Birthday Month v3

[quark_assassin]

WHO: Dustin and company
WHERE: Temba and Sh'Ka
WHAT: Dustin Doing Things - it's a catch-all!
WHEN: Throughout October
WARNINGS: Dustin swears a lot

1. New Plan | Temba and Sh'Ka | OTA

Returning topside from the Warrens had been a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, fresh air and space from the dozens of other bodies stuck underground with him is a pleasant change; on the other hand, Dustin has come face-to-face with the sheer level of destruction left in the wake of the new volcano's eruption and he doesn't like what he sees.

He lingers around what he used to consider his new home in the factory district of Temba for several days, just sifting around listlessly in the ruins for salvageable materials and wondering what he should do about it. Rebuilding is not off the table, and yet the idea paralyzes him. Abandoning this stupid building was one of the most painful things he's ever done - what if he has to do it again? Could he do it again?

Eventually, restlessness wins over his waffling and forces Dustin into a solution. All of these unpleasant feelings were born of sentimentality, which only came about because he chose to settle a place and put a considerable amount of time, effort, and resources into it. If he simply never settles, never amasses so many resources in one place, then he won't care so much if they're all destroyed, right? He can't be hurt again if he doesn't give this world the materials to hurt him with.

The end result is that Dustin does a lot of moving around for the next month and a half. It's behavior reminiscent of when he first arrived here, except now Dustin has a pretty impressive-looking exosuit wrapped around him at all times; he's less stealthy now, sure, but he can also cover longer distances and get into places he normally wouldn't with greater ease. He can be found skulking around the abandoned ruins in both cities, clearing out collapsed rubble so he can replace it with metal lockboxes of assorted materials tucked into nooks, crannies, attics, basements, and rooftops. Some of these places may be unused parts of buildings he knows are inhabited. Aside from going out of his way to not disturb anything that might be in the regularly-traversed parts of those locations, Dustin doesn't seem to care that he's trespassing.

2. New Friends | Sh'Ka Estate | OTA

Dustin hasn't spent a whole lot of time in Sh'Ka, mostly because other obligations in Temba (combined with having to ask for a lift from someone on the Palm Cottage that can fly the ship) have kept him from making any extended trips. But now that he has given himself the task to disperse his materials across known Agra-10 territories, becoming more familiar with the Sh'Ka ruins has become more pressing. It also helps to check in on progress with the Rock Tree project, and to just...clean things up in general. The forcefield that protected Temba obviously didn't do anything here, and the dunes of ash in some places are just as dangerous as the falling stone leaves, especially where they've settled on top of already precarious roofs. The end result is that Dustin spends more of his time clearing careful paths through where he remembers the streets being and very carefully slicing back the piles of blood vines he uncovers beneath them - all until he finds his way to the Estate.

Previous excursions to this corner of Sh'Ka have been uneventful. The Estate was just a smaller, less remarkable mirror of the Palace, right? So unremarkable that whoever blew up the latter didn't bother to destroy the former, presumably because they didn't think it would send as strong of a message. That, combined with the abundance of rooms and tucked-away corners, makes this an excellent candidate for hiding some stashes. The real treats, though, are the multitude of robot workers hidden past the overgrown garden and behind the walls. Dustin figures out pretty quickly what they're about (after he encounters one by accident, panics, and hides behind some shrubs to watch for about half an hour). The next few hours involve tailing the robots to assess their jobs and functions, followed by some personal interrogations when he finds a few following him, a sample of Lethe's Blessing carefully binned in a stoppered vial for testing later. Dustin never fully loses track of time, but there's just too much to do.

Two days pass.

By the end of it he's mustered the nerve to nab several of the recharging robots from their ports and has made some adjustments, which are likely obvious to anyone that's in the area. A mover bot that's simply been reprogrammed to respond to commands from Dustin's communications device has been set on a patrol around the edges of Sh'Ka, letting out little chirps every fifty meters traveled; a cooking robot actively scours Sh'Ka's Agriculture Building for the ingredients to make a simple fruit salad, then brings them back to the Estate, while a pruning bot carefully clips the ripe golden fruits from the Barrys' big tree and gently lowers them to the ground for the workers to take to their Queen. The one open on the Estate's dining room table at the moment is a watering bot, which Dustin is fitting a simple water filter into with a look of fierce concentration plastered on his face, totally oblivious to anyone that might be following his other work back to the source.

3. New Earth Year | Temba | Closed to Omega

WIP

Comments

[newmemorywhodis]

Link is silent, for a moment, as he looks at the rubble. Remembers the ruins of Hyrule. The places where people used to live that are now empty, and decayed.

But also the places where people have rebuilt. Where they survived, living for a hundred years under the threat of the Calamity. Where they look to a new future.

"...Yes."

[quark_assassin]

Dustin gives a noncommittal grunt. He's not entirely sure why he's not surprised by Link's answer, but he isn't, nor is he especially impressed by it.

"Maybe for other people," Dustin says with a dismissive wave of his non-sandwich-occupied hand. "Not for me. I don't need..."

He gestures vaguely at the pile of rubble behind him and underfoot.

"...This. Never have."

[newmemorywhodis]

"It was still yours."

Need, as far as Link was concerned, didn't really come into it. You didn't have to need something for it's loss to hurt.

"Do you want it?" he asks. Because really, that was the main question. If Dustin still wanted it - then Link would do everything he could to help him get it back.