Participants:
| Scene Title | Fun and Games |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Elliot and Squeaks attempt to out-pursue each other through a parking lot. |
| Date | July 13, 2021 |
There isn't a sound that's not normal and everything looks just like another stop for the night. It's all just the usual talking and planning, and all the noises and activities that go with setting up camp. It's just like every other time the caravan pulled off the road to regroup and recharge.
So it's completely totally unexpected when a smallish but sudden weight hits Elliot from behind.
Squeaks clings to Elliot's back like some kind of feral beast, but where she came from is a mystery. There isn't much to hide behind or under. The small mounds of thick reedy grass and with the one stunted and twisted tree don't seem like much cover at all. The caravan isn't that close, and there just isn't much around on this stretch of highway.
And yet the teen managed an ambush.
Elliot's immediate, visceral panic lasts less than a second. A fight or flight instinct is gene deep, so he doesn't fault himself for the brief freeze before dropping into a calm that presages violence.
He's moving on instinct even while running the numbers. His attacker is small, weighs comparatively little; the list of likely culprits dwindles. Feet slide apart, center of gravity lowers as his arms reach up and back to grapple at the back of a small neck. He's certain now that this is Squeaks, and determines it's as good a time as any for a flying object lesson. His left hand hooks under a slight left arm as he both drops to a knee and pitches forward to fling her over his shoulders and into the grass.
Squeaks had been expecting a counter attack. She just wasn't expecting that kind of counter attack. Being actually thrown will have to be added to her list of possibilities. But in the moment, it's all she can go to try and twist once her grip is broken and she's very for reals flung away like a sack, so she doesn't land in a bad way.
Any success is a good landing hard to see. So is any failure, actually. Squeaks lands mostly on her back with a grunt, the momentum and the little bit of rise from the weedy mound making her slide an extra two or three inches. And when she settles, her head tilts upward — it's up for her, but it's downward from where Elliot is — before she rolls over onto her belly for better, faster moving.
“That was sneaky,” she says out loud. In the grass like she is, fingers digging into the rough soil and toes trying to find a good purchase, Squeaks watches Elliot like she's thinking about all her options. She could tag him and run. Or maybe just run, find a new place to hide and wait.
Elliot doesn't hear anything break when she lands, and snark rather than wailing is a bonus. He has two options now, each a different type of learning experience. The first would be to press the attack, swift and without mercy. This plan appeals due to the fact that she'll be absolutely impossible to find if she gets any further into the grass, as her arrival just demonstrated.
The second plan would require a lot more effort, but would render her ability less than effective in the tall grass. The wind stirs, droplets of rain patter against tall stalks of whispering grass. He could step back into the cacophony and play a longer game of hide and seek. But she already knows how to hide silently for her chance to strike.
Still crooked forward over his knee, he fishes his wooden practice knife from under his coat as he launches directly at her. The maneuver will drop most of his weight on her to pin her in place. He brings the stick down in a way that will leave a mark, feeling no impulse to pull his punches yet.
Squeak doesn't see the pretend knife come out, but she sees Elliot leap at her. And she rabbits. Hands and feet both push off the ground to run, but not straight forward into danger. She goes sort of more sideways and backward, twisting at the shoulders to turn away from the offense.
That maneuvering lets Squeaks avoid Elliot's feet by less than inches. He lands right where she had been half a second before and the crunch of dead grass is loud in her ears. She's quick and small, and that counts for something even though it doesn't get her outside of his longer reach. If it was a real knife, there's a pretty good chance Squeaks wouldn't be doing much hiding or climbing for the next few days. Luckily it's just wood and the solid hit that catches just inside her shoulder blade is probably only going to slow her down for a few minutes.
The teen almost laughs at her narrow near escape. The sharp feeling in her back makes the sound a tiny bit forced. She runs though, bolting for the opening ahead of her. She needs better coverage, instead of facing her opponent head on.
“Christ she's feisty,” Wright says, tipping popcorn into her hand. It isn't fresh, but it feels like the thing to do in this situation. “She can never meet Ames.”
Elliot follows in a roll, slashing at ankles as they disappear into the grass. He smiles at Wright’s irreverence and his trainee’s craftiness at once. He's on his feet in a blink, trying to overwhelm her with the length of his stride for as long as brute force is an option. Almost everyone she fights will be taller, faster, stronger. I'm this world, they'll also be desperate and unforgiving. This is what she needs to train against in a combat scenario. He dashes forward, following the waves she makes in the tall grass.
Knowing very well she can't outpace him, Squeaks has to hope that not knowing the land will maybe slow Elliot down even a little bit. She's relying on instinct as much as what few details her echolocation gives her besides just grass, zagging and zigging past obstacles or what might be foot traps even for her.
She keeps a reckless pace for a while, at least seventeen seconds of running full tilt like a spooked fox. Then, all of a sudden, she goes to ground. It isn't the best place to be. The grass can be great cover but not always when being chased. But it's what she has and it's only for a couple seconds.
Half sitting like she just stole second base, Squeaks turns enough to watch for Elliot. She needs him to be closer, close enough to grab, close enough that the handful of dirt and gravel in her right hand would be an actually for reals distraction. Close enough that she can pin him with her own practice knife, grasped in her left hand, up under his jaw.
Elliot is hot on her heels for a while, footfalls thundering behind her. Then, with a sudden gust of heavy wind and a spray of rain, there's no sound of him.
Spotting two thick stalks jutting up from the grass, Elliot shrugs off his coat and drapes it over them before backing up to disappear into the grass on the opposite side of the path that they trod. He controls his breathing and focuses on listening through the susurrus of dry grass.
Squeaks waits for Elliot to appear, staring hard and listening closely for signs that he's close. She squints a little against the wind and wet, all ready to move fast once he catches up, but she also stays very still so she isn't easy to find. After half of a minute, she forces her breathing to be slower. Then, after another one or two minutes, she slowly sinks until she's stretched on the ground like a snake.
With careful movements, Squeaks crawls on her belly to change her hiding place. Feet and elbows push against the ground, giving her the leverage to move forward and turn off her original path. Hopefully the wind covers her changes.
Once she's gone a goodly fifteen or so feet, the teen pauses. Fingers push into the ground Near her chin and dig around until she comes up with a rock about the size of a Hotwheels car. Maybe it is a Hotwheels just caked in dirt and apocalypse stuff, but she doesn't take time to tell. Instead, super careful so she doesn't lose her cover, Squeaks lobs the hotwheels rock over her shoulder and opposite the direction she's going.
On one knee, Elliot’s breathing is back under control from his sprint. In a normal “trying to hunt someone through the tall grass” scenario, this is usually the part where one would call for dogs or start a wildfire. Neither option being feasible, he remains still while he watches the wind move his jacket several paces away.
He controls his impulse to lurch forward at the sudden but distinct thump of a small distraction rock hitting the earth. With his best guess at her last known location, he can assume she threw it away from herself and get a general sense of her direction. It's far from perfect, but while he's willing to let this take all night he'd honestly rather it didn't. He begins taking agonizingly slow movements out and around to head her off, gathering bits of gravel along the way. It dawns on him that this field probably used to be a parking lot.
If it were Squeaks’ choice, she’d keep up the game all night, sneaking around through the grass and growth and debris and always keeping herself one step ahead. It isn’t really her choice, though. Partly because Tay is probably clinically insane, with how he’s driving the caravan — not that she disagrees with not delaying very much, but sometimes it’s good to take a longer break. Also partly since she knows she might zag when she should zig instead, and that’ll lead her right into Elliot’s path.
She won’t let that happen this time. Nope. That’s why the teenager slinks along the ground, slow and steady and not in a straight line. It’s more S-shaped, and angling more and more toward the campsite that the caravan picked out. If she can get back, Squeaks decides, before she’s caught, then she can spring the best trap.
Elliot pauses when he comes up against the rusted hulk of a sports car. Quickly leaning up and over, he flings a large fistful of gravel out over the area he estimates to contain his quarry, then dashes forward again.
Bits of rock and rubble cast off rains down in a pattery-pitter of sounds. And then everything is quiet, still, as if the whole natural world recognized that a predator is nearby. It's broken in Elliot’s ears by the very hushed rustling of his hustling…
…the again by the very sudden and very furious flapping of a startled bird. A couple of feathers flutter toward the ground as the creature scurries through the air for a new hiding place.
In that same instant another heavier sound cuts through the air and not too far away. The small and sneaky Squeaks manifests out of the darkness, leaping-jumping and half obscured by the shadows, with one grassy clod of dirt in each hand. Left then right, they’re thrown down at Elliot’s back right about the time she should reach the apex of her arc.
Elliot takes a direct hit to the jacket. By paintball rules he'd be out, but this is a knife fight.
He pivots away from the second clod of dirt, lowering his center of gravity then jumping up and forward to grab his target around the waist as she descends. His greater weight and momentum spins both of them into the grass, landing hard with Squeaks loosely pinned in one arm as he pulls his wooden knife from his belt.
Squeaks screams when she's caught, but it isn't exactly the sound that someone would expect. It isn't fully like the sound of a human child. There's too much surprise and feral creature in it. The sound lands somewhere in the range of angry rabbit and sassy goat.
The sound cuts when they hit the ground. It's the only thing saving her from having the wind knocked from her and gives her a chance to still fight. The teen bites down into the arm holding her and kicks with her feet like a cat. Her hands swat and push and grapple for a hold on anything. Maybe trying like she's trying to get away. Or maybe just as a distraction while she tries to get to her own practice knife so she can stick it in Elliot's belly.
Elliot still keenly remembers the sound of a rabbit caught in a wire trap during the middle period of the war. He very briefly wonders if the sound will draw any members of the convoy, but doesn't devote any mental energy to fabricating an excuse. He's training a minor to be a spy, nobody's going to like it anyway.
Instead, he grunts automatically at the sudden bite through his sleeve, feeling Wright’s amusement that he left his thick canvas jacket in the weeds. Unfortunately for Squeaks, this is far from the worst pain he's ever continued to operate through, and he bats her legs away after a couple kicks to the ribs and pins her right arm in place with his shin.
When it comes down to it, Elliot has a decade of training and double the mass. Letting her win teaches her nothing, and she's already done a lot correctly. Deciding that it's time for a performance for review, he jabs her lightly in the throat with his wooden knife, saying, “Boop.”
It was a gamble. But the fact of it is, in Squeaks’ mind and experience, it’s always going to be a gamble for her. She’s small and quick and sneaky, but that only gets her so far. And tonight, a couple of times at least, it earned her a couple of equally small and sneaky points. She plays a strong and feral side eye when the knife jabs into her neck. She still claims a victory dance for those teeny wins, in the very exact moment and in spite of ultimately losing, and grinds her teeth on Elliot’s arm like an incorrigible puppy.
Elliot is very good at hiding what he's feeling on the outside, though an amount of pain in the realm of mild annoyance is expressed as a long sigh. “Can I have my arm back?” he asks. “Also the wax in this coat might be toxic.”
He pushes himself up to standing whether or not she relents, slipping the practice knife into a pocket with the other hand. “Anyway,” he continues, “your best bet is going to be a preemptive strike. Let's practice your takedowns.”