revivalproject | Plants are the Worst

Entry tags:

Plants are the Worst

WHO: Dustin and you!
WHERE: Somewhere in the northeastern quadrant of Temba and the Hangar.
WHAT: Dustin does not take plants seriously until they make him. Later, he tries to talk to some mushrooms.
WHEN: Where the Wild Things Grow event, August 11th - September 8th.
WARNINGS: Someone needs to wash this boy's mouth out with soap and make him go to his room.

1. Northeastern Temba [OTA]

Dustin had plans. Key word, 'had.' He'd come back from Eorzea with a wealth of new tools, unique chemicals, some potions - hell, even some clothes that were more tolerable in the heat and actually seemed to fit him! It's more of a haul than he was expecting and it leaves him returning to the ship genuinely optimistic about his projects back on Agra-10.

...Well, okay, most of those warm-and-fuzzy feelings end up being constructs of the Agrii and their incredibly effective compulsion abilities, but even after Dustin comes to this realization he finds that they're not totally foreign. For the first time in several years, he has a place that he wants to go back to and improve.

That feeling is what he's trying to focus on now.

It's hours later, back on the surface of Agra-10, Temba. What should have been the road south from the hangar. What it is instead is a miserable slog through too-tall grass and prickly bushes encroaching on just a bare sliver of exposed, cracked asphalt that winds through towering trees blotting out the summer sun, forcing him on a winding route with no static landmarks to speak of. The leatherworking knife he brought back along with his crafter's gloves help him slice through the more onerous vegetation in his way, but it's like he's brought a pocket knife to the heart of the Amazon. The walk is slow, hard, and annoying.

Maybe I can mix up something more effective back at the shop, Dustin considers, grimacing as he pushes aside a blanket of vines dangling in his face. Some of them are as thick as his arm - twitching like one, too. He has to step carefully over their piled-up and tangled mass in the middle of the road. There were a few reagents that had endothermic reactions with each other. If I can isolate the most efficient ingredients and find a way to amplify the cooling effect, maybe I could freeze out some of these irritating plant fuckers from the roots. That'll show 'em.

Something moves next to his ankle. Dustin glances down, just in time to see one of the vines suddenly start to tighten around his leg. He gasps in surprise and hops out of the way--

--Only to feel his feet drop out from underneath him as a mesh of thin roots masquerading as solid ground gives way. This was likely a natural depression made from rubble blocking the road that he just didn't notice under all of the plant cover. Interesting, he thinks, numbly, just before landing in a heap on the leaf-littered dirt at the bottom. The fall isn't far enough to injure him, but the shock and impact still leave him dazed for several seconds.

Then, Dustin looks up. The roots are growing back.

"--H-Hey! Hey!" he yelps in panic, stumbling upright on unsteady legs to scrabble at the edges of the pit. It's about eight feet deep and the sides (or at least, the side he's currently clawing at) are too crumbly to get a good grip with his fingers. "Wait! Fuck!"

2. Temba Hangar [OTA]

Several days later, Dustin returns to the hangar feeling a lot more prepared than when he left it. Not only was he able to make it back to his shop (eventually) and find it relatively unscathed from the storm, but also he has done something he never thought he'd consent to and picked up an expertise. These little mushroom guys - Funfronds, according to the 'Dictionary' - clearly have some kind of negative effect on the overactive plant life around them, and they're intelligent enough to be communicated with so they can discover why, potentially. Dustin feels confident he could have picked up their language with enough patient observation and time, however he is finding himself woefully lacking in both time and patience at the moment. Desperate measures must be taken.

So here he is, sweaty and exhausted from yet another long walk through the aggressive forest, back to where he remembers seeing the Funfronds when they disembarked the ships. There was a crack in the wall, surrounded by glowing moss...but surely he's not the only one chasing this clue here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"There's not a lot of options of things to tie it to," Radley says. "I don't trust a tree.... Wait, here's some kind of old pillar...."

He cuts a few vines away from it and ties the rope around it. "Okay, try that!"

As soon as Radley gives him the go-ahead, Dustin hops up and clutches onto the end of the rope, feet scrabbling at the sides of the pit to give him a bit of extra leverage. His new gloves do a much better job at holding on than his bare hands ever would - which is fortunate, because he needs to start climbing immediately to outpace the roots growing back, and a pair of sweaty palms would not have helped in the slightest.

Still, the boy's arms have the strength of wet pasta and he's still quite shaky from the fall. Those last couple of feet to the surface are slow going. Dustin ends up having to swipe away several exploring roots that would have otherwise grown over his head as he clambers over the edge, puffing and wheezing from the effort

Radley stands by, watching tensely. He hopes not to have to cut vines away now, as he doesn't want to run the risk of his aim slipping and hurting Dustin. He does try to help push away those last roots. When Dustin finally makes it to the top, Radley reaches to guide him away from the pit in case any roots snake out to try to pull him back in.

"This is like a bad science-fiction movie," Radley mutters.

Dustin allows Radley to pull him up - although 'allow' might be a strong word in this situation, since the boy weighs next to nothing and is completely boneless from exhaustion and stress - and flops onto his back, chest heaving. He squeezes his eyes shut as the inevitable subconscious berating starts. That was, what, a three-foot rope climb? With supporting wall? I'm so fucking out of shape.

There's silence for a few moments. The roots over the pit grow back but don't extend any further from where they started; seems whatever tree produced them wanted to maintain its existing root system rather than trap anyone deliberately. Those plants probably exist, too. Dustin sighs heavily, though it's masked somewhat by him continuing to catch his breath.

"Something to get used to, apparently," he eventually grumbles back.

"Aren't we supposed to fix this, not get used to it?" Radley retorts. He stays alert, tense, not convinced they won't be attacked by something that really is deliberately after them.

He sighs after a moment, not really expecting an answer to that. "Are you okay?"

Dustin waves off Radley's question, partially because he doesn't have the patience to be fussed over, partially because he's becoming rapidly irritated with the subject of their discussion.

"Right, sure, we'll fix this," he says, shooting Radley a glare from his spot on the ground, "Then some other weird-ass storm will roll through and we'll have to do this song and dance all over again. Fuck knows how we're supposed to fix a whole goddamn planet, and it's not like the Agrii are able to give us any real, helpful information to do it."

Radley stares at him. "You mean all the progress that's made keeps getting tore down again and again?! There's no real way to even fix it?!"

There's that panic Dustin remembers from the Bishop. His glare turns quizzical.

"Based on what I've heard? Kind of sounds that way," Dustin says, propping himself up on his elbows. His tone is neutral in spite of the topic - stating fact, rather than deliberately trying to rile the man up. "Obviously individual infrastructure sticks around as long as someone is there to maintain it, but I don't know that any one person the Agrii have kidnapped has made any tangible progress towards figuring out what the actual fuck these storms are and how to make them stop."

"Then we have to do that!" Radley retorts. "There has to be an answer somewhere. Has anyone even tried to figure it out?"

Dustin gives Radley a heavy roll of his eyes before hauling himself to his feet.

"In three years? I'd be more surprised if no one has," he quips, making a few half-hearted attempts to dust off his pants. "My point is, the 'answer,'" Dustin adds a set of finger quotes for emphasis, "if one even exists, probably isn't simple enough for a rotating group of disoriented strangers in a ruined city to just figure out. We're talking about a global phenomenon that is inconsistent and extremely destructive, and the Agrii, at their prime, failed to weather it out. The fact that they think we've got a better chance is almost laughable."

...He says, knowing that he would take any bone this planet throws him in order to uncover what the storms are and why they're happening. The way Dustin stares at his feet while he rants suggests that he isn't putting as much stock in his pessimism as it might sound.

Radley feels even more overwhelmed.

"The storms are the phenomena that wiped most of them out? Does that mean some of the displaced people ... die when they hit?"

This is not where he wants to come to the end of his life!

He definitely takes note of Dustin's body language.

"Maybe it's laughable, but it's our only chance," he says. "Are there records of all the clues the others have found over the years? I want to see them."

Dustin shrugs. "Probably," he says, turning away towards the narrow, overgrown path. Is that a response to whether or not people have died from the storms, or if records exist of other clues people have found? From Dustin's point of view it's both, and he's troubled more than he'd like to admit that he doesn't have a firm answer to either question. He's gotten snippets of intel here or there from the people he's talked to and old network logs, and he'd probably get even more if he'd made a concerted effort to try and organize some kind of info-gathering session among the people that have been here the longest, but...that would require dealing with people. And dealing with people sucks.

Case in point, Radley's persistence is starting to irritate him. "You and everyone else," Dustin huffs, starting off down the trail. He's not too concerned if Radley follows him. "Do you even have a plan for what you'd do with that information? Or do you think you're competent enough to figure it out when you see it, where everyone else has failed?"

Radley starts off after him. "I really wouldn't know until I'd see the info. Maybe something would jump out at me that the others hadn't spotted. Or maybe not. But it would be worth checking into."

"So no plan, then." Dustin rolls his eyes at the trail ahead and swipes past a bush that clings at his pants. With his path constantly hindered like this, combined with his short legs, he's not too hard to keep up with. "What are you good at, Radley? What did you do before you came here, that makes you think you're so special?"

These questions might be posed with a heavy air of sarcasm, but Dustin does find himself genuinely interested in the answers. Maybe Radley is being so insistent because he actually has some foreknowledge that could be applied, here. Dustin finds the possibility slim, but not nonexistent. All angles should be considered.

Radley is irritated, but continues to follow.

"A better question might be asking the Agrii why they chose me. I do have knowledge on building towns. I know something about construction, even though it's not my top specialty. I know about strategy and planning. I just don't know anything about violent plants or bizarre storms. But I might be able to see a pattern if I look at all the info together."

Radley honestly doesn't think he's that special. But he wants to be useful and he wants to go home, so he's trying to think of how he could use his knowledge to that end.

Dustin huffs a derisive laugh, but his expression isn't too far from the baseline cynical it normally rests at. Unless he's hiding something, Radley doesn't sound terribly exceptional - in fact, Dustin considers, this is probably how most of the rest of the Agra-10 population views him. Just some kid that's got a good memory and knows how to build things. His abilities aren't apparent enough to draw notice, and Dustin would like to keep it that way for as long as possible.

That means Radley's likely putting him in that same bucket. Well, not going to stop him from thinking it. It's also not too important in the context of Dustin's answer, so he shelves the observation for now.

"Then maybe you should start by collecting it," he says, turning his head to better shoot Radley a quirked eyebrow. "As far as I'm aware, this conglomeration of intel you're referencing doesn't exist. Even the library's a dead end. I checked."

Radley really doesn't know Dustin well enough to have an opinion on him, other than thinking he's foul-mouthed with a bad attitude.

"If the info really doesn't exist, then you can bet I will," he says. "I'll ask the others for everything they can tell me about the storms."

Dustin shrugs, this time not bothering to look Radley in the eye. "Fine. Good luck I guess."

And...that's it, apparently. For a little bit. The teenager forges ahead, content with the silence and lost in thought. But he keeps circling back to the rather reluctant admission that Radley did kind of save his ass back there, which means he owes the man a favor, which means...he can't be as flippant about this goal Radley has as he might want to be.

Eventually his brain forces him to address it. Midway into wading his way through some itchy grass, Dustin sighs and abruptly turns to face Radley again.

"...What do you need?"

Radley is surprised when Dustin speaks again after the silence.

"I'll need cooperation from everyone who knows something. Mainly I'll need them to tell me details about the storms, everything they can think of that happened. Even something insignificant could be important."

Dustin waves Radley on with an impatient twirl of his hand. "Right, yeah, that's all you," he says, trudging forward again now that he's regained the man's attention. "Where are you going to collect and store this information?"

"I was thinking of making a network post, so initially online," Radley says. "If I can print it out, I'll do that to have a hard copy too. Or I'll write it out by hand if printing's not an option."

"Counterpoint," Dustin says, pausing as he hops over a wiggling bunch of prickly vines with a hup of effort. "Evidence suggests that the Agrii civilization was built on non-written communication. Paper and standard writing utensils are at a premium. You'll either have to make your own or find a different replication method."

Radley grimaces.

"Why doesn't this surprise me. Nothing is easy here."

But he's not deterred. He'll carve in stone if he has to.

"Damn right," Dustin mutters, mostly to himself. He figures the last two months he's spent in the Agrii's service has even been mild in comparison to what some of the other inhabitants have gone through; hell, this is only his first storm, and he wasn't even on planet to experience it. Difference is, Dustin has gone into this situation (frankly every situation) expecting the worst, while he notes that Radley has some modicum of optimism about it. Comparatively speaking, anyway - it's not hard to be more optimistic than Dustin.

But fixating on how shitty everything is without doing anything about it isn't his style. "It wouldn't be too useful anyway," Dustin continues, raising the volume of his voice slightly. "If the storms affect the area this drastically, I doubt any delicate written material would survive for long. Multiple digital sources or underground storage might be more suitable."

"... That's a good point," Radley muses. "I'll check out how things are underground."

He stays alert for trouble as they walk. Who knows when another plant will attack them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Plants are the Worst

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject