bottlecaplogs | [closed] some get dealt simple hands

Jack has never seen a catapult before, much less built one. But they got supplies and instructions, and that's all he actually needs to figure it out. They're both prodigies in their own way, it'll be fine. The real problem is that his big teddy bear paws don't actually give him that much dexterity... and he does have the better paws for it out of the two of them.

He's just finished very carefully sliding a dowel into place (and transferring some honey from his paws onto it, they are... probably going to have to clean this thing first) when he glances up at Eleanor.

It doesn't seem it, because he's talked even less now that they know each other (he didn't even say anything when he set up his bed next to hers), but he is intensely curious about her. He's just... not sure where to start, when he's limited by how much he can say in the first place.

"Have you done this before?"

Jack had been nervous when they first signed up for combat - although he hadn't actually been very clear about what was making him nervous. It's not that he doesn't want to fight anyone, that part is fine. It's that fighting is different here, and he's already gotten a sense for that in the week or two that he's been around. There's an expectation not to kill, and he's never actually left someone alive who hurt him before.

He hadn't mentioned it. Even if he could speak more, he didn't want to scare Catrina off. But he'd been quietly determined when they set out to fight the wave of transformed Ditto. And now they're in the thick of it, with Jack wasting zero time before picking an "Oddish" and whaling on it with Thunder Punches and Fury Swipes. He doesn't even try to dodge any attacks in return - he's just tanking everything, continuing to move forward with the clear goal of killing this thing before he moves on to the next one.

Jack has survived one wave of Ditto so far, and learned a little about fighting them. He still hasn't really paid attention to the nuances of fighting other Pokemon, could not tell you about Type match-ups or any of that. But he's got his trusty Thunder Punch, and a mission to get through this without himself or Emporio falling unconscious.

To that end, the moment he sees a "Trapinch" snapping its jaws near Emporio, he reacts with extreme violence. Grabbing it by the face, pinning it to the ground and slamming a Thunder Punch directly into its face before just punching it into unconsciousness. There are more enemies around, but his instincts still strongly insist on making sure it can't get back up and cause more harm... so Emporio might want to stop him before he curb-stomps this thing to death. Or worse, gets hit by another one while he's distracted.

"Nope."

Her reponse comes quite quickly - near instantly, in fact. She has no experience in this whatsoever and is running purely on vibes. Which is fine. This is fine.

Eleanor is limited in what she can do by her flippers. She's relatively dexterous with them, in fairness, but she still needs Jack's actual fingers to do most of the heavy lifting if they have any hope of getting this done in good time. She's awkwardly slapping a peg into place to ensure it's in the hole as tightly as it can. Yep, seems about as secure as it'll get. No problem.

She glances over at him and tilts her head to the side. "I can assume you haven't, either?"

To be fair with Jack...Catrina is no stranger to violence whatsoever. From the infamous 'apology' pies to her very own former cremate, Biggs, who pretty much ate everything and everyone, Jack is considered pretty nice normal to average at best with the beat down of the weird Pokemon in Catrina's mind. Good kid, can throw a good punch.

So when the Oddish or at least what they think are Oddish, Catrina wastes no time in letting loose the Smog upon the weird blueberry onion creatures. "Just remember, if yah kill it, yah eat it!"

...Can Oddish or for that matter, can Ditto soup well?

"WOAH-!"

Well, Emporio would normally do his best to stop this from going sour, but something very strange is happening between the 'Trapinch' and Jack. Normally he'd be quick to say that 'thunder punch' won't do anything. Trapinch is, after all, ground type. But these are Ditto, so that shouldn't be a factor...right?

Right???

Except indeed, the Ditto giggles as the rest of the crowd pause to laugh for a little bit.

And Emporio clues in pretty quick from there. "J-Jack!!! Jack, I think they're immune to paralysis!!!"

~~They're so....Limber.~~

Jack shakes his head. It is similar to the mechanics of a grenade launcher if he squints... and he can imagine the schematics for that, even if he hasn't actually put one together. He's certainly fiddled around with one to upgrade it, although that was with the help of a machine.

"Easy, though."

Easy enough, since they have instructions and it's fairly good practice for Jack to learn hand-paw coordination all over again. He finds himself just... casting around for a conversation topic, figuring it will go faster with some exposition.

"How long have you..?" He waves, generally, toward the city buildings.

A Pokemon generally lacking certain fine motor skills makes a lot of the designs for machines (and anything adjacent to them) relatively simplistic, she's noticed. Something you could probably hand to a young child and watch them put together with minimal assistance. Sure, they're complicated and there are plenty of ways they could go wrong, but the actual methods in this instance especially feel that way. Not that she's complaining, it means the Miniors can go home faster.

She glances up, having half turned to go and grab some more rods. "Six months, as of this month. I think." She tilts her head to the side and frowns. The Little Sisters back home have to be okay by now, right..? A ship could have found them. And her mother.

Don't think about that.

"That's what you mean, right?"

The words force Jack to pause, and glance over at her. Does he... actually have to eat these things? He's not sure what they are, but that also means he doesn't know the first thing about preparing them.

He's not opposed to it either, but... maybe cooked. Maybe in a stew.

The thought distracts him long enough to be looking away when the Oddish under him uses Petal Dance - he has no idea what the hell these petals are that are floating around him, but he's reminded with a shock of fighting Rosebud. He knows they cannot be good.

Jack tries to leave the dust-devil of petals, but a few of them slice into him painfully. He ends up letting out a pitiful bark, in an attempt to get Catrina's attention.

Jack pauses, letting out a frustrated noise at the Ditto giggling at him. It's- well, he honestly prefers it over the babbling of splicers, but it's still deeply bothering him to be laughed at while he's trying to fight.

But okay, he can't paralyze them. The one-two punch is not an option, but Thunder Punch still does damage them, and he has claws and teeth for Pete's sake.

Jack grips his claws into the Ditto and just starts repeatedly picking it up and slamming it into the ground. Which also doesn't stun it, but its short little Trapinch legs are struggling to get out of his grip. And just to make absolutely sure it's ~~hopefully just~~ unconscious, he blasts it a few more times with Thunder Punch.

He's going to run out of energy for those... very soon.

He nods. Six months, that's... okay, so this probably isn't a temporary situation. Rapture was temporary, even if it was also sort of his entire life. Ten hours of torture, and then it was done, and he only sort of remembers being in Rapture before the surface. But this is... possibly the rest of his life, safe but without any sense of what happened to his daughters. Hopefully they're okay, they were with Tenenbaum. But there's no way to be completely sure.

He's not even completely sure they're safe with Tenenbaum, but he has to trust something. Otherwise he'll just tie himself in knots.

Jack has more questions, but he's struggling with the programming in his head again. His brow furrows a bit while he tries to come up with something, and then come up with the least amount of words to use. And all the while he keeps just... messing with the catapult.

"Hard to get used to... everything. Here."

But they've got time. Nothing but time.

"Yeah."

She's thought this to herself before, but she really hadn't expected him to be so... sad. Of all the things he could be, anyway. She'd heard conflicting stories back home and hadn't been entirely lucid for his rampage through the city. She remembers it, sure, but not well. Her understanding of him as a character was basically everyone arguing over what he did afterwards. The only facts she has are that, regardless of what he did with them, he hadn't left enough Little Sisters in the city to keep the ADAM flowing. But this didn't seem like a man who'd have killed them.

Eleanor drags another bundle of dowel rods over and begins to work at the hemp tying them together with her teeth, pulling away when they unceremoniously collapse. "Yeah."

She's not sure if she experienced the same thing as him. She definitely didn't. Her adjustment to the foreign body wasn't that hard - she almost prefers this one. Being a Brionne. But for Jack...?

"What's on your mind?" She tilts her head to the side, trying to push a little more. Test the waters a bit.

Did those...did those blueberry radish monsters just shoot murder petals at the teddy bear child? OH HELL NO! Catrina is seeing red and damn it all, this candle is about to ruin these Dittos' day.

"STAND BEHIND ME JACK, I'LL PROTECT YOU!" Catrina might not be the best of medics ~~and isn't...you do not want first aid from Catrina~~, but Catrina is a good little brawler of sorts for the most part. Scrunching up her face like she bit into a lemon Catrina goes to use Psychic...

A bunch of rocks start levitating up from the ground..

Oh Dittos, there's an incoming psychic rock storm coming provided by a very angry candle...

The swarm of giggles doesn't last too long- fortunately, or unfortunately. These Ditto are here to test their mettle after all, and testing their mettle means actually fighting. Emporio soon finds himself back to back with the bear regardless of what Jack might want, beating at a nearby 'trapinch' with his bonemerang bat.

It's after he batters one back enough to get breathing room again that he turns around and...Uh.

"D...Do you still have energy for that kind of move!?"

It's a good question. A lot of things are on his mind. It often feels like he's overwhelmed with thought until the second he tries to speak up, and then it all vanishes. And especially when someone else is nearby, he thinks some part of him is still waiting for instructions.

"Shell shock, mostly."

He's pretty sure that's what this is. He can't really remember how much he talked in his true memories, before Rapture, but doesn't feel normal for him. And certainly not this... constant feeling like he's going to wake up one day and be back in Rapture.

The smell in the Spire really doesn't help.

"...It's slow here."

And he's not actually sure if that's a good thing.

Jack ends up sort of frozen in place at first, just... staring at her. Because across his entire span of memories - false or real - he can't actually remember someone rushing in to protect him of their own volition. His false memories painted him as the sort of cocksure go-getter that never needed rescuing, and his real memories... well, he's never been valuable enough to warrant it.

He blinks back to reality the next time those petals slice into him, and he scrambles to get out of the way while the Dittos turn their attention to Catrina. He doesn't want to move too far away - just far enough to duck behind cover and lick some of the honey off his paws. It should give him some health, at least, even if he's lost his human(?) body's terrifyingly efficient metabolism.

And he's keeping an eye on Catrina, just in case she needs help. Because he is absolutely willing to jump back in regardless of how dangerous it is for him.

"I think that's how it's supposed to be."

'For normal people', she wants to add. But nobody here is normal, not really. ~~Let's ignore the Mayaka shaped elephant in the room.~~ A slow, relatively uneventful life. Perhaps not quite what Eleanor longed for, but close enough. She would've been in New York by now if she'd had her way, helping her sisters finally get home. Or having long done that.

She holds out a fistful of rods to him. "Is that such a bad thing?"

The good news is that by the time Emporio turns around, Jack has successfully knocked the Ditto unconscious. The bad news is that the next time he tries to charge up a Thunder Punch... nothing happens. It actually hurts if he strains too hard, which feels a whole lot like being out of EVE. Fuck.

So, the answer is no. And he hasn't taken the time to learn about berries yet, so he is out of energy for that move, but that's- fine. He can deal with that. He's dealt with worse... ignoring the fact that he's died several times by now and always had a handy Vita-Chamber to revive into. It's fine, Jack also hasn't thought that far ahead.

So for now, he just switches over to abusing Fury Swipes over and over again. And occasionally just straight up biting the Ditto that get too close.

You can hear that ominous boss music now as the rocks rain upon the Oddish disguised Ditto and it was relentless. Catrina would've been cackling maniacally at the scene, but she wasn't. No, Catrina was far too pissed off to even register just how successful this was.

Some of the 'Oddish' start running off from the war machine known as Catrina and her Psychic induced rock storm...Catrina what the hell did you do!?

"You better fucking run and be sure to tell yah little buddies about it!" Catrina goes to risk a glance and check on how Jack was holding up.

"Yah doing okay there, Jack?" Catrina...there's still some OdDittos there..

[closed] some get dealt simple hands

Eleanor - Not A Minior Matter

Catrina - Ditto To That

Emporio - Ditto To That

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Well...Catrina got a nat 20 on her dice roll with the Ditto...