gameofmana | [log] when you let your dog off his leah

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[log] when you let your dog off his leah

Who: Chikusa and Ken
What: That moment when you use a magical artifact and it make a place. Also, hunting mushrooms.
Where: Luon Highway, and then Mekiv Caverns
When: Day 46
Other: Violence, probably

As the dust clears away, Chikusa is still wiping traces of dirt away from his glasses and face. Small blessings, during times like this, ensure that he's not actually useless with his glasses. Tugging the shirt out from behind his Kokuyo jacket, he focuses on wiping his glasses clean while squinting out to the enormous space that's suddenly been filled. Only a second, and suddenly there's a place there.

"...Ken, what did you do."

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"I didn't do anything, byon!" Ken says defensively, even before he's really thought about whether he has done anything or not; denial comes quicker to him than rational thought. He follows it up with a sneeze before he shakes dust off himself in a rather dog-like fashion. "That stupid wheel was still in my pocket from ages ago, and I pulled it out and it just started doing weird things!"

He doesn't see how he can be held responsible for that. No one could expect something like that to happen, right?

“...Next time, I’m holding whatever weird objects you get.” Still, glasses cleaned, he considers the place even further. So this must be how all the other places showed up… It’s something to keep an eye out for in the future.

“Is there anything weird about it…?” Ken is sneezing, so Chikusa isn’t sure how good his sense of smell will be, but it never hurts to ask.

Ken pops in a cartridge - shielding his mouth from the settling dust as he does so; it looks like Wolf Cartridge, which does tend to be his default - and sniffs the air, but almost immediately he sneezes again. "Can't tell, byon," he replies with some disgust. "Too much dust in the air, it's all I can smell!" Which is to say any number of things, all mixed together in an indecipherable mess, mostly overlaid with a dozen different shades of dirt and grit.

Well… He supposes that’s only to be expected. There’s only one thing for it now. Adjusting his glasses, Chikusa inclines his head towards the expanse of road. “Do you want to investigate it?”

"Why the hell wouldn't we, lazy kappa?" Ken snorts - and follows it up with yet another sneeze. "It just appeared, right? So nobody's been there yet, byon! There could be good stuff, or a way to get back to Mukuro-sama!"

And he promptly seizes Chikusa's wrist, hauling him towards the new area.

Well, really, he couldn’t have expected any other answer.

Chikusa lets himself be pulled along without complaint, moving only to make sure that his feet don’t go flying from underneath him. From what he can tell, taking into consideration Ken’s frightening amounts of energy and the speed it backs, the distance to the roads takes only as long as everything else before it. A half hour isn’t long, not really, and he wonders at it even as the ground beneath their feet turns hard and a color almost more gray than brown. Once it’s clear that they’re properly along the roads, he tugs at Ken’s hand.

Ken and Chikusa really do operate on the same wavelength, sometimes. At almost the same moment as Chikusa is tugging on his hand - maybe even before that - Ken is slowing naturally, scrutinizing their surroundings. By now the dust has settled more, although scent-wise everything is still confused by all the dirt that was kicked up. It's still just about all Ken smells.

He glances back at his partner at Chikusa's tug. "What?"

“We’re here.” Which is stating the obvious, but sometimes Ken can get so caught up in his nose that he doesn’t really pay mind to common sense things outside of scent. “We need to choose where to go in it, now....” Just blindly running is only going to get them into trouble.

Still, Ken has stopped, which is the important thing. Carefully, he starts to take survey of their surroundings. It seems like, for the main stretch that they’re on, the road keeps going for some time, but he can already see smaller roads that splinter off of theirs along the winding hills and dips. At least there seem to be two interesting areas of note: what appear to be caves down one way and then, almost opposite from what he can see, a more sturdier and rockier mountain area.

Ken looks around them questioningly, rubbing his nose like somehow that'll clear out the dirt from the air and make it easier for him to smell things. After a few moments' consideration, he turns expectantly back to Chikusa.

Obviously Chikusa will decide where they go. He's the smart one.

It’s a good thing that Mukuro really did leave them to their own devices regularly enough. That means it doesn’t feel too foreign to be looked to for leadership in this kind of situation, and Chikusa looks over everything again. After a moment, he nods towards the mountain.

“It’ll be better if we get a look from a taller perspective…” It’s worth a shot, anyway.

"Okay." Ken gives Chikusa a questioning look. "Want me to carry you, byon?" Scaling the mountain in Kong Channel won't be difficult for Ken, and Chikusa's weight while he's in Kong Channel is a negligible addition.

On one hand, Chikusa is never opposed to having an opportunity to not move much at all, which would be a guarantee with Kong Channel. However, he takes a moment to think instead. This is away from the town, for all that it looks like a road, and he can't see any wheel tracks in the dirt that look recent....

"...Let's wait until we get there, Ken. We don't know what's on the way there." And with that said, he starts to shuffle forward. If Ken has anything to say, after all, well, they have a long walk ahead of them.

"Okay." Ken accepts this readily enough; whenever Chikusa opts for more physical effort rather than less, it's safe to assume he has good reason to. He falls into step beside his partner, easily matching Chikusa's speed despite the difference in the length of their strides. They've spent most of their lives at each other's sides; keeping pace with each other is unconscious habit by now.

For a while, it’s nothing but dirt and shrubs, wind whistling along the winding paths. Chikusa doesn’t mind it. In a way, he’s reminded of the abandoned stretches of road that lead to Kokuyo Land: long kilometers of nothing save for the beat of their footsteps and the occasional bird flying over head. Comforting familiarity.

However, soon enough, something catches his attention, and he slows to a stop. There along the road, a batch of maybe half a dozen log plants with bulbous buds much larger than anything else, and more colorful than most of the dead life here. However, it’s at this point that the road isn’t really wide enough to avoid them entirely. A faint frown. “...Be careful of those, Ken.”

Ken sniffs in the direction of the plants. "How come, byon?" he asks dubiously. "They're just plants, Kakipi. I won't eat 'em."

“You don’t have to eat them for them to do something, Ken... “ What Chikusa is thinking, of course, is some sort of strange pollen or maybe an allergic reaction or any other number of things. What he’s not thinking of, and which is what happens, is for the plants to suddenly spasm and their large bulbous heads to part open like beats as they uproot themselves out of the dry earth.

Ken really should know about those kinds of things, too, working with a poison specialist like Chikusa. But the whole point of Chikusa being the poison specialist is that Ken doesn't have to worry about that boring stuff, so of course he doesn't really think about those possibilities unless Chikusa points them out.

However, all those mundane concerns fly out the window when the plants uproot themselves. Ken promptly bares his teeth, digging out a cartridge. "Monsters, Kakipi!" He sounds excited. Monsters means he gets to fight.

They certainly are monsters, ones which are moving quite steadily against the ground and looking aggressive. Plant monsters, which means something which Chikusa isn’t particularly equipped to deal with, being a poisoner and not a gardener.

So.

He’s simply going to…. Step back. Behind Ken.

“Have fun, Ken.” A pause. “And don’t swallow anything.”

Ken snaps in a cartridge with a sound that's half excited whoop, half roar; it appears he's gone with Lion Channel for now. He's promptly bounding toward the plants, and while they're certainly moving faster than any plants from their world do, they're not moving at Ken speeds. In moments he's swiping at them in passing, showing more intelligence than most people give him credit for - but then if there's any area Ken can be called competent in, it's combat. Because he rakes the plants with his claws in passing and keeps moving beyond them, skidding to a halt out of their range and watching to see what they'll do, what effect his initial attack has on them. Usually Wolf Channel is better for speedy hit-and-run tactics, but Lion Channel does have more power. And it lets Ken potentially wade in if it appears this initial caution isn't necessary.

If there’s anything to be said for this new place, it’s that it has plenty of room for Ken to go wild in. Chikusa supposes it’ll be useful in that way. He watches as Ken tears through the plants with ease, their strange beak-like buds trying to snap out at him as he passes. It looks like his claws have definitely made their mark, weakening the stalks and making the creatures wobble, but they still attempt to spread out best they can on the dirt road as if to get him in a pincer attack.

Chikusa isn’t worried. Ken can take care of himself.

Ken is immensely pleased with the effects of his first attack; it's clear these plants aren't particularly hardy. They're not fast, either.

He promptly swaps cartridges, from Lion to Wolf; Lion is stronger, but Wolf is faster and better suited to hit-and-run tactics. He starts speedily circling the plants, looking for an easy angle to attack one without leaving an opening for the other.

It doesn't take him long to find one; he re-positions a lot faster than they do. With an eager yell, he darts in and slashes the thing, twice, hoping to take it down entirely and risking a possible counterattack if he fails to.

Hit-and-run tactics seem to be the perfect solution to taking care of at least one of the plants, and soon enough it’s crumpling to the ground but not without trying to release a sudden puff of spores as it goes. Slightly, Chikusa stirs, but his call is fairly lazy. “Careful, Ken.”

There's nothing wrong with the call being a lazy one; for one thing, Ken had bounded away from the dying plant to the one still kicking, so he's out of range. But Ken's also got good instincts, to say nothing of animal-quick reflexes and a sharp nose; he'd probably have darted away in plenty of time even if he'd hung around.

In the meantime, he's currently tearing into the second plant with even more confidence than he had with the first. And once it's down, this time he knows to spring back.

Ken's not the strongest fighter in the mafia world (which they technically are part of, no matter how much the Kokuyo gang would hate the suggestion) back home by a long shot, but his being outclassed is more a sign of how many insanely strong people there are in the mafia world than it is any indication of Ken's base power. Compared to quite a lot of enemies, Ken is an absolute monster of a combatant.

Well, there’s a reason they rely on Mukuro- the kind of person who can hold up against such horrifically powerful people who have proven there’s a reason why their respective Families are so strong and lasting. Chikusa supposes it’s only common sense.

But there’s none of those Families here, or at least not yet, and Ken’s power is enough for them right now. That suits him just fine as he watches Ken tear through, yawning into one hand. When it’s clear that both plants have been defeated and there’s no need to worry about anything happening after death, he starts to shuffle his way forward. “Those seem like they could be annoying if there were a lot of them….” But then, that’s Chikusa’s verdict on most things: annoying.

"Tch, they're weak, byon," Ken says dismissively, even as he shakes himself off and removes his cartridge. "If there were more of 'em, I'd just kill 'em faster!"

That's uniquely Ken logic at work.

"That doesn't make any sense." Crouching by some of the plants, he gathers some leaves and other things into his pockets to look over later. In this place, he'll have to figure out ways to make his own poisons all over again...

"D'you think they were farting poison, byon?" Ken, no. Spores are not plant farts, although good luck explaining that to him. He's watching Chikusa with idle curiosity; he knows his partner's penchant for poisons and he's clearly already guessed why Chikusa's gathering samples.

"Too bad you couldn't collect the stuff in the air."

A pause, and Chikusa dead eyes Ken where he stands. It’s a common fact of life that Ken isn’t the brightest in the bunch, but sometimes the things he says… It makes him wonder just what’s going through his partner’s head sometimes.
Besides plant farts, apparently.

“That’s not what spores are, Ken.” It’s the only thing he can think to say, clearly exhausted at the idea of having to go indepth about how how he’s wrong. “Anyway… Next time, we know what to look for, so we can at least get a head before they’ve had a chance to attack like that…”

"What's the difference?" Ken asks, because clearly there's no degree of exhaustion to which he's not willing to drive Chikusa.

He squints at the plants. "Are they always gonna do that when they die, or could I kill 'em so they don't?" If they keep the spores inside them, Ken theorizes, maybe Chikusa can collect them somehow.

“Most people don’t kill others with their farts, for starters…” Can he leave it at that? He’d like to leave it at that. Especially because Ken has offered up something much more interesting that he has to consider. His chin tilts down to his chest as he thinks, shuffling along.

“....You’d have to be faster… That kind of thing is probably their first line of defense.”

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[log] when you let your dog off his leah

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