Blackout, blackout!

[kore_npc]

Who: The residents of Cape Kore
Where: The center of town, near the ruined fountain
When: Day 100
What: Stane gathered some supplies for a community fire. Consider this a party-style post reacting to the lack of power and the loss of the communicators.

After the power goes out, Stane spends a few minutes standing stock still in the room, holding his breath and waiting for it to come back, but he doesn't waste too much time lingering in that kind of hopefulness. People are going to need things; they're going to need fire to cook and boil water, and they're going to need to do something about the food that's going to spoil.

It's so important that he helps them. It's so important that he helps them stay alive. Maybe the dream sharing is getting to him, maybe it's made his nightmares... feel real, but...

They're going to survive this. He's determined.

He gathers some wood that can be used for firewood and kindling, and he leaves them in the center of the town; he has no way of announcing that the things are there, really, but he cups his hands around his mouth and shouts a general Go to the fountain! Maybe someone will hear him.

Comments

[nedofpies]

[ Ned, hesitantly, in case she changes her mind, pulls the coat back on and fastens it. When she asks how he is - and seems to really mean it, too, not just be asking for the sake of polite conversation - he attempts a smile. It's small and sad around the edges. Sadder, certainly, than when they'd first met. But quite a few things have happened, in the intervening time, for him ]

Yeah. You know how it is. Friends disappearing without a trace, guys having ominous visions about krakens, the power going out. Just another average week in the Cape.

[ There's a note of sarcasm in his voice, but also resignation. He has gotten more used to the slow but unceasing march of one disaster after another, never quite letting them get their feet under them ]

You?

[blackmagus]

[She smiles back, with an empathetic nod. She hasn't been around as long as some, but she, too, is getting used to the turbulent ways of life in the Cape. Disappearances, appearances, then the food shortage, and the random and mostly unpleasant happenings. It's the disappearances, she finds, that are hardest to deal with. All they have for a break in the madness are the people around them.]

Other than what you've mentioned, peachy. [Those damn fish in the fridge had better not spoil. Maybe she and the roomies can offer them up en masse.] An awful lot of people have disappeared. Coupled with today's events, I'm not really sure what to think.

[Snooping with Donna is about to get a lot more important, perhaps.]

[nedofpies]

Yeah, they have. [ Ned looks down at his hands as he speaks, looking rather forlorn. ] It's happened before. A whole lot of people all going missing at the same time, only a few of them returning, if any. The first time, I thought it was a bad sign, like something big was going to happen to the rest of us, but it didn't. So maybe... I should try not to panic, this time.

[ Which doesn't change the fact that a lot of the people who have gone missing are his friends, and that he's worried what might be happening to them right now. He crouches down, offers Jazz his hand to rub against, should he choose. ]

At least there's plenty of wood around to burn? [ He's really reaching for a silver lining, here ] And the water's still running. Not sure what we're gonna do if that stops.

[blackmagus]

Panic is generally an emotion to avoid, if possible.

[She says it gently, aware that it's harder for some to contain their emotions as well as Fortescue can. Even if Ned looked on the depressed side of things, he seems to be keeping a lid on things fairly well.

And even if something bad is coming, panic won't help. Quite the opposite. Instead of panic, Fortescue's moved right into coiled wariness of the situation.

Jazz, remembering the scritches last time, purrs and rubs his chin against Ned's hand.]

It could be worse. I shouldn't say that, as it's tempting fate, but. [Shrug.] Humanity survived to the point of building refrigerators, so we should all be fine as it is.

[nedofpies]

I don't think fate needs much tempting, here.

[ But of course, she's right. According to some people's standards, Ned knows, this place is probably a lot more livable than where they came from, electricity or no electricity. Even if the lights aren't working and they have to find alternative ways to store their food, the company is good, and there is relative safety - at least, outside the woods. That is something to be grateful for ]

Do you think it was intentional? Like... they're playing with us? Or do you think something's gone wrong, and they're trying to fix it?

[ There is no way for either of them to know, but Ned is curious what her opinion is ]

[blackmagus]

[Fortescue thinks for a moment. It's hard to say which it is, as they're still as trapped in the Cape as ever.]

Nothing aside from the power is malfunctioning. So it was either a very localized problem, on our end, or deliberate. As far as I can tell.

[She's played this game before. Captured, and then toyed with. But it was a much less fantastical experience before. There was more beating involved, and magical suppression. The Cape is a much happier experience, as it comes with less sanctimonious speeches about what she is. And there's less death here. That, too, is a good thing, though it's been traded with... disappearances.

Who can say what happens to those who disappear and don't come back?]

[nedofpies]

[ Ned nods. Everything she's saying is logical. He knows that fretting isn't going to get him any answers, and it's also not going to turn the lights back on. At the same time, he can't imagine approaching this as calmly as Fortescue seems to. Is it an illusion? Is she a duck that seems serene on the surface but is paddling like mad under the water, or is she really such a collected person that she is not fazed by any of this. Without meaning to, he blurts ]

How can you be so calm about all of this?

[blackmagus]

[She smiles a little. It's not quite as bright as she had intended. But it's hard to be cheerful about... past experiences that still give her nightmares, on bad nights.]

I've been... held captive before. This is very different. But the principles are, more or less, the same. [She shrugs.] I received training for being kidnapped [and tortured], and it saw me through that. I'm hoping it'll do the same here.

[nedofpies]

[ Ned gives her a look that is initially incredulous, his eyes wide, mouth dropping open for a moment. He closes it a second later, feeling a bit foolish. It's not exactly the most outlandish thing he's learned about a person in this place. Really, he ought to get used to it all, but sometimes it takes him by surprise ]

How do you train someone to deal with being kidnapped?

[ He says it half as a joke, but half seriously, too. Over and beyond being brought here, there was once an... incident, with a few of his fellow captives. It was no one's fault, of course: they'd been transformed into various kinds of monsters and couldn't exactly be held responsible for dragging Ned across the town by his neck and handcuffing him to a radiator. All the same, he hadn't coped very well with that situation, and on the off-chance that it ever happens again, he wouldn't say no to a pointer or two from someone who is, clearly, far more badass than he could ever hope to be ]

[blackmagus]

[If she's smiling, it's only because of that silly - but oddly endearing - look on Ned's face.]

You simulate it. Teach various methods of escape. Psychological methods to use on your kidnappers. How to resist actively and passively. Defensive tactics. Disabling security. How to govern your thoughts and stay calm. [She shrugs.] That sort of thing.

[She'd had fairly extensive training on the matter, being that she was sent into enemy-heavy areas. Even during 'peace time', before the war had started. But she'd made a stupid mistake inside Germania borders, and it had been costly in the end. She'd lost the information she'd been sent to obtain. And because she didn't exist - legally - she'd been on her own. No one had come to rescue her. It would have been impossible, anyway.

They'd put her in a room choking with so much Runic magic that it was impossible to concentrate on using her own. Then the blows had come, to try and wear her down. A man in a brand new uniform had been so enthusiastic he'd almost broken her nose, especially after she'd asked him how his ballet was coming on. It had been a cheap and unimaginative shot, but it had worked along with a few other jibes in making him off-balance and less professional. Less tectically brutal, which had been the point. The man in charge, a Nazi and not an Inveterate, had come in and asked if she'd been impressed with his operation. She'd told him, in fluent Germanian, all of the mistakes his flunkies had made in their combat.

Numbers and bad luck. That had been the only reason for her capture.

Then she'd been put away in a regular building of the camp, and had been forced to wait for a few weeks before devising an exit strategy. She'd overpowered the guards - that's all the mistakes, on their side, that it had taken for their operation to be razed to the ground. She hadn't planned on destroying it, just setting herself and the others free, but they'd hurt Jazz when they'd tried to interrogate her. They found it amusing that she'd brought a cat, and they'd broken one of his legs. So she'd broken their base.]

[nedofpies]

[ Ned listens in awe as she speaks. There is clearly a hell of a lot more to Fortescue than meets the eye. He says, in a voice that's gone a little bit weak ]

My skill set runs more along the lines of... various methods of pastry baking, different kinds of fillings to use with different kinds of pie crusts, meringue tactics, and how not to over-knead.

[ All things which are very useful to a professional piemaker but thoroughly useless here, particularly now that the ovens won't be working ]

[blackmagus]

[Her smile strengthens, at that, and she shrugs.]

I wouldn't sell yourself short. There are fewer cooks here than people who know how to handle a weapon.

[Fortescue suspects that that's not a coincidence, especially as it seems they've been brought here for military purposes.]

[nedofpies]

[ Ned lets out a long sigh. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't undersell the importance of his own baking skills. He is a firm believer in the fact that pie can improve almost any situation imaginable. But those skills are of little use if he doesn't have a way to use them, and without power.... ]

There does seem to, uh. Be a significant portion of the population who are, for lack of a better word... badasses.

[blackmagus]

[That's a term a bit too modern for Fortescue, even in her own crazy world, and she frowns thoughtfully at Ned. Then smiles. Clearly, there's something that she's missing, here.]

Do you disapprove of that many bums here?

[nedofpies]

[ Ned looks at her in confusion for a good thirty seconds, misunderstanding what she means by bums at first, trying to puzzle out how that answer possibly makes sense given the context. Then, when he puts together the British and the from-the-past pieces of evidence, he realizes, and laughs at his own mistake ]

No, it's- [ He tries to think of some appropriate equivalent or definition ] Sorry. Forgot you're from the past. Means a different thing, in my time. What I was trying to say is there are so many people here who are very competent and intimidating, who know how to fight and take care of themselves and... that kind of thing.

[blackmagus]

Ah, I see. Thank you for introducing me to it. [She's amused by the term, and visibly so. It must have had a colorful evolution.] ...We certainly do. Our captors seem to have a preference for it. But not everyone's like that. Knowing how to handle a weapon can bring as many problems as it solves.