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

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.

Dustin shoots Donnie a weird look, which stops him from sending the same sort of look at the little Funfrond that has beaten him to the edge of the hall. Only for a moment, though - they've got work to do. He stoops down to the mushroom's level and, pausing briefly to release his forearm from the exoskeleton so that the extended metallic hand doesn't interfere with his real one, gently perches his pointer and middle fingers on the floor.

Then it starts to 'dance.' [Help with water?] is directed to the Funfrond; meanwhile, completely deadpan, Dustin continues speaking his conversation with Donnie. "It's only a theory," he says with a shrug. "I have decent confidence in it, though. All of the right components are there, matches the build of the other ships."

"-what! You can't just say that and then stamp 'it's a theory'-usually you say that before you get my hopes up!" Donnie groans. "But it would make sense. There's clearly power running through this place, and water," he says, pointing out the leaky pipes above. "There's air filtration of some sort because none of the areas have seemed stale that I've come across so far...and what are you doing."

He doesn't immediately notice the Funfrond so seeing Dustin start wiggling his fingers about on the floor is just baffling. "...are you doing some sort of finger breakdancing...or..?" Glancing back down the hall, he finally sees the little plant being. Oh. ...kay.

The Funfrond clearly 'listens', ignoring Donnie. Because this one here, Fuzzy Animal, is one of the intelligent ones that knows how to talk. Their friend.

[Help more? How? Already made small warm rain asked. Too warm.]

This time, the pointed eyeroll Dustin delivers is for both Donnie's exasperation and the Funfrond's ignorance of the situation, although he imagines only the turtle will understand the gesture.

"Explaining the problem," he says, blithely. Puzzling out how to do that explaining in a way the little mushroom will understand takes some dedicated brainpower, so there's a pause, his fingers uncertainly twisting on the floor, before they start their dance back up.

[First step in longer dance,] Dustin taps to the Funfrond. He's not sure if that's supposed to be a colloquialism, but the translation feels natural enough, so he rolls with it. [Warm rain drains into dirt. No dirt here, makes lake. Bad. Need go elsewhere.]

To Donnie, a different explanation. "They communicate by dancing," he elaborates. His hand does a little skip in place, rotating his thumb like a twirling arm. "Generally speaking. I'm pretty sure it's more of a rhythmic vibrations and air current thing. The spores they create are also important, which can make exact translations..."

Dustin scowls at his hand.

"...Annoyingly vague."

Donnie squints at Dustin's continued finger movements and the response from the Funfrond.

"...interpretive dance." His lips tug in the slightest smirk as he can't help but be a little amused at that.

"What, you can't do it with your full body or would that be too much for them to take in?" Or maybe it's a matter of pride. It would still be easier than what you were limited to with hands. "Hm. If it's also taking into account vibrations and...air currents? Oh, a multilayer sort of compilation. Wow, that is a surprisingly complex language."

And yet not since clearly it was very exclusive to spore-forming beings. ....yeck, spores.

"I don't suppose pictures work for filling in the blanks?"

Oh. Soil. Yes, that makes sense. The Funfrond has to consider for a while.

[Bring foodmoss. Yes. That will take moisture. Can tolerate the warm rain. Too warm. Rain is cold.]

Dustin's already furrowed brow twists in consternation. The few times he's had to do this 'two conversations at once' business, they weren't nearly so technical. Leveraging the Communications expertise helps a little, at least, but his conversation with the Funfrond suffers for it, as his hand's dancing slows noticeably from the distraction.

"I mean--they definitely can," he answers first. An image of Iron Man enthusiastically tap-dancing at a small group of mushrooms flashes through his mind's eye, all of them watching, enraptured. "But I...won't..."

It's absolutely a pride thing.

Dustin welcomes the opportunity to change the subject. "It's no different than interpreting and replicating subtle body language - the fact that you've drawn eyebrows on your mask to better communicate facial expressions, for example," he continues. His dancing hand manages to work through the thought, [Cold rain bad for animals. Make...], but he has to think harder about how to explain 'ill' to a fungus, so abandons it. [...Bad. Can take lots rain? Need more.] "They do definitely communicate by picture...they made murals as a sacred retelling of their colony's history on the planet. It's not a terrible idea."

"Hm." Something Donnie supposes he can experiment with. If they ever get out of here and those data points are still accessible. Interpretive dance isn't really one of his specialties but he does like to bust a groove.

Although the brief thought of Dustin doing interpretive dance makes him smother a snicker.

He watches as the other teenager continues trying to explain. If this were sign language it'd make more sense. He wonders if there's any similarities, but so far he's recognized nothing of the movements. That art isn't completely foreign to them does perk Donnie's interest, so while Dustin is handling hand-dancing, the turtle pulls out his notebook and starts doing some quick doodles.

While Donnie is no Mikey, he hopes his simplified images (read: stick-figures) will suffice. There's a figure who is Definitely Not Dustin (it totally is) with a floof of identifying hair and frowny face, squiggly lines rising up from him. There is the water coming from the ceiling. The next sequence is the water that's already spilt to the ground and gathered, a pool which he emphasizes with the same squiggly lines while portraying the stick-figure with a big happy face and distinct lack of squiggles.

Then there's a sideview of their situation, where he takes care to mark the ceiling and the pipe the water comes from, the hall they stand in, and the floor and the suggestion of another pipe below. He adds more squiggly lines along that pipe along with arrows going down towards it from where the "dirty" pooling water is.

"It'd be easier with my computer but anyway, best I can do," he said, studying it a moment before he tore the page off and set it down on the floor.

Cold rain bad for animals? But all rain is cold, and animals haven't had problems before. Though maybe this is special problem for Talking-Animals. The Funfrond regards Dustin very seriously and taps a foot in the common 'go on' expression as Dustin 'talks'.

[How much rain is lots?]

Then the picture is held out and the Funfrond moves to study it as well. And it considers. Considers for another full minute before returning attention to Dustin.

[Want creek take away?]

Dustin's primary focus is on the Funfrond once Donnie goes silent, but he still manages to cast him - and his work - several furtive glances while he desperately tries to think of a way to explain metric volume to a sapient mushroom. Average shower outputs...eight liters per minute? What natural object would that divide into...

Just as he's considering leaving to find an actual, physical bucket to use as a representation, Donnie produces some art. Dustin cranes his neck, looks it over once. Immediately shoots the turtle an offended glare.

"You could've used someone else as an example," he whines, face flushing pink. Even still, his hand starts back up again, its dance a little more harried than it was before. [Yes. Animals put dirt in creek. Creek cleaned, comes back as warm rain.]

"You're right here and as good am example as any," Donnie insists with a shrug, apparently not at all guilty for his choice of subject matter.

Besides, it looks like it helps clarify some things, given the Funfrond doesn't seem to be too confused. He waits and watches.

The Funfrond considers this new information and eventually dances back a response.

[How clean creak?]

Because that strikes it as so much more important than anything else.

Edited 2023-09-05 02:18 (UTC)

Dustin shoots one last glare at Donnie, but it doesn't last long. He has more important things to think about than his own bruised ego.

[Several ways,] he starts to explain. [Push through or mix with...hold.]

Dustin endeavors never to make the same mistake twice, and he can already tell that trying to explain the nature of water treatment methods via a third of a language is a recipe for disaster. He lifts his hand off the floor so he can reach for his tablet, setting it flat on the ground to replace it, then quickly swipes through a menu or two to open what looks like a basic Paint program.

Another pointed look is passed to Donnie before he starts drawing. "They don't have a water recycling method in place," Dustin explains idly. His index finger works through complicated schematics of water purification devices without lifting - the Funfronds might not understand what they are, but he's assuming they'll be able to replicate them anyway, as long as he's precise enough. "Gonna need one if we're down here for a long time. I imagine whatever their source is isn't infinite."

Donnie folds his arms, still trying to make any sense out of the little plant-person's wiggling before he looks at Dustin's attempted explanation. He's not at all surprised when the older teen resorts to drawing it out as well. Explaining a filtration process doesn't seem like it'd translate well by dance.

"Hm. Yeah, it'd probably be better. But if it gets too complicated, it still can't hurt to figure out if there's a place the used water can get dumped. Even Calibrations had drainage from the showers."

The Funfrond of course stands there, holding. Hopefully they will explain this magic to them of how to clean water without waiting for time. And lesser plants.

Dustin nods several times, puts the finishing touches on his drawing, then sets the tablet down on the floor with a twist of his wrist so the Funfrond can investigate. His other hand returns to its two-finger position but waits - he'll let the mushroom try and work through the schematics first before trying to explain them ahead of time.

"Ideally, drainage and recycling will be linked," Dustin says to Donnie. "If this is a ship - and I'm assuming it is - it would have to have some basic infrastructure available already for this task. Providing a picture of what that looks like might make the Funfronds recognize an existing system and modify it."

"Assuming that such systems look like anything that we'd figure sensible or familiar, anyway," Donnie has to note.

He can only hope that whoever designed this place didn't do everything backwards or make some inane system, but then the layout that he'd mapped out has already proven to be pretty unorthodox.

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Thank You For Your Patience

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Thank you for Patience, Will Try Not to Sick Again

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