2022-01-20: Something Left Behind

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  • Log: Something Left Behind
  • Cast: Josephine Lovelace, Ratatoskr
  • Where: The Cape of Breath
  • Date: January 20, 2022
  • Summary: Josie makes plans for a future expedition with Ratatoskr's help.

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    Being one of Odessa's Irregulars has its perks. For one thing, Josie gets to set her own hours -- mostly, that is, unless she's being summoned for one of her specialities or needed with regards to the Akasha System (the latter, not so much these days). For another, it means that she gets to ignore all those annoying rules and regulations and more or less do what she does best:

    Expedition, with extreme prejudice.

    "So that's the long n' short of it, eh?"

    The site in question has yet to be visited, let along dug into (so to speak) -- just another spot on the map that's caught Odessa's eye. Whether or not it'll bear fruit is another tale altogether.

    Josie jabs towards the island on the map with her bottle. It is, mercifully, empty; nothing sloshes onto the already fairly ragged parchment. Dark eyes turn towards her equal and opposite in this particular venture, the Hyadean historian Ratatoskr.

    "Got any questions, kid?"

<Pose Tracker> Ratatoskr has posed.

    Then there's Ratatoskr - the 'kid' noted above, who seems to be one of those that keeps slipping in and out of the cracks, where people forget to tug the leash for long periods of time and sometimes - sometimes! - his research and insight into his chosen field of study helps with whatever operations manage to pull the chaotic multi-faceted revolutionary mess that is Odessa together.

     Sometimes it becomes a glorified babysitting job of a nineteen-to-twenty-five year old genetically engineered combat-ready creature blessed with the concepts of vocabulary, ambition, and initiative without the effective natural teacher of hubris that is 'pain and lasting injury.'

     Mercifully, he did not jump up and down with questions throughout the explanation. His smile settles at about the medium-range grin of contentment, all pointy teeth and shiny solid yellow eyes as he leans towards the map ever closer from where the bottle points.

     "You think the Meria Boule navy would still be keeping watch...?" Ratatoskr has voiced a few times over how awesome it would be to get to 'experience' them first hand. Scores of privateers and their stories and experiences say otherwise, it's often spoken as one of the few absolutes of life on the seas: do not fuck with the Merian navy. Even the Metal Demon blockades of the seas - impassible to those outgoing from Ignas - were hard tested to hold their position.

     "You might be right that there's something left there..."

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    'Kid' is a relative designation in this case, as -- more than likely -- Ratatoskr is at least decades, if not centuries her senior. But in the case of Hyadeans, perhaps age, too, is rather relative -- one can be old in years but young in...

    ...in everything else, perhaps.

    Perhaps that's why Josie's come to give him that particular appellation of hers, as he slots nicely into the slot that so used to be occupied by others in her orbit.
    Even the propensity for property damage and general mayhem isn't so different in the long run.

    "Who knows?" she says, shrugging hugely. "Guess we'll find out! Anyways, it won't much matter between us on our lonesome -- figure we can slink back on into the shadows, right?" She pauses, as if to consider this. "Or run away, fast as we can! Besides..."

    She indicates, again, towards the site in question. "Wonder if them lot'd just be out of bounds anyway. Seems like Sylvaland'd nearly have it, if any did." Still, she shakes her head. "...Ain't that old, this. 'Alexandros Lighthouse'," Josie says, naming the site. "Well outside my area of expertise, right? Wonder what-all's up in that caught their eye?"

<Pose Tracker> Ratatoskr has posed.

    Fortunately(?), Ratatoskr's an actual young one. With all the baggage and trouble young ones bring! But what is Filgaia if not a place that continues to have to deal with it (and/or slowly die in its inability to do so).

     'Guess we'll find out,' and there's that lighter glint in the Hyadean warrior's eye that's going 'yes plz,' dimming only slightly at the idea of slinking back into the shadows or running... and turns his head towards the indication.

     "Hmmm... never looked into anything like that," which may be the point of this little pow-wow between them, as he kneels down and turns his head like he might rest his face against it and take in all the lines and graphs and scales directly to the side of his face. It wouldn't be the first time. (It may inspire an episode of xkcd!)

     (...never mind)

     "Lighthouses are used to guide ships..." He takes a clawed finger, gently, to the map. He has a good track record for not letting having terrible flesh-rending claws actually live up to their function, as he traces a circle around it. "Not sure where they'd be guiding to..."

     He stands back up with a renewed grin. "They're really quiet about it right now, huh..."

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    Frankly, it might well be a first for Josie -- someone who is actually the age they appear (and act)!

    Of course, it isn't as if she is the most stellar example of grownup to stalk these particular parts. One need only look at the bottle in her hand...

    "Really? Ain't never been up a lighthouse, kid?" she asks, looking at him a touch owlishly. "It's-- ah, there you go! Good, that I way I don't have to explain it none." She nods, setting down the empty bottle. "Seems like this one's ruined. Eighty years? Hundred or thereabouts? Around that much at most," she continues. "So it ain't shinin' a light for no one, no more." She grins, a little toothily. "...Now, that's a question, eh? What was 'round these parts back then?"

    This may be an open question: it isn't as if Josie has an in-depth knowledge of the Deku islands area history.

<Pose Tracker> Ratatoskr has posed.

    "Eighty years... a hundred years..." Ratatoskr echoes those timeframes as he mentally catalogues the circle. He crosses his arms as Josie asks that open question, where his thoughts come into play and one has to pray they may be productive ones and not a precursor to open theory-fighting between an obscure martial arts school of one geographically isolated location that can never have met with another, because that happens. A lot!

     "...It was mostly Elru around that time... mostly! Very late 300s Post Collapse! It was said the Veruni struck out across Filgaia then... it's a bit further than one-hundred years, but I wonder... if that might have been attacked? If that might have been attacked!"

     As he said, though, it's largely Elru - long-suffering, still-suffering Elru - that was subject to the worst of those purported attacks. "About eighty years ago... that was when Kislev and Aveh both started utilizing weapons found near Nisan, but that wasn't near here..."

     Trying to cross-reference with well-known and well-understood pieces of Filgaian history seem to only point to a theoretical - possible target of Veruni attack back then?

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    She studies him, watching him with a particular closeness that suggests, for one thing, that she's quite interested in his assessment of the site. But why his, in particular? It isn't as if that area was ever held by the Hyadeans -- at least not within the time where the lighthouse, when it functioned, would have been relevant.

    Or perhaps it's something else altogether. Perhaps it's unrelated to who he is, and rather, relates to his particular area of expertise.

    "You really know your wars and fightin', kid. Me, if it ain't fought with ARMs, I can't be arsed, knowin' who fought who and when and what." She shrugs, expansively and shakes her head.

    "So, what, you think it was the Veruni, then? Or... somethin' closer to home? Don't think it was Aveh and Kislev or none, no. What about Celesti? Them do any damage further afield?"

    At least she knows it's too far from Zoara to really be a viable... cause.

    "Or maybe it was none of any of that. No war. Just abandoned. Fell apart, forgotten, the works. Heh... ain't that the story of this planet." She reaches for the bottle and only when the fingers of her left hand close around the neck does she remember it's empty and then set it down firmly on the table again.

<Pose Tracker> Ratatoskr has posed.

    "Hyahaha--!" Ratatoskr has that annoying little laugh of his out at Josie's compliment of his assessments and thoughts. "Someone should...!" It has ever been his life mission to catalogue and keep the knowledge of all these wars past and present, and if one were to ask the Guado, it has also been his life mission to find cause to be banned from scouring the Farplane for any number of confirmed fallen soldiers ever again.

     He shakes his head at mention of Celesti, flicking that segmented tail as he crosses his arms and considers local culprits and causes that might be of historical note. "It could be... it could be..."

     He gets a finger from his right hand to start tracing visibility circles around that purported lighthouse, as if it might stir any inspiration as to the hows or whys of it.

     "...There's only one way to find out..." He grins.

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    "Heh. Bet you'd be a right treat at a history lecture, eh? Give those professors what-for when they get the tactics wrong?" She shrugs, though. "Or somethin' like, anyhow. Ain't known much but my old m--" She stops for a moment, as if hesitating. Only after the moment passes -- whatever it had been -- does she continue, shaking her head. "...Anyway. Higher education and that business aside, ain't a bad thing, right? Knowin' what we've all done like that. Daresay we're fool enough to do it again."

    She sighs, putting her hand on her hip. "...That what brought you in with our motley crew? Seems there's a fair bit of scholars and the like in our midst. Guess they're seeing the writing on the wall..."

    She watches him then, leaning partway across the table to see where he traces his fingers, the circles ever widening.

    And in spite of her grim talk, her lips split in a grin. "Sure is. What say we get what we need together, maybe we'll be off soon enough?"

<Pose Tracker> Ratatoskr has posed.

    "...I'm just happy I'm alive for what's going on today," which is the strangest set of words anyone on Filgaia will ever say, what with everything going to hell and/or desert, or hell desert from purgatory overwintering. (wait what???)

     He is at the heart of what is currently an everyone vs. everyone war, after all - an off-beat, youthful joy that has somehow endured despite having been in the periphery of some incredible tragedies (Operation Mi'ihen, and even then, he did not relent in trying to identify and confirm as many of its participants as possible).

     He keeps thinking about what could have been in the circle that might've made the lighthouse's location so interesting - or when it would stop being such, drawing back as Josie finds her outward grin again. "Hyahaha--! I can't wait to see what's there..."

     That's a 'yes.' That's also a 'really make sure they get what they need before he goes running off ahead anyway.'