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

He's starting to put those pieces together, yes. Dustin holds a hand up for Link to wait; then he rifles around briefly in his satchel and pulls out a glass vial, removes the cork stopper, and instead stuffs the top with a bit of torn old bedsheet that he carries around as a grease rag. He holds it out to Link, gently grasped between three fingers.

"Store it in here," Dustin says. "Payment, for helping out today."

It pains him a little bit to be giving away such a precious commodity - glassware in good condition is miserably hard to come by, and most of what Dustin's managed to obtain either came from Eorzea or replicator rations - but he means what he says. Link has been very helpful; he deserves at least some kind of compensation, even if he wasn't expecting any.

A little glass container! Link hasn't got any of those yet. Eagerly he reaches out to take it, and carefully places the little cricket inside, before trapping it in with the torn fabric.

He cricket jumps around inside the vial, unable to escape. Link looks at it happily, before putting it back in his pocket.

"Thank you."

"Sure," Dustin grunts, letting Link's thanks roll off of him like water on a duck's back. There's no point in drawing it out - it's a simple exchange for services rendered, and besides, there's still more work to be done. Dustin resumes tugging at the rollers without looking back at him.

There's a beat. A little flutter of emotion through Dustin's chest, that causes him to perk up.

"...Just don't break it," he says, ducking his head again. "I don't have a lot of those and they're a real pain in the ass to fix."

Link looks up at Dustin, as he helps him with the rollers.

"...I won't," he promises. He'll keep it at his room in the Hotel, along with all of the other things Link's collected.

(And besides - it's not like it's a pot. Those are made to be broken, as far as Link's concerned.)

Dustin glances once at Link out of the corner of his eye, trying to judge if that answer is honest or not (in spite of the fact that he already knows it is). Then he lapses into silence while they finish up with swapping the rollers.

Just like everything else so far, this does not take very long at all with Link's help. Dustin throws the jack stands over his satchel - it is not a straight shot to the Amphitheater from here, so they'll need to swap the rollers a couple more times in order to navigate tight corners - and the bulk of their journey begins. On a normal day, without any kind of massive payload, a walk from his shop to the Amphitheater could take close to an hour; while being forced to stick to the nicer main roads and pushing a massive raft and motor in front of them, it's still probably going to take a few hours.

It might take a few hours, but Link shows absolutely no sign of being concerned about it. He just keeps on mushing the raft, without complaint.

Though while Link's stamina is certainly much, much more than Dustin's, it's not endless either. Periodically, he does need to slow a little, and catch his breath. But it's never long before he's back into action, pushing at the raft once more.

...And considering the severe gap between Link and Dustin's physical capacities, the one that's most likely to cause them to take breaks is Dustin. He's not putting in nearly as much work as he needed to when doing this himself, but it's not a negligible amount, either. The only thing that stops him from resting more frequently is the fact that he has an audience. Link's dogged persistence gives Dustin an unconscious benchmark to judge himself against, and his stubborn, competitive nature does the rest.

That does mean, once they finally roll up to the outside of the Amphitheater, Dustin is absolutely wiped. He's shed a majority of his sweaters and stuffed them into the corners of his satchel along the way, yet he still manages to be drenched in sweat and beet red in the face. Dustin pauses, holds up a finger to wait.

Then he just kind of slumps down with his back to the motor. He's gonna...hang out here for a while. They've got time.

Link waits. In contrast to Dustin, he just looks like he's maybe had a bit of a brisk jog, nothing more. He could probably go climb a mountain.

In fact, while Dustin is taking his little rest, he does climb the nearest building. He hasn't been to this particular spot before, after all. And he'd like to get a good look at what's around.

Dustin's not sure what Link is up to at first when he wanders off--Found another bug to catch?--but once he figures it out, he can't help chuffing a hoarse, tired laugh.

"Yeah, sure, go on then," he croaks, not really expecting Link to hear him or care. "Enjoy your climb I guess. I'll just...be here..."

In spite of the sarcasm dripping from his words, Dustin finds that he can't be too annoyed with Link right now. He's helped him so much today already, and it's not like Dustin is in a position to keep working himself, or force Link to keep going without him. They both deserve a break; for Link that involves doing some exploring, while for Dustin, that's letting his head fall back against the sun-warmed metal of the motor and closing his eyes, dozing while he catches his breath.

Link does, indeed, enjoy the climb. And collecting the little flowers he finds, growing in-between the cracks in the buildings. Quick pansy, the knowledge from the Agriculture datapoint whispers to him.

He could make something like a speedy elixir from this, he knows. So he makes sure to collect a good amount. It's not like there's any rush, after all - he can see that Dustin's asleep.

And indeed, only once Dustin has actually woken from his little nap will Link return. And it won't take long for him to do so - Link made sure to stay close enough that he could keep an eye on the other teenager.

For someone as full of anxiety and paranoia as Dustin is, he is exceptionally good at just putting his head down somewhere and falling asleep. Research done on him suggested that this was partly because of his high metabolism, partly because of his exceptional memory retention, although that second bit was more speculative. Point being, Dustin has long since turned Power Naps into a science; he's only out for about thirty minutes before he blinks awake again, rubs the sleep out of his eyes, and hefts himself to his feet. Part of him is (embarrassingly) relieved to see Link already approaching once he's upright again.

"Find anything interesting?" Dustin asks him blithely, in an attempt to cover up his genuinely good mood. "More terrestrial arthropods for your collection?"

The long, complicated words are a little confusing. He's not entirely sure what a terrestrial arthropod is, exactly. But Zelda talks the same way, so he's not bothered by it.

"Quick pansies," he says, showing Dustin the little flower. "For speedy elixirs."

"Speedy elixirs," Dustin repeats back to him while arcing an eyebrow, although his skepticism doesn't stop him from tentatively reaching out to pluck the flower from Link's outstretched hand. He recognizes the Quick Pansy plant from the 'Dictionary,' and even the note about turning it into a potion with the Agriculture data point (which he supposes Link must have if he's going to attempt elixir synthesis), but the source being Agrii has made him...dubious, to put it lightly. Especially after the Candy Incident. "Do you understand how that would work?"

"You drink it," he says. "Makes you faster."

Though he does consider it a moment. As yet, he hasn't actually made one - though he's planning to, soon, along with some other experiments. "Probably," he adds.

Dustin doesn't dignify that explanation with a response, aside from the requisite, haughty roll of his eyes before he hands the flower back. Adding 'speedy elixirs' to his mental list of things not to consume without proper testing - no more ingesting of weird alien drugs on his watch, not if he can help it.

"Come on," Dustin says instead, jerking his head to the side. "We're almost done. Just need to get this shit up to the top floor."

Link nods, and them moves back towards the motor, ready to push. But he looks back at Dustin first - which direction are they meant to go?

Dustin once again doesn't answer in words, but in motion. He goes ahead of the raft to haul open the massive front doors of the Amphitheater before returning to help Link push the motor through.

This next step of the process should have been the hardest section, and definitely would have been, if Dustin hadn't put in a nontrivial amount of time in preparation both last fall and within the last few weeks. The front doors roll easily out of the way on a fresh set of tracks and wheels; the path indoors has been deliberately cleared of debris, infringing snow and water, and the scattered clumps of plant matter from last year's storm-related overgrowth; even the massive stairwell leading to the top floor has been fitted with a pseudo-elevator system through the center of it, pre-fitted for the motor's raft to slot into place on top. It'll be tiring work pulling the elevator's rope to heft the heavy motor up multiple floors, rather than lowering it down, but at least he has Link to shoulder some of that weight this time around.

Link looks at the track and wheels and the elevator system with great interest. He's never really built things like this, at least not that he remembers. But they look like they'd be fun to make. Like solving a puzzle, but where you decide what the puzzle will look like.

Pulling the elevator's rope does indeed take a little time - but while Link's small, with a slight build, he's strong. There's a few huffs and grunts of effort as he pulls, but he manages well enough.

Link is, once again, the primary driving force behind this next leg of transport. Dustin can feel his own feet lift off the ground a couple of times as they both pull at the rope, and he's sure he could let Link take him the whole way up if he held on tight enough. He doesn't, though - he at least wants to pretend like he's contributing something, aside from the elevator itself.

There's a mechanical stop at the top of the stairwell. Dustin anticipates when they'll hit it by several seconds, which is several minutes longer than he estimates he could have done this himself. He lets go a fraction of a second before, with a hefty clunk, the rope abruptly judders and locks into place.

"--There," Dustin pants, brushing his hands off on each other as he glances up through the center of the staircase. "I'd say we could ride the counterweight up, but we kinda...have to move the motor first."

His eyes drift over the stairs. Five flights of Agrii-sized steps, he processes with a long, tired sigh. Fuck. So close, but so fucking far.

Link looks at Dustin. And then up at the five flights of stairs. They didn't seem like that much of a bother to Link - he'd climbed much, much higher.

But then, Dustin did seem kind of...weak. And not very fit. It took him so much longer to do pretty much anything, and what he did do wasn't all that much. Really, Link had been doing most of the work here.

Maybe Link could help, then.

"Could get up with Revali's gale?" he offers.

Dustin pauses in his reluctant shuffle towards the foot of the stairs and squints, trying to determine if he knows what that is - then, when he inevitably comes up blank, glances at Link out of the corner of his eye with a brow raised.

"...With what?"

"It's a wind," Link explains. In his usual, not-that-helpful way. "Takes you up high."

Dustin squints at him. That description is just enough to get his imagination going as he tries to puzzle out the pertinent details - things like, is this a thing Link will create, or does he have some kind of ability to ride updrafts with incredible efficiency? How would Dustin handle either of those situations? He isn't very aerodynamic after all.

Eventually Dustin concludes that, curious as he is to fill in the blanks, he's not curious enough to risk his own skin on solving this particular puzzle. "...I'll pass," he shrugs, continuing to walk towards the stairs. "Won't stop you from using it yourself, though - just don't fuck up the elevator on the way."

Link shrugs. Well, if Dustin feels like doing it the long and hard way, Link isn't going to make him do otherwise.

So instead he just crouches down for a moment. Suddenly, a strong upward wind emerges around Link, and he leaps up - letting the wind carrying him high into the air as the ghostly spirit of a Rito circles around him.

The wind takes him all the way up to the top of the stairs - at which point Link simply steps off. Then looks down, and waits for Dustin to catch up.

...That does look awfully useful. But it would also involve trusting that he could control his ascent as easily as Link just did - not guaranteed - or, if he let Link fly him up, that the updraft would be strong enough to carry them both at once, or that Link could control their trajectory just as effectively with the increased load.

Too many uncertainties. He'll take the stairs.

This does not stop him from wanting to understand how that whole process works better. "'Revali's gale,'" Dustin repeats through a puff, stubbornly clambering his way onto the second floor landing. "How do you control it so precisely?"

March Catch-All | Network/Action

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