Logs:Corruption of Youth
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| RL Date: 3 November, 2007 |
| Who: Jolak, N'thei |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| When: Day 28, Month 1, Turn 14 (Interval 10) |
| It's late-- midnight has just come and gone, the Weyr is cold and quiet and deserted on a coal-less winter night, people shoved in bed under as many quilts and comforters as they can lay their hands on. Except someone is prowling around in the deep back of the supply caverns, far to the back of the furnishings room. The pale light of a glowbasket wobbles in the frosty darkness, the bluish-green illumination just visible from the main corridor, a strange sight on such a night as this. The deeper into the lower caverns a person goes, the colder it is, making it a great place to store things to keep them from rotting or spoiling. And in these lower caverns a young man slips further into his fur lined coat, nuzzling his chin underneath a layer of the fur made from skins down south. His steps were quiet against the stone, each stride taken with practiced ease of one who has snuck around the Weyr at such suspicious hours. He carries only one small glow in the palm of his hand, knowing the route too well to need further assistance by light. And when the cavern spreads in several directions, he turns at the appropriate tunnel, seaking the storage cavern of furnishings and mysterious objects which have long since lost their purpose. When he turns he notices the faint glow at the back, making him frown slightly at the presence of another down here at such hours. Hiding his glow as much as he can, he steps lightly toward the source... Either the person with the glowbasket never heard that footfall, never noticed that glimmer of light, or that's what they want the interloper to believe. The bobble of light steadies as the basket is shelved amid the dust and disuse, shadows begin to resolve themselves into recognizable shapes in the darkness. This shadow, this person, is big, bigger-looking in the dark, but also preoccupied; there's a stack of sacks at his feet, and he's just hefting one down from his shoulders to end the pyramid, a grunt as he lowers it with a gravely-crunch of contents. A chill runs down his spine as he slips around a grand shelf unit, pausing at the end of it to peer around toward the lumination within the stores. His blue eyes squint in the darkness, getting a sense of unease from the situation, he reaches out toward a spare chair leg set out on the shelf unit across from him. It requires him shifting a few other parts away from it, his feet scuffing slightly on the floor as his fingers stretch for it, eyes flashing back toward the figure in the shadows before he successfully curls his finger around the dusted piece of wood. The unfortunate part comes when he pulls at the chair leg, as once it's free of the shelf the objects beside it which had been supported by it, move. A rattling clank resounds in the cavern as the pieces fall and roll, the young man bouncing back against his hiding spot, back hitting the shelving unit's end wall, his break sucking in as another rattle tat tat occurs when yet another object falls out of place. With ears tuned to the long sound of only his own work, N'thei kens to the shuffle and then the rattle like a fox, just an ear-flicker short of it. Surprisingly agile for a man of his bulk, the bronzerider takes a long stride over the bags, shoves a chair out of the way like it doesn't exist, and reaches out with two big fists to collar Jolak, roughly shoving him against the shelves behind him. "Who are you, and what's the reason I shouldn't break your nose, you little spy?" he grates quietly, heedless of the chair-leg Jolak grabbed-- probably for just such an occasion, good-thinking! His heart was racing and pounding in his ears after the last sound faded in disrupted echos, and it doesn't take him long to register the fact that the other person in the room was charging at him. The door... His eyes leaped toward it but before he could make two steps away from his hiding spot, he felt rough hands grab him by the collar, the teen grunting as his back hits the shelves from the push, more objects sent wobbling and some falling around him as a sharp pain makes through his shoulder where he was shoved. Instead of trying to answer the towering man, his first instincts are to swing - swing - swing... The chair leg comes up and aims to make a blow at N'thei - in the side or where ever he can land it from the awkward position he's in. N'thei takes a wallop in the ribs, met with a grunt; when the adrenaline's spent, that's bound to hurt. Right now, with close to a foot and a hundred pounds on the poor kid, he wrests one hand off the collar but keeps the other one there, the shirt bunched in his fist and his forearm across Jolak's collarbones to keep him pinned with doesn't-feel-good pressure. The other hand, the left one, reaches for the kid's lanky arm. With an extra shove, a shake that makes a chair cushion fall from an upper shelf and bounce with a humorous puff of dust off the bronzerider's shoulders; "Dammit, you dumb kid. Quit hitting me and start answering." Joe seems more surprised than N'thei when he actually makes a successful strike, his own adrenaline skyrocketing as he tries to use the leg chair as a pry bar, attempting to stab the one end against N'thei's thick waist to seperate the guy from himself. It's not like the kid has much of a chance on the larger fellow, especially pinned the way he is against the shelf - but he's getting desperate as the stabbing pains in his back continue - bone rubbing against the shelf the wrong way. At least the kid has spirit, by the way he glares up at the larger fellow, "Get off--" his voice gurgles a bit from the pressure put on him and the tightening of his collar against this throat, his knee can be felt coming up swiftly, aimed for the other guy's crotch. N'thei reacts with downright visceral anger at the instant he's about to take one in the family jewels. Red-faced, shining even in this poor light, he's no doubt feeling the prods and pokes in his guts, and he gives up trying to catch the stick. With both hands on Jolak's collar again, with the kid's knee catching him right where it counts, he hauls back and just physically shoves the young man across the room, pretty much the same way he did the chair just a few seconds ago. It has the advantage keeping him away from Jolak's nuts-to-knees kung fu, and puts N'thei-- stooped and grinding his teeth against a howl of pain-- right between the littler guy and the only door out of the storeroom. Just now, he's too out of breath to do more than glare at the boy. The seconds after his knee came swiftly up and connect seemed a blurr to him. He knew right then that he just asked for this confrontation to escalate and he was at the short end of the stick sort to speak. What stopped him from flying through the air was an unmoving piece of furniture, on which his head bounces off before he tumbles to the ground beside it, his body doing a few rolls before he comes to a halt -- the chair leg flying off some where in the darkness behind him. For a few lingering moments he remain limp on the ground, flopped with limbs twisted in a sprawled out fashion near the table in which he just collided with. As N'thei recovers from being canned, Jolak finds pain throbbing in his skull, a hand moving up toward it as he can't help but groan at his misfortune, face turning toward the exit to see the man who threw him glaring at him... Shards. After a long spell of silence, if you don't count the sound of hoarse breathing and Jolak groaning, N'thei gets his wind back enough to say something. One hand wipes upward from his forehead, back across his head, down the back of his neck, and he squares himself in front of the door, which he now closes behind him with one hand. "Alright. The way I see it, this ends one of two ways. Either you start telling me who you are and swearing you'll keep your mouth shut against pain of me snapping your neck in sleep some night, or I snap your neck right now and stuff your body behind some old shelves." He rubs at his ribs with the flat of one hand; "Either way, the likelihood of you getting choked to death exists, so it's really about the same to me." Jolak only goes so far as to push himself up off the cold floor, his hand going to comfort the back of his head as he leans up against the table which taught him a pleasant lesson. His eyes widen slightly as the door to the storage cavern closes with the larger man acting as the barricade before it, limiting significantly his chances of escape - or anyone hearing his plight. "You got no right," he begins to grumble out at the other, "I work down here... You don't... You should be answering questions..." he hisses out between wincing at the ache in his skull and the stinging in his back. Yet the threat the other makes has him scuttling back against the table as much as possible, "I like my neck intact..." he utters quickly between clenched teeth, realizing he's in over his head... "Most of us do, kid. Most of us do." For someone who just body-checked the kid, N'thei puts a remarkable amount of compassion in his voice. Fingers rubbing across his chin in a slow thoughtful chafe to his stubble, he just stands there thinking or waiting or some combination of the two. After yet another appreciable pause, when nothing changes but a little dust settling back down and a new wince where he rubs his side, he continues; "What's your name, and what are you doing down here in the dead of night?" Steadying himself with a use of a hand on the edge of the table, Jolak looks defiantly out across at N'thei, even though his odds of escaping further bruising seems slim to none. After a while, when he can concentrate on something other than the nagging pain in his back, he answers in a surprisingly firm tone, one that would deliever a challenge to N'thei when Jolak should be begging not to be killed, "Jolak. Like I said, I work down here. I'm the records keeper... I count and stock.. and check on the goods stored down here. And maybe I couldn't sleep... But you, it looks like you were trying to sneak stuff in or out and failed to go through the proper channels!" N'thei cringes and casts a look over his shoulder, though all there is to see is a firmly closed door and his own shadow laying across it. Turning back, he looks at Jolak with a pleading expression, strange considering he's the one holding all the cards right now. "If you don't keep your voice down, I'm going to have to keep it down for you, and I think we could both stand to get through the night without more bruises." He flexes his fingers into a fist though, pops a knuckle in the process, and looks at the lad with a silent, Capiche? "Here's the thing, Jolak, records keeper. You obviously caught me in the act here, and that's a problem-- for me, for you. Right?" There's a subtle shift in the young man's mannerisms, instead of huddling back against the table, his shoulders square up and his back stiffens, his chin drops - a sneer takes place of a frown. "It looks like I did catch you in the act--" he agrees, his arms folding across his chest, "and it seems it would be only a problem for you, since after all, you're the one without the justified reason to be down here. I think, they'd believe me over you - considering your fingers were caught in the preverbal cookie jar..." A pause, "Adding further bruises is only going to worsen your case, by and by..." added for his own safety, still not desiring a thrashing about nor a breaking of his scrawny neck. Tilting his head, looking down at Jolak from across the distance with the tolerance of a big dog playing with a kitten, N'thei explains, "You're assuming I'm going to let you walk out the door, Jolak; that's still my decision to make, and you're making it a pretty easy decision right now." He leans his head from side to side, loosening up the muscles in his neck in a gesture of practiced intimidation. "Before we get to me beating you senseless and hiding your corpse, don't you even want to know what's in the bags?" He takes half a step toward the kid, eyebrows raised to questioning arcs. "You're going to have to let me out eventually... The others will come into the stores when the sun rises, and I think I can dodge around you until then..." he says all the while picking his footing around the table, eyes darting around in hopes of finding that chair leg - it was a worthy weapon after all. "Whatever it is in those bags must be worth my blood, worth you getting exiled from the Weyr..." he glances in the direction of the bags, "So maybe I do deserve to know what's in there before my life comes to an end..." he keeps up the talking as he shifts back, hoping the other man doesn't notice him getting near the shelfs with metal hinges boxed in crates. The same patience; "Kid, I will eventually catch you, and then I'll probably choke you to death. I'll feel bad about it, and you'll be dead, and that won't do neither of us any good." N'thei stops advancing after just a step, a very long distance accrued between Jolak and him. His confidence is unflagging and sans malice, like this is just the way things are, nothing anyone can do about it. "But before you grab another chair-leg or a handful of nails or whatever you think you're going to hurtle at me next, go look in the bags. If you still want to rat me out after that? Then we'll deal with it." His arms folded, his left eye twitching when his elbow touches the tender spot on his ribs, he lowers his head toward the pyramid of stacked bags-- which could have just about anything in them, from potatoes to body parts. He hesistates. His curiousity gets the best of him, his hand twitches as he pulls it back to his side from whence it was climbing too, his voice carries out as he slips into the darker parts of the storage cavern, "I don't want to die, okay? I'm sure you don't want to kill me either, and even if you do, it'll be to no good end..." His vision lurks to the side as his feet shuffle that way, nearing the pile of stacked bags, "You sure you want me to look?" he asks out toward the figure of the other as his hand drops toward the highest bag stacked, fingers looping around the ties before tugging them back, spreading the mouth of the first sack open so that he can see the contents within... "At this point, either you look and we go from there, or you don't look and I kill you." N'thei shrugs it off, no big deal to him whichever way it ends-- "Though I'd prefer the part where I'm not a murderer, given the choice." He goes quiet while Jolak opens the bag, his gray eyes snapping with life and interest but the rest of him utterly immobile. Inside, it's something both mundane and remarkable; cromcoal, eight big bags of it, the bags bearing no marks to betray where they came from, certainly not stamped and tagged from a tithe train. For a while the contents appear to him as mere shadows, hidden by the lack of light, so it takes a hand to dig into one and clamp around a solid shape before he comphrends what it is. Even then, unbelieving, he has to confirm it by removing the piece of coal, putting it under the glow basket light with astonishment written over his face as he rolls the piece in his hand - the coal dust transfering to his fingers. Immediately he looks back at the unmarked sacks, stepping to the pile and shifting the bags around to see if there is some tracking information upon them. Upon finding none, he twists back toward N'thei, "Where'd you get it? And can you get more?" Calm all the while, just waiting until Jolak makes the discovery on his own, the bronzerider waits with what eventually turns out to be a chuckle. "Those aren't exactly the kinds of questions a man answers when he's been threatened by a rat." N'thei rests easily now though, shifting his weight onto his heels, his grin widening while he partakes of the lad's astonishment. "I trust this means you'll be keeping your mouth shut then?" "Get one thing straight..." he puts the piece of coal back in the opened sack, "I'm not a rat...Especially not when it comes to something so important..." he takes a step toward the bronze rider, his lips twisting as he dusts off his hands. "If anyone knows the importance of getting more coal to this Weyr, it's me. After all I'm the one that keeps tabs on our stocks morning and night, five six times a day..." He pauses as he continues to close the distance, "The Weyr can last the winter with wood, but it doesn't last as long and doesn't provide the heat like coal does... If you can get more of this stuff for the Weyr, then you can be sure that I'll not say a word, in fact," he says with a pointed finger, "I'll make sure no one is even aware of it. I'll add it to our stock in such a slow fashion that no one will blink an eye at how our stock isn't depleting as fast..." A smirk as he regards the other man, "To be honest, I hope it's from Telgar." "I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but now that winter's set in, I believe the Headwoman's given the keys to coal storage to her assistants and no one else?" N'thei cocks his head curiously, a twitch of some thought unvoiced ticking his brow higher. But he digresses; "Anyway, you keep your mouth shut, and I'll keep us all a little warmer. But it's not exactly light-as-a-feather. Since you're already in the know, and such a strapping young lad." His smile turns malicious for a second, surely trying to rib Jolak for his lack of comparative stature. "I could use someone who could help cart the stuff around." "They've got the keys, but I work directly under Milani," he says as if that should explain everything, before he shrugs, "though locks really don't stop me..." He quiets down to listening what the other has to say, deliberating over every word spoken aloud. The offer has him frowning again, arches of brows turned down, knowing that he's being played like a harper plays a pipe. "Let me guess, you'll still break my neck unless I agree?" Rubbing his forehead with the palm of a hand, Jolak considers the situation he's been placed within, having come on the wrong night to find old junk to tinker with and old gadgets to fix. Rolling his head toward the side so that his vision carries back toward the pile of sacks, he agrees with the nerve and the fortitude of a young man who knows no fear and sees only opportunity. "I suppose we could try the first option, since I'd be better to you alive than dead. Afterall, you'll need my hand to tweak the records..." Laughing ruefully, N'thei steps back toward the door with his hand extended to the knob; "You overestimate your value to me, Jolak. But whatever makes you feel important, fine with me." He's got a decided limp acquired somewhere along the way, one he tries to weather without overstating while he pulls the door open to the dark and abandoned corridor. "I'll find you when the time comes. Until then, if anyone catches wind of this, I'm going to assume you ratted me out. So let's hope the secret's safe, huh?" He flashes a gleaming smile. Jolak lets his head fall slightly, his gaze of the other man almost blocked by the pretruding structure of his brow, his mouth curled down in a disapproving frown as he's told that he's got less value than he had hoped. He makes a mental note of everything that occurs, especially the last of it, the promise of being found when the time was to come. It sounded like he was going to be made into someone's errand boy whether he liked it or not, or end up dead - in which case the first option was better than the latter. Sighing, he shakes his head with a final promise, "No one will hear anything from me." "Good lad." N'thei tosses his hand toward the pyramid of sacks; "Tie that one back up and let's put this whole nasty night behind us." Making it out like they're the fastest of new friends, he smiles most jovially at Jolak while ducking out into the dark corridor, his glowbasket left behind. His parting advice; "Get some rest, kid." Jolak brushes his fingers through his hair as he heaves out a breath, hooking one hand on his hip as he twists about to look at the pile, "Way to go Joe... look at the mess you put yourself into this time... Idiot.." he scowls at the pile, so frustrated now with what happened that his prior objective that lead him down into the stores is forgotten, and after he ties the bag he opened he finds himself marching out of the stores with the glow basket in hand. |
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