xp_logs | This Savage Land - Part Four: Survival

Once the sun rises, everyone gets put to work. Some tasks are a little dirtier than others, but perfect for a workforce that's mostly four feet tall.

Mondo had volunteered for the unpleasant task of digging a pair of pit latrines, one for the boys and one for the girls. They had no shovels or other tools, so Mondo was staring at the chosen patch of earth and thinking. Hard. He had a vague idea, but he had to be crazy to even consider trying it. "OK, kiddies!" Mondo said cheerfully. "Time to get to work!"

The four smaller children looked at Mondo questioningly. Leong and Nga glanced at each other and whispered, then turned to look at Mondo. "Miss Marie said we were supposed to help you dig," Leong said as he stood beside his sister.

"But we don't see any shovels," Nga finished as she crossed her arms over her chest. Beside her, Leyu adopted a similar posture, adding a simple "No shovels," comment.

Artie just shrugged mutely, projecting an image of a shovel in a circle, crossed out by a line. Then, as the boy giggled, an image appeared of Mondo with a pointy nose, whiskers, and thick glasses, digging in the ground like a mole.

Mondo laughed at Artie's projection. "I know. We don't have shovels but we do have ... Mr Pointy!" With a dramatic reveal, he pulled out the tent stake he was holding and held it like he was going to stake a vampire with it. "And we've got the dinner plates!" he said, pulling out one of the only-slightly-singed tin camping plates that had survived the rampage. "Everybody grab a plate now!" he said, tossing the one he was holding (gently) to Artie while handing out the others as the kids stepped up. "Now ... now we get creative." he told himself and the kids both. "Stand back, I'm not sure if this is going to work."

Obediently, the little kids all scooted back as they passed around the tin plates. Leong leaned over to Artie, whispering loudly "Mondo turns into stuff like Mister Piotr, I think."

"Nuh-uh!" Leyu insisted, arms folded defiantly. "Mister Piotr turns into metal and I've never seen Mondo do that."

Mondo synched up with the steel in his necklace and thrust his arm deep into the ground, using his fingers like the blades of a tiller. He belly-crawled slowly along the perimeter of the pit, marking off the boundaries of the pit. Once that was done, he got up, gave the kids a big thumb's up, then crawled along the surface of the pit, using both hands to till the earth, to break it up. By the time he was done he was absolutely filthy, but grinning. "OK, guys, your turn! Everybody start scooping up the top layer of dirt and put it over there!" Mondo instructed, gesturing towards the designated dumping zone.

Artie was the first of the kids to venture forward, kicking at the suddenly loose dirt. Smiling, he stuck his forked tongue out one corner of his mouth as he started scooping the topsoil off to the side, moving straight ahead while projecting an image of a cartoonish bulldozer.

The other kids followed suit, making parallel lines where Mondo had indicated, marking off two sets of double trenches, each about ten feet long. As they worked, Nga tugged at Mondo's shirt when she approached.

"Mondo? Why are we digging holes?" she asked.

"Gotta have a clean place to go potty." he told the girl as the rest of the kids got to scooping with enthusiasm. Maybe a little _too_ much enthusiasm. "GUYS!" Mondo told Leong and Artie. "Dirt goes in the pile, not in your _hair_!" he wailed with mock-despair. Turning back to Nga and smiled at the Vietnamese girl. "This way, when we're all ready to head back, we can just fill in the stinky."

Nga wrinkled her nose, but kept digging. She reached the end of her trench and turned around like she saw the boys doing. When she passed Leyu, she leaned over to whisper conspiratorially. The two giggled, then started working in sync, singing an off-key song loud enough for the boys to hear.

"Boys are are stu-pid, girls are neat, boys smell ic-ky, girls smell sweet!"

Over at the other trench, Leong and Artie perked up, an angry exclamation point dancing over Artie's head. "Yeah?" Leong shouted back, "We're almost done, and you're not so nyah!"

Mondo was almost tempted to join in, but then he remembered that Miss Marie had put him in charge. "All right, guys, knock it off." he said, but his heart wasn't in it. "Once everybody's done I'll get the next layer of dirt broken up, then we'll have a race, OK? First team to finish up gets to sit out the final pass!"

Turning it into a competition was obviously the best way to get the unruly construction crew under control, as both groups started working diligently at shoveling the loose dirt into piles, albeit rather messy ones. By the end of the effort, all four kids were dirt-streaked and filthy, but tired enough to be well-behaved.

Mondo wasn't tired at all, but that was because he was synched up. They couldn't afford for him to get all sleepy now and go take a nap. People needed him! "Good job, guys! Really good work! Now, I want you take up alllll the dirty plates and give them to Miss Marie so that they can get clean for dinner tonight, OK?" he told the kids, making sure to give each of them a hug or a pat on the back or both, as appropriate.

Elsewhere, the search for fresh water finds more than pond scum and bacteria as environmental hazards.

"Hey, the stream opens out," Angel said, pointing towards the mouth of the stream a few feet away. She hadn't gone very far from Crystal and Marie, unwilling to get lost or eaten by something passing by, but they were a straight shot from where she was standing now. Considering the fact that they'd been stuck out there unexpectedly, the supplies weren't the best stocked in the world. Finding a water source had been one of the first big priorities in the group and she'd volunteered to go with her suitemate and RA.

Besides, she was sticky and the idea of being able to wash off some of the gunk was a very good one.

"Good," Marie said with a nod, walking over to stand closer to Angel. "Once we get some drinking water, maybe we can rinse off some of the bits of tarp that were salvaged in case we need them for something." Marie wiped a hand across her face, her glove smudging with dirt. "Or just rinse off ourselves," she added wryly. She still felt like she smelled like dino, even though she wasn't quite sure what dino smelled like. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

We need to find a source of water, they had said, apparently forgetting that she was a source of water . Crystal could appreciate the fact that people needed to be useful and find something to do, so she had only created a minimal amount of water for people and had let Angel have all of the fire duties the night before. Still, it did seem rather silly to split up in a group and risk running into dinosaurs in the search of something that could be provided back at come. Oh well, so here she was, just tagging along for now. Crystal hoped they wouldn't run into any more dinosaurs. She wasn't afraid of them, but she had no desire to see Marie create any more piles of dead dino bodies.

The sight of the body of water immediately perked Angel up. Water meant swimming, if only briefly, which meant a bit normality among the really, really unnatural. She crouched on the bank and dipped her fingers in, wiggling them about. "So far the day has been going..." A ripple on the water hit her fingers and she paused...that hadn't come from her.

"Did...anyone else see something move?"

"See what?" Marie said, looking up from where she'd been pulling various bottles out of one of the bags they'd salvaged. "Be careful Angel, no telling what's where here or even if that's safe."

Crystal hadn't been looking at the water, either, and hadn't noticed anything. Finding the stream was nice, but she'd take a shower generated by her own powers over the water in an unknown stream any day. Who knew what might be in water...

"I dunno, maybe I'm just seein'..." There was a splash this time and this time it was clearly not a figment of her imagination. Angel stood up, feet already going to push her back when something lashed out from the deeper parts of the water. She didn't have time to scream before it hit her from the side and instead of going toward Marie and Crystal, towards safety, she was sent flying in the opposite direction. Into the water and with the creature.

Crap! Pushing off the ground, Marie let out a sigh of relief as Crystal seemed to have the same idea and they were both floating off the ground. "Ah'll get the...thingie, you get Angel. Stay the hell away from it if they're too close until Ah get it distracted," Marie ordered before diving towards the water's surface. The girl had proven that she had a good grasp on her powers and a level head on her shoulders and Marie was trusting that she could do what she'd asked.

A "bubble" of air surrounded Crystal as she leapt into the water, moving within it as she searched for the young girl. Crystal was glad that Marie was the one to take care of whatever-it-was that had grabbed Angel. Had Crystal been alone, she would have immediately jumped into the water on her own to save her suitemate. However, jumping into the water to fight an unknown creature was a rather silly thing to do when you were with an invulnerable woman.

There was a muted flare of blue from under the water, immediately followed with some bubbling and steam. The creature in the water roared in pain and thrashed, throwing lake water around in it's wake.

The fire had been instinctive but Angel couldn't keep it up for long. She kicked off, away from the thing she hurt but it was big and now, angry. And, she realized suddenly as she tried to ignore the pain in her chest, built for the water and very fast...but so was she. Turning, she managed to kick off against a log that floated near her. It might expect her to go up, so she went down, powerful kicks sending her to the bottom quickly.

Big, fast and angry...but she was smaller, faster and scared. If she twisted and turned enough, she could hopefully avoid getting hit again--or, worse, eaten--until she could surface again.

Hoping the blue flash would be enough to guide Crystal to Angel, Marie dove for the writhing, thrashing beast. "No eating the nice girl," she said sternly before she broke the surface of the water. As one hand brushed the skin of the animal in the water, Rogue balled up her other hand in a fist and punched with all her strength into the side of the beast.

Angel was diving down? All right, time for some new uses of power. Crystal pushed the water away from her, shooting through the depths, guided by where she had seen the blue flame. There wasn't enough air in her bubble to last for too long, and Crystal wasn't quite sure she wanted to test out whether or not the ability to breathe underwater was one of her capabilities.

There she was... The water was pressing down on Crystal's bubble of air. Never mind that. Approaching Angel, Crystal pushed her hands into the water and reached out for Angel.

Even with all the debris floating around--kicked up by the beast and Angel's swimming--it was hard to miss Crystal's appearance in the water. For a second, the younger girl felt her foot hit the bottom and she shoved off and managed to grab onto Crystal's outstretched hands. When their hands interlocked, she felt the fear faded away a little and she ignored the pain in her ribs just for a while.

Crystal took a deep breath and the air bubble moved to surround Angel, leaving herself mostly in the water. At the moment, Angel was the one in need of breathable air, and at worst, Crystal could always try out breathing underwater. She concentrated on pushing the water out of her way to move faster and headed toward the surface, the air bubble and Angel following close behind.

When they hit the surface, Angel stuck close to her suitemate. Now that she knew there was something in the water, she could prepare a little better. But she'd rather not. "Marie?" she called out, voice breaking only a little bit. Please be okay please be okay please be okay.

There was no response and the surface of the lake began to calm once the girls had emerged, the surface become smooth and mirror like. Just when it seemed like Marie wasn't going to emerge, the head of the water reptile broke the surface, her arms wrapped tightly around it's jaw. "We good?" she asked as if the girls were just out for an afternoon stroll and she wasn't trying to keep the critter from eating them. Noticing that both girls were safely out of the water, she nodded in satisfaction and rapped the beast on the nose with one of her fists before releasing it and shooting over to float in front of the girls. The beast let out a bellow and then sunk below the surface, obviously deciding that his easy snack was turning into too much work to be worthwhile.

With a thump, Angel kind of collapsed onto her butt on the shoreline. Now that the dinosaur had slunk off to wherever it needed to go, the adrenaline and fear started to seep away, leaving her a little boneless. "...um. Thanks, guys?" she finally said and then winced. "Okay, ow. Ow. Lesson number one: being smacked around by water dino thing? Hurts. Lesson number two: Er. Stare intently at whatever you're going to be, you know, touching or dealing with in case of hungry critters."

"I believe that being 'smacked around' causes pain whether it is done by a 'water dino thing' or anything else," Crystal said, giving Angel a look of concern. "We need to see if you are suffering from any serious injuries before continuing on with our task at hand."

Angel nodded, shifting around a little bit to get further away from the water and also to give them easier access to her ribs. "It hurts to breath," she admitted, "but not a whole lot...and nothing feels broken but then I've never broken anything before so how would I know what broken feels like until I actually break something?" She looked up at Marie curiously.

Marie landed softly beside the redhead, checking the girl to the best of her abilities. "Well, Ah think you'd be in a lot more pain if you'd broken something, but that's not always the case. Nothing feels broken, but you're getting checked out when we get back to the mansion since Ah'm not a doctor. Also, less getting smacked around from now on. No throwing yourself at things." Marie let out a sigh. She could feel the white streak in her hair growing. "Let's get back to the others. We'll find another water source. This one is no good."

"I will be more than happy to supply water until we are able to locate another source of water," Crystal said.

"Yes, good! Because water-beasty infected water is probably not the best thing in the world right now." Angel squeaked as Marie bent down and scooped her up in her arms. "...oh, sweet, I get to catch a lift. Flying with no fire involved, this is neat." Battered, bruised but still in one piece. That's what mattered for the moment.

Back at the main camp, Laurie discovers the inevitable visitors that come with being a human bug attractor. Less enjoyable when the bugs are the size of a shoe...

Laurie looked down at her air scrubber with exasperation. It was completely fried, having been covered with mud and who knew what else in the dino stampede the night before. Had they been in civilization, that might not be a problem but out here without their guides and in jungle surroundings...yeah, so not good. She just hoped that her control over her powers had progressed enough that she wasn't going to start giving people random physical weirdness.

Her brooding was cut short rather abruptly when a bug the size of her hand took a quick flyby of her face and tried to land on her head. To say that her scream was shockingly loud would probably be something of an understatement.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem to bother the bug any, and said bug seemingly had friends. The scream that split the air made everybody in earshot jump, not least of all Sooraya, who had been sitting near the campfire in a sort of half-wary, half-dozing state. Eyes wide, she peered around for the source of the noise, her heartbeat speeding up as she envisioned another stampede of dinosaurs ripping through the group like they had the night before. Luckily, there didn't seem to be any such beasts about, and the only thing out of the ordinary she saw was Laurie, flailing her arms about herself as several large insects hovered around her hungrily.

With a frown, Sooraya pushed herself to her feet and hurried over to where her suitemate was sitting, joining in the efforts to shoo the bugs away without a word. They weren't easily deterred, however, zooming back to dart at Laurie's face and arms whenever they were batted away. "They like you very much," Sooraya murmured, having noticed that the insects didn't seem be pestering anybody else quite so much as Laurie.

Laurie really, really hated bugs and bugs the size of her hand were even worse but she made an effort to calm down enough to answer Sooraya. "It's my power, they love the way I smell and even without the area effect, they can still smell it on my skin."

"Oh dear." Sooraya wasn't quite sure where she had heard the expression, but she understood the sentiment well enough to project quite a bit of worry into just the two words. "They will not go away," she added as one of the fist-sized insects flew into her in its quest to get close to Laurie. She gave an 'eep' and batted it away, frowning. This could get very uncomfortable very quickly for her suitemate, and she didn't want to see that happen. "There is a way, maybe of making them to stop..."

"Whatever it is, I'll do it." Laurie replied, batting away another bug that had tried to land on her head. Sooner or later, one of them was going to succeed and she so did not want to think about what kind of diseases these mosquitoes could be carrying.

"It is a very messy thing. And it will use water..." Sooraya glanced around, spying a half-full bottle of water next to one of the salvaged coolers and leaning over to pick it up. She knew it was a valuable commodity, but Laurie looked like she wasn't going to last much longer under the bugs' attentions. "You do not mind mud?"

"Mud and I have a very long acquaintance, it was the best material for pies when I was a toddler. Although I don't think my easy bake oven ever recovered." Laurie replied with a grin, swatting away another fist sized bug and giving the others a glare for good measure. Sometimes bugs just didn't know when to quit.

Well, that seemed to settle it. Sooraya began to scuff a foot in the dirt, glad that the earth was neither too loamy nor too full of clay where they were. After having created a nice pile of dirt between them she uncapped the water bottle and gentled upended it into the dirt, leaning down to scoop it together with her hands so that the liquid wouldn't drain away.

Laurie watched Sooraya work, curious. She had an idea of what was coming and she wasn't particularly looking forward to it but she supposed if it helped keep these blasted bugs away, she'd be grateful. "You sure this'll work?" she asked, batting away another bug.

Sooraya glanced up, her expression almost apologetic as the mud seeped through her fingers and oozed back to the ground. "Yes. It will work, I will promise you. The insects will not fly around you so very much. You are ready?"

Laurie took one look at the mud, another at the insects and then nodded her head. It would be just like the mud masks her mother put on at night, right? Those weren't that bad, albiet she'd be wearing this one for much longer. "I'm ready." she replied, closing her eyes.

As the day progresses, the group realizes that they'll need something to eat. When in Rome, do as the Romans. When stuck in the Jurassic... make like a predator.

"Okay, so, tell me if this makes sense, because this is kind of the crash course in hunting and -man- I wish we had Rahne here." Kyle said, while pulling his hair into a short ponytail. Hair in his eyes and mouth while he was trying to deal with dinosaurs was distracting. Dinosaurs were bad enough without eating his own hair. "So, first we have to find something that we can deal with. Which means plant-eating dinosaurs because, well, one I don't think we want to take on one of those raptors, and also, carnivores aren't usually good for eating." He looked over at Jennie. "Which I think is gonna be half you making with the luck, because if this was like, deer, I could smell them out, but I haven't seen enough dinosaurs to tell you if I'm following a brotosaurus or an allosaurus or what."

"I am thinking the plant-eating animals are being the good idea," Yvette agreed softly from where she was standing between Marius and Kyle. "I am seeing enough of the people-eating animals already, please."

Marius squatted in the dirt, poking at the broken stems of a plant that looked as though they might have been torn by a questing mouth. "My preference would be towards the eating of people-eating animals over the eating of actual people. It's still only a small part of a balanced diet at best."

"So not even touching that last comment. Okay! We want non-scary, non-us eating dinos. Right. Shouldn't be. . .too hard." Jennie wondered if she should do some theatrical arm waving or somesuch to distract from the fact she wasn't sure she really could do something like find a pack of dinosaurs that wouldn't eat them. Anytime she tried for Forge, all she got was a tangled muddle of red and white threads. "I don't wanna hear it if my power goofs, I did warn you. A lot." The girl closed her eyes and sighed, turning in a slow circle. Probability was a tricky thing, and the universe didn't always respond the way you wanted it to.

But then again, sometimes it did. Jennie's eyes snapped open and she took off, letting the others follow her. Several minutes later, she crested a rocky outcrop overlooking a meadow and stopped, pointing. "Do they work?"

"I could kiss you." Kyle said cheerfully. "If Marius wouldn't rugby kick me into next April." Concentrate on the here-and-now and the food-getting and he could think about other things later. Like Forge still being missing.

"Not without your own certain charm though you may be, I doubt mine's the boot to worry about--" Marius reached the top of the outcropping and whistled lowly when he saw the meadow. "Ah, never mind, then. This does warrant a kiss."

Jennie had found them a group of duck-billed dinosaurs, that Kyle didn't remember the name of, but they were spread out in the meadow, more than a dozen of them, grazing on the plants. "Herds are easier." He explained. "If it was just one, we'd have a harder time, but this way we can just run them down and... you know." He glossed over the whole 'kill the dinosaur' concept. They all knew.

He looked at Yvette, and then at Marius, and thought for a moment. "So, tell me if this sounds crackheaded. I've done this before, with deer, and these are way bigger, but it should work." Kyle asked. "I go and ... well, basically scare the crap out of them crashing around like some kind of heffalump and run some of them down. Basically, get the bigger faster ones out of the way, so that the only thing they might trample is, uh, me. You guys get to actually take out whatever lingers behind. Slow, old, young, whatever doesn't get away fast enough."

Marius scratched his head. "Sounds as good as anythin' to me, mate. Bear in mind this is a feat I have never before attempted on less than four legs, so results may vary." Rahne and Catseye had been quite the learning experience, but Marius was still working on how he would repurpose the normal strategy to account for lacking several crucial components, like claws and fangs. The former could be mimicked, but stabbing something to death lacked a certain grace.

"If you are making them to run that way, past the woods, there, I can be waiting for one?" Yvette offered, but less hesitantly than they might have expected from her. She hadn't hunted much, but she understood the need for food, and doing what was needed to get it. "If I am hiding, I can be using my claws to be making one not run?"

"And I will, um, stand off to the side." Jennie shrugged. While not exactly keen on hanging out and let others do the work, it was the safest bet. The other three had enough to worry about without watching after her in the meantime. Besides, she was much better for long-range stuff anyway.

"It's, um, called hamstringing." Kyle said, and tapped the back of his thigh. "On people, it's up here, but on those? Back of the knee. But really, any of the tendons in their legs should keep them from being able to run very fast." He was definitly uncomfortable with the topic, as he kept flexing and unflexing his fingers, watching his claws slide in and out. "I am going to be making a ton of noise, so don't be worried if I'm yelling and screaming. I -want- to scare them."

Marius gave him a solemn nod, putting one leg forward in a lunge and bracing his hands on his knee, stretching out his thigh in preparation. "Make a lot of noise, eh? I can't say for certain, but I suspect you may have a natural aptitude for this strategy." He flashed a smile at Kyle, the expression diminished by the hardened skin. "At your leisure, then."

Yvette nodded, understanding the principle. "Jennie, can you be using your power to be finding the best place for me to be hiding to wait?" she asked the older girl. Her face was back to the expressionless mask of her initial arrival at the school, her skin hardening from the stress, but there was a certain determination in her voice.

"They don't really work that way, honey," Jennie said apologetically. "I could tell you what's best now, but once Kyle starts moving things will change. That's what probabality is, there's a possibility for things, but it's only a possibility." Jennie knelt down by the younger girl. "But what I could do, for each of you," she looked back up at the others, "is give you a little bit of luck and see if that helps." She also neglected to add she was going to pay for it later, but that was later.

"Works for me." Kyle said, and after Jennie had rested her hand on his shoulder for a moment, dropped off the rocks and into the meadow. For a few long moments, he was nearly invisible, creeping through the tall grass on hands and feet.

And then a patch of leafy brush halfway across the meadow erupted into Kyle, growling and snarling and running at top speed. He ducked and weaved around the already startled dinosaurs, who added to the din with honking bleats of distress. For every dinosaur he personally riled up, coming in close and swatting at necks or bellies, another two panicked, and soon, the entire herd was moving, with Kyle only a step ahead of them, long legs barely keeping him from being trampled.

For her part, as soon as Jennie had touched her shoulder, Yvette had melted into the underbrush, skin and black leotard blending into the shadows as she made her way to the point she'd decided would best work for her ambush. She was barely in place before the Kyle ran past, fleeing ahead of the stampeding herd. Narrowing her eyes, she watched as the fitter and stronger creatures surged past, dwindling down to the stragglers. One approached, quite close to her hiding place, hobbling a little from a wound on its flank, caused maybe by another predator. There.

Soundlessly the small spiky girl slipped from her hiding place, using the dust raised by the trampling feet as cover. Her claws didn't make a nifty sound effect like Mr. Logan's, but they were long and sharp and after a day of stress, could cut through just about anything - dodging the creature's tail, she ran her claws along the back of its hind knees. Blood spurted, and the stricken dinosaur went down with a honking scream, its back legs trailing uselessly as it thrashed around, trying to regain its feet.

Marius had been doing his best to stay close to the youngest girl. She'd been training, he knew, but it was still a shock to see the spray of red left behind by her talons -- and to hear the hadrosaur's scream. Without even stopping to think Marius leapt for the injured animal and grabbed it around the neck; using his momentum as leverage, he let one leg go out from under him to take him into a suicide dive while simultaneously jerking his upper body around. Something in his side screamed in protest, and he went down hard -- with a snap from the dinosaur's vertebrae, and silence.

Jennie had picked a spot to the far side of the meadow, next to a shallow but steep ravine. What she didn't count on was some of the panicked herd doubling back, towards her. And they showed no signs of slowing. Her eyes widened, and she took a step back, only to touch nothing but air.

"Oh, shit."

Momentum had carried him yards ahead, and he had cleared the stampeding herd the best way Kyle knew how, making a running leap onto the branches of a gnarled looking tree. When the herd had passed under him, he dropped down and made his way back. The smell of blood was thick enough that he caught it before he'd even gotten away from the herd, and it only grew stronger as he approached, overwhelming nearly everything. For a moment, he stood silent, almost stunned and then shook himself, sheathing his claws. "Whoa.."

Marius shoved the limp animal off his chest, wincing. His knee was just shy of being turned the wrong way. There was also something slightly unsettling about the twitches still running through the body. "Never do I do that again," he said, painfully unfolding his leg. He paused to shove the hair out of his eyes, then caught sight of Yvette.

The girl was standing off to one side, blue eyes fixed on her blood-stained talons.

"Oi, Penny," Marius called, levering himself to his feet. "You all right?"

The blood was so red, and it dripped from her mother's hands to splash onto the kitchen floor, sharp as a scream on the worn linoleum. Yvette backed away, eyes wide and frightened. Her mother had been angry, had taken her by the arms and shaken her, and then there was blood, so red...

Yvette blinked, and looked up at Marius with wide glowing blue eyes. "There's blood," she said, distantly, and then she looked over to the fallen dinosaur, and seemed to come back from somewhere far away. "I am thinking we are having the dinner, yes?"

"Yes. I'd say that is a definite likelihood." Marius frowned. The total lack of expression on her face was a sign in itself. And that wasn't much of a surprise. What were the odds Yvette had ever killed anything before, let alone with her bare hands? Then he realized another problem. . . . oh, bugger. We were going to field-dress and Yvette's the only one with anything approaching knives.

"Uh." Kyle interuppted. "Not to you know, ruin the moment of triumph over our giant turkeyasaurus, but ... where's Jennie?" He tilted his head back to sniff the air, and shook his head. "All I smell is blood and dinosaur crap. Dammit." He muttered to himself and bent to peer at the ground. "Dinosaur, dinosaur, Yvette, dinosaur.. I can't even see -my- foot prints, much less anyone else's."

"Oh bloody hell, not another one." Marius looked around; his special sensitivity to mutagentic signatures was being remarkably unhelpful. He decided to utilize the tried and true method of cupping his hands around his mouth and yelling at the top of his lungs, "Oi, Jennifer! Where are you?"

The voice that followed several seconds later was faint, but it echoed throughout the meadow. "Down here!"

"Jennie!" Her roommate in apparent trouble galvanised the small Albanian girl, and she scrambled away towards the voice before the two boys could stop her. She didn't have to go far - there was a ravine at the foot of the rocky outcropping where several freshly-overturned rocks and some skidmarks showed where the ground had given way and tipped Jennie in. "Are you being okay, Jennie?" Yvette asked, peering over the side.

"Fine!" Jennie said, a touch loudly. "Just fine, nothing broken and I am okay!" Her left side was smeared with dirt, forearms scraped from where she'd slid down, and she was bleeding from a small cut on her scalp, just above her left temple. Her movements were quick and shaky from the adrenaline, and from the fact that her friends were all covered in. . .

The dark-haired girl touched the wetness on her temple, bringing her fingers forward and frowning at them. "Oh hey, blood, look at that. Anyway! I found something cool!" She gestured for them to look towards a bush a few feet from where she was standing. She disapeared behind it, emerging with two oblong-shaped eggs in either hand. "I have found us some eggs."

Marius blinked, then shook his head. "Cheers for the lack of broken bones, but you couldn't have fallen into those before the bit where we had to drop a dinosaur?"

Jennie slid an egg under her arm and made a rude gesture at Marius.

"Man, those are some big eggs." Kyle said, once Jennie had been helped out of the ravine, eggs in hand. "Well, means that hopefully someone can omelette them or something." He was eyeing the slain dinosaur critically, with occasional glances over to Yvette. "Marius, help me pick this thing up. It can't be that damn heavy. We're carrying it back. If people want to eat, they'll help us deal with cleaning it. We had to do the hard part, everyone not us can do the messy part."

"That seems a reasonable compromise, as we did go through all the trouble of slaying." Marius moved over to the hadrosaur and scratched his head. "Eh . . . Sooraya may get the short shrift here. I don't suppose there's much chance beasts which hail from the dawn of time are halal."

Yvette moved to where the animal's tail was dragging on the ground, pulling her gloves back on so she could take hold of it and heft it onto her shoulder. When the two boys looked at her, she looked back blandly. Of course, with her face as hardened as it was, all her expressions were bland, but she managed to get across the point. "I am to be helping too," she pointed out, with a certain amount of dignity. The memory she'd deal with later, when they got back to the school. Right now, survivial came first.

"Not to be a downer or anything, but you guys kept track of which way the camp was, right? I was sort of not paying attention to that." Off the blank stares she recieved Jennie sighed. "Right, gimme a sec." She carefully cradled the eggs in their makeshift sling and closed her eyes. Then she jerked her head towards the right. "Thisaway. I think."

Marius smirked from his grip on the dinosaur's front end, feeling a considerable sense of accomplishment as well as several muscle groups that were going to spend the next few days violently expressing their displeasure. "But of course. Be sure to mind the cliffs. We wouldn't want another ambush."

"I hate you soooo much," Jennie said, without even turning around.

The way back was mercifully uneventful, Jennie's sense of direction proving correct. And once in sight of the camp, Kyle visibly relaxed, even with the heavy weight of the dinosaur on his shoulders. "Home stinky home." He said, and then grinned, opened his mouth, and burst into a stunningly off-key rendition of "The lion sleeps tonight." It was, at once, both an announcement of their success and return. No one would mistake his singing for anything -but- Kyle.

While everyone else is occupied, Garrison puts his detective skills to use, but finds himself far out of his element.

"See, this is the thing." Garrison Kane was creeping along the ground, not more than a few inches away as he carefully moved plants and dirt, scrutinizing them with great care. "The guy has a metal leg, a metal arm, and built his own plane. He runs security for a school that has been attacked by paramilitary forces and was taught by ex-mercenaries, pop stars and elemental forces of destruction. He constantly bangs on about how brilliant he is and yet, he can't figure out to stay in one damn place if you get separated?"

Kane paused and straightened up. "Yes, I know I'm talking to myself. It's weird. But I was attacked by dinosaurs an hour ago. Therefore, talking to myself officially goes much further down on the weird list."

"There's no blood trail, despite the obvious blood marks in the camp itself. Maybe he was eaten." Kane shook his head as he cut over a dozen metres and crouched down again. "I'm not digging through dino shit just to locate his leg. No matter how hi-tech it might be. Why couldn't he have built in a cellphone or something into it?"

Kane brushed over a series of prints, all tri-toed and reptilian. Obviously the herd had come this way after the camp. "Marie honestly thinks I'm going to find you, man. Gave me that big eyed look that said 'you're a Mountie, of course you can track someone through the forest'. I grew up in West Toronto, in the midst of four million people. Tracking someone through High Park is more my speed. If Logan was here, he'd just pick up your scent; Red Bull, motor oil and acne cream, and you'd just reek him to you. But no, we'll send the guy who doesn't have the super senses, because Kyle would freak like a Barrie raver five minutes in if he didn't find you, or worse, if he did find whatever's left, there's no way he could avoid telling the rest of them."

What had looked like some blood on a leaf turned out to be discolourization, and Kane shook his head. "Forge, I hate to do this to you, but you're on your own. Your trail stops cold, and I am not some sort of super tracker who can sniff the wind and see a slight nick on a tree and say, yes, he's now in Montana giving five dollar blowjobs behind the Pick N' Save'." It was just impossible to find any sign of him in the underbrush. The dinosaurs had broken up plants and trees, wiping away most normal signs of passage, and what they assumed was Forge's blood simply stopped at one point.

Kane sighed and turned back towards the camp. There was nothing else he could do at the moment, and he still had a bunch of kids to keep safe. All he could do was hope that the reality was that Forge was an idiot, because if not, he had to be a corpse by now.