Peace hobbled back up to her camp tired and hungry, unsatisfied with the productivity of her shopping trip. After sitting in her shelter for a bit, she angrily stalked out into the wilderness to rustle up some meat, since most of the fruit was frostbitten at this point. She circulated methodically through three nearby areas she hadn't hunted in yet, but after letting a couple of birds, rabbits, and foxes slip through her fingers, she found herself back at the river, this time tracking a rather large catfish. She'd heard of people slipping their hand into these fish's mouths to catch them, but when it finally came to the surface, she lashed out with her fists and pummeled it until it stopped moving.
Dinner that night left her with a significant amount of leftovers. After performing some perfunctory maintenance on her name, she sat back and watched the sunset from the mountaintop. As the last of its rays retreated over the edge of the horizon and stars started to dot the sky, she opted to hit the sack. The stress of the day had gotten to her and she needed to recuperate.
Days of Recovery: 7/17.
Ergo War generated a random number between
75 and 175 ...
153!
Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2017 5:56 pm
As soon as Peace awoke, she knew this day was going to be much better than the previous one. She had immediate confirmation that her shelter would hold up well in winds, as the gales outside it whipped around the mountain and shook the trees. Her wounds still ached from the exertion of the previous day, but they started to feel better after she ate some more catfish and went on a walk. She let her mind wander as the roar of the wind through the treetops drowned out the sound of the city, and before she realized that it might be a bad idea, she found herself approaching the police outpost. Perhaps luckily for her, the officers were too busy to notice as she approached, so she took a peek at the bulletins of lost and wanted individuals--which was which she'd worked out over her previous visits--and then beat a hasty retreat while the officers were still occupied.
There had been only a few posters up, and of them, even fewer had attached maps. She headed toward a spot she'd seen marked under a picture of a kid who couldn't have been older than ten, which meant he was probably a runaway. It didn't take her too long to find the kid, since she could hear his sniffling and smell the disgusting odor of an unwashed child as soon as she was remotely close to the area marked on the map. He was an obstinate little thing, though, and tried to run away when he'd spotted her. She grabbed him by the collar of his felt, superhero-esque pajamas, though, and tossed him over one shoulder, where he flailed ineffectually against her grip.
About halfway back to the police outpost, something weird started to happen. The kid quieted down and at almost the exact same time the ground split open and spewed forth a cloud of bats, each composed primarily of dirt. They attacked her rather weakly, at first trying in vain to claw at her and then trying to ram themselves into her mouth and eyes. Eventually she started to casually smack them away, which was more than enough to disrupt them.
The kid, as it turned out, was the one creating the bat clouds. The police were much more shocked to learn that than she was, as they'd been looking for a cape who could do just such a thing. The kid had been stealing small things from stores when no one was looking, then having his bats carry those things out to a safe place. He'd gotten caught just recently and run away when his parents tried to punish him for his misdeeds. After everything related to those matters was squared away, Peace was given the rewards for both finding the kid and providing information on the shoplifter. As she counted out the cash, she thought she saw one of the officers give her a weird look, but she wasn't detained at any point and so went and caught a rabbit for her dinner. The rest of the day was rather calm, and after finishing off the catfish for lunch and eating part of the rabbit for dinner, she went to bed.
Days of Recovery: 8/17. Private Eye, D-List Bounty: Complete.
Ergo War
Enduring Guildsman
Offline
Ergo War
Enduring Guildsman
Offline
Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2017 8:58 pm
A miraculous event occurred! The pain in Peace's wounds was finally subsiding, though she knew from experience that a lack of pain didn't mean she was fully healed. Still, the bruising was fading and there were no signs of infection, which was a good thing in her book. Riding high off of this development, she devoured her breakfast and set out on a hike to find some fruit and refill her water supply. The next few hours she found plenty of food, including an armful of apples and peaches that had avoided succumbing to the frost, a small fox, and even some potatoes. Everything was coming up in her favor.
As she skinned and gutted the fox, she thought she noticed someone lurking across the clearing from her shelter. When she looked directly at where she thought they were, however, they vanished, their silhouette becoming no more than a few branches and a fern. Not too long thereafter, a chill ran down her spine. The heat of the previous day was starting to drain from the area and even the wind was blowing colder than it had been. She wrapped up her work quickly, checked to make sure her shelter was properly set up, then retreated inside it and stoked a fire. Over the next couple of hours she was witness to a seventy degree swing in the temperatures, which plummeted from a warm 80 degrees to almost zero. She was absolutely elated she had retreated into her shelter when she did, as she had no idea if she'd be able to withstand the wind at those temperatures. Still, at least she had food and water, so she'd be fine for a while even if she stayed in her shelter for the rest of the day. It felt positively cavelike in there.
Days of Recovery: 9/17.
Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 6:50 pm
How long had it been? Was there only a week left? There had to be only a week left until she could get back to life as normal, Peace reckoned as she cleaned her arm wound. The gash on her side seemed to have almost completely healed, but she wasn't going to press her luck on that front too much until the stitches were out.
The weather of the prior day persisted through the night, and even as the day grew toward noon the frigid arctic winds whipped around the mountain like dogs after a rabbit. The few streams of wind that penetrated her shelter made the homeless parahuman shiver and scoot toward the fire. By far the worst part of Peace's day was when she had to go get water--she already had food from the previous day--which consisted of her sprinting down to the river and then back before the wind got to her too much. She spent much of the rest of the day indoors, limiting her exposure to the fierce winds and low temperatures as much as possible. The only notable exception was when she left to grab some logs to chop for firewood, the chopping of which was done inside her shelter out of necessity.
Days of Recovery: 10/17 First Aid Kit: -1 uses.
Ergo War
Enduring Guildsman
Offline
Ergo War generated a random number between
20 and 100 ...
33!
Ergo War
Enduring Guildsman
Offline
Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 7:34 pm
And then the weather broke. Peace woke the next morning to temperatures well above what she'd experienced over the past couple of days, even if the wind chill made it seem like there wasn't much of a change. She finished off the fruit and animal meat she'd gathered and waited until the day had warmed above freezing to go about hunting and doing outside work.
And of course she ran into a not insignificant number of gang members practically as soon as she'd walked away from her camp. They appeared to be dumping the gear they'd used for some crime or other out in the wilderness, not that she cared; what irked her was that they were chatting about mugging some dude and raping his girlfriend the night before. One of them spotted her and swaggered over. She raised a hand to keep him from walking right up onto her and he grabbed her wrist and pulled himself close. As he raised a hand to grab her chin while muttering all sorts of unsavory things, she punched him square in the pelvis. He squeaked and fell to the ground, stinking of and covered in piss. His buddies all ganged up on her at that point and managed to pin her down without taking too many hits. As she felt them start to pull at her clothes, she lashed out.
Two gang members fell backward as she planted her feet in their faces. Then she twisted around and kneed on of them, loosening their grip on her good arm enough that she could slip it out of their grip and smack them in the face. Seven gangsters remained, but three of them fell in a matter of seconds as she broke free and started rampaging through their ranks. A couple of them tackled her and went rolling down the mountainside a short distance with her, hanging on despite her repeated punches. They crashed into an embankment of rocks and a fallen tree, which did more damage to them than it did to her. She wrestled her way free from their grip only to be kicked by one of their friends as soon as she stood up. She once again was sent for a tumble, but managed to right herself fairly quickly since she wasn't weighed down by people this time. Her bad arm was throbbing painfully, but much less so than she suspected it would have a few days prior. Without waiting for her opponents to launch another attack, she dashed back up and took out the one who had kicked her and one of the ones she'd fallen down the mountain with. She quickly located and knocked out the other one of the latter group, leaving only one gang member up and about, though she didn't know where they were. That gang member jumped out at her when she was headed back toward camp and got a few hits in before she got them with a one-two combo of a hit to the gut and a cross jab to the jaw.
After binding the gangsters and hauling them to the base of the mountain, she spotted another small group of similarly-dressed youths, these ones talking rather loudly about their plans to jump one of the police officers at the nearby outpost that night. She dispatched them with relative ease, taking down the first with a sneak attack, getting nicked by a knife wielded by the second, breaking the second's arm and then knocking them out, hitting the third hard enough in the jaw that they lost a couple of teeth, and then repeating that process with the fourth. After that, she dragged them and their buddies to the police outpost, making sure to take some cash from them for her trouble.
That afternoon she happened upon a deer fawn. She briefly contemplated killing it, but instead waited for some more mature deer to arrive and then beat one of those to death. Compared to the gangsters she'd dealt with earlier, this fight was incredibly straightforward, especially since the other deer bolted as soon as she jumped on the first one. Sure, it bucked, and sure, it tried to roll onto her, but its spine wasn't so durable that her repeated punches wouldn't pulverize it. As soon as the beast was dead, she skinned it, gutted it, and then took the meat and pelt back to her camp. She was getting a nice collection of furs going and now she had a sizable amount of meat she could prepare. Prepare she did, cooking and roasting well into the night so she had at least a couple days' worth of meals before she ultimately headed to bed.
Days of Recovery: 11/17. Scum Removal x2: Complete.
Ergo War generated a random number between
10 and 50 ...
37!
Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:25 am
Peace awoke late to find that the day was much the same as the previous one, but with significantly less wind. Her arm wound was feeling significantly better and the spot where a bullet had grazed her side looked completely recovered and ready for stitch removal. That meant that as long as she didn't use her injured arm very much, she should be able to return to the lifestyle to which she had grown accustomed. After eating breakfast and fetching some water from the river, she set herself about getting back into shape. She felt like she'd lost some of her muscle by lying around for almost two weeks, so she was glad to get back into the swing of things. She did a few standard exercises, including some stretching, some running, standing on one foot, some sit-ups, some planks, and so on. On the way back from her mountain jog, however, she smelled smoke.
The police outpost was on fire on one side. The officers had already exhausted their fire extinguishers by the time she arrived, and it was only a matter of time before firefighters arrived to deal with the scene. She wasn't destined to see how that went down, though, as one of the officers noted her approach and told her the arsonists had run off into the forest. They needed not say any more after that, as she ran off into the treeline where they had directed her without any further ado.
She came upon a small group of individuals on the border between her land and Gil's, their numbers only coming up to three. They were laughing uproariously as she approached, their clothes stinking of gasoline and a few lighters on the ground near them. By their own admission they'd thrown a few firebombs at the police outpost, but she didn't see any more that had been prepared and so rushed in with a head full of steam and fists pumping with fury.
The closest one of them didn't see her coming, but their buddy did and kicked Peace in the gut as she moved in for a punch. She wasn't phased, however, and simply grabbed that person's foot to hold them in place while she moved in for a punch to the gut. That was one down.
The first arsonist yelped in surprise after processing what had just happened and drew a knife to slash at Peace's leg. He caught her off guard, but the poor angle of his attack didn't let him muster up the power he would've needed to seriously injure her, instead leaving her with a shallow scratch. She responded by punching the wrist of his knife hand to both disarm him and discourage further attacks, but before she could get a proper hit on him, the third one tackled her and drove her backward. After digging her feet in and bringing the two of them to a stop, she kneed this opponent in the gut to get them to release her and then slugged them on the side of the head to knock them out. The last one charged at her with the knife in their still-healthy hand, but the lack of power they generated from their non-dominant hand meant that the only cuts they made were shallow. She planted a fist square on their jaw to knock them out of commission for a while, then piled the unconscious arsonists on her back and carried them--slowly--back to the police outpost.
Even though the flames had been extinguished, Peace still kept her distance from the smoldering side of the building, the heat rather unpleasant on her face if she viewed it up close. She turned over the criminals and claimed a small reward for her trouble. That evening she couldn't help but think back on the destruction fire caused to that small outpost while she huddled around her campfire for warmth. Sure, she'd known that fire was dangerous when misapplied or mishandled, but she wasn't quite sure what had been different about the heat from those flames as opposed to the ones she used every night to keep warm. She went to bed with muddled thoughts.
Days of Recovery: 12/17 Community Outreach, Scum Removal: Complete.
Gil stalked back into the forests surrounding New York City, fuming at his discovery. He was not at all pleased about having to wait even longer for his arm to heal than he already had. He was already performing his usual territorial patrolling at an extremely anemic level. After all, it wouldn't do to appear in front of those he was attempting to intimidate with a glaring sign of weakness not quite on his sleeve, but in a sling. The longer he waited, however, the more likely it was that there would be an influx of the uninitiated, interlopers who hadn't heard of him and didn't know any better than to trespass in his territory. Gil reasoned however, that it was worth it for there to be more idiots to run afoul of later when he was at his full strength and his most intimidating than to have a smaller number, but expose his weakness to them. As such, Gil would spend the next few weeks in relative peace and quiet, maintaining a simple schedule that never took him far from the heart of his territory, and minimized his interactions with others.
When he woke up, Gil would go for a run, strengthening his legs, his lungs, and his control over his power. On the way back, he would quickly check his various traps for any game he may have caught during the night, collecting it and bringing it with him if present. His next stop was the river, where he would clean himself, his clothes, as well as the aforementioned game on days when there was any. While his clothes, his body, and the pelts dried in the sun, Gil would work on his current whittling projects, Peace's white rook taking priority. When that was finished, Gil also made himself a more permanent spit for roasting his food, some utensils, and a large box with a lid designed to look like a part of a tree to keep his valuables in. Once everything was dry, he would collect his pelts for later use in making pillows, blankets and other such accouterments and return to his clearing to deposit them and retrieve his spices. Returning once again to the river, he would cook and eat his lunch close enough to the river to allow for easy fire management. Packing whatever leftovers he may have had into a Box-Car Children style refrigerator in the river to be eaten with his dinner, he would begin his workout regimen. 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and 100 squats on top of his earlier 10km run, every single day. After that he had a relatively free few hours which he would choose daily to fill with more whittling, seeking out Peace to play more board games, and resetting his traps. As dusk inevitably approached, he would venture outward to hunt for dinner, usually a deer he would dispatch by firing a sizable rock from his foot at a fair distance. Of course, a deer could feed him for quite a while, so hunting was not an every night activity, but there was also the chance of not finding a deer, so he couldn't take too many nights off. Once he had found and killed his quarry, he would prepare it in much the same way he had his lunch, before having a late dinner, followed by an hour or so of continued whittling, and then bed. It was not an overly exciting schedule, but it served to keep him busy during his recovery period.
Rook whittling progress: 100% completed Spit whittling progress: 100% completed Utensils whittling progress: 100% completed Large box and lid whittling progress: 43% completed
Ergo War generated a random number between
50 and 150 ...
103!
Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:01 pm
Increased police presence just outside her territory meant that Peace woke to a day without much contact from the outside world. The usual tourists and small-time criminals who bothered her were absent, which meant the day was going to be relatively nice even with the rain, which came down in a steady drizzle all throughout the day. The sun was bright, but filtered through the thin clouds that cloaked the countryside in half-shadow, creating a haze of heat and rain. It was hot out, even without factoring in the effect of the humidity. The breeze offered only a slight reprieve whenever it reached Peace as she hunted and foraged in the valleys between the mountains, where the heat was mitigated somewhat by the foliage. Animals for the most part evaded capture, but she managed to find a few edible plants to make up for it.
At about noon, after eating a breakfast and lunch consisting of whatever plants she could scrounge up that she was sure wouldn't poison her, she wandered out into a large clearing after following a completely overgrown dirt road, recognizable as such only because it was relatively even and the right width for a car. There was no chance of a vehicle making its way down that path anymore, not unless it could plow through fallen trees and keep going. There was a large parking lot under the grass and weeds of the clearing, but the only building of note that she saw was a cement block building with a caved-in roof that was too small to warrant the immensity of the lot adjacent to it.
Not recognizing this location outside of its general existence--she could note the lack of trees from her mountain camp--she scaled the only building she saw for a better vantage point. There wasn't much out of place at first glance, but a dark spot at one end of the clearing caught her eye. It looked like a hole in the ground, surrounded by thick grasses and bushes. She made up her mind to check the place out on foot, taking a rotting broom handle from the building to feel out the ground in front of her as she went. She'd fallen in too many holes out in the wilderness not to be cautious when approaching one.
The pit turned out to be a bit larger than it had first seemed. The grasses and bushes that surrounded the hole were actually plants that had grown upward from deep within it, as she found the hole actually started about a hundred paces from the spot she'd seen. She poked her way around the edge until she found a spot that descended at an angle she could tolerate, then followed it down to what appeared to be a shopping center, the stores long since looted or decayed past recognition. It was a curious thing, both because the roof appeared to be missing altogether and because of the totality of its abandonment and subsequent reclamation by nature. Then she happened upon some evidence of human occupation after its abandonment by society, in the form of a decaying campsite next to what appeared to have been a fountain long since run dry. The cans she found scattered about the place had lost their integrity and their contents had rotted away past the point of recognition. Then, among the tattered remains of the tent, she found a corpse.
The smell hit her first, but this wasn't her first time around a body; even if it was foul and reminded her of the worst times she'd ever endured, she could handle it. Given that there was still some skin on the corpse's bones, she figured the person's death was relatively recent, so she carefully searched the body for some identifying marker, eventually coming across two items: a large, rusted rifle with a word etched in its side, along with some dog tags. After securing those two objects to her person, she sprinted out of the building, climbing back to ground level as quickly as she could without slipping, then ran back to the police outpost.
As preoccupied as the cops were with the aftermath of the arson, seeing her so flustered commanded their attention. She handed over the gun and the dog tags, then pulled out her map and pointed to the spot on it where she'd found them. The items caused the officers to go wide-eyed, then pull out some old papers from a beige filing cabinet at the back of the office, make a few calls, and ask her to wait. She did as requested, accepting a cold bottle of water and half a peanut butter sandwich for sustenance as she waited. About three hours later, a police truck pulled up and she was interviewed about the state of the campsite when she'd found it and what she'd been doing there in the first place. She answered the latter with a shrug and the former with a rough drawing in the dirt. She was paid for her services without much explanation beyond that the person had gone missing a while back and the gun was an important artifact of some sort. She accepted the cash and retreated back to camp, grateful for the relative security of her shelter when she arrived.
The vast blue sky greeted Peace as she awoke. It was shortly after dawn, which meant that she had gotten at least an extra hour of sleep, though it felt like the opposite. After a breakfast of some of the leftover venison she still had, she headed down to the river for water. On the way, she inspected her wounds and found that the one on her side had completely healed and the one on her shoulder was almost to that point as well. She'd have to head in at some point in the next few days to get the stitches removed.
On her way back to her campsite she spotted something bulky moving through the undergrowth and stopped in her tracks. She kept her eye out for further movement, slowly stalking the creature while simultaneously fearing it was hostile and hoping it was edible. The latter turned out to be the case, as a wild turkey slowly treaded out into the open, seemingly unaware of her presence. Naturally, her mind went into overdrive and she chased the bird down so she could eat it for dinner. Much of her morning was spent plucking and butchering the bird.
The afternoon was a bit less eventful, as she spent most of it near camp while the bird cooked. She went on a run through the forested mountainsides, a few strength-training exercises, climbed some trees, plucked fruit, and generally enjoyed herself outdoors. After the bird was done and set off the fire to cool, she climbed a tall tree near her campsite with her backpack on, positioned herself on a sturdy branch about two-thirds of the way up, and pulled out a pair of binoculars. She scanned the landscape for any changes or interesting sights, noting that the sunken structure she'd come across the day before looked like a grassy clearing from there, as she'd previously assumed it was. There were a few other partings in the trees that she knew from experience were either not noteworthy at all or contained a few relics of human civilization like campsites or dilapidated houses. Nothing out of the ordinary presented itself to her, so as the sun started to dip low, she descended from her tree and set about eating part of her bird.
Ergo War generated a random number between
100 and 200 ...
159!
Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2017 9:00 pm
Peace was definitely almost healed. The wound on her arm was so shallow now that it only really hurt if she played around with it, and then not more than an average bruise. She happily mused about her impending freedom while she ate a breakfast of fruits and a few bites of turkey. It was getting cold again, she realized when the day didn't so much get warmer as stay the same temperature with a bit more wind. It wasn't too cold out, at least not yet, so she contented herself with wearing a fur around her waist for warmth when she went out for a while.
She was thoroughly expecting a day just like the one before, but after her exercises, she returned to camp to find someone squatting at the base of her name, smoking a cigarette. The figure was an adult male, maybe a few years younger than her, several inches taller, light brown skin marred with a number of scars and cheap tattoos, both visible through the thin white tank top he sported. He was physically very buff, but it didn't seem like he was the type to lift weights for no particular reason, nor to come all the way out there without a plan. No, he was there to see her, a suspicion which he confirmed readily. He also claimed to be the elder brother of someone she'd beaten up recently and hospitalized, which probably meant the incident at the martial arts studio. So, in short, he was there for revenge, and since she'd taken out quite a number of dudes, he wasn't going to hold back against her. Peace was more interested in how he got around the cops that were probably patrolling at the edge of her territory, but didn't bother to bring it up since she figured they were just too incompetent to stop even a man as physically imposing as this one.
The first blows they traded drove home his threats, as he ducked around her punch and socked her firmly in the side. His fist hit far heavier than most punches did, hard enough that she made sure she had her defensive field up as she swung again. She whiffed again and he pushed her punching arm aside and knocked her to the ground. She managed to roll out of the way before he could start attacking but he punched her in the side again as she was regaining her footing. Clearly, this man was no ordinary boxer, she realized; in fact, if she had to say, it seemed like his punches were empowered much like her own were. Luckily for her, the fur around her waist was somewhat muffling the damage of his punches, but there was still more weight there than she'd like. Since her reckless swinging didn't seem to be doing her any favors, she needed to change up her strategy.
Peace blocked his next punch using one of the blocks she'd already learned in her martial arts classes. Her form was off, but she managed to deflect the majority of the punch's damage. His next attack went much the same way, at which point she managed to land a light jab on his jaw. He didn't react how she'd expected, meaning he also had some sort of defensive ability, possibly one akin to hers; that meant she couldn't very well rely upon her power-enhanced punches alone. She blocked his next punch, then stepped back to avoid the next one and aimed a counter toward his chest, shifting her weight a bit so that its power came from her waist. It was one of the things she'd learned in her classes, and it paid off: he stumbled backward, slightly winded. Then he returned the favor and knocked her flat on her a**. She sprang back to her feet and simultaneously blocked his punch and jabbed at his side, causing him to flinch. They traded a few more blows, but when she didn't look like she was going to go down as easily as he'd hoped, the man ran.
The two of them chased each other down the mountain, trading blows. He was less acclimated to the task of navigating the area, though, and she managed to knock him over and send him tumbling over a 10 foot cliff. He wasn't doing too well after that but still managed to get back to his feet, only for her to knock him right back down.
That was when his associate showed up. A blast of water sprayed at Peace from near the river bank, but she'd reacted quickly enough to brace herself against the force. It was short, but would've knocked her over easily if she hadn't seen it coming. She charged over toward the source, her movement slowed by a couple more blasts, but the fight was over when she spotted the reedy-looking woman behind the attacks. With both of these assailants in tow, she made her way over to the police outpost and turned them over. They were apparently wanted for some revenge they'd pulled on some of the hospital workers after the man's brother's arrest, so she made out with a pretty nice sum of money in addition to some peace of mind.
Her dinner that night was well earned and consisted of venison, turkey, and a small pile of fruits.
Days of Recovery: 15/17 D-List Bounty x2: Complete.
The soreness Peace felt after her encounter with the boxer the previous day was what woke her rather than the chilly weather. While her gunshot wounds were practically healed in their entirety, the few bruises she'd obtained as part of that scrap hurt just enough that when she rolled over onto one it was too uncomfortable for her to sleep through. As a result, she was awake before dawn, so much so that she couldn't even see the first rays of the morning light when she poked her head outside. Not feeling too hungry, she went on a jog through the trees, visited the river to fill up on water, and did her daily workout, finishing up around the time that the horizon was just starting to lighten.
Peace ran out of things to do well before lunchtime rolled around and so made her way down to the police outpost, which was now serving almost as her day job since they paid so well whenever she brought them someone she would've beaten up anyway for starting fights and/or acting hostile in her territory. As it turned out, they needed something from the sunken mall she'd found the other day: a box of stolen goods belonging to the corpse she'd uncovered. They explained that they had retrieved the corpse and its things after she'd pointed it out to them, but the cops she'd been interacting with had made sure the police left her territory as soon as possible, since she seemed to take trespassers so poorly. As a result, they hadn't been able to locate the aforementioned box, and were now asking her to perform the search herself if she had nothing better to do. She naturally did not, and since she was also grateful for their swift withdrawal from her territory, she agreed to make a return trip.
She jogged across the rough ground toward the sunken mall, treading across rocks and between trees smoothly as if there were nothing that came more naturally to her. After a while she came to the clearing, grabbed a stick, and probed her way toward the hole in the ground. After finding it, she worked her way down to the insides of the structure in a move that appeared to be more a controlled fall than careful hiking, landing with a light thud on the concrete floor inside. From there, she made her way down the overgrown stairs and through the foliage-ridden hallways to the first floor. She oriented herself around the spot where the deceased gunner had made camp, then started searching through the nearest stores.
The first shop she investigated was a small craft boutique, the sort that carried 200 different kinds of beads in carefully organized bins and had independent labels and pricing for each kind. It seemed like an obvious first choice, but if there had been anything of worth among the decaying plastics and looted registers, she couldn't find it. The second store was once a computer store of some persuasion, but the machines in it were either gone or broken to the point they would be useless if salvaged. The third store had a specialty she couldn't make out under all the miscellaneous garbage that had been piled inside it, and after searching through trash bags for half an hour with no sign of progress toward her goal, she moved on. The fourth was completely empty except for a few mannequins creepily arranged in a circle with a burnt-out light dangling overhead, and she vacated it quickly. It wasn't for two more stores that she found the object she'd been looking for: a small wooden case tucked away under a shelving unit in an old shoe store, its contents a rusty handgun, a few expensive-looking rings, and a letter.
With this loot in hand, she made her way out of the mall and back to the forest. The jog back to the police station was fairly uneventful, though she did wonder what Gil would think of her working with the police so much. Maybe she should take up a hobby, she thought. She'd always wanted to get into archery, so maybe once she was healed and her classes were over, she'd her hand at making a bow and then take up target shooting in her spare time. It would be a useful skill for hunting, at least, if she could get good at it.
The reward for the job wasn't great, but it was better than nothing and the work had kept Peace occupied for the day, so she didn't complain. As she returned to camp, she found herself hungering for a burger, but settled for more venison and turkey. The burger would be a treat for after her stitches were out.
Days of Recovery: 16/17 Private Eye, Community Outreach: Complete.
This was it. This was the day, Peace knew, that she would get her stitches out. The flesh under them had finished sealing up and was no longer bruised, though other parts of her were thanks to her antics in the intervening time. Truth be told, she was uneasy about the prospect of returning to the city after the debacle that was her last trip, but she was way too excited to get that weird string out of her arm and side to seriously contemplate not going. After working out in the morning to calm down and bathing in the river so she smelled less like human filth and more like river, she headed toward the city.
Ergo War generated a random number between
20 and 100 ...
21!
Ergo War
Enduring Guildsman
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2017 6:24 pm
Peace returned to her camp fat and happy off of the burgers she'd devoured whilst in the city, relaxed the rest of the day, and went to bed early. This also meant she woke up early, though just how early she didn't realize until some college students interrupted her breakfast, all of them pretty thoroughly wasted on alcohol. That meant the bars had probably just closed, which put it at three or four in the morning. She was content to suffer their drunken yells, expecting they would pass out or wander back toward civilization, but when they came upon her clearing and started dumping bottles and cans in varying states of emptiness and pissing all over her trees, suddenly there was a problem. She dusted herself off and exited her shelter with a chunk of venison dangling from her lips. It took them a full minute to notice, at which point one of them yelled at and grabbed her, acting both overeager and much too familiar for her tastes.
She hit him with the back of her fist just hard enough to knock him down, hoping that would end the altercation. It did, at least on that front; the rest of them were a bit upset that their friend had gotten handled so roughly. They weren't much of a threat, though, all things considered; after one of them tossed a sloppy punch her way, she casually sidestepped and then kicked him into one of the others. The two of them tumbled away into the darkness, their drunkenness and rotational velocity carrying them down the mountain and out of sight. The last two managed to fall into a couple of punches that set her off balance, but she dispatched them both with relative ease and then set about dragging the lot of them down the mountain toward the police outpost. She didn't manage to find the two who'd rolled down the mountain on their own, but figured they'd gone off somewhere on their own. The police were very understanding about the whole situation when she pantomimed drinking and pointed at the unconscious college students.
Despite the unanticipated early morning exercise, Peace still kept up her workout routine. She didn't find the missing drunks on her run either, though she did find them when she returned to camp. They were busy dumping lighter fluid or something with a similarly foul smell about the area when she returned, accompanied by another three stooges they'd probably dredged up from their 100-level math courses. Without waiting for them to notice her, she clobbered the two offenders from the previous night until they were unconscious, then turned to their three friends. Three hits created three more unconscious idiots, whom she dragged to the police outpost with an air of annoyance about her after taking some cash from their wallets. Since she was making the trip anyway, she threw two of them over her shoulders to work on building some muscle. It had been a while since she had done a lot of digging or hauling, so she figured the exercise was warranted.
After dumping that lot off at the usual place, she walked around the area for a bit, then decided to wash herself and her clothes in the river. While the latter dried on a sunny rock, she went on a bit of a swim, visiting a rocky island in the middle of the river, swimming upstream a bit, swimming downstream, diving, then just floating leisurely while maintaining a position near her clothing. When she got bored with that, she climbed out, dried off in the sun, clothed herself, and then returned to camp for lunch. Between then and dinner she performed some maintenance on her signage, but mostly just relaxed. It had been a productive day, and her rest that night was well-earned.
Ergo War generated a random number between
20 and 100 ...
76!
Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2017 8:04 pm
Oh, to be young and stupid, Peace mused above the unconscious bodies of two obvious gang members and a college guy. About five minutes prior she'd found them making molotovs nearby in much the same way she'd stumbled upon some others doing the same after the arson at the police outpost. They'd heard her coming but had been practically helpless to stop her from clobbering them, even after cracking a bottle over her head. She'd encountered them after her morning workout as she was fetching water from the river.
The police looked like they were going to get on her case as she dragged one of them and carried the other two up to the outpost and dropped them off, but they calmed down when she presented them with the fixings for the molotovs. It was good they knew the situation beforehand, as she would come back with a group of nine more flunkies about two hours later. She'd managed to get the drop on that group after her swim, so even though she was feeling pretty exhausted at that point, the group fell to her might fairly quickly.
The first guy dropped without so much as a yelp after she darted out from behind a tree at him. He had been at the rear of the pack as they ascended the mountain toward her camp, crude weapons in hand and clearly meaning business. She didn't understand why all these idiots seemed to band together, but she was fine with taking violent people out of circulation for a while, and if they were coming to her, that was all the more convenient. The second person noticed her early enough to swing for her with a bat, but her fist met his stomach before the bat hit her, meaning she effectively knocked the power right out of the swing. It stung as it nicked her head, but not much. The third person was down before they could turn around.
The next three dropped like flies, leaving the final trio to realize what a bad idea it had been to attack her on her home turf. The first of them managed to land a slash on her with a cheap hunting knife. The knife then shattered as she punched the hand holding it into their chest, which became a mess of broken fingers, plastic chips, and blood. The second among them she grabbed by the ankle as they climbed atop a boulder and yanked so hard they slipped and faceplanted on the boulder with a hollow thud. The third swung a crowbar at her and hit, but the damage it caused was mitigated not only by her power but also by the awful footing they'd had. Then that one was out cold.
She rummaged through their wallets before dragging them to the police station in a group of five, then a group of four. As she left the scene, she looked back and noticed a news van pulling up, but she didn't stick around to check it out.
The rest of that day she laid around, exhaustion from her workouts and the effort of knocking out and ferrying college students and gang members through the wilderness. Dinner that night was boiled venison, a slab of turkey, and some peeled fruits.
There was something to be said for taking a day off. Peace still did her early morning workout as normal, complete with a swim, but since nobody showed up all day to bother her, she found herself lounging about and letting her muscles rest. She spent about an hour at lunch just chewing her way through a single slab of meat while watching the clouds roll overhead. The mild weather just made it all the more comfortable to laze about. As the sun started to sink toward the bottom of the sky, she remembered the martial arts studio and made up her mind to go visit it. Not just then, though; she was far too invested into lying around to just stop.
