revivalproject | March Catch-All

Entry tags:

March Catch-All | Network/Action

WHO: Dustin, Barrys, various people
WHERE: Network, Sh'Ka, Temba, all over the place
WHAT: Dustin discovers some stuff and complains about it. Also, he's building things again.
WHEN: Through the first half of March
WARNINGS: Dustin. Will add as needed.

1. Network | Video/Text | OTA

[It's nearly impossible for Dustin to think of a situation where broadcasting his location, live, over an Agrii-monitored network, could possibly be a good idea. Nearly impossible. But this planet is always full of surprises.]

[This is one of them. The camera cuts on to show Sh'Ka's iconic palace - or where it should be, based on the unusually large patch of short grass growing here amidst the massive trees. What remains instead is a giant pile of rubble. The camera pans around it for about thirty seconds, in complete silence, to show the scale of the destruction before shutting off.]

[Captioning it, in Dustin's characteristic pithiness: ]

What the fuck happened here?

2. Sh'Ka | Closed for Barrys

The Palace had been an incidental observation on his way to a greater project - something that Dustin has had in the works since last fall, actually, and was forced to put on hold when the winter's snows kept him isolated to Temba. Barry intel.

The 'hive' of Barrys he's been focusing on seems to be an especially active one that lives in the walls of Sh'Ka's Agriculture Building, and Dustin is pleased to note that the colony's drones are still alive and stomping around after Agra-10's deep freeze. His offerings today are perhaps lackluster compared to the ones he's left in the past, but unfortunately he has to make due with the small winter and early spring berries he's scavenged on the way here, with a handful of dried summer fruits to supplement. The small pile is left next to a trail Dustin has observed the workers frequently using.

Then there's nothing else to do but sit back several feet away, crouched in the shade of a young fruit tree, and wait.

3a. Workshopping | Closed to Donatello

The lack of snow and warming temperatures mean that Dustin isn't nearly so restricted in where he goes and what he gets done, but that hardly means he's avoiding his typical haunts. If anything, his workshop requires special attention right now; his telescope motor needs to be finished and installed when the nights are still cool and clear, while still avoiding patches of ice or snowmelt mud that could hinder its transport. That window is rapidly approaching and won't stay open for long.

It's one of those days of harried work, when he's spent hours fiddling with the code on his tablet, napped, snacked, then coded a bit more, losing track of what time of day it is save the little streaks of daylight streaming in through the boarded-up windows of his shop, when Dustin gets a single knock on his door. He straightens abruptly from his shrimp-like hunch over his communicator and waits.

Three seconds later, there are two more knocks.

Ah. Dustin hops out of the chair behind his workbench - what used to be a checkout counter - and strides to the door. "I hear you," he announces, loud enough to carry through the thick masonry walls. "Gimmie a sec to unlock the door."

A few extra manual locks have been added since midwinter. There's a series of at least five clicks, scrapes, and pops, then the door cracks open and Dustin peeks around to make sure it's Donatello on the other side.

3b. Demolition | Closed to Link

Finally, finally, the motor is complete. That just leaves the part Dustin had been dreading the most: Getting this fucking massive thing installed back in the stadium light he took it from. Getting it out and into his shop last year had been a production in itself, which is a lot of the reason why he'd been anxious about repeating the process in reverse. At least then he didn't have to worry about breaking it in transport last time - the thing already didn't work. But now it's got all kinds of delicate bits on it for precision lens movement and rotation, and Dustin's spent a lot of time on the initial calibrations while pairing it to the tracking program he wrote on his tablet.

He could have moved it again on his own, yes. Though the more he thinks about that process now, the more he's thankful for Link's offer to help instead.

Link will get that call in the early morning, about an hour before dawn, in the form of a picture of Temba's map sent to his personal inbox. The intersection between buildings Orange 8 and 9 has been circled in bright red. This, rather than his workshop proper, is where Dustin waits for Link to meet him, leaned against the rubble of Orange 8's walls and shivering against the lingering evening chill.

3c. Construction | Amphitheater | OTA

Once he and Link have extricated the motor from his workshop, rolled it to the Amphitheater, and reset it in the modified spotlight housing he left behind last fall, that just leaves getting the newly-minted telescope working again. Dustin spends the next week more or less living here to get this done. A decent chunk of that time is spent just cleaning up the old observation room he stayed in last year, and scrubbing the rust and debris off of the spotlight after three months of neglect.

Then, testing. Hours upon hours of testing. Some of this Dustin can do during the day, where he calibrates the motor and lenses by sighting in distant objects at the edges of Temba, but a lot of it has to wait for nightfall. Then he can start combining his mental star maps with his makeshift tracking software to have the telescope follow stars across the sky. This is a more passive process, where he sits back, takes measurements of the telescope's current position, checks the sighting scope and compares it to the observation piece, sometimes makes adjustments to one or both, then breaks to scarf down some dried Baconroom and wait for another thirty minutes in silence. It might seem like tedious work, but the entire time Dustin is practically vibrating with excitement, even if someone unexpected shows up in his workspace. Eight Agra-10 months of planning and naked-eye observation are finally paying off.

5. Spores | Various Locations | OTA

Dustin's final task for spring is one that happens between all the rest, generally when he's going from one location to another. The shortest path is always the preferred one, of course, but this month he's been going out of his way to take odd routes, circling areas that people don't frequent often, where he spots new plant growth starting to sprout with the warming temperatures. And where he goes, Dustin carries a jar with a sieved lid, filled with a powdery, partially aerosolized red substance. He pauses periodically to tap the jar over these islands of greenery, makes sure that a fine mist coats wherever he stops, and then, apparently satisfied with his work, continues on his way.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's almost two hours before there's motion. They are cautious things, the Barrys. A pair of scouts appear, see the pile, and then flee. In another hour they return with a larger party of scouts who immediately start to scoop up the gifts into their baskets, and a handful of warrior Barries, their weapons of sharpened thorns in hand. These warriors watch the watcher, glowing eyes narrowed, as the scouts go about their gathering of supplies on quick feet.

It's nothing new, it's how most things have gone when Dustin left gifts for the colony, though there's less hostility now than there had been at first. Sure the warriors watch, ever attentive, but the scouts had been so quick to come back with the party, and the scouts didn't even seem to pay Dustin any mind at all. No one looked ready to attack Dustin for being close unlike the first few times. Really, it's as peaceful an exchange as has ever occurred.

This is a familiar reaction in more ways than one. Dustin understands this level of paranoia on a personal level; if he had the sorts of protections the Barrys have for their queen, he'd behave the same way, and in a lot of situations he already does. Their caution is understandable and Dustin respects it. He lets them have their space.

Their relative comfort around him, however, is also notable. Maybe now he'll have an opportunity to speak with one of them? That same paranoia has kept him from observing too much of the Barrys' language, but he has the Communications expertise to fill in the gaps. He can almost feel the information slipping into place as his index and pointer fingers gently touch the ground, like instinct.

Dustin waits for the last batch of scouts to start loading up food. Then he taps his fingers, in the imitated 'stomp' of their language.

[Need to talk.]

The motion earns the warriors lowering their thorns at the new behavior, as if to threaten him to return to the norm. And then he taps. Everyone, including the scouts, freeze. There is consideration, concern, looks shot between them.

While perhaps their language required less motion and dancing than the Funfronds, their more expressive hands and eyes meant there was a touch more body language in the hive, and there was no doubt there was concern. At last one of the warriors, one with an extra large and just hinted with red leaf in their cap, tapped out a tentative reply.

[What would you speak of, Gifting Giant?]

...Perhaps he was too forward? Dustin resists the temptation to pull his hand back; if their more aggressive reaction had been towards sudden movements, then retreating is just going to make them warier. Those little thorns probably won't kill him, but being pincushioned by them is also a deeply undesirable outcome.

Thankfully, the answer he gets is workable. Dustin lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

[Ancient history,] his fingers tap back. The Barry language is much easier to formulate than the Funfrond one, which is a pleasant change of pace, but it requires some careful spacing and percussiveness of stomps that demands a lot of brainpower to moderate, at least until his muscle memory kicks in. His words are, therefore, a bit slow and halting at first while he gets the hang of things. [I have many questions about it. Was sent by the...mushroom hive? Translation debatable.]

Again there is quiet and some consideration before the Barry raps back an answer.

[Frond-brothers. Send you for history. We keep better history. Tell history instead of draw. What history do you want?]

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Spores

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3a

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