please don't deceive me when i hurt you

[kidproof]

Who: Joel Miller (kidproof)
What: Just DITL of what my loser gets up to in Milton, and the frozen wasteland they now call home + some event top levels.
When: Month of April through to May
Where: around — reach out for any closed starters you may want. His app is here and his permissions too. Reach out to me on plurk at doggos or on discord at newdlle

Content Warnings: TBA - will update here and by headline when necessary. Advance warnings for Joel being Joel.

Comments

the hunt, ota

[kidproof]

[ Joel doesn’t think much of Old Bear, Young Bill, or his faithful companions but his aggravation is palpable with idle hands. He’s been stuck here with fuck all to do and no way around pilfering the tech he’d picked up during the last aurora. The remnants of it litter his kitchen counter, and even though they remain more or less functional, he can’t get anything to work beyond a spark here or there, followed by the threat of complete overload or a blown fuse.

So, when it comes time to take down the titan despite his kinship with the old beast as another from one battle scarred old warrior to another, the meat, and the pelt provide too much of a resource to the town and its inhabitants for him to look the other way.

At least, that’s what he tells himself.

The truth is, he’s got to blow off steam and release all he had pent up. He can feel it brimming, boiling under the surface like a volcano about to blow. He’s got more questions than answers, and the adrenaline he’s been riding directly conflicts with how little he’s slept in the last month.

When the floor gives way he goes tumbling with the rest, spear in hand and rifle slung over his back by the strap. He hits his knee hard first, and then goes feet over head to land half on his side and half on his back. ]

Ah, hell…

[ Joel plants the blunt end of his rifle and uses it as a cane to get up and out of the snow. There's the litter of debris everywhere and powder white in the air from them knocking the snow around.

He follows the variances in color, and pushes the toe of his boot into a heap of a coat that's embedded in the snow with no clue if it's attached to a living person or a corpse. ]

Hey. Get up.

what one man can do, ota

[kidproof]

[ When it comes down to it, Joel doesn’t know Young Bill from Adam let alone trust him. The only thing that makes the guy worthwhile is his insight to the bear and the fight. That alone kept him among good company, but it only went so far. They were still stranded on a frozen island in between time and space with limited resources and too many mouths to feed.

The Old Bear was at least reliable in its pursuit, in the fact that specter or not it was a damned animal and behaved like one. Joel still remembers his dream pretty vividly, so when shit hits the fan down in the hollowed out area where the others had been trapped he’s not surprised.

He’s sporting some nasty injuries, scrapes and gashes he couldn’t feel bleeding thanks to the natural charge in the air but the flecks and the self sacrifice leave him not with a sense of accomplishment but with a churning sick kind of disappointment.

Joel’s got his palm over his right flank where he took a blow from getting knocked back. It’s already shadowed up in a bruise as dark as the room around him. He’s up, kicking the wood that had peeled off the building around them in the altercation on his way to pick up the damn abalone claw. He stows it in his pocket and staggers to the wall to plant his shoulder when a dizziness grapples him. ]

What a waste.

milton school house, ota

[kidproof]

[ Typically, Joel didn’t spend much time around people at the school house and when he did he preferred to be a fly on the wall. Better unseen, unbothered, then pretending to be part of a community he had no foot hold in.

It would be a cold day in hell that Joel would be the life of any Milton School House supper but cold it was and hell it very well could be so he made the occasional trip when his hunting heralded him no results or sleep couldn’t find him for more than a night or two. The crackling of the fireplace stirred something in his soul, and so he’s laid out, bandaged up on the side that took the blow from Old Bear, his flannel shirt open and his winter coat being used as a head rest.

He’s got a dusty old copy of The Brothers Karamazov open on one knee and the claw from Old Bear out on his other glinting off of the fire light. He’s been unraveling the parcord from an old bungee cord he’d pilfered from one of the houses in between chapters and the text is faded and discolored, making it difficult for Joel to read for too long without a resulting headache.

It’s a delicate dance, the books text, his work on unbraiding the old bungee cord. It leaves the small space in front of the fireplace looking like a bomb had gone off and Joel had been the casualty.

Put “Always doin’ too much,” on his headstone. ]

You're in my light.

[ Curiosity gets you an irate look and he'll drop whichever thing he's working on. The claw, the cord, or the book and stare at a person deadpan until they say something.

If they don't: ]

Take a seat or keep moving but if you don't get out of my light I'll ankle pick you.

farm house homestead, skirts of milton, ota

[kidproof]

[ Being gone a month in this sleet-filled never ending icy hellscape meant that he had to do routine maintenance on the farm house he'd taken up residence in. Besides turning the top of the barn into a crows nest he's got pit-falls around his meat reserves he's slated under ground and booby traps around the barn itself to protect the horse. Nothing that'd kill a person, only inconvenience them and he regularly checked them too in case some poor unfortunate moron found themselves on the reverse end of one of em.

Joel's working with wood, and the sound of his mallet pounding nails through the wood that wasn't rotten through from the dampness of the snow and sleet echoes off of the flat margin of land between him and Milton. So does the sound of the saw, and the fire he's got burning in an old metal barrel to keep him warm while he works if the sweat's not enough.

He's singing to keep track of the time, under his breath, Future Days by Pearl Jam. ]

All my stolen and missing par-

[ It's when he pulls down a hot cup of steeped herbs that almost managed to taste like tea that he realizes he's got company. ]

Why can I never do my chores alone? I reckon if you're gonna stand there looking stupid you might as well make yourself useful. Can you grab me some more wood from over there.

[ Joel jerks a hand in the direction of the wood pile he's already chopped apart. Less work for his back if he's gonna have spectators any time he decides to patch holes in the fence and the foundation. ]