psychoshenanigans | GRATIA // PSL

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GRATIA // PSL

So, here's what Irahl knows.

He's alone in a dark, cold cave. He has most, if not all, of his gear. No one is guarding his location. As he heads away from the spot where he came to consciousness, no one tries to stop him, and no one gets in his way. The few people he finds down there seem human, and not about to approach the nearly-seven-foot man that comes stalking out of the lower tunnels. Honestly, everyone here seems a surprised and a little astonished about his... Entire scene.

There is a way up. It's a maze of twisting corridors and confusing passageways, half of which feel too small for him. It's bigger and bigger groups of people, some of which scatter like schools of fish, and some of which have to be pushed through to get anywhere. It's climbing up into streets lit with dingy lights, graffiti-covered hallways, warehouses, weird holes in stone walls that may or may not be windows. It's alarm bells, it's people yelling at each other down the street. It's just an absurd number of stairs. A couple of people make an attempt to stop him somewhere, and it goes poorly for them.

Elsewhere, events are being set in motion where Irahl cannot see. But he's on his way out.

Eventually, more people try to stop him. At the end of another long stretch of Underground city, a group of official-looking folks are putting a real effort into blocking off the obvious exit, and some of them have weapons.

Down a side alley, into another tunnel, and then the space opens up into a... Plaza, of some sort? The floor is made of stone. The buildings surrounding it are made of stone and are hard to distinguish from one another. At at least the ceiling (also made of stone) is a lot higher than before. Cavernous. There's some kind of sculpture in the middle of it, some impressive feat of geometric stonework that gives the illusion of defying gravity despite weighing literal tons.

This is where someone finally catches him. Sounds have been echoing unhelpfully down every passageway, making it hard to tell if people are coming or going - but this series of quick footsteps comes from an upward direction before someone hits the ground about five feet in front of Irahl.

His clothes are different. His hair is better-kept. Maybe if the situation wasn't quite so tense, there'd be time to see the ways in which his face is different, the way his eyes don't have quite as vicious and sharp a gleam as they used to. But whatever Irahl can take in of him, there is Robin, having hopped down from a rooftop to put himself between him and the exit again.

"...Holy shit."

Kind of weird that he looks absolutely shocked to see the person in front of him, though.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If there's anything that keeps Irahl in a mood to interact with others, it's a proper appreciation for his rifle. It helps for things like answering questions about his records and statistics without launching off into side-tangents on any number that he feels doesn't accurately reflect his skills. Instead, he talks more about the various types of records he keeps track of, such as the difference between shots fired in an artificial range versus out in the field, and 'hits' versus 'kills'--including different stats for each size category of creature.

...Even so, he still can't help but mention that he only counts 'kills' as being those which had been successfully completed with one shot, which perhaps hurts his numbers, and mentions that he's better at hunting live targets than he is at firing at inanimate targets.

This perhaps proves itself to be true when it comes time to face off against the moving targets. His frustration had already begun beforehand with his performance being not as good as he'd like with the distant stationary targets, as he has dealt with shooting through heat distortion plenty of times before, but that was nothing compared to what he's experiencing now in the desert. He still hits targets nearly a mile out, but it's not what he'd been hoping for himself. So, he starts to get frustrated when they move on to the moving ones and he doesn't perform as well as he wants to there either.

For the slower and closer targets, he is able to impressively pick his rifle up and brace it while kneeling with improbable success. Once the difficulty ramps up from there, though, so does his frustration. He's still a very good marksman, but several things add up for this to be in neither his nor his rifle's comfort zone.

Finally, once yet another direction-changing target escapes unscathed, his patience quietly snaps. He looks like he is one step from figuring out a way to parkour down there and stab the thing himself. Growling quietly, he mutters to his audience of one while he ejects the empty magazine and loads up a new one.

"...I hate small targets. And no body language to watch."

It's starting to feel like one of those exercises that he famously labels as 'pointless' and refuses to do anymore back home. His career isn't hunting little metal shapes. He hunts large, living, dangerous creatures. So, he's still attempting the exercise until they tell him to stop, but his tolerance is eroding quickly.

They're fully aware that the range on a few of these targets is insane. Even at the upper limits of human ability, and with very, very good gear, they wouldn't expect accuracy. But this is just as much about getting a sense of how Irahl deals with stress and bad conditions as it is about getting some distances recorded. And, you know, learning that he can hold his rifle up like it doesn't weigh fifty pounds.

They let him take a few more shots after his complaint, then call for him to stop and follow them back to the table.

Jandru heads over, fishes a couple of metal cups out of the bottom of a tool bag, and fills them up at a wide spigot on one of those two cooler-looking things below the table. They hand one to Irahl, revealing that it's water filled with ice chunks. They drink some themselves, having just sat in the sun for a while, before they radio up to the booth.

"Nikaro, could you bring the weights down?"

"Copy that," Irahl hears through the tinny speaker, shortly before they reemerge from the booth and start heading down the stairs.

"Let's get you on the course," Jandru says to Irahl, setting down their water.

The course, as it turns out, is about half of the mess of things that are set up on the other side of the arena. They have Irahl stand on a little red X marked with chalk on the floor. Jandru presses a button on a panel on a wall, which causes a winch to lift the canvas and reveal a enviably challenging obstacle course. While perhaps not as sophisticated as the one he encountered up in space-jail, they've still done a lot with what they have. Jandru doesn't give Irahl much time to strategize.

"Get to the green X on the other side as fast as you can, don't leave the marked boundaries." They start a hand-held timer, "Go."

Irahl takes a drink of the offered water more to have a sensory experience, chewing on some ice chips to help him transition between two tasks, than for a real need for hydration. He leaves the cup behind again as quickly as Jandru does.

After missing out on the satisfaction of handily destroying as many things at a distance as he'd wanted, he is more than ready to move his body around. As soon as he catches on that some kind of obstacle course is next, he shucks off his cloak--giving a better view of his fancy flex armor--and makes sure that the speakers are fitted securely into his ears. He'd be even more agile if he'd leave behind his coat and tactical vest as well, but he wouldn't shed those as willingly as he would leave his cloak behind in the field, so he keeps them on for now.

And though he is attempting to analyze what he's looking at and strategize before the tarp has been fully removed, he doesn't hesitate in bolting forward as soon as he hears the word 'go.'

He absolutely is running in before he has fully processed anything, but even if he'd known exactly what he's got ahead of him, his answer to the puzzle would likely be the same, because it's the same impulse he follows while out on the job--go up.

So, instead of jogging into the space that is clearly meant to be the start of the path through the obstacles, Irahl runs to build up speed so that he can just... kick off of the nearest solid object as soon as he's inside the marked boundary and use it to propel himself up, using his insane reach to grab onto some scaffolding above what the average soldier would consider a sane and reasonable thing to go for. But, with a huff of exertion, he pulls himself up and climbs until he reaches whatever he can stand on that is essentially above many of the initial obstacles, and hurries from there.

If he can climb over the top of barriers, and get a better view of what he's working with from eight feet up, he's gonna do it. Everything makes more sense from above. He's sure there are things he won't be able to get around, and maybe things that can still reach him up there, (as he's sure that something in here is probably primed to shoot or swing at him,) but he takes off running along the top of whatever he can.

Unlike a lot of big guys, he has zero fear of heights and great balance, so he's going to ride that as far as he can.

There's a lot of stuff up here. Including a couple of immediate threats--one is a small cannon that starts launching sandbags at alarming speed in scattershot bursts all over the "top" of the course, and the other is some sort of grease all over every surface that would otherwise look easy to walk along.

There is another small detail that may or may not escape his notice - down on the ground, there are several more small chalk Xs on the ground in a few places, though none of them are red or green. What does that mean? Maybe time will tell.

Jandru hustles up to the top of the stairs to try not to lose sight of Irahl for long.

Edited 2024-10-04 01:20 (UTC)

Oh, well then. Color him surprised. The sandbag canon is expected but far more formidable than he'd imagined, and the grease is completely new. So new, in fact, that he almost misses it completely. Luckily, the first things that he climbs and clambers along are not sane things to traverse, so he fairs okay. But when he swings up to land on something that does seem platform-like, he comes very close to immediately slipping and breaking his neck.

He'd been too busy watching the canon's activity, but he very quickly learns his lesson to watch his feet and the surfaces underneath them. For his trouble, he has no other choice but just... take the full force of a sandbag straight to the chest while he's still trying to figure out what to do about the grease around him.

He braces for impact, but still grunts with the force of being hit by something that would have absolutely taken someone smaller off of their feet--and would have toppled him too, honestly, if he hadn't seen it coming. And it's when the sandbag falls to the platform at his feet, and he then uses it as a greaseless surface to stand on, he gets an idea.

Because, he would really like to stay up here for as long as he can. Cannon or no cannon, he can see where this upper path will get him farther than scurrying around on the ground will, and he doesn't particularly want to find out what those other X's are about. So, he waits for the next volley, and this time purposefully catches the sandbag flying toward him.

Ignoring the pain that it causes in his filed-down claws, he pulls a move that is very rare for him, which is to dig in with his claws and sharp canines to rip apart part of the seam on one end. As sand starts to pour out, he gives the bag a good fling to start throwing it onto the path ahead of him. It isn't perfect, but it's enough to give the treads of his boots something to grip onto as he scrambles along the top of this barrier, watching the trajectory of projectiles as he goes.

Not a lot of people take the high route through the obstacle course--and even fewer people make it past getting pelted with one of those extra-large sand bags. Jandru reaches the top and peers back down; they're just in time to see his clever choice to catch and rip open a sand bag.

Irahl can make it about halfway through the obstacle course before he starts running into a new problem--an entire section of the course that's a lot flimsier than it looks. Boards suddenly thinner, trapdoors, supports that aren't actually attached to one another, all things designed to try and drop someone on top into the middle of the mess.

At first, he underestimates the persistence with which things up here are built to crumble. He catches the first couple before disaster strikes, but he foolishly thinks that will be the worst of it, and expects that he'll hit a new sort of trap after that. But then his foot goes straight through a board, falling through almost all the way up to his thigh before he catches himself.

That's when he gets a little annoyed.

For this obstacle course, he has put himself into the mental gear that he slips into when trying to catch up to some target racing through the ruins before it gets away. It's a familiar gear for him, obstacle courses are pretty similar to the ruins he often goes hunting in, and it fits the hurried timing of the test. He'd get similarly annoyed in the real-world scenario, so he does here what he would do back home.

Looking around, he searches his near vicinity for something to tear down or tip over. A scaffolding, some support structure, part of a wall--anything that looks sturdy enough to help support his weight that he can rip away from wherever it's supposed to be and shove over to help bridge the rickety path he's on.

Well, that's... One way to solve that part of the course. The construction is built to withstand a pretty fair amount of damage, but it's also not exactly a disqualifier if the whole thing happens to come down around him. They didn't say he can't break stuff, just that he had to get to the other side quickly.

So there he is--a bridge to get over the worst of it, ripped out of the scaffolding. The remainder of the obstacle course is fairly straightforward (aside from more sand bags and a bit where he either has to scale a wall or finally descend below it to get across), until the green X is finally in sight on the ground.

Those sandbags won't catch him unawares again, so he makes sure not to get winged by one as he scales the wall (because Irahl will always opt to go up and over something when the other choice is to go underneath) before he spots the goal.

He doesn't clamber down carefully to reach the X. He jumps nimbly down, but he does so from up on his perch, which is far above where someone should be concerned about their ankles on the way down. He, of course, has no such fear. Dropping down, he hits the ground like a dexterous meteor, before taking his place on the X a couple of long-legged strides later.

While it would have been hilarious if a trapdoor opened and plunged him into a pit-trap or something, no such tricks await him on his way to the green X--unless you count the numerous red Xs also in the area, but Irahl remembers his instructions. On the top step, Jandru scribbles down the recorded end time on their clipboard.

"Good," they call out to him across the arena, not about to give him more than a moment's break, "From here, get to the yellow X as quickly as you can. Don't leave the marked boundaries. Time starts... Now."

It will quickly become clear that everything before this was kind of a warm-up; they let him off easy by starting with something he's familiar with. The rest of the day will be an onslaught of challenges, one after the other, carefully-coordinated by Jandru to use up each and every one of Irahl's minutes here to get some kind of work done.

There's the challenge of finding the yellow X hidden deep in the obstacle course, which tests both how well he was paying attention to his environment during the first run and how quickly he can make up for it if he wasn't. The yellow X is small, but visible from the top of the course. However, by the time Irahl gets up there, they've swapped out one of the sandbag cannons for what's essentially a high-pressure fire hose with much better aim.

After that, he's asked to lift a 100lb weight in the air. Then they tell him to dismantle and repack his rifle.

Then they unveil the stealth course, which is a mock-up of a crumbling, two-story building. Then instruct him to get from the entry door to the second story, then set up his rifle at a window, staying as hidden and quiet as possible along the way. As soon as that's done, they tell him to come down and lift a 120lb pound weight in the air.

They make him catch or dodge balls shot at him from high-pressure canons, they put him on a jungle-gym-looking construction where they can test his balance, then they send him back to the open wall and set up a bunch of mid-range targets for them to test his skill with other kinds of firearms. They'll test with whatever guns he has with him, but will also provide a couple of theirs for him to try as well. Between all of these tasks, they ask him to lift things with increasingly large weight before moving on.

While Jandru never offers him more water, there's always a cup waiting for him if he wants it, and whether it's part of a test or simply force of habit from Jandru's years as a personal assistant, they periodically make sure it's filled with fresh ice.

There's the puzzle box--a space filled with challenges one must solve before they can "escape" from the room. They warn him about it ahead of time given that it's intentionally a small, enclosed space, and try very hard not to look disappointed when Irahl gives it a hard pass. True to their word, they don't make any efforts to force him into the room, or even ask why he refuses to participate. They follow it up with a straightfoward speed test, where they make him run the length of perimeter of the erena with only a few walls to scale and no other complications. They make him run it seven times to get a range of scores, and to see if he'll show any signs of tiring.

At some point, the sun has fallen very low in the sky. As breakneck a speed as they've all been going, they do pause for dinner. Nikaro emerges from their booth to sit on the steps near the long table, quietly eating whatever takeout Jandru got delivered here. Irahl's offered food as well, and once Jandru finally starts eating there's a good ten minutes where they zone out and only eat. There may very well be a long stretch of time where no one says a word, all of them industriously working to restore their depleted calories around this makeshift dinner table.

The quickest way to summarize these hours of testing is that there is good news and there is bad news, and both of which is the fact that Irahl had not been exaggerating about himself. He is highly skilled, his abilities are generally above what is considered normal for a human, there are a couple stark deficits and refusals mixed in there, and--for better or worse--he is very difficult to tire out. He'd come into this thing at the peak of rest and with full stores of energy, so he just... keeps going.

The first thing that is confirmed about him is that he has incredible determination and focus, but that focus is narrow. When they send him back through the maze to look for a yellow X that he hadn't noticed, the fact that he frowns is clear despite his face-coverings.

Then comes one thing that he hadn't mentioned. When he heads back up to the top of the obstacle course and is surprised by a water cannon, it doesn't hit him normally. As he's surprised by it, throwing his arms up to shield his face, there is a partially-visible shimmer and the water seems to glance off of him more than hit him directly. He's knocked slightly off course, but the blast doesn't have nearly the punch that it should.

After that, he's gratefully allowed back into his comfort zone. It's a show of both himself and his equipment working in perfect concert when he gives a demonstration of how he works in his natural habitat on the stealth course. Even his little speakers are designed to not let any sound out when they're properly tucked into his ears. Aside from the fact that they will need to get him a paler cloak to better blend in, his flex armor, gear, boots, and natural skill are all built to be as stealthy as possible while hunting. Someone who specializes entirely in stealth would beat him in this category, but he still excels more than someone of his size should be able to.

By the time he gets to the dodging and balance tests, he's starting to have fun. He does well, again showing that his height does not get in the way of moving fast and keeping his balance as much as it should. He even cheekily tries whipping one of the balls back at the cannon like he's trying to break it. He also seems to enjoy the firearm test. He's quite proficient with them, though he shows a clear preference for rifles and handguns over automatic or heavy-duty weaponry. He can at least handle himself with any firearm put into his hands, but he's a sharpshooter through and through.

Between it all, he occasionally returns to his glass of ice water, but he does so in the way of someone sipping on a drink over the course of an evening, chewing on ice whenever there is a minute between tests. And it's during these transitional times when it becomes alarmingly clear that he he doesn't seem to be tired. When he takes a moment to rest and eat ice, his respiration is elevated, but only to the point of catching up to a normal, human rate of breath. He hardly seems to sweat, even after the speed test.

It's only once they stop long enough to eat that he seems visibly tired at all. When he stops moving for the first time in hours and lets himself settle, there's finally a droop to his posture. He joins the other two in eagerly zoning out and mindlessly refueling. Blessedly, with no one drumming up any conversation, he's allowed to shut his brain off for a little while.

Jandru is rapidly hurtling towards exhaustion. They aren't entirely aware of it, but they loose track of their body while eating and their own posture begins to look a little wilted. While they aren't running laps or dodging sand bags, but they've been thinking very hard, problem solving, multitasking, keeping track of times and paperwork and which instructions go to which task--on top of standing, crouching, and scurrying around the field to make sure they've got a good view of whatever Irahl is doing. They're much better-trained than an average civilian, but they are human, and the testing is going on for much longer than even they anticipated.

But as soon as either they or Irahl are done with their food (whichever comes first), they stand and ask if he's ready for the next round of tests. The work continues.

The first is a simple vision test, mostly to confirm that Irahl's eyes are really as good as they seem; they're smart enough to skip right to the furthest averages of human vision, so the work is over nice and quick.

After that, they have him stand at the front of a long, covered setup and ask if he'll consent to putting a blindfold on. They let him do it himself. As the canvas is pulled off the course, they explain that in front of him is thirty feet of straight track with various objects between him and the end point, and they want him to navigate to the end of the track without being able to see. They don't mention a timer or any other rules. The objects on the track are all fairly mundane, stationary objects--a chair, a crate, a standalone doorframe, that sort of thing.

Originally, they'd wanted to test his ability to move around in total darkness, and if he's got any preternatural sense of what's around him, but... It quickly turns into an observation of how he does under pressure, and if he can stick it out long enough to complete his task.

After dinner, Nikaro stayed out in the arena to reset and repair parts of the obstacle course that Irahl had trashed earlier. After the blindfold test, they pipe up, mentioning that they've actually got something they'd like Irahl to take a stab at.

The final tarp is pulled off the final, humbly-sized mystery... Which turns out to be a table covered in eight different weapons that mostly look like guns. Some of them are a little hard to discern the function of at a glance. With a proud smile, Nikaro explains these are some of the weirder prototypes that've passed through this facility, plus a few things they slapped together just for this test. They'd like Irahl to go ahead and wreck the test dummies on the other end of the arena, using anything from the table, in any order, with no indication that he must use them all.

This is secretly a replacement for the puzzle box. All of these weapons are either not intuitive to use, hard for a human to wield effectively, or have some trick to them that require just a little bit of brainwork. They specify that he's not being tested for speed or anything--they just want to see what he does with some unusual tools.

And after that concludes, however that concludes, Jandru calls for the last test.

The sun went down a couple hours ago, and the room has become considerably colder. For this test, they shut off the lights and have him set his rifle back up at the open wall.

"Sometime tonight, a supply truck will be passing over those dunes on the way here." Jandru points at where they're referring to, "They'll also be passing over the buried cliffs that house a flock of smokewings. When they startle, some are likely to break off and fly this way. Once you bring one down, you can go home for the day."

It turns out that patience and tolerance are two different things for Irahl, and one of them is admittedly running a little low.

The blindfold had seemed fine. He really hadn't thought it would be a problem, but as soon as he agrees to the test and puts himself into voluntary blindness, he realizes his mistake. His body language clearly shows his immediate regret and agitation, but he has already agreed to it, so he forces himself to try anyway. His tolerance crashes to critical levels as soon as he runs into his first real obstacle, though. The very first thing he bumps into hardly counts, as he barely glances off of a crate, but then he walks into the chair head-on.

As soon as he trips over that, it seems to startle the hell out of him--judging by the irritated growl--and the only thing that keeps him from falling completely over is the way that he reaches down to snatch the little piece of furniture away from his legs.

A chair might as well weigh nothing when in Irahl's hands, and there's a moment there where it's very believable that he's just going to chuck the thing in a random direction to get it away from himself.

It's probably a testament to his self-control that he doesn't immediately vent his aggression on the inanimate object though, instead gritting his teeth and continuing with the test. However, he doesn't put the chair down. He keeps that thing held out in front of him to be used as a cane, as he somewhat hurries to get through the rest of the test. Thankfully, nothing that he runs into is living, because it absolutely would have gotten brained with a chair.

After that, he is more than happy to submit to a test that isn't that one. His tolerance is still running a little low though, so even though he's in much better spirits with a test that involves playing with weapons and wrecking dummies, he doesn't have the mental energy to fiddle with things that he can't figure out right away. Anything that isn't fun for him to figure out, takes too long, or is too unwieldy for him to see a point in using 'correctly,' becomes an improvised weapon. They may not explicitly say that everything on the table needs to be used, but he either assumes that to be the case, or he imposes that rule himself.

By the end of it, everything on the table is used in the destruction of the dummies, whether used correctly, used as a projectile thrown with an intimidating amount of force, or snapped apart to be used as what he believes is its true destiny as either a stabbing or bludgeoning weapon. At the very least, it's an entertaining show to watch.

And then, finally, they give him an assignment that he truly understands. Even though his first thought when they describe his task is 'great, shooting little birds in the dark,' he doesn't complain and he doesn't ask any followup questions. He simply accepts the assignment at face value, turns the night vision on in his visor, and sets up and settles in as if it's any other sniping job out in the real world.

This requires actual patience. This, he can do.

With the final test accepted, Jandru trudges back up the stairs to go flick a few light switches near the door. Aside from dim egress lighting and a few overheads at the back for Nikaro, the space is plunged into darkness. It's far from closing time, though--Jandru comes right back down, has a seat at their makeshift desk, switches on a portable lamp, and starts writing their report.

The night only grows colder as an hour passes. The desert is pretty calm tonight; Irahl might see a small critter skuttling over a dune, or catch a twirl of sand in the wind, but otherwise there's not a whole lot going on out there. For a while, all he'll hear from the space behind him is the flip of a page from Jandru, or Nikaro sweeping up remnants of test dummy and wheeling some of their concluded business into a staging hallway in the back.

As one hour stretches slowly into two, Jandru fails to stifle a yawn. Some forty minutes later, Nikaro reappears with a tarpful of mangled equipment, and sits down on the large steps again to make small, quiet repairs to whatever they scraped up. More time passes. Two hours become three. At the third poorly-suppressed yawn, Nikaro pipes up.

"Hey, Jandru, aren't you... Up at sunrise?"

"Yeah," Jandru says, before they blink a couple times and wake themselves up, "Yes, why?"

"You should head home, then." Nikaro says. They have a way of speaking gently even though they haven't really lowered their voice or anything. The smile is evident in the sound of their words. "Don't worry, I can take it from here."

Silent hesitation from Jandru, maybe the start of an argument, but Nikaro doesn't let them get very far.

"C'mon, clock out and get some sleep. Your work'll get sloppy otherwise."

Irahl has not spent a whole lot of time with Jandru, but it's not hard to imagine that this is one of the few things that could actually convince them to do anything, let alone give up on what's already been above and beyond the usual scope of their work.

"You'll get the distance...?" They begin to ask, before correcting themselves again, "Of course you will, pardon me. I'll give you the key."

After Jandru's gathered up their things and passed the key on to Nikaro, they head to where Irahl is perched and crouch nearby, like they had been doing when they'd initially assessed his rifle at the beginning.

"I'm swapping out, Nikaro will take care of things from here. I'll be at your hotel to pick you up tomorrow morning at zero nine hundred hours."

They wait just a moment to see if there are any questions, but won't stick around for too long. They're sure Irahl was listening. And now that they've finally caved, they do really want to get to bed as soon as physically possible.

Edited (i'm as tired as Jandru rn) 2024-10-05 04:09 (UTC)

The classic, stake-out-style sniping is not Irahl's favorite, (which other snipers might consider a blasphemous thought,) but he has the patience needed for it. Especially with his music playing, he can disappear into the quiet part of his brain, watch the desert through his binoculars, and become a simple creature that is predatory eyes and not much else.

The conversation behind him is something happening on a nearby but unrelated plane, which he can both idly keep track of and have no thoughts about whatsoever. And with the way his aura flattens out, what has been an extremely busy and powerful presence all day now stills until it doesn't feel like there's even a third person in the room.

Time slips by without meaning, tracked only by the number of songs playing over the course of the evening, until picking up Jandru's approach finally stirs his mind out of its lull.

He hardly takes his eyes off of the sand that he has been diligently monitoring--because wouldn't this be the stupidest reason to ruin this hours-long watch--but he does move, blindly reaching into the gear bag at his elbow.

He knows what he's looking for by touch, so soon pulls out a watch that is both digital and analog--as well as displays more than simply the current time--and holds it up vaguely in Jandru's direction.

"Is this right?"

If he's talking about whether the time displayed on the watch correctly matches the current time, then no, it is not. It isn't correct by many hours.

As he holds up the watch, there are several seconds of confused silence as Jandru tries to figure out what they're looking at. They might have gotten it faster if they weren't so burned out already, but even at the height of their mental agility they don't really have a context to comprehend the digital readout automatically.

"...No?" They eventually say, sounding a little vexed, "It's... Very behind."

Nine hours and fifty-three minutes behind, exactly. Not bothering to double-check if they have permission, they pluck the watch from his hand and start comparing it to their own pocket watch, a much simpler contraption. At least the mechanism for adjusting the analog part of Irahl's watch is easy enough to figure out.

About a minute later, they hand back his watch with the time synced up nearly to the second. Then they finally stand back up and make their way out of the arena, leaving Irahl to the rest of his assignment under the watchful gaze of Nikaro.

Which is not actually all that watchful; Seth's second-in-command seems to take a much more relaxed approach to things than Jandru did. A majority of their focus is on slowly and carefully dismantling a slightly-crumpled sand bag cannon by lamplight, and they only glance up on occasion to see if it looks like anything's going on outside.

After about twenty minutes of silence, they do suddenly pipe up and ask a question, but it's one Irahl might actually be interested in answering.

"That rifle takes specialized rounds, yeah? Do you have a supplier?"

The watch is retrieved wordlessly and without checking to see what, if anything, has been done to it, and he doesn't think to say anything as his chaperone then departs for the night.

The following minutes are almost pleasant with one less person in the room and the sounds of methodical tinkering in the background, somewhere behind his music. And when that mostly-silent peace is finally broken, he doesn't mind all that much, as it is about something he'd been planning to talk about at some point anyway. In fact, with this person supposedly being second-in-command, they might be the perfect person to discuss it with.

"Not yet. It's an Enclave. Takes armor-piercing, anti-vehicle rounds, both standard and arcana."

If there's anything that Irahl will offer more words than necessary on, it's his rifle. He also blindly reaches next to him and nudges his gear bag in their direction, silently offering for them to look if they're that curious.

Well, don't mind if they do! With a soft noise of interest, they set down their tools, pick up their lamp, and head over. They crouch near the gear bag and pick through it with one hand until they find the rounds they're looking for--and fish out a normal cartridge and an arcana cartridge to get a look at them both in the light.

Each one is regarded with exacting focus, and the kind of attention that comes from being intimately familiar with the math and science of how these things are normally made. They'd been hoping to get a look at whatever these "arcana rounds" are ever since they saw the inventory list captured by Jandru a couple weeks ago.

"I think we've got some rounds that would work for your standard," they explain, still looking down at the arcana round, "And if not, we can make some to spec. But these guys..."

They hold it up at the open window, looking at the silhouette of it, before sighing and lowering it in their hand.

"I've got to admit, as much as it pains me... You've had us stumped around here with your 'arcana' rounds." They smile again, as if them being totally in the dark on this is actually funny, "I've got a bet going with a buddy on what they actually do."

Edited 2024-10-05 21:55 (UTC)

Irahl can't help it, the small sound under his breath is almost a 'tsk.' However, it's aimed at the general inconvenience of how few things seem to directly translate between his home city and the two that he has visited here, and it isn't necessarily a judgement on the Capitol or anyone in it. Not that he clarifies this fact out loud.

Right now, it's only a subtle nonverbal comment to himself. Right now, going off of the conversation he'd had with the scavenger down in the junk pile, he assumes the discrepancy is only one of terminology.

"Anti-magic rounds," he explains with the flippancy of someone who is expecting things to easily fall into place with only a little clarification. "Nullifies magical effects and destroys supranatural energy."

"Mmm... Nope!" Irahl can practically hear the overpronounced shrug in their voice as, once again, admit to having no idea what Irahl's talking about, "Don't have those here. Man, I've lost a bet and I've learned we're behind..."

They're treating this like a mild inconvenience even though they immediately think of a dozen people to whom this would be a very big deal if it's true. This is a life-changing discovery and the kind of thing that could very well alter the course of human history. Which is precisely why they move to put the arcana round right back in the secure case in the duffel bag of a guy who doesn't talk much.

The sniper takes his eyes off of the desert.

It's barely a second or two, but Irahl finds this statement so hard to believe that he lowers his binoculars long enough to shoot a glance at this 'equipment expert,' mostly to double-check their expression and judge if they're messing with him or not.

He diligently returns to his task right afterward, but a good portion of his attention is still on the conversation. It's Irahl's turned to be a little vexed.

"...Scrappers down in the other city didn't seem confused about it."

Nikaro is not exactly easy to read at a glance... But it'd be a little weird to feign embarrassment like this for a prank. And they don't back down from what they've said in the slightest.

When Irahl says that, it takes them a couple of seconds to realize what he's talking about. But only a couple.

"You mean those guys that haunt Fourth?" They ask, before they laugh out of delayed surprise, "I didn't realize you've been in touch with them... And I guess I'm not all that surprised to hear they're figuring it out faster than we are."

They shrug again, before remarking more to themselves than to Irahl.

"Three points of hard news in a row. What bad luck..."

Whether or not it's genuine, the laidback attitude grates on Irahl a little, especially as this revelation has more time to sink in. Replacing his arcana ammo is going to be a pain, but if the entire technological category is just as much of a mystery to these people, it's going to make his life more difficult in several different ways. On top of that, it's annoying to find out that even though this city is more welcoming of technology than the other one had been, they're still missing a couple important things.

"Guess you don't have cloaking fields either? Nullifying armor?" He doesn't sigh, but the sentiment is under there. "Miracle you've been hunting without it."

Interesting. What a judgmental statement. But it reminds them of something Seth had told them about this guy--and they make no attempt to defend themselves, deciding to take another route through this conversation instead.

"Not outside of prototypes, really. Incorporating magic of any kind into our equipment is a very new concept; we've had a hard time getting stable models out."

Still crouched there, they rest their arms on their knees as they look out at the empty desert. They're still holding the giant (standard) cartridge loosely in one of their hands. They still sound pleasant, but there isn't much humor in their voice now.

"Is that something you'd be interested in helping out with? Or are you more about using the gear and less concerned with how it's made?"

Even with how cold and sedentary Irahl tends to be, especially while sniping, something about his demeanor subtly goes even more still and frigid. It could easily be mistaken for Irahl suddenly spotting something out in the dark, but he doesn't shift from his binoculars to the scope of his rifle.

The pause becomes distinct as Irahl needs several long seconds to remind himself that if this person is as unfamiliar with the technology as they claim, they probably don't know what creating and testing it entails. This probably isn't the veiled threat that it sounds like. Once he takes a moment to tell himself this, he takes a few more to let the spike of anxiety drain out of him again, and wait for the ice in his voice to at least halfway melt.

"Not qualified."

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