thebastion | Day 236 [Open]

Entry tags:

Day 236 [Open]

Who: Zuko and anyone
Open: Open!
When: Day 236
Where: All over the Bastion
What: Toph is gone. =(
Format: I'll match
Warnings: Honor

The first day, she wasn't worried. The second, she tried not to be. But now it's the third day that she hasn't seen the only other person from her world that she knows is still alive. Not one to sit idle, Zuko spends most of the morning searching the Bastion for any sign of her friend, asking whoever she runs into:

"Have you seen Toph?"

By afternoon she decides to move her search beyond the Bastion. She shoulders her swords and leads one of the ostrich horses out to the bridge to the Skyway, but there she stops. She's lectured more than one person on the dangers of going out alone. As much as she wants to get moving, it won't help Toph if she just gets herself into trouble, and it would be hypocritical of her not to wait for someone to join her.

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"Oh please," he replies, rolling his eyes. "The only thing I should be leading is an engineering department, with people who know my skills and who have studied my work. I don't have the qualifications to lead anything else. I'm the only person in the family that dad has said is NOT in the running to lead the empire when he steps down or passes. And that's for the best."

You're not telling him anything he doesn't know here, Zuko.

"Unfortunately, they way things are, we've got to rely on our strengths to get us through this," he tells her, shaking his head. "We haven't got the luxury to step out of our comfort zones for self-improvement. We've got enough of that just trying to survive. What I wouldn't give to be able to attend one of my department's continuing education seminars right now..."

He doesn't act like he knows that one a lot of the time.

"Your father is an emperor?"

Zuko shakes her head. "We might not have the time to focus on skills we can't use, but there's time to learn some things."

"He is," Colin says. "I can tell you more about him, if you're actually interested. I really look up to him."

He smirks then, and he shakes his head. "Some people have time. I have breaks to rest my brain. I haven't stopped working since I've arrived here several months ago. The Bastion needs a lot of work to keep everyone comfortable, to keep everything running. Nathan hardly sleeps, for much the same reason."

"I don't know if we look up to the same kinds of people..." Although, Colin does respect Paarthurnax, so maybe they do. Who knows. "I just wouldn't have pegged you for royalty."

She glances over at him, considering for a moment if she's going to regret asking. "What are you working on all the time?" She assumes that lately it's been that information machine they asked him to make, but who knows what he's been doing before that?

"Oh, dad's nothing like me at all," he says, laughing in amusement. "He's a real people person, knows what to say all the time, knows how to lead people. Brave, strong, able to stand up to anyone and anything. A lot of things I wish I could be."

He shakes his head then, still smirking fondly at thoughts of his father. "Let's see. The farm, the skiff, the observatory, Rin's kitchen, gathering supplies and making repairs, getting the training yard's exercise range set up, working on a solution to the power source, working on getting us some better transportation options, getting Yukio set up to be our new doctor, helping set up things for the events that we have every so often..."

He pauses, thinking as he rides.

"Sounds like my uncle." And she wouldn't say she's much like him either, unfortunately.

"...do you have anyone who can help you with that? Like an assistant or an apprentice." She may not especially like Colin, but she can acknowledge that most of what he tries to do has its uses. And he seems to be the only person who knows how to do it.

"If your uncle's anything like my dad, he's gotta be one heck of a guy," Colin says, smiling over at Zuko.

"As for assistants... not really. Nathan's the only one here who can keep up with me right now, and we've..." Colin trails off, thinking.

"We've come to a disagreement and are giving each other space," he says finally. "Otherwise, Paarthurnax tries to bring me things he finds out in the wilds that look useful. Nobody else really comes by unless they need something. There's lots of work that needs to be done that isn't technical, after all."

Predictably, Zuko doesn't return the smile. Yes, her uncle is incredible, but unlike Toph, she has more reason to think he's dead than just missing.

"There has to be someone who'd put up with you enough to learn what you do." Zuko knows it isn't her, but other people have more patience.

"As the saying goes, we go to war with the armies we've got," Colin says, shaking his head. "It takes years to train a good engineer, and most people here can't stand me anyway. If I need help, I can swallow my pride and grab Nathan. Until then, I'm not going to force someone to learn a difficult trade when most of them can't be bothered to learn basic first aid or wilderness survival."

He seems to realize what he's saying, the tone he's taking, and he sighs. "Sorry about the bitterness," he says with a tired tone to his voice. "It bothers me that there's so many people here who are one accident away from losing everything, and they don't seem to care to learn the skills that can keep them alive."

"That's one thing we can agree on." She's not exactly bitter about it, but it does worry her knowing there are so many of them untrained and not even seeking to change it.

"You make it sound willful, though, and in most cases, I don't think it is. If you've grown up being safe, then that's probably how you keep seeing the world until something bad enough happens to change it."

"Not willful," Colin says, shaking his head. "Scared, more likely. People don't want to leave their comfort zones. I think. After losing so much, having to rely on someone to teach them how to survive on their own is probably terrifying. Having to think about surviving on their own PERIOD is probably the last thing people want on their minds."

He looks down at the back of the ostrich horse's neck. "Which is totally understandable, but that doesn't mean it's going to get better just because they run and hide," he says.

"They aren't on their own. Not exactly."

She felt like it at first. She still feels like it now, to a degree. Some of her reasons for wanting to find Toph are selfish, because she doesn't want to go back to being the only one from her world in the Bastion. But she's coming to realize she has quite a few friends there, too.

"They're not on their own now," Colin says, trying to keep his tone gentle. "But we're proving right now why this knowledge is important. If something happens to someone and they're separated from the group... Or if there's another incident that puts the Bastion in danger..."

He trails off and shakes his head.

"Toph can handle herself."

Which is why she's clearly not worried in the slightest. Yeah, Zuko can't think too hard on how Colin might finish those sentences right now.

"Night could too..." Colin says quietly, before sighing and looking up into the sky. "Sorry. Just... it would be better if people had the knowledge and never had to use it, rather than needing it and getting caught without it, right?"

Zuko's jaw tightens at the mention of Night. This isn't going to be like that. Toph might enjoy a fight, but she's not stupid. She knows when to run.

"I get what you're saying," she says stiffly.

So did Night, and that's what bothers Colin most.

"I'm going to start putting together a list of things we need for emergency kits, in the event that we ever need to evacuate again," Colin says, changing the subject since he's no happier to discuss that than she is. "Everyone needs to have a simple backpack by their door that they can grab in the event that they need to run. No fuss, no panicked gathering of supplies, just everything in one neat package. What do you think?"

Zuko nods, preferring the new topic as well. "An evacuation plan. That's a good idea. We were lucky before that things went as smoothly as they did."

"I'll confess that I don't know the first thing about terrestrial evacuations," Colin says. "Even my research on it is a little light. Spacers don't typically think of what to do when planet-side... But I can put together survival kits pretty well. That should let someone better trained in this sort of thing put together a plan, knowing we've got supplies for it."

"Spacers...?" Is he talking about evacuating... from space? Like in that movie?

"I've never evacuated anyone, but I'm sure we can come up with something. Places to meet, who's going to be responsible for the kids or any injured, and the animals..." An evacuation plan which does not include the turtle ducks is an incomplete plan.

"Ah, right. 'Spacer' is slang for a person that lives on a ship or a space station, rather than on a planet," Colin explains. "I've spent roughly three quarters of my life among the stars, rather than on the ground."

He grins and leans forward on his ostrich horse slightly. "There's a lot of animals to take care of, but we've got talented people," Colin says. "Between N, Hilda, and Zulf, we probably have enough people who can wrangle the animals appropriately. So long as they know that they're supposed to. We should probably see about socializing some of them more, though. Animals aren't likely to obey people that that they don't know, even if those people have their best interests at heart."

"You actually live up there? I thought it was just for travel." Zuko can't understand the appeal. Isn't it just a lot of, well, space?

She shakes her head and pats her ostrich horse on the neck. "People seem interested enough in the animals we have. I don't think getting them better acquainted will be a problem."

"Lots of people live up in space," Colin says, smiling fondly at the thought. "And lots of people live on planets. Just different upbringings, different circumstances."

He pauses and he shakes his head then. "The people being interested in animals is easy," Colin says gently. He's trying not to sound contrary, but he knows he's likely not going to pull that off. "The animals being interested in the people is not. Many animals have an instinctual distrust towards people, unless they've been domesticated. These ostrich horses, for example? They're docile, used to people. Not all animals are so easily pacified. The dragons that Crona brought in, for example, are still wild, still skittish around people."

"Sounds strange." Zuko might not be an earthbender but she still prefers having, well, ground. And water. The Skyway is weird enough.

"I guess I haven't dealt with many wild animals, but in my experience it's the person who has to adjust to the animal, not the other way around. You figure out how to deal with them, and they'll start to trust you. ... Anyway, screwing up with dragons that small seems a lot less... risky."

"Difficult to understand, certainly," Colin says. "Like people who live on the coast looking at people who live in the desert. Two completely different ways of life."

He smirks at Zuko's statement, and he shakes his head. "You'd think so, but never underestimate any animals, no matter their size," he tells her, gesturing over towards her. "Or have you forgotten how panicked and bitey the turtle ducks were when you gathered them up? And those animals know you, like you, recognize you as a source of food."

He hadn't witnessed it personally, but word travels quick in a small community.

"I'm not saying it's hopeless, but there's a vast gulf between being friendly if there's food to be had, and trusting a person enough to let themselves be handled when their first instinct is to run," he says quietly. "Wild animals don't live very long if they don't suspect everything around them is going to try to kill and eat them."

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daughterofursa - 2014-10-17 21:31 (UTC) - Expand

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