gather round you friends of mine

[venatical]

Who: Dean, Clint, and the scouting club.
When: Daybreak on Day 79.
Where: The woods.
What: The scouting team was informed of the fact-finding mission set for Day 79, looking for anything strange after the Doctor's plot but also just feeling out the woods in general and getting a lay of the land. This is when they meet up yay! Here's some info on what you can expect to find.

Everyone who meets up by the woods gets split up into teams of two people -- everyone, because Dean and Clint don't allow for any pussyfooting or hemming and hawing about joining up. You're there or you're not, and you have some sort of weapon with you too. Preferably not a super shitty one, okay. If you don't have one or if you had one that was moronic and/or useless, you have a badass looking kitchen knife now. Congrats.

The goal is for everyone to take a different path through the woods, but don't get out of shouting range of the team next to you. If you need help, call for it. This is a fact finding mission, so there's no need for heroics or too much stupid shit.

Take care of each other. Be smart. Be alert.

Comments

[enchangement]

"Oh no. You'll abandon me." River keeps pace with Meg fairly easily, continuing along in a tired, droning monotone. "What so ever shall I do?"

Eyrolling and, yes, sticking her tongue out again because River is afraid of certain things but Meg has yet to be added to the list. There's plenty of trees, definitely, though River can spot where there are swathes of burned trunks and ground, empty and black husks reaching towards the sky. She rolls her eyes at that too, the failed escape attempt that scrambled her brain just a bit more, enough to knock her off her unsteady balance again.

"What is the plan and the plot for lions, tigers, bears, oh my?" Is Meg going to just snap her fingers and make them go away or what?

Stranger things have happened.

[foundacause]

Would anyone notice if she fed River to the wildlife? Yes? Damn. Seriously, why did Meg always get stuck with the annoying brats? It was almost as annoying as being stuck with Dean but in mini form. Ugh.

"The plan? I was thinking of using you as a distraction or bait..." What? She was all for self-preservation. She wasn't going to get eaten by a bear in order to save a stranger.

"You got a better one?"

[enchangement]

So much eye-rolling. If River has a better plan (and hers involves a lot of avoiding, tree climbing and hoping that she can break the limbs of a jungle cat fast enough if needed to) she isn't sharing with Meg.

Because that would be pointless.

So instead of, say, answering River just shrugs and then, the moment Meg is looking away, up a tree she goes.

[foundacause]

Did... did she just lose the annoying brat? Does this mean she's free to go on adventuring alone? No one can blame her for a disappearing kid, right? It isn't her fault River up and vanished...

"Wow. Rude." Meg rolls her eyes and continues walking. She really should've stayed home. She could've been reading a magazine with her feet up resting right now instead of getting hot and sticky in the woods full of dangerous crap that wants to kill them.

[enchangement]

"My plan," she announces from somewhere above Meg, "is not to be bait."

So yeah, screw that noise. "One eyes up, one eyes down. Easier to spot threats, traps and other dangerous substances. Not going to feed you to the metal menagerie."

[foundacause]

"Unless of course there are creatures in the trees in which case you've made yourself easier bait." Meg continues along the way at ground level, despite her snark and aloofness, her senses are all on high alert for signs of danger. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She doesn't like this. Going into the unknown is hardly her idea of fun.

"Just keep your eyes open, kid."

[enchangement]

There are cats, River knows, big ones, but she expects that she can climb at least a little higher and a little faster than one of them can.

And if not, there is always kicking it in the head. In River's experience, in these boots, that has worked fairly well in the past. A gun would also be useful, but bullets take time to make and effort to reload. She'll use what she has. Even a branch can impale.

Of course that's not the first thing she spots. The first thing she spots is a mechanical Hulk. "Mm. Wait."

Meg will see it eventually, right? It hasn't noticed them yet. Must be proximity programming.

[foundacause]

Meg comes to a sudden stop. Oh yeah. She's seen it. Just what they need. Mechanical Hulks. It would be a lot less intimidating if Meg was operating at full capacity, but he injuries are still quite bad.

"Crap..." Suddenly the trees look a lot more appealing. Wouldn't be her first time hiding in a tree in Cape Kore. "Don't suppose smashing it into a tree would destroy it?"

[enchangement]

"The statistics say the results would be poor. Metal against wood, and the wood will give first." Maybe Meg should climb a tree, because River isn't entirely certain how else they'll manage to get past this thing.

"Circumvention?"

[foundacause]

"Circumvention - the smartest thing you've said all day." Meg starts to pull herself up one of the other trees.

If the shit really hits the fan then she can always smoke out and leave her squishy little meatsuit behind to buy them some time, but meatsuits seem a little short in supply around the Cape. People might start asking questions if she just settles in to a new body. Besides, she kind of likes the one she has.

[enchangement]

River remains still and watches this mechanical monster more or less monitor it's own perimeter. What sort of resources would a government need, she wonders, to be able to build things like this? And why a Hulk of all the things?

Well, maybe that's a silly question. Right up there with how far out are they supposed to go, anyway? Once Meg is up, River climbs higher to see if she can spot anything else. "Turret."

[foundacause]

Who knew what governments got up to behind closed doors? Global recession? Nah, shady governments are just spending all the dosh on giant mechanical Hulks to squish people.

"Turret? Well that doesn't sound ominous or dangerous at all... How far?"

[enchangement]

"A distance..." Well, that's not the easiest question. How does one measure how long it would take the machine to notice them? "The width of a house and half the width again from the mechanical hulkling."

River shrugs. "We came, we saw, we return in our respectively whole pieces?"

[foundacause]

"That's a plan I can get behind. If the others want to risk getting crushed that's up to them. Personally I prefer my internal organs to not be jellied."

And balancing in the trees is very uncomfortable.