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The answer to the puzzle of the yeti wasn't obvious, or at least not obvious yet. Jordan sighed. If he kept picking at it, he'd never get anywhere. There were two more concrete problems to be dealt with, anyway. One of them was sitting on a desk, doing nothing and looking mutinous and sullen.

Jordan picked his way across the rubble to where Rep sat, stopping beside the desk with his back to the room and speaking quietly enough that his voice would carry only to the Sun trainee. "Rep. I'm going to tell you something, but first I want to hear that you're going to hear me out and not interrupt while I'm explaining, because you're not going to like it, but you need to hear it." He gave the red-haired man a steady look, waiting for a response before he went on.

"Good," Jordan said, then, bluntly, "You've got to quit this lying s**t. Exaggerating or straight-out lying, either way it's doing you way more harm than good. All it's done is get you a reputation as a liar and an a*****e. Hear me out." He held up a hand to forestall any interruptions, reminding Rep silently that he'd agreed to listen. "You've been here under a month, haven't had time to train and settle with Tracey, and nobody knows you. Candace has been here nearly a year now. She outranks you, she's one of the more aggressive people on the island, and we know her. She says she beat you in a spar. She dragged you into the infirmary, and we know she's good at what she does. So it's pretty damn obvious to anyone with half a brain that when you say she didn't beat you, you're lying. And you've lied about things that happened in front of witnesses, like today."

He took a breath, crossed his arms, and continued. "Now, since people know you're willing to straight-up lie to their faces, how do you expect them to ever believe what you say? They've got no reason to believe you're not lying. Even if you're not. If you want credit for what you can do - and I've seen you fight, you're going to be a capable hunter - you gotta admit when other people do stuff, and admit it when you're beaten. If you keep on lying, you're going to ruin yourself. It's a small island. You really want to be known as that lying dude who isn't enough of a man to tell the truth?"

He caught Rep's eyes, holding his gaze steadily. Now it was up to the other man to decide what he was going to do.

Rep was indeed tempted to butt in to try and defend himself, rather ironically with another lie. He totally wasn't seen as a liar and an a*****e, they were just jealous. But the raised hand served its purpose and Jordan was afforded a petulant pout rather than an interruption. He was listening though, and clearly it was taking every single scrap of his very very limited self control to keep from interrupting serveral times thereafter.

This only made him feel even angrier, that sort of lurking gnawing anger that made him want to throw a tantrum and flip tables. When people were ******** right and he just didn't want to hear it, when it was easier to just stick your fingers in your ears and pretend you didn't hear. And it just grew and grew until he was jarred out of it by what he was sure had to be..yeah it /had/ to be.. a compliment? Did he honestly think he was capable of being a decent hunter or was he just saying that because it was his job on this mission to be like babysitter?

To anyone else Rep'd likely have thrown a complete freakout, told them it was bullshit, denied losing to Candace again and told them they were delusional and calling him a liar for no reason. But this ******** guy was /frustrating/, he couldn't rightly say any of that with that /look/ on him. He got the feeling he could see right through him sometimes and it was unnerving to say the least, he looked away irritably and snorted.

"It's easier."

Jordan nodded. "Yeah. I get that. I really do. It's easy to make like nothing's wrong and you're on top of the world, and it's a pain in the a** to have to admit that you screwed up or someone else did better than you. But think about it. You know what's true, you don't believe your own bullshit either. How are you going to convince anyone when you know it's a crock yourself?"

He tucked his hands into his pockets and shrugged. "It works both ways, too. You give people credit for what they did, and they'll be a lot more inclined to give you credit for what you did. And then when you do something excellent, you'll get believed and get credit. As long as you actually did it."

He smiled faintly. "Think about it. You don't have to take what I say on faith, that'd be dumb. Think about it and see if it doesn't make sense to you. I'm gonna go talk to Bix and see about a defense plan. Come find me when you're ready to get back to work." He clapped Rep on the shoulder, turned, and walked away. Now all that was left was to give Rep a little time and space to run over what Jordan had said and make up his own mind about it.

As he'd stated, he headed over to Bix. "Hey," he said. "How's your lamb been holding up?"

Candace was quiet for a few seconds as she considered Cass' offer. Her head hurt a lot. She looked as if she was spacing out until she held a hand out. "Yeah okay that sounds like a good idea. That thing was ********' after me." She was frowning as she thought about it. Snow, random yetis conveniently appearing one after the other, one that ignored the trainees and went after her..? What the hell was...she wanted to figure out the yeti now, forget the rest of the place. The yeti was driving her insane. What was it about that thing that just didn't seem right? "Usually the things we do kill..like...their dissipating looks like they're exploding. That yeti disintegrated." Candace explained to Mercedes with Cass. She gave Cass a look as she said this. There was something else they knew that disintegrated. "Perhaps I'm paranoid~." She shrugged, stepping over some debris to check out the damage.

"Mm. What Cass said. Aria explained to me once there used to be two sectors inside the Mist division, too. One that worked on its own and one that could support other divisions like we do now. So far all the missions we've been taken on have had all of the divisions coming along.."

At Marcus' call Candace turned on her heel to see what he was talking about, looking up at the ceiling. How the ********> "...We can certainly try..but I make no promises." Candace didn't see a ladder anywhere. Someone had looked for one but there wasn't a ladder in sight. "What do you think, Cass? We could split up, have one of us and a trainee or two trying to get onto the roof and one of us staying in here. I'd like to keep Mercedes in here because of her ranged weapon in case a yeti comes in here again, but Feng and Molly should be fine heading outside. Molly's a capable girl, she brings a lot of extra supplies. And Feng could probably use a bit more action to taste.." They had an uneven number of Mists under their care, it'd be difficult to split them up. Perhaps two go out onto the roof? There were plenty of trainees in here, but she also wanted the Mists to get as much action as they could.

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Cass went through her things and pulled out a page of the foil-wrapped pills meant to simply be popped out and taken, breaking a square off and offering it to Candace before popping one of them herself. Probably should have taken it with some water, but she didn't think too much of it. She just wanted the pain to stop trying to distract her.

"I think we could do that. It looks like between the five of us we've got Mercedes and Myself on long range and then You, Molly, and Feng appear to be melee." Technically Cass was Melee too, and she knew Candace would know this, but she was laying it out in such a way as to say 'Which would be a better divvy of these skills' to determine who would go to the roof and who would stay down in case of Yeti attack.

"So I'll leave it up to you on if you'd rather say or go. I could handle going outside if you need to sit for a while and rest. I didn't get hit too hard and once my shoulders stop aching I'll be in top working order, as always." she reassured. Splitting up was something they had the option to do, at the very least.

Ami's wandering investigation of the dark substance was cut short as Marcus gave them some orders. Ami was good at that- following orders. Sometimes she was a bit back-sassy, but she could do orders.

Especially when it was her job to protect someone.

"On it," she said in Marcus' direction. With that, she began piling up bits and pieces of boards every which way. She stacked them as orderly as she could, but when it came down to it, it was really just a pile.

Then Emma started harping about making support. As much as she didn't want to admit it, Emma was probably right. She nodded at the girl. Ami stacked boards on the opposite side of the hole of Emma, slowly filling the gap. Would they make it in time?

Taking in Madison's and Aria's comments, Dillon was about to set to work to check for the Fear Meter's control runes when Before's suggestion came in. And since that came from a superior... Dillon heeded his suggestion, leaving the Fear Meter to check the control runes on the broken computer by removing the casing of the equipment.

As for the situation with the Yeti ...

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It's not like we could hit it in the first place, it being so far away....
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