ush little Viking, don't you cry, or the Berserker will stab you in the eye...

[ruffntumblenut]

Who: Ruffnut and you!
What: Ruffnut has come to the realization that this place blows. 
Where: A cold, dark, wet alley in the Capitol
When: late afternoon after the mini-arena
Warnings: Only the usual about the hunger games so far.

Vikings were highly emotional people.

This contrasted nicely with them insisting that they were not in fact emotional.

While it was perfectly acceptable on Berk to be happy, or angry, and all manners of loud it was typically frowned upon to mope, And while lamenting a loss or two was acceptable it still wasn't easy to do, 

Ruffnut and her brother in particular did not like to mope in public and as such had both simultaneously but independant of one another discovered the magic of the dark soggy alone place.

In the dark soggy alone place no one could see if you let the occasional tear out, and sobs may be stifled in peace because you were alone. Ruffnut had never really considered her life difficult before because despite how many hardships Berk had faced? They were vikings! Living hard was part of their lifestyle.

So being completely unable to cope with the swirling emotions of failure and hopelessness in her, she had set out to find a new dark, soggy alone place. This quest had taken her away from the Training Center to the darker corners of the city till an appropriately dark and ominous alley opened up to her.

With a Chinese restaurant on one side and a bathhouse on the other this alley was everything a soggy, dark alone place could be. The only difference between this and her cave back home was no roof. She could still see the sky turning an orange as the sun set somewhere out of sight.

She was so depressed she had even let her stylists dress her up nice. Clean hair in neat braids, the latest style of jeans and a fashionable dark green leather jacket that counter balanced some of the chill of the wind whistling through the dark soggy alone place.

Wallowing in her misery Ruffnut may lose track of time and miss curfew at this rate. But she finds it difficult to care. 

Gazing idly down into a puddle as she sits on the ground with her back to the wall for a moment she sees her brother in the reflection. Scowling she swats at the water and he vanishes into the ripples.

Comments

[notdavinci]

"I think the bullying is part of it, but there has to be more than that somehow." Siroc didn't know why he thought this way exactly, only that he DID and that he knew something else was up. "It's more...what would people call them, when you just feel like something is wrong? Bad vibrations? Vibes? I could be wrong but it just...looks awfully familiar.

And they DO do that, don't they? I wonder why they're so afraid of people who can handle themselves? There's got to be something else going on, you know? I just wish I could find out what."

[ruffntumblenut]

"Guts." Ruffnut answered knowingly and to make her point she jabbed a finger at his stomach. "You've got a gut feeling. Are your guts usually right?"

A viking tended to put alot of stock in their gut instincts.

"Well of course their afraid of people who can handle themselves. If a whole bunch of warriors get mad enough they'll start wrecking the place." the blond girl reasoned.

[notdavinci]

"They've started to be." Siroc felt good about things like instincts usually. "Sure, sometimes, I end up being yelled at by my Captain but...it's usually for a good reason and usually things work out."

Not without a lot of adventure, sometimes, sure, but even SO, it was there.

"It does make you wonder how they'd do if we managed to get everybody here a little more able to stand up to them, doesn't it?" Siroc asked. "They have some good weapons, like you mentioned earlier, and a lot of ....legal power, I guess, but putting those to the test...I don't think we're as bad as we're supposed to seem. It would probably be dumb to try something like that for good, but sometimes I really want to."

Frustration prompted saying that, but it was also totally true at the same time. Hopefully, it wouldn't cause too much trouble.

[ruffntumblenut]

The light had come back into Ruffnut's eyes and she nodded.

"Better to die in a blaze of glory then live as someone's slave." The words were powerful sounding and she was just parroting back one of Gobber's old stories about why Vikings were wild and free.

"But it's different getting people you care about hurt for something you believe in I guess..." She added taking the steam out of her own sails. "Hiccup and Astrid can look after themselves but if I get killed having fun they'll get all sad and stop doing what they do best. They're too emotional."

As if she was one to talk.

[notdavinci]

"Yes!" Siroc agreed, excitement growing in his own eyes at those words. "Slavery does nothing good for anyone, and it is certainly no life for anyone like you." Or anyone in particular, but, reminded of his friends as he was by Ruffnut, he could see her, especially, doing badly there.

"Not that it is a life for anyone," Siroc was quick to add there, "But it seems especially wrong to take someone so fierce and bold." Because he saw that, even right now, in the rain and the muck, and the chaos. "Talking to you makes me feel like I still have a chance here. I wasn't sure that I still did, before."

Though, yes, that was true.

"Getting people hurt is bad. It's beyond bad." Siroc shook his head there, thinking about a few times he'd needed to deal with that. "I've done it, accidentally, more than once. My friends are very good about that sort of thing, I suppose. We are soldiers after all, but still. I hate to do that to them. And I know Ramon especially worries about things like that. I'm glad he isn't here to see me dying like that. Ah emotions. Those are tricky."

A part of him suspected that the emotions were so hard because she was a young woman. ...Changes... and all of that. That, combined with this place? He gave her credit, he really did.

[ruffntumblenut]

Despite herself, Ruffnut felt her cheeks warm up at all the praise and acknowledgment of her finest qualities. She preened a bit with pride and twirled a braid around her long rough finger before letting it unwind on it's own.

Of course if she knew he was thinking of such a forbidden topic as her body betraying her mind due to hormones and puberty she'd probably have a much sharper reaction. For now she just rolled her narrow shoulders expressing her confliction on the topic.

"Pain is good for you. It makes you stronger...or at least it's supposed to. It doesn't always work with Hiccup." She could think of a few times when pain had only served to make him lose his focus or even stop entirely. But like any good viking most of the time Hiccup took his pain and turned it into strength. He'd grown alot like that.

"He lost his dad I guess." She reasoned. "And it made him more determined to do things right. He's the chief now and he says I have to survive and go home so I can warn him and we can save his dad."

It was a mission she'd almost forgotten about till now. But it was true...in a way Berk's entire future might hang on the hope that Ruffnut could get back to her own time.

[notdavinci]

For now, Siroc wasn't going to mention anything like that, no. He enjoyed things like being able to breathe and having extremities and all. Losing them because he'd said something about hormones would be pretty bad, actually.

For now, instead, he listened as she spoke. He was not sure about pain working in that way, exactly, since he'd been pretty much trained, in his limited field first aid type skills, that pain meant that things were wrong, but he could see how, to a warrior, it might be a motivator instead. Stay away from what caused you pain, or work through it, right?

"Does it not? I'm not all that surprised. Sometimes pain can do weird things. I guess it's how you use it, isn't it? A chief as young as that must have had to grow up pretty fast. I do hope that you can get home again in time for that. I have to get there too, but I can't think of any deadlines as clear as that one. So you definitely have to be careful here."

It was almost scary, that thought.

[ruffntumblenut]

It was something she'd honestly forgotten, probably because Hiccup had actually lost faith that they were going to return home.

"Yeah well, I don't even know how they brought me here. This technology stuff is too complicated. I wanted to just call it magic but Hiccup said it's not the same thing."

She might just go back to calling it magic.

Standing up she dusted off her pants feeling a little better having someone to talk to. It was something she wasn't used to because even her most trusted brother never needed her to talk...he usually just got it. That didn't mean he was actually going to help her if he knew what was wrong but at least he understood.

[notdavinci]

"It's a really good question, isn't it?" Siroc frowned. "I like science and medicine and...everything, but I have no idea myself. And they don't want anybody to find out, which makes it harder. Maybe magic IS the way to explain it. I've seen some things that don't have any other explanations." It didn't mean he liked it, but he'd seen it.

"It feels kind of wrong to just say 'magic' doesn't it?" He shook his head. "I think part of me will wonder til I find out but...before then, it's good to know I'm not alone. Talking to people helps a lot. Thank you for that." Understanding was something that Siroc valued too, when he could find it. He and Ruffnut may not have each other's worlds completely figured out, but this was at least a step, right?

[ruffntumblenut]

"Is it?" Ruffnut wasn't used to people telling her she had good questions.

"I mean...yeah. Yeah of course it was." She agreed in a weak attempt to save face.

She frowned when he said it felt wrong to call it magic because...well it felt easier to her so how was that wrong? But she didn't argue because next he thanked her?

She was clearly puzzled and even a little embarrassed by the idea.

"I...was just here I guess. You found me remember?" It's not like she'd meant to help him out but if he was gonna credit her for it she wasn't going to argue that hard.

[notdavinci]

"I think it worth consideration." Siroc allowed, smiling at that attempt. "Good questions are the ones that make you think, and possibly debate the answers too, aren't they? Yours definitely did that.

And then, at the frown, he figured that he'd better explain a bit more.

"Maybe 'wrong' is the wrong word." He said, smiling at the repetition as he'd caught what he had done there. Someone needed to make a book of words someday, that suggested alternate words to the ones that didn't quite fit a situation or idea. He imagined something like that could sell pretty well anyway.

"What I mean is...wrong more in the sense that it feels off a little, or odd. But then, magic at home always seems to follow the weird things and vanish during others. I haven't really had a chance to get to know it. That's why it feels a little different for me. It's not something I've gotten used to knowing. But if it exists, which they seem to have proved here, I'll need to just get used to it, huh?"

He hoped that helped a little in the way of explanations.

"I did, yes. And I'm glad that I did too. Chance encounters can be pretty useful sometimes, I think. Today, especially."

So not so much an argument as a statement, then. And he could accept that, really.

[ruffntumblenut]

She nodded like she understood, though she only barely grasped his meaning. Still nodding was what Hiccup usually wanted when he would babble like that.

"What's so special about today?" She wondered out loud running her long rough fingers through her hair. Her entire body felt like it was sharply contrasting itself. Rough fingers with manicured nails, shiny silky hair that was sweaty and dirty from just a days worth of being Ruffnut. This alley didn't help matters. It was somehow one of the dirtier places in the Capitol despite how fastidious the groundskeeping usually was downtown.

[notdavinci]

Nodding was what Siroc's captain usually did, and he tended to accept that it meant people were listening at least. It was one of those things he'd never really caught onto, the idea that he tended to lose people in conversations sometimes when he did that. So, he was pretty satisfied with that in general.

"Today, this place was especially getting to me. Talking to you...it reminded me they cant take everything." It was incredibly dirty, but Siroc had seen worse so it wasn't SO bad. His stylists would probably have fits if they saw him coming in like this, covered in dirt, most of his pants soaked through..."It's been worth it, finding out other people understand."

[ruffntumblenut]

"Oh..." She was still puzzled, after all she hadn't intended on making anyone else feel better. She'd been so focused on how lousy she felt that the thought had never even crossed her mind. But...apparently she had? Her lip curled into half a smirk.

"Yeah...yeah I guess they can't." She nodded resolutely.

"I'm a Hairy Hooligan from the Isle of Berk. And they can rip out all my back and leg hairs...but that won't change." She declared feeling a flickering fire in her chest once more.