Post by Colton Deraine on Aug 21, 2019 16:49:56 GMT -5
[googlefont=Open+Sans]
[attr="class","firstfriend"]
Bravery is believing in yourself, and that's one thing nobody can teach you.
Hour Fourteen. 2000hrs.
There came a point in the day where walking around aimlessly like a dipshit was a bug and not a feature, and it was approaching that point. He had succeeded by and large at his initial goal of dropping in a place without people but had succeeded a little too much and encountered very few people throughout the day. That was fine, however, because people would naturally congregate at night and he doubted very strongly that most of the other trainees knew how to set up a proper camp.
Colton was in no way, shape, or form any sort of skilled outdoorsman but he was taught the basics. The biggest issue, largely, was finding a flat piece of land with only a mild to moderate amount of vegetation and grass that he’d need to tear out in order to form a fire pit. Eventually he found a decent spot, but not before he had been kind of looking for about an hour. He went to set up the fire pit first, using Polarity to dig and rip out all of the undergrowth and grass because he was too good to do the dirty and physical labor with his own hands. While the days were normally fine temperature wise, the nights tended to be cold as shit and he didn’t want to be miserable the entire time.
The next step after clearing out all of that shit was to make a platform made of dirt in the center about four inches thick. There were three material components he still needed to gather, though, and each would be a tedious endeavor that he would not enjoy. The first material was tinder, which was stuff like dry leaves, bark, wood shavings, and dry grass. The point of this was to get a good ignition that would spread to the rest of the wood. The second material was tinder, which was usually just small twigs and branches about the width of a pencil. This was to catch fire after the tinder but burn slow enough to spread it to the third material in the fuel wood. Fuel wood was the thing that keeps the fire burning and was basically just branches that were about as wide as your wrist or forearm. Overall, the wood that snaps and broke when pressure was applied was vastly superior to use in any of these categories because it meant the wood was completely dry and thus much easier to burn. If it bent but didn’t break, then it was too wet or otherwise unsuitable to do anything except make smoke signals like this was the prehistoric era.
Once the materials were gathered, which took for fucking ever, it was time to actually make the shit useful. The Argus native went with a Teepee Fire Lay, which started with putting the tinder bundle in the middle of the site. Above that bundle, you formed a teepee with some kindling. In this case, it was more of a pyramid rather than a teepee but at the end of the day Colton was training to be a huntsman and not an engineer. An opening was left in the kindling on the side the wind was blowing, which allowed nature to do the work instead of needing a lot of tending to it. Once all the kindling was put upright, basically with the fuel wood all he needed to do was lay the fuel wood outside of the kindling so the fire would start in the middle and then spread outwards as it went. When the fuel wood was all stacked up, it was a simple matter to just toss it a couple of matches under the tinder and then the fire would rise upwards and then spread outwards in an ideal situation.
Then it was time to make the tent and holy shit did Colton regret not going with a premade tent. He had two tarps, some rope, and some smaller metal stakes but this shit would take a while. Setting it up far enough away from the fire was easy enough, especially because it was spreading slowly and was barely kicking up any smoke or heat at the moment. The tent was to be set in between two trees, and the rope was to be tied to each of the trees for stability. Clearing the area was another boring but necessary part, but he lacked the skill to do it more efficiently than just essentially sweeping the place of stray rocks, twigs, and other debris with his gear.
Once the area was clear, then one of the tarps was to be set on the ground, smoothed out, and then secured with the stakes. The second tarp was tossed over the rope that was in between the two trees and needed to be straightened out so that each side hung down evenly onto the ground. At this point the stakes needed to be redone to stabilize both tarps, but Polarity removed the annoying hammering part that other plebeians needed to do. Once all four stakes were redone, what was left was a stable structure that the teenager threw his sleeping bag into and went back to the fire.
The fire, frankly, was being uncooperative as hell and required more matches. The brunette lit and tossed in three more into the fray before the fire finally picked up some steam and illuminated the ever-growing darkness around it. If nothing else, it would make Colton’s location known to everyone around. It might attract some Grimm, too, but that wasn’t his concern. The former champion’s own aura had recovered to the point that it was unlikely for any attack on the camp to do anything other than annoy the fuck out of him by destroying either the fire or the tent and make him waste another large chunk of time in order to rebuild either or both of the structures.
Dirt and other debris would stick to his shield, sword, and scabbard as a result of using them as digging and excavation tools rather than packing his own, but frankly that was fine. He saved some space in his kit by just improvising, which was more important than the near-term perfect maintenance of his weapons. So long as the dust injection kits weren’t damaged, it was nothing a quick wash wouldn’t fix once they got back to campus. A wash of the hands later and he pulled out a pot, filled it with water, and started holding it over the fire. He brought with him some traveling rations that only needed to be heated and exposed to some water before being ideal. The fact of the matter was that while he knew the absolute basics of cooking, it was still far easier and less time consuming to go with the pre-made option rather than doing it himself in the interest of both space in his kit and time since he had already spent the past hour or so setting up the damned camp in an effort to keep his backpack as light as possible.
Which was a mistake, by the way, because the time wasted on setting up camp could was a much higher opportunity cost than simply carrying around a few pounds more shit to make it much easier and more convenient. Things to keep in mind for next time, anyway. At this point, it was dark enough to where the firelight could be seen for quite some distance away. No matter how far away the others were, at least a few of them would be drawn to that light. He needed to end the twenty four hour time slot with a group, and this was the easiest and most foolproof way to go about it that he had been able to think of.
There was absolutely, positively zero chance in Hell that he was going to be the one to get more firewood here when this batch ran out, though. That would be somebody else’s job, because fuck that shit. For clothes he just wore the standard Haven Academy uniform consisting of a black jacket with a light gray outline around the edges, a white undershirt and a white band around the student's left arm along with the red bandana signifying his group as a rose being attached to his upper right arm. Issues socially was a perfectly apt description of his time at Haven, and whether he liked that description was largely irrelevant. It was the behavior that landed him in this group and objective type to begin with, so he would need to at least pretend to tolerate others for the duration of this no matter who showed up.
At this point, he would take literally anyone with a vocabulary of more than five total words. Higher than twenty, ideally, but any number more than five overall would be at least not the absolute worst possible option. If they were also capable of not shitting right beside where they slept for no reason, that would be another bonus. The last thing Colton wanted to do was be woken by the stench of feces again, and he fervently hoped that nobody else smelled that bad out of the group that was sent out.
Yeah, at this point the ideal metric was literally just ‘Not Qiu’li’ and the brunette would be fine. Literally anyone else except for that failed abortion attempt would be much preferable and he could live with it. For now, though, all he could do was wait and continue to cook his food to have his nice campfire dinner in at least momentary peace.
There came a point in the day where walking around aimlessly like a dipshit was a bug and not a feature, and it was approaching that point. He had succeeded by and large at his initial goal of dropping in a place without people but had succeeded a little too much and encountered very few people throughout the day. That was fine, however, because people would naturally congregate at night and he doubted very strongly that most of the other trainees knew how to set up a proper camp.
Colton was in no way, shape, or form any sort of skilled outdoorsman but he was taught the basics. The biggest issue, largely, was finding a flat piece of land with only a mild to moderate amount of vegetation and grass that he’d need to tear out in order to form a fire pit. Eventually he found a decent spot, but not before he had been kind of looking for about an hour. He went to set up the fire pit first, using Polarity to dig and rip out all of the undergrowth and grass because he was too good to do the dirty and physical labor with his own hands. While the days were normally fine temperature wise, the nights tended to be cold as shit and he didn’t want to be miserable the entire time.
The next step after clearing out all of that shit was to make a platform made of dirt in the center about four inches thick. There were three material components he still needed to gather, though, and each would be a tedious endeavor that he would not enjoy. The first material was tinder, which was stuff like dry leaves, bark, wood shavings, and dry grass. The point of this was to get a good ignition that would spread to the rest of the wood. The second material was tinder, which was usually just small twigs and branches about the width of a pencil. This was to catch fire after the tinder but burn slow enough to spread it to the third material in the fuel wood. Fuel wood was the thing that keeps the fire burning and was basically just branches that were about as wide as your wrist or forearm. Overall, the wood that snaps and broke when pressure was applied was vastly superior to use in any of these categories because it meant the wood was completely dry and thus much easier to burn. If it bent but didn’t break, then it was too wet or otherwise unsuitable to do anything except make smoke signals like this was the prehistoric era.
Once the materials were gathered, which took for fucking ever, it was time to actually make the shit useful. The Argus native went with a Teepee Fire Lay, which started with putting the tinder bundle in the middle of the site. Above that bundle, you formed a teepee with some kindling. In this case, it was more of a pyramid rather than a teepee but at the end of the day Colton was training to be a huntsman and not an engineer. An opening was left in the kindling on the side the wind was blowing, which allowed nature to do the work instead of needing a lot of tending to it. Once all the kindling was put upright, basically with the fuel wood all he needed to do was lay the fuel wood outside of the kindling so the fire would start in the middle and then spread outwards as it went. When the fuel wood was all stacked up, it was a simple matter to just toss it a couple of matches under the tinder and then the fire would rise upwards and then spread outwards in an ideal situation.
Then it was time to make the tent and holy shit did Colton regret not going with a premade tent. He had two tarps, some rope, and some smaller metal stakes but this shit would take a while. Setting it up far enough away from the fire was easy enough, especially because it was spreading slowly and was barely kicking up any smoke or heat at the moment. The tent was to be set in between two trees, and the rope was to be tied to each of the trees for stability. Clearing the area was another boring but necessary part, but he lacked the skill to do it more efficiently than just essentially sweeping the place of stray rocks, twigs, and other debris with his gear.
Once the area was clear, then one of the tarps was to be set on the ground, smoothed out, and then secured with the stakes. The second tarp was tossed over the rope that was in between the two trees and needed to be straightened out so that each side hung down evenly onto the ground. At this point the stakes needed to be redone to stabilize both tarps, but Polarity removed the annoying hammering part that other plebeians needed to do. Once all four stakes were redone, what was left was a stable structure that the teenager threw his sleeping bag into and went back to the fire.
The fire, frankly, was being uncooperative as hell and required more matches. The brunette lit and tossed in three more into the fray before the fire finally picked up some steam and illuminated the ever-growing darkness around it. If nothing else, it would make Colton’s location known to everyone around. It might attract some Grimm, too, but that wasn’t his concern. The former champion’s own aura had recovered to the point that it was unlikely for any attack on the camp to do anything other than annoy the fuck out of him by destroying either the fire or the tent and make him waste another large chunk of time in order to rebuild either or both of the structures.
Dirt and other debris would stick to his shield, sword, and scabbard as a result of using them as digging and excavation tools rather than packing his own, but frankly that was fine. He saved some space in his kit by just improvising, which was more important than the near-term perfect maintenance of his weapons. So long as the dust injection kits weren’t damaged, it was nothing a quick wash wouldn’t fix once they got back to campus. A wash of the hands later and he pulled out a pot, filled it with water, and started holding it over the fire. He brought with him some traveling rations that only needed to be heated and exposed to some water before being ideal. The fact of the matter was that while he knew the absolute basics of cooking, it was still far easier and less time consuming to go with the pre-made option rather than doing it himself in the interest of both space in his kit and time since he had already spent the past hour or so setting up the damned camp in an effort to keep his backpack as light as possible.
Which was a mistake, by the way, because the time wasted on setting up camp could was a much higher opportunity cost than simply carrying around a few pounds more shit to make it much easier and more convenient. Things to keep in mind for next time, anyway. At this point, it was dark enough to where the firelight could be seen for quite some distance away. No matter how far away the others were, at least a few of them would be drawn to that light. He needed to end the twenty four hour time slot with a group, and this was the easiest and most foolproof way to go about it that he had been able to think of.
There was absolutely, positively zero chance in Hell that he was going to be the one to get more firewood here when this batch ran out, though. That would be somebody else’s job, because fuck that shit. For clothes he just wore the standard Haven Academy uniform consisting of a black jacket with a light gray outline around the edges, a white undershirt and a white band around the student's left arm along with the red bandana signifying his group as a rose being attached to his upper right arm. Issues socially was a perfectly apt description of his time at Haven, and whether he liked that description was largely irrelevant. It was the behavior that landed him in this group and objective type to begin with, so he would need to at least pretend to tolerate others for the duration of this no matter who showed up.
At this point, he would take literally anyone with a vocabulary of more than five total words. Higher than twenty, ideally, but any number more than five overall would be at least not the absolute worst possible option. If they were also capable of not shitting right beside where they slept for no reason, that would be another bonus. The last thing Colton wanted to do was be woken by the stench of feces again, and he fervently hoped that nobody else smelled that bad out of the group that was sent out.
Yeah, at this point the ideal metric was literally just ‘Not Qiu’li’ and the brunette would be fine. Literally anyone else except for that failed abortion attempt would be much preferable and he could live with it. For now, though, all he could do was wait and continue to cook his food to have his nice campfire dinner in at least momentary peace.
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MADE BY MIZO
