Eskimo Quest #2

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You crawl out; and pick up the ice shiv. You tuck it away in a netting pocket on the backpack - hopefully it won't cut something it shouldn't, it doesn't look /that/ sharp. At least as not as sharp as it did when it was inches away from your throat.

"So you actually did it, huh?" your sister, Harirold, calls out; in full winter gear as you, as you do that.

"Yeah. I said I would, didn't I?"

"I'm not calling you a liar, Ice." She pauses, then half-smiles at you. "Just a fool."

You flick her off, turning your back to her, and start rolling up your gear to pack. "You followed the fool."

"I did," she amusingly admits.

"And the fool packed up enough gear for two to go on a fools errand," you continue, teasingly.

You turn around to face her - the vision of her cut in half by an energy field - maybe one of the high power enviromental ones - her ey- noNONONO. Out.

You shake it from your head, accompanied by a literal head shake, but it's too late, she's noticed somethings up. "Ice, you okay?"

"It's nothing, Hari." Psssh. 'Nothing.' Hopefully she wouldn't press.

"What happened?", she asks, pressing.

"Bad dream, is all. How was the trip?" You nod to her backpack, and shrug on yours.

"You're dodging, Ice."

"So I am. Walk'n'talk, we're going...." you trail off and pause, looking at the skyline and the horizons. You pick ... west. "That way." You elaborate with an outstretched arm pointing that way.

"What's that way?"

"Dunno, left the map at home."

She's quiet, no immediate response to that. You set off on a walk, and you hear her footsteps behind you. "I figure we'll go for a while, wait 'til I'm too hungry to keep going, then get breakfast out."

"Mom and dad are pissed."

"Expected as such."

"Not at you; at grandpappy. They're blaming him for putting the idea in your head."

You think it over, did he? Nah, he may have opened your eyes - or tried to - to more of the history and tradition of the Inuit, but he never suggested you do ... this.

"Well, they're wrong. This was my idea."

You and your sister walk in silence, the wind blistering, the landscape cold and icy, broken up by wind-blasted rocks jutting out sporadically, unevenly.

You glance back every now and then, you don't need to, you can hear her steps, in sync with yours, but there's something about the visual.

You're not sure if the worry is showing on your face and she picked up on it, or if she's worried about something, but you catch it on her, regardless.

You consider telling her about the totem spirit.

>Nah, she'll think I'm crazy.
>If she's gonna be with me on this trip she should know.

>>1350848
>Still don't know what I'm doing but I made it off the ground floor!
Well, we're on the ice floor now. Thanks for making the charsheet.

>>1350869
>>If she's gonna be with me on this trip she should know.
Talk now before we lose our shit later. We can also show her the totems if there's any traces of them.

>>1350943
called, writing

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>>1350869
>>1350943

You'll be fine - probably - but if just a breif run-in with ... that, leaves you like this, and she's gona be with you, she needs to know. To understand where you're coming from, and to maybe help her deal if something comes up.

"Hari," you call back, slowing your pace, and walking with her, not in front of her.

She picks up on the somberness in your voice, dropping to a wary, worried tone. "What is it?"

"Look, so ... before I get into this. This is going to sound crazy. Crazier than usual. But if you're gonna be here, walking with me, doing this with me, you need to hear this, and you need to listen. You can decide later if you want to beleive me, but I want a promise you're going to listen."

"Ice, you're not making any sense."

"Yeah, I know. Do you promise?"

She gives you a cautious lookover, like you've grown a totem pole out of your forehead.

"Is that a yes?" you press.

"Ice, I don't know..."

Dammit, she's doing the hedging, unsure thing again. Why does she get like this? You thought for sure you'd have built up some credibility with her, but noooo. "Fine. Anything that happened before you showed up is off-limits, then." Push back, see if her worry or curiosity will outweigh her cautiousness.

You pick up the pace, walking ahead. You don't look back - you really want to tell her, but unless she asks, it's not gonna be heard the way you need it to be heard.

Playing cool works after a minute or so of walking in silence. "Ice," she calls ahead.

"You promise?", you call back.

"Fine."

You drop back and walk side by side.

"So yesterday started with just a lot of walking, just a bunch of running with Big Legs to get away from the city. But that night..."

You launch into the telling, not so worried about how cool or dramatic it sounds, just putting one word in front of another. Dry. Explaining when neccesary, but trying to be detached about it, you don't want to get to into the feelings part of it so much. She holds to her promise and listens; you can tell she's strugglig with some disbeleif and incredubility, but you didn't make her promise that, so it's fine.

"... and I think I've shook it, but that vision of you, it spooked me some. I'm not sure if that was just... like a one time visit, or if it'll happen again, but if it does, you know what I know, at least."

You're quiet, then, as is she. "That's pretty much all I've got," you close.

Funny, for how talkative your parents were, that you two ended up being so quiet.

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>>1354766

dammit triptags are hard, how do even?
It's a heavy quiet, she's thinking it through, probably not so much the details, but maybe she's trying to decide if you're really crazy or not. You're quite aware that she can wreck this whole ... journey of yours with just one call, she probably hasn't ditched her comms the way you did. She /would/, too, if she thought that was best.

Finally, she says something. "I want to see it too."

Not quite what you were expecting. "It was dangerous, Hari. I told you about the knife."

"So you should do it alone? What if next time, you don't ... figure out the words? Besides, I heard the same stories from grandpappy. If - IF - you're telling me the truth, I want to see this."

"I don't know if it'll happen again. I hope it doesn't."

"Then it doesn't?"

"Fine."

"So... that's your plan. Walk a while, get lost, chase whatever catches your interest?"

"Well, yeah, do you have a better idea of how to get lost on purpose?"

"I've got a map and gps, we can head for the middle spots?"

"Look, Hari, just... no. The whole point is to get away from it. No directions, just my heart, the sky, and the spirits. If I'm constantly double-checking the route or heading to a place, I'm not really lost, or looking at where I'm at, I'm just on the way somewhere. I've gotta be where I'm at. Completely." You pause, then look at the sky. "So. West. See if anything catches either of our interest."

She sighs. "If we get into an emergency; I'm calling for help and using the comms."

"If you feel you must. Don't tell me, though."

----

You both break for breakfast; lard and jerky and nutritonal mealbars, and then set out upon your trek. A few times you stop; to discuss birds you see, or clusters of rocks, or having sliding contests; running on stretches of ice and dropping and sliding for the most distance.

You're not keeping track, per-se, but you guesstimate you've gone 15 miles by foot when you see the glimmer of something on the horizon. An oil drilling site; with no activity visible from where you're at. It looks like it's been abandoned, years ago, the central shaft that used to hold a drill now empty. Large fences go around it, but the whole site looks pre-mecha, between BIG ARMS and BIG LEGS whatever's there shouldn't be a big deal.

You and your sister discuss... she defers to you becuase you're the sibling that is..

>younger brother
or
>older brother

You look at the oil site; and consider options.

>Explore?
>Avoid?
>Have your sister pull up information with her comms about it?
>Other?

>>1354773
>>older brother
I would think we are if we're the first one to go on this wisdom journey and our sister wants to tag along.
>Have your sister pull up information with her comms about it?
Discover oil site, remove corruption.
>Other?
Recall memories from our grandpappy if we can do anything about these oil sites to prevent another corrupted totem spirit tragedy.

>>1350869
>ice siblings.gif
We Ice Climbers now?

>>1354773
>dammit triptags are hard, how do even?
Yeah, me neither. Haven't bothered yet since I haven't seen the need to.

>>1354914
>We Ice Climbers now?
There's a lot of fun eskimo pictures out there.

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called, writing

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>>1354773
>>1354914

You walk closer, engaging BIG LEGS to get a bit of height, and the close the distance a bit quicker. Your sister engages BIG ARMS, doing a knuckle-walk that takes some serious skill to pull off.

You think it over. "So, uh, without telling me where we are, what can you tell me about the big drill up ahead?"

She pulls out her comms, and starts pulling up something.

Meanwhile, you take a closer look. A fence, a dozen feet high, surrounds the whole thing, intermittently. It's mostly intact, but there's enough holes you can crawl through, and it's short enough you and BIG JUMP over it, or Hari can just Big Punch it down.

Inside the fence is largely storage vehicles, trucks with large oil tanks, a few buildings. The distintive lattice-built reinforced laddders that surround and reinforce a central pillar, with large boom arms out to opposite sides that probably one held counter-wiegths to the drill. Ones missing, but one of the coutner weights, just ... a solid, impossibly huge hunk of metal is on the ground; a building crushed beneath it. The central drill is missing; and you suspect it's fallen in.

the smaller details are harder to make out; layers of snow cover up most of everything except the largest structures.

The whole thing is so... low-tech, and old. This was before the mecha breakthrough, this was before the war, this was probably before the corps.

Whatever happened here, you think, happened years and years and years ago.

"Ice, I can't find a mention of this place. Net's slow, but it's not coming up on basic searches, but it shows on map as just an abandoned site. Hard to make out from above with all the snow on it."

You and her trade notes on each others observations and thoughts; she thinks there might some pre-war metals there, you think maybe the drill's tunnel goes pretty deep and maybe the anchor lines for the counterweights will hold, and again she defers to you as the older sibling.

>Explore generally?
>Explore a certain part first?
>Avoid?
>Other?

Charsheet/resource doc updated

>>1357282
>>Explore generally?
Get the lay of the land of the oil drilling site, then
>Explore a certain part first?
Explore within the fence, particularly for what's in the storage vehicles.

>>1357220
>writing.png
That's a nice writing tip, thanks.

not dead, but IRL has been batting 5 to 0 vs me. x_x
Hopefully tomorrow night will be sane.

>>1364812
>not dead, but IRL has been batting 5 to 0 vs me. x_x
It's okay QM, take your time. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

longer hiatus update - I've got several essays I realllly need to focus on, so this'll be shelved until that passes. I didn't forget about y'all, just IRL hates me doing anything consistent and creative. X_X