bit of painted stone that the Hunter had there on a table. There might have been some strange sense of pleasure in wiping the smug look off of his face, but his thoughts are mostly elsewhere.

His hand closes tightly around it, and he's out the window without another word even after Cayde's "HEY!", greatcoat fluttering after him as he drifts from the old clocktower and to the ground below.

"Who else has these," Felwinter asks himself, allowing himself another look at the piece before he begins to move onward.

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"--Yeah! Yeah I'm fine," Dustin responds, perhaps a little too quickly and urgently. Jerked out of his daze from watching Felspring appear, it seems; he'll have to reassess his assumptions about Felwinter and the little twitchy Ghost in his helmet after all. "Wait. I can breathe, we don't need to leave yet. I just, ah..."

The boy's voice leaves him as he struggles for a way to phrase the problem in a way that won't be humiliating. And fails. There's no avoiding it. Felwinter might even be putting the pieces together already, since the otherwise very fidgety and touch-averse Dustin hasn't budged in response to the warlord's hands on his arms. Instead there's only a tensing of his muscles, like he's trying to pull away but can't.

Which is exactly the issue. "I...I think I'm stuck," he mumbles lamely. "Your cloak's like fucking flypaper."

"Stuck?" Whatever the reason for Dustin's koala-ing, for some reason being stuck has not occurred to him as a possibility. "But how..." Felwinter starts to ask, looking down at his own sleeve and the specks of annoying plant matter. He tries to brush it off and finds it quite tacky, causing him to draw his hand back before it might get too attached. Already he can feel the slight strain between the gloves of his fingers, and he stares at them and the fine strings of whatever natural adhesive the spores have created as they stretch between his outspread hands.

"....."

"Oh no." Felspring recoils, flying up higher, not that it's doing her any favors. "Ugh, this is the worst."

Felwinter watches his Ghost before he looks back at Dustin. Well, clearly there's no peeling the boy off of him, so he starts to make as quick work as he can in unfastening his coat. "Can you move your legs?" he asks, hesitating from immediately shucking the coat and Dustin thereafter- he doesn't want to drop the kid.

As soon as the cat is out of the bag, Dustin has started to do his own testing and problem-solving. His hands and feet twitch experimentally to get a better sense of his range of movement. Hands are thoroughly stuck, wrapped as they are around Felwinter's neck and against each other, so those are nonstarters. His legs, on the other hand--

"Yeah! Kinda." In response, Dustin jerks one of his legs, tugging Felwinter's coat down slightly. "Maybe a bit of--friction? Like unsticking superglue. I'd just--" He jerks his leg again and growls in annoyance at the continued lack of give. "--fuck, this is irritating!"

Felwinter stands statue-still as he waits to see what Dustin's capable of. It unfortunately doesn't seem very promising. "I'll try to go low enough so that you can put your feet down. The coat is loose, but I can't remove it until you're at least standing."

He is unfamiliar with superglue but it seems like pulling anything will be difficult so long as Dustin is behind him. There's also no guarantee that anything else will stick given how his gloves are already doing so to each other.

"...maybe I should've used solar after all," he mutters.

"--Sure, whatever," Dustin answers a little too impatiently. He's got enough give in his arms to maybe tug them loose from Felwinter's front once he has more leverage on the ground, but if he can't, his options for escape are looking rather slim. What a pain.

That mutter doesn't escape Dustin's notice, though, and it's not a bad idea either. "Heat!" the boy exclaims suddenly. "Most adhesives break down with excessive heat. Could you activate solar in a controlled enough way to slowly step up its thermal output, see if there's a noticeable difference?"

"...I have not often done so in the presence of allies," Felwinter admits. It's a big admission, really. Most anything he's resorted to back home have been on the offensive. It's always been him and Felspring.

He holds up a sticky hand, a glow welling there in his palm, this time a warm yellow rather than the almost ghostly negative energy of voidlight.

"You will not burn."

At least he sounds confident in this, not that saying such a thing is very confidence-inspiring, but he leaves little room to argue as he brings his other hand up to gather the glowing light between them both, spreading his arms as it expands. It's brilliant, and the warmth seems somehow bearable as it engulfs them in a searing golden light.

It surrounds them like an aura, it seeps in and seems to erase any fatigue, clearing the mind, providing a refreshing boost to abilities as applicable. It's not quite controlled in the way Dustin has in mind, but the Radiance still serves to make short work of the lingering stickiness that holds them together.

Dustin doesn't consider the significance; as far as he's concerned, if Felwinter has tested his abilities on himself, then that's as good if not better than testing it on others. Assuming he's not lying, anyway. But considering everything that he and the warlord have collaborated on so far, Dustin's finding those sorts of paranoid thoughts are appearing as footnotes rather than alarms. Felwinter has yet to let him down.

This helps quite a bit in keeping the boy from panicking at the subsequent enshrouding golden light. He braces slightly, expecting maybe an uncomfortable heat or tingling, but it never comes. Instead there's this wonderful warmth followed quickly by a noticeable clarity of mind - a feeling of waking up refreshed from a nap and swaddled in a fleece blanket. It feels incredible. Dustin's whole body relaxes instinctively, at which point he notices the lack of tension against his limbs as Radiance does its work on the spores.

Immediately he hops off, landing easily behind Felwinter. His legs feel springy like he could run a mile and back. Okay, starting to get a little weird now. "...What is that?" Dustin asks, adjusting the shawl to better cover his face now that his hands are free. Clearly it wasn't the limited fusion reaction he had been expecting.

"Another aspect of using Solar. Normally I would use it in battle when the odds look less than favorable. Not all of my powers are destructive. Even the Void can be used to heal. Better?" It doesn't seem like it needs to be asked when Dustin is off his back, saving Felwinter the trouble of having to slip his coat off. Felspring drifts back to her usual level beside the Exo, giving her shell a spin.

"That feels better. I'm not sure how much of this is still hanging in the air though, so it might be better to hurry a little so we don't have to stay too long and risk getting stuck again," she notes.

Felwinter nods, looking back towards the broken mural. He pulls out the painted fragment, holding it out to Dustin.

A closer look at the mural reveals some sort of depiction of events, or a story, perhaps. Even with the missing pieces there's something to be told from it. In the center are images of different areas of the planet, such as woods and plains, sandy shores and mountains. Surrounding this central image are the little mushroom-like creatures and other plantlike beings. Beyond this ring are people that appear to be tending to things, plants and animals alike. And then comes the portion with the most 'damage', although here and there parts can be made out- a city that looks similar to Temba, Agrii...

Strangely enough the following 'ring' of images surrounding that is undamaged, and this depicts an empty city, overgrown with time, and those little Barrys and Funfronds taking care of those plants.

Dustin nods, accepting the mural piece as his wide, owlish gaze drifts between Felwinter and Felspring. There's obviously a lot he has to learn about the Exo and his abilities.

But that's not what they're here for right now, and besides, Dustin's asked way too many favors of Felwinter to start grilling him for information. He'll keep those questions tucked in his back pocket for later.

Finding the correct spots for their mural pieces is trivial, at least from Dustin's perspective. The images are an easy fit to the outer unbroken ring in addition to the unique outline of the sheared stone blocks, much like putting together a simple puzzle. Dustin takes advantage of the lingering mist of spores to affix them in place, sweeping the pieces through the air and holding them down until he's satisfied that they won't fall forward, then steps back to admire the (mostly incomplete) mural.

Dustin swipes a hand through his now somewhat tacky hair. "Seems like a deliberate omission, doesn't it?" he notes.

Coming up beside Dustin to watch, Felwinter studies the portions revealed with the placement of the missing pieces. "Yes, it would appear so," he agrees with a nod.

Ships landing at the city. The fringes of storm clouds. It seems strange to him that the part they've come to be familiar with seems to be the part that's been broken. "But why..?" he voices his thought aloud, not that he expects an answer.

Dustin hums in agreement, placing a thoughtful hand to his chin.

"To keep the information hidden seems like the obvious answer," he muses. "From us? Unlikely, if the Agrii have methods to immediately implant the relevant information in our heads. From the Agrii themselves, perhaps? Maybe some other alien agent was trying to get them to forget, before they came across the--fucking--"

The teen's train of thought is cut off as he realizes that his hand is now stuck to the shawl over his face. A little bit of twisting and back-and-forth jostling is enough to release it, though not without leaving him very irritated.

"--Bastard. Anyway--the data points. Maybe those weren't anticipated to last as long as they did."

"Hm. But that leaves the question of who made this image. Parts of it look like they've been recently touched up in comparison to other portions. And these indents suggest an old form of text but the Agrii have not been known to have a written language," Felwinter says, fingers brushing across the engravings along the edges of the mural. He tugs his hand away when it threatens to get stuck.

"The datapoints that have been left intact seem too specific. I've heard there used to be more in the library but they are but shattered remnants, likely destroyed on purpose."

Dustin's head tilts in consternation. "The Funfronds seem like an obvious culprit for the painting and maintenance," he murmurs. "Except...they don't have any hands, I think? It would also imply a culture that we haven't seen from them yet, although that could easily be explained by their private natures."

The indents, though - that's very interesting. Dustin leans in for a closer look.

"Doubt they were responsible for these carvings, either...hmm." He backs away, brow furrowed. "Too faint. I need to come back with a way to take an impression, and when everything isn't so fucking sticky."

Felwinter eyes the images of the little beings. He supposes this isn't something he can rule out, so he finds himself nodding in cautious agreement.

"...yes," he says, having no arguments to that. "I wonder if it will simply fade or remain." That would make things a bit annoying. He sighs. Nothing to be done for it now. He gives a nod at Felspring, the Ghost decompiling in a shimmer of light, vanishing from sight.

"We will probably need the other pieces as well. I will take us back up whenever you are ready."

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Beat Your Plowshares Into Swords and Your Pruning Hooks Into Spears

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