Through the Looking Glass
22 May 2018Haley
So it’s a good thing I checked my kit before we did anything. Someone thought I’d be ok with a piddly little combat knife; I’d asked for a machete for a damn good reason. Have you ever tried to amputate a leg with a combat knife?? The quartermaster here was being a real tight-arse about replacing it too, until I offered to demonstrate just how difficult it is by using him as a model. He got helpful real quick at that point. I now have a damn good machete. Still no idea what I’m going to do with the gun though.
I’m not usually this grumpy about everything.
I was a little surprised to find Diane working in this crazy place. Dunno why. Not sure anything so small as that should be surprising after the day I’ve had so far. And then of course the reactions came… I think the only time we’ve had a more over the top reaction to our supposed similarity was that time we went to Rice Paddy’s together (Japanese food made by Irish people? Who would have expected that to be a good idea? 😛) and the staff lost their minds! This time, everything from amused stares to shocked disbelief. Hayden even asked if we’d had a DNA test… We’re not that similar. Diane’s taller than I am. We have different colour eyes. I could go on (but I won’t, because this is my diary and nobody else is going to read it!)
We moved on pretty quickly, seems that Diane isn’t coming with us. She’s one of the comms team here, so she’ll stay in the base and basically keep in touch. It’s just us noobs going on this magical journey, apparently. But holy shit, there’s a massive hovercraft. With equally massive guns. And Solveig is apparently going to pilot it by herself. At least she’s offered to let me “help” - Hilde gets to be a jeep instead and isn’t allowed anywhere near the controls 😛 And then… magic happens and a portal appears and we do a zoom and then we’re somewhere else.
Somewhere else, in this case, appears to be a recently abandoned base camp. Hilde instantly dashes off to have a look around, because apparently daughter of gods and blah blah blah, and instantly gets attacked by a giant lizard. This is so many kinds of odd. Hilde got grabbed, another lizard appeared, someone dealt with it somehow, don’t even remember, it all happened too fast. About all I can remember is that I managed to shoot the damn thing with my pistol from a ridiculous distance which gave Hilde enough of an opening to throw it off a cliff. I’ve never even touched a gun before today!
We moved on from there, following the trail left by the previous party. We came to a remarkably familiar looking village, and somehow our party decided to stop and investigate before charging in headlong again. Something about this place was trying to remind me of something but I had no idea what it was. We figured we’d roll down to the village, leave the impressively scary hovercraft on the outskirts, and attempt some diplomacy. This is totally what happened. Because of course nothing’s going to go right for a bunch of noobs exploring a whole new wooooooooorld (argh Disney, I can’t use that phrase without the music from Aladdin) and I have no idea who thought it was a good idea. First hiccup was having to get Hayden to pretend to be a girl - I have no idea why this was the thing my brain was trying to remind me of…? And then. instead of diplomacy going as planned, their chief shaman-type individual told us a bunch of lies and then everything went to shit when we questioned her a little bit more closely…
The shaman attempted to blind us with her magic staff, which worked pretty damn well. Solveig didn’t care, and just fired the main guns on the hovercraft anyway. This was predictably disastrous, damn near hit all of us but surprisingly missed literally everything except the village which pretty much fell to pieces. Hilde then crash-tackled a watchtower which collapsed on top of the shaman and her assembled warriors… and that was pretty much the end of that. Once the dust settled, we went and found the remains of the team we were sent to find.
Locked up in the only fully intact building remaining in the village, we found Lauren, the Hux, and another random guy who turned out to be the previous chief of the village. Hux was unconscious, so Lauren did some explaining about what the hell had happened.
Also, apparently Lauren is also my clone, just like Diane is. This is a surprise. I guess I must have one of those faces.