[PRP] The Great White North (Zac + Otto)

[Bittiface]

Otto needed grunt workers to help set up his training course. Asking for help was not easy for the blonde. He preferred to do it all himself. However, after a few trips back to one of his locations clearing zones... he was learning that one man was not enough.

He left a simple notice up near the portals for anyone willing to work a shift here or there doing grunt work and left it at that. If people showed up, all the better. He left instructions with the ones on duty, and left for his destination.

He preferred to work alone, even if it was slow going.

The location was somewhere in the great Canadian wilderness. The air was slightly chilly. The woods were oddly quiet save for some squirrels bickering in the trees. Otto was in a clearing, dragging away fallen branches.

endejester

 

[endejester]

To be perfectly honest he was looking for something to do to kill time before he decided if it was time or not to take the next step in his dealings with Ever. But the sign also looked like it was going to provide an interesting thing to do that didn’t involve getting stabbed from what he could tell.

Of course, it was Deus, he’d learn better than to assume there was anything that didn’t likely involve stabbing, being shot, or being bitten.

He stepped cautiously though the portal and immediately regretted it, it was a lot colder than he was accustomed to given where he was from.
“Pai a Ihowa, toto e he matao!”


He cursed before waving a cautious greeting to the senior hunter.

“Hey, saw you could give a hand yeah? Got to be warmer than just standing here.”

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

Otto heard the phoney balogne moon language before he saw the trainee. The blonde looked up from his work, giving the other man a critical eye until he spoke English.

"You'll get warm real quick." He stood straighter and pointed. "See the yellow flags on the smaller trees? All them are comin' down. If you can use an axe, use it and chop them ********. If y'ain't comfy doin' that, then just clear the debris from the ones I already took down."

He appeared to be making a clear pathway for one of his courses by clearing a line of smaller trees. He wasn't going to bother taking down the larger ones.

"My name's Otto. Ya got any questions or gripes, talk to me." He expected an introduction in response.

endejester

 

[endejester]

The critical look he got made Zac smother a grin, the more senior hunter even looked like a classic tourist type so he bit his tongue.

He grabbed an axe and gave it an experimental heft as the weight wasn’t a given before nodding and heading towards one of the flagged trees.

“Could have a grand barbie with all this tinder.” He remarked conversationally. “But it looks like you got heaps of work before you could get that far eh?”

“I’m Zac by the by.”

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

Barbie? Tinder? Otto furrowed his brows, wondering whether to even ask or pass it off as a gap in cultures and ignore it altogether. "Uh.. Right.." He murmured, dropping an armful of branches down into a pile. "About four hours from now will be a break." There seemed to be a cooler waiting nearby. The contents unknown until lunch time.

Otto was at peak levels of uncomfortable. He'd avoided asking for help, simply because a lot of hunters liked to gab it up. Otto wouldn't have minded, except that he himself wasn't terribly good at it. Oh how he wished he had an artifact that allowed him to do this work alone. A giant robot that made clear straightaways.

Instead of awkwardly thinking of things to say, he outright pretended the man didn't exist.

Otto grabbed another axe and dragged himself to another flagged tree.

endejester

he is the king of silence /sobs

 

[endejester]

“As you like it.” He nodded and set in to work. “Long as the bloody mozzies don’t eat us whole. Can guarantee we’ll be knackered tonight, this is hard yakka.”

He casually uttered the alien vocabulary with an ease and comfort of long use, like he actually expected it to be regarded as a language.
At least he didn’t try and push too hard about making conversation though, he worked hard and paced himself rather than trying too hard to prove himself to the other and hurt himself in the process.

“Hey mate, if you get too tired you got extra hands, take a load off.” He did suggest after a while, though to be fair he had no idea how far Otto could push himself on a daily basis. He thought it might be on the better side of caution to be at least a little friendly.

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

Otto had to fight hard not to stop working just to make sense of the man's speech. It was wonky and odd. With all the strange accents he'd ever heard, this was the first time every other word sounded like complete nonsense. "You talk like friggin' Dr. Seuss." Otto grumbled.

The work went on and on. Even with the chilly air, it was easy to become overheated and sweaty with the constant movement.

Otto stopped for only a moment when prompted. Catching his breath and looking over both their work. "S'fine..." He murmured, wiping sweat from his brow with a sleeve. "We'll call it quits in a few anyway." He was getting much more done with two pairs of hands.

After some time, it was indeed time for a big break. Otto pulled up the cooler. It had colas and snacks, as well as... fish? Yep. A section was dedicated to small fish Otto had caught earlier in the day. "Help me build a fire."

endejester

 

[endejester]

The Doctor Seuss comment made him laugh. A soft warm rolling sound just as alien as his words in its own way, but he didn’t seem to take offence at all. “Maybe he spent some time with the Kiwis”

He gathered up some dry wood and made a ring of stones to place the pyramid of scraps and old wood into.

“Ae?” he asked carefully. “I haven’t got a lighter sorry, but it’ll be a good start I think.”

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

"Nah, it's fine. I got a lighter." He really just wanted someone to help get the fixings together, after all. "You eat fish? If not, you only get whatever is in the cooler." Otto himself had only learned to catch and prepare fish during his 2 weeks roughing it a month prior. It was still a shaky skill at best. It was enough to keep him going on more than just travel rations.

Otto lit the kindling and watched it grow.

"What made you come here? I ain't even offered any kind of reward for it."

endejester

 

[endejester]

“Oh yeah, got no problem eating fish, with my family I’d have been a sorry bugger if I didn’t learn to like some fish n chips.”

Zac rolled his shoulders in a small shrug.

“No reason for me not to, sometimes people do favors just to lend a hand Eh? Many hands make light work and all, so they say right? Though you look like you could use a Handle.”


“Here… if you need a hand with that.” He offered, waving a hand at the fish before sweeping some sweat off his brow. He tugged at the braid of hair he wore and then tucked it idly behind his ear, where it slid free a moment later.


“Bit surprised no one else has come to be honest.” He said, for once choosing to avoid the slang that was so familiar to him but so ‘Doctor Seuss’ to Otto.

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

Otto already forgot Zac's name. Therefore he would be forever referred to as Dr. Seuss. Too bad for Zac.

The teen nodded, accepting any help Zac wished to offer in cooking their lunch. "I get help every so often. Not a whole lot. It's not like it's important Deus business. Just a training course." It was Otto's specialization, after all. He was still new at it. One day though, maybe what he did would make a difference on the island.

To that he aspired to. His goal. A purpose.

endejester

 

[endejester]

"Seems important enough to me?" He shrugged as he finished prepping the fish, finaly skewering it on a lightly charred stick to roast.

"Better to train than to jump in blind eh?" He glanced up, swatting off scales and mess on his trousers before taking a seat by the fire with a grateful sigh.

"How long yeh been doin this?"

Bittiface

Lost @ Dr. Seuss

 

[Bittiface]

"This? Uh..." Otto thoughtfully counted with his fingers as he muttered the time gone by. "About a month and a half, give or take." He concluded soon after. "First while I spent just surveying and mapping. After doing some brainstorming, I designed a course I think would work well for this terrain. Now it's a matter of getting it all ready for construction."

Otto found it to be difficult, and even stressful work. But it was something that he could focus on. A goal and a project of his own. He wasn't just furniture, as H asked one day. No, he'd be a vital member of the team, one way or another. He was not front line fodder. He would see to that.

"I let a lot of Life and Moon dudes make up some traps and stuff of their own design. Makes them happy, and it really adds to the diversity of a survival course."

endejester

 

[endejester]

Zac nodded thoughtful. “… kin I try it when its done? Or am I barred from it cause I’m helping set up?” He grinned. “I need the practice eh?”

“Pretty impressive to see this coming together, that’s some serious drive you have to put this much together.”

He turned the fish over in the coals, poking a finger lightly into its side and then leaning back again, apparently not yet satisfied with how it felt to the touch.


“You doing the construction too?” He asked after another long pause, turning the fish again and poking it with a ginger figer, which was more quickly pulled back and shaken.

“Bout done.” He assured.

Bittiface

 

[Bittiface]

"Yeah, you can try it. You can help test it when it gets that far, if you want." Testers were always helpful. If the course was too simple, there would be no challenge, and no learning. Otto took the compliment as humbly as he could. "Thanks.."

Otto watched the cooking fish idly, fairly impressed that Zac knew a little more about cooking them than he did.

"Some of it. Not much, though. Building stuff is more for Moons. So I usually get some of them to build the traps n' stuff."

endejester