revivalproject | Connect This Space Between

Entry tags:

Connect This Space Between

WHO: Donnie and you..?!
WHERE: The Warrens
WHAT: Taking things one step at a time...
WHEN: Post volcano eruption
WARNINGS: N/A
NOTES: Will match tag format.

i. hanging in there
The trip down had more or less been a mechanical process. Just follow everyone down, one foot in front of the other. For all that he's observed, the whole matter of a volcanic explosion happening somewhere overhead was still a difficult thing to process, or perhaps it was just everything else with that just topping it all off. He'd traveled in uncharacteristic silence, just waiting for that last straw that would possibly make him snap.

Thankfully he's been able to hold it together. Fresh water helps, and having other things to mind has kept his thoughts from spiraling completely out of control. It might be an odd sight to see a humanoid turtle carrying a makeshift tank with some kind of local alien turtleish creature in it, but Donnie's clung to it like a lifeline. And then there's DATA, Tony's strange little robot-spy-camera who's apparently been demoted to a cantaloupe as Donnie's chosen method of carrying him along is by a net-like bag. But now there's space and they can rest, so they're set down while the teenage turtle tries to get some feeling back in his fingers as he slowly allows himself to start assessing their new surroundings. Data collection usually helps him relax.

ii. like mapping out dungeons
Being underground isn't really a problem for him. He's more or less lived underground all his life, and compared to the sewers of New York, this is far less complicated to navigate.

Donnie takes to mapping things out, wandering the strange tunnels. He hasn't yet managed to cobble together a replacement computer for the one he sorely misses wearing on his arm, so he's doing things the old-fashioned way, with pencil and paper. He's tackling things in sections, intent on working out every possible direction down one way before he'll commit to the next. Which will explain his absence from the main area at given times. This may not be some technical project to work on, but he's approaching it the same way, completely caught up in his findings.

Someone might want to make sure he remembers to eat or you know, sleep.

iii. no time for idle hands
If he'd been completely without some sort of access to tech he might have lost it by now. At least here the atmosphere is much more inviting than Calibrations. But it also means there's no doors he can close when he wants to keep to himself and work on things. Not that he's finding himself too bothered by people.

His main concern is potential fire hazards, and what with moss and mats everywhere, at times Donnie gathers up some of his things and relocates himself down some tunnel or another where there's less of a risk of burning anything when he tries to do some circuitry work or welding.

iv. aces wild
Choose your own adventure! Throw me a starter or whatever.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The tunnel Donnie relocates to for whatever project he wants to work on, as it turns out, is already occupied. Dustin - in his exoskeleton suit, as he refuses to leave it unattended when there are so many people around - stands at the end of a side path, chin propped pensively in a hand. There are pipes that look freshly-laid along the ceiling and they are...slowly leaking water onto the floor. In a growing puddle.

This is a problem.

"Hmm?" Donnie acts as only a slight distraction, drawing Dustin's gaze away for a second before he recognizes who it is, breathes a sigh. The chin-on-hand gesture becomes more of a hand-to-face one of frustration. "Oh, it's you. What do you want?"

Go figure, all the tunnels available and he still manages to come across an occupied one. Donnie freezes, his tension only easing just so once he realizes who it is. He readjusts the strap of his backpack over his shoulder, taking in the situation.

"Relax, I was just looking for space to work," he says, forcing a sigh even as he starts over closer, but his intent is at least clear as he puts his feet in the puddle, lifting his hand to the dripping water from the ceiling. And then the smell almost physically hits him, making him recoil.

"-eugh, gross! You smell worse than if you'd crawled out of a sewer and believe me, I know."

"Well, this one is--"

--Is what Dustin starts to say, before Donnie wanders in past him and starts making himself at home. He scowls, folds his arms. And it only gets deeper a moment later when the turtle recoils, though from the way his face flushes deep crimson, it's not just from offense.

"--Hey!" Dustin whines. He cannot bring himself to admit that he was too shy to make use of the communal showers in the Calibrations area, and then became noseblind to himself when he realized he wouldn't have his ship to go back to on the surface; his pride won't allow it. "Man, fuck off! It's not my fault the Agrii took the hot water away with the ships!"

A hand goes to self-consciously sweep through his hair - and promptly gets lodged in a matted tangle. The blush creeps down Dustin's neck.

"I-I'm trying to fix it!"

Funny how not living in the sewer for months clears up that same noseblind-ness. Donnie doesn't look impressed by that excuse. He hadn't been shy about the communal showers himself, although admittedly he'd chosen strange times to make use of them, and only then had it been just to soak a bit, even if the private rainfall did make for more miserable a setting.

He shifts his focus back to the ceiling and the leaky pipes. "By flooding the tunnel? I mean, I can get behind having a subterranean lake to float in. Ugh, that would've been so nice earlier." The weather had been absolute torture for a softshell, and he's sure spending so much time in and out of the crystal caverns had screwed up his sleep schedule. ...not that he needed the energy boost to do that, he'd been pretty capable of throwing off his own schedule on his own even before experimenting with mystery powers.

Braving Dustin's ambient scent, Donnie lifts his face to the dripping water with a sigh.

Dustin isn't sure if he's relieved that they're moving away from the topic of his out-of-control hygiene or annoyed at how the conversation is developing instead. Probably both.

"Work in progress," he mutters, settling for sullenly folding his arms rather than reminding himself of how ratty his hair's gotten by scratching it. "I talked the Funfronds into piping overhead hot water into this area--"

Which, as Donnie has likely already noticed, the water dribbling from the pipes is pleasantly warm.

"--But I must have neglected the concepts of 'water pressure' or 'drainage,'" Dustin huffs. "It's in a state that's serviceable, just...ugh. Resources. Annoying."

"Pretty sure they don't understand the concept of showers outside of rain so...probably not a big surprise there. And resources and the lack thereof have been the story of this place ever since we've been dropped here."

Donnie squints past the water dripping on his face, stroking his chin before he looks down at the floor.

"Drainage is going to be tricky considering we don't know what part of this...facility we're in and where it should ultimately be directed to. I've been mapping the place out, but I can only tell so much from pipes, and annoyingly, anything I try looking through my goggles at that Someone doesn't want tampered with just shows up blank. Jammed just like when I was looking at where the door was supposed to be, back in...that other place."

He glances back at Dustin. "Can you ask them? The Funfronds, I mean. I'm not sure how complicated it would be, but they clearly know which pipes do what to some degree, and if there's no preexisting drainage one they can cut into with their strangely effective needles, then at least they can help us figure if a space is okay to be dumping waste water into without gumming up whatever else is here."

Dustin nods and, when appropriate, periodically rolls his eyes as Donnie elaborates. Lack of materials and Atroma meddling in figuring out how to acquire them is a pretty typical state of being, as the turtle has pointed out. This does not make the situation any less frustrating or annoying. Kind of interesting, though, that Donnie's goggles are being blocked of all things - Dustin is aware of the basic level of readouts they produce based on his quick glance at them the previous year, but the fact that they're being actively jammed like overall abilities were in the Calibrations area feels significant to him.

Donnie's question startles him out of his idle pondering. "--Hm? Oh, uh, yeah, I guess," Dustin says quickly, glancing around. "There's always one nearby somewhere...yeah, that's probably the most efficient solution, assuming I oversee the operation and make sure they don't build a fucking waterfall or something stupid like that. They have the tech, sure, but it's like...trying to communicate the need for sleep to a slime mold. Except the slime mold controls the mechanism needed to help you fall asleep in the first place."

This metaphor is running away from him pretty quickly. Dustin waves it off like a fly buzzing around his face, twisting to look around the corner of the hallway.

"It's a totally a ship, by the way."

"Language barriers, ugh. Cultural barriers too, probably." But at least Dustin's looking, and while he's expressed the complications, hasn't said it's impossible. They just need to reach some kind of mutual understanding. Although Donnie's curious to see just how Dustin can communicate with them.

And then Dustin drops that confirmation like a bomb, leaving the turtle to blink but for all of two seconds to process before he pumps a fist. "YEsssssa- I knew it!"

Speaking of Funfronds... A little one with a dark brown stem and soft green cap peeks its head around the corner to look at them, watching with a curious intensity.

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