Trapped in the Jurassic
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Trapped in the Jurassic
by Psyckosama Fri May 02, 2014 3:41 am
Chuck Harrison
Time: March 20, 2014, 2:52 PM
Location: Oceanic Airlines Flight 653, 28,000 feet above the Mid-Pacific
Chuck Harrison hated to fly. He really hated to fly.
Somehow, for some damned reason he couldn’t imagine he’d been invited to speak at some kind of Survival Experts Convention in Hawaii. What they’d want with a 72 year old mountain man in Hawaii he’d never know, but his grandson will had somehow managed to convince him to embark on this little misadventure.
And now, one layover and a two hour delay later he was stuck sandwiched next to his grandson and a fat man with body odor that could strip paint, with some asshole who seemed to delight in kicking the seat behind him.
Frankly, he could deal with Porky here. It was inevitable that on any flight you'd get stuck next to either some idiot who couldn’t shut up about things you couldn’t be less interested in, downwind of some freak with odious personal hygiene, or within ear-splitting distance of a wailing infant who simply refused to shut up. Commercial Aircraft flying was a pain in the ass when he moved to Alaska forty-five years ago, and while he found it hard to believe, it had only gotten worse in the meantime.
No, the problem was the jackass behind him, and if he kept it up he’d find old Chuck’s boot rammed so far up his ass that he’d be choking on it.
“Something the matter?”
He sighed and looked at the face of the only kin he had that would admit to being related to him, his grandson Ben. “Yeah, I’m getting tempted to do something untoward to the fool behind me. He keeps kicking the chair and I’m getting mighty tempted to kick back.”
“Relax, Pops,” Jim laughed, “It’s not worth it. Flight’ll be over before you know it.”
“It better,” he grumbled to himself. There were few things that could make this any worse.
“Attention, this is your captain speaking...”
Chuck sighed as the inner comm began to sound. Well hot damn, speak of the devil.
“We seem to be entering an area of increased turbulence. Please remain seated with your seat belts fastened and your tray table in a fixed and upright position.”
Suddenly the plane started to shake. Not a violent jerk, but more of a steady rumble. It was an overwhelmingly nauseating sensation unlike any he’d ever felt before. It both made him weak in the stomach and swim in the head. In only seconds, though it felt like an eternity, he’d gone from annoyed to an overwhelming state of vertigo that threatened to tear him from consciousness. And as he slowly blacked out, he thought to himself, that out of all the countless places in all of god’s creation, any of them would have to be better than this seat in this plane at this moment.
Chuck Harrison
Time: Unknown
Location: Unknown
Chuck slowly awoke with a low groan. He hadn’t felt this uncomfortable since the morning after his stag party. That hangover had been so bad, that he’d sworn off hard liquor for life. It was too much trouble.
His head pounded, his eyes were blinded by the light, and his mouth was dry. And he was lying down. And he could feel warm dirt on his ass.
Wait, was he naked?
Well, he sure as hell wasn’t on that goddamned damned plane, that was for sure. Slowly and with a high pitched groan he attempted to stand up, but his legs refused to obey him and instead he only managed to turn himself onto his side over and upset his stomach. It was severe and unpleasant the attempt at movement antagonizing his lingering vertigo and sending him into dry heaves.
For what felt like an eternity he lay there coughing and choking, but like all things it passed and in relief he slowly moved back onto his back and opened his eyes,
Above him he saw bright sun, blue sky, green leaves, and white clouds.
“Where the hell is...” his eyes went wide as the words caught in his throat. What had happened to his voice? It was high, sweet, and delicate. The kind of sultry voice that would never come from his rough vocal tract. Not in a thousand years.
With a jerk he sat up and looked down at himself his eyes left wide and horrified eyes at what he saw. He looked down upon a perspective that in all of his days he’d never expected to see.
What he saw was not a thought form, stout and harry, shaped by thirty years of hard living in the brush of Alaska, but something far softer and much more delicate. Something right out of a magazine. He saw smooth skin and full breasts, a flat stomach, and long, shapely legs ending in dainty feet and crowned with an absence that proclaimed to all a complete and utter lack of masculinity.
Left mute with shock, he reacted by instinct. In a desperate attempt to prove that this wasn’t real, one hand went to a breast, and another to the groin and he squeezed. His eyes went wide and he gasped as he was assault by new and alien sensations that confirmed to him that this was no sick dream or crazy hallucination. It was reality.
And to his dying day he’d always deny that he screamed like a woman.
And he sure as hell wouldn’t admit to fainting like one either!
Michael Conrad
Time: Day time?
Location: The Woods?
Michael Conrad lay in place thinking to himself wondering what the hell was going on. Last thing he knew he’d been sitting in a plane, suffering the worse case of nausea he’d had to deal with in a very long time. Now he was lying back in the muck looking at a clear sky and what seemed to be a strange set of conifer branches that lazily hug overhead.
He realized consciously that he should be freaking out about now. He was lying sprawled naked in the dirt, location unknown. He had no supplies, no equipment, and no idea where the hell he was. He’d obviously gone through some changes as he hadn’t looked this good in, well, ever.
Gone was the bloated, rotund form that was the source of much of his shame, the hateful product of the perfect storm of childhood depression compounded by an accident that had made the physical exertion needed to lose it almost impossible due to pain.
Instead he’d shed what felt like a hundred pounds of lard and had it replaced it with strong, lean muscle. For the first time in years he wasn’t dealing with a nagging chronic pain that made even the most fundamental functions of daily life a chore. He’d been enhanced in every way going from zero to hero if one wanted to quote the company of the mouse.
The sheer freakishness of the situation couldn’t help but make him laugh.
So he did. Things were completely out of his control, he had no idea what was going on. He didn’t know what to do, what to think, or what would come next, so he decided to lie in place and enjoyed the moment.
He had warm sun, clear sky, a cool breeze, and for the first time in living memory he was comfortable in his own skin. What comes will come, he accepted that. He’d after to deal with his, but first he’d spend just a little while soaking in this fresh sensation of freedom.
And then he heard the scream.
Without a moment’s thought he was moving a speed that he didn’t know he possessed, mainly because he’d never possessed it before. In what felt like a fraction of a second, he was bounding towards the source. It had only taken a moment to get there, as they were very close. Close enough, he realized that had they been up and about they’d have run into each other in minutes.
He found himself looking at a woman lying on the ground. A woman whom he had to admit was quite possibly one of the, if not the most beautiful example of the female persuasion he’d ever seen. She was lean and fit, lean in all of the right placed, with dark hair, lightly tanned skin, and gentle features and slightly almond shaped eyes that hinted to some possible slight asiatic descent. She was also naked as the day she was born and lying unmoving on the ground.
Lying next to her, seemingly discarded, was some kind of simple bag woven from dried grass. But that wasn’t what was important. What was important was the girl. And in second he was to her side.
If Mike had to describe himself he was a man of many hobbies. Knowledgeable but with few practical skills. Thankfully though, one of those skills was first aid. Before the accident he’d spent time working his way through college as an EMT. While it had been a decade since he’d been physically capable of such labor, he knew what to do.
Gently he knelt down next to her and placed his finger against her neck. He didn’t have a watch, or anything for that matter, so he couldn’t do a proper reading but he could estimate. It was slow but strong, a health pulse for a very healthy young woman.
In the same moment he placed the back of his other hand above her mouth, letting the sensitive skin on the back of his hand feel for her breath. It was low, but warm and steady.
He lowered her hand and scowled. Well, she was healthy. Time to check for responsiveness.
His first instinct was to try the sternal rub. It was a technique long used by EMS personnel to check for responsiveness, but he decided to go with something more passive first. She was out of it, but he didn’t know how badly. He doubted she’d react positively to someone grinding his knuckles into her breastplate when a simple shake would do.
So he placed his hands on her shoulders and...
Suddenly began to see stars as someone bowled into him, knocking him away from the woman.
He recoiled for a moment in shock before he felt a kick slam into his stomach.
“The fuck?!” he exclaimed, as he rolled into a ball, just in time to take another blow to the back.
“I heard her screaming and ain’t gonna let you do anything to this lady, you degenerate!”
The voice was angry and male.
“This is all a misunderstanding!” he exclaimed frantically trying to keep from being beaten by this manic.
The man scoffed. “Like I’ll believe...”
“Both of you, cut it out.”
He turned his head towards the new voice as a new figure walked into the small clearing. He was strong, tall and fit, shaggy brown hair and with good features for a man. And unlike the others he was not totally nude. Over his shoulder was a grass satchel like the one he’d found next to the girl.
“Oh thank god,” Mike muttered. A voice of reason. Just what they needed.
“What do you mean settle down?” the jerk who’d assaulted him proclaimed. “He was doing something untoward!”
“I was checking her damned vitals!” Mike snapped sitting up. “The hell is wrong with you?”
The man gritted his teeth looked down, and sighed. “Seriously?”
Mike’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
“Oh,” he shrugged, “Sorry.”
Like that made things any better.
Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the sound of moving brush. All eyes turned to the side, as a large fern frond was pushed out of the way to make room for a new arrival.
She was a nervous looking girl, blonde and buxom and just as stunningly beautiful as the first emerged from the bushes. She also had a grass bag which she was holding tightly to her chest in an attempt to preserve at least a fraction of her modesty.
“Um, hello?” she asked nervously.
Whatever they were going to say in greeting was banished to the wind as the prostrate figure lying in the dust began to groan and slip into wakefulness Slowly her eyes opened and then she sat up with a frantic jerk, her head darting back and forth to the figures surrounding her.
“Who the hell are you people?” she demanded.
Julia Ann Roberts
Time: Mid Day
Location: Forest Clearing
Julie was terrified.
No, she was beyond terrified.
While she was theoretically a country girl she wasn’t exactly what you’d call woodsy. In fact she was something of a homebody to be honest. She liked books more than people, which made it ironic that she’d chosen to major in people. Or at least dead people. Archaeology wasn’t exactly a people field. Sure, they talked to people, but besides the inevitable begging for money, their jobs were pretty much one-tenth people and nine tenths sorting gravel. And that was just the way she liked it.
She actually found being around large groups of people extremely uncomfortable and it has only been at the urging of her professor that she’d agreed to accept the invitation to that damned anthropological conference. She’d get to meet some of the best, he said. What could go wrong he said.
Well, you could wake up in the middle of a jungle naked with only a grass sack in a body not your own for one! If she had to describe herself before, she’d have called herself petite and cute in a mousy, bookish way if she wanted to pat her own back. Short, flat chested, and plain if she wanted to be brutally honest. What she wasn’t was a tall, leggy blonde with a body that it fell out of an issue of Sports Illustrated, and she didn’t just mean the Swimsuit Edition.
Except she apparently was. Which made things very uncomfortable because she looked like Kung Fu Action Barbie. And she was naked. And she was surrounded by strange men. Strange naked men. Strange naked men who looked like they fell out of a movie about Spartans and Gladiators except without the cod pieces, with their heroic features, rock hard muscles, and everything else, all on open display!
And here she’d thought that the most awkward thing she’d have to deal with today was apologizing to the poor person who’d been sitting in front of her about kicking their chair due to that nervous tic she got in her leg when she was stuck in a seat for too long!
People and nature, neither were really her field of experience and now she had to deal with both. On top of the whole Naked Spartans Kung Fu Action Barbie stuff.
Oh Joy. And now she was hovering over a naked women with three naked men, one of whom had just been beating on the other because he thought he was doing something untoward.
“Who the hell are you people?”
Amen sister.
The other woman, who Julie reluctantly had to admit looked more like her than she did. God, that was strange to think, but it was true. At least the colors were closer. The old Julie liked her dark hair and made fun of blondes. Was she going to get, like, stupid or something?
Ack! Bad brain! Treasonous brain! Don’t go blonde on me, damn it!
“Are you alright, ma’am?” the guy who’d put that little scuffle to rest said calmly, “Because we heard you scream.”
She took him in for a moment, and hot damn was he pretty!
“I didn’t scream!” the woman said, her speech artificially held low as if trying to resist the pitch of her own voice.
“Um, you kind of did,” one of the other men, the one who’d been getting beat on, commented. “And you looked like you fainted.”
She realed around and punch him in the side. “I didn’t faint either!”
“Damn it!” he exclaimed, “Will people stop hitting me, please!”
She punched him again. “Now until you explain who the hell are you, what the hell we’re doing here, and what the hell happened to my goddamned body!”
“I don’t know!”
“Then what good are any of you!” she cried out frantically, “Because if this is someone's idea of some kind of sick joke, then I swear to god, I’ll kill the bastard!”
“Calm down, lady,” the man who’d started the previous fight snapped off. “I sure as hell don’t know what’s going on.”
It was telling that the only response from anyone was an awkward pause.
She looked thoughtfully at the three men. While all of them were, for lack of a more charged discription, extremely well formed specimens of the male form, Each seemed to hover each fill a niche. If she was thinking fantasy novel, her first instincts would be to apply the Elf, the Knight, and the Barbarian.
The first guy, the one who’d arrived with her had what she’d call elven looks. While he wasn’t quite as large as the other two, he had a fit, fast, lean athletic looking frame, like a male gymnast or swimmer. Like everyone else here, his skin hovered somewhere in the range between light tan and Mocha brown. His hair though was long, and sickly, and so blonde it was almost white. His almond shaped eyes were the bluest she’d ever seen and his jawline was very angular. Simply put, he was quite possibly most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
The one who’d getting beat on was taller, and stronger, though not freakishly so. His features were what a book would call noble. He had a strong jaw, a proud nose, and dark piercing eyes with dark brown hair that formed into luxurious curls. He looked like how she’d imagine someone like Captain America, Superman, or King Arthur. Manly without being obscenely masculine, powerful without being overbuilt. Strong without being harsh. The kind of looks you’d expect from a knight in shining armor.
The final, the one who’d been beating was what she’d clinically described as a bubbling volcano of masculine virility. Everything about him was big. He was very tall, very muscular, and for lack of a better description, very very manly. He was several inches taller than either of the other men, neither of whom were anything resembling short. His face was big, with a large nose, heavy jaw, and thick brow that could only be called aesthetically primal. His muscles were huge, not freakishly huge Mr Universe body builder muscles, but about as close as you could get without looking like you lived in a gym and ate steroids breakfast. He looked like the kind of guy she could imagine running around in a fur loincloth with a battle axe in an old swords and sorcery novel.
While she was frightened and nervous, there was a part of her that lived deep in her reptile brain that only had one thing to say.
Mama like!
She flushed at the thought.
“Are you alright?” Mr. Knight asked her in a concerned tone. “You were kind of just staring out into space right about now.”
She blinked. “Oh. Sorry,” her blush deepened. “I was just distracted...”
There was a chuckle from Mr. Barbarian. “You were so checking me out.”
At this point she simply turned red. “I-I...”
“Keep it in your goddamned pants, boy,” snapped the other girl.
“What pants?” Mr. Barbarian snarked in response.
“Don’t remind me,” she hissed.
Mr Elf sighed. “Well, I think were trying to figure out what happened. Not that we’ve said much.”
Julie frowned for a moment. She was getting a sneaking suspicion and she needed to voice it. She sure as hell wasn’t her, the men all looked like they all fell out of the kind of fantasy novel you didn’t read in public, and the other girl, well, if she looked anymore like your classic exotic princess archtype, then she’d be expecting an evil wizard on a dragon to swoop down and make off with her any time now.
“I...” she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Normally they said imagine everyone else in their underwear when you got nervous, but right now she’d kill for any kind of covering. Naked people are intimidating!
Feeling a little more comfortable she lowered herself to the ground, keeping the bag she’d found held closely to her chest. While still naked, her intimates were no longer on open display which helped calm her, if only just a little bit.
“I think we’ve all been... changed.”
“Well, I could have told you that,” replied Miss Princess with a snap. “I sure as hell wasn’t born looking like this!”
“Well, I don’t think you can trade it in,” Mr Knight replied, “So just look on the bright side.”
“There’s a bright side to this?” she growled.
“Well, how old were you,” he replied, “And what condition were you in? I don’t know about you, but this is the first time I’ve been able to stand up without pain for a long time.”
“I was...”she trailed off for a moment, her jaw hanging open, then she closed it with a snap. “The hell?”
“Is something the matter,” Mr Elf asked.
“I tried to tell you, but it didn’t come out. It was like it got caught in my throat or something.”
She frowned. Wait a second. She wanted to try something.
My name is Julia Ann Roberts. I’m in the first year of my graduate studies in Archeology at Penn. I’m 23 years old and I’m a Cancer.
Or at least that was what she wanted to say.
What she said was, “My name is...” And then she trailed off and scowled.
“I can’t say any personal information,” She frowned. It seemed like someone wanted to keep who they were secret, even from each other. “Strange. Hm. I had an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Try being as vague as possible. No names, no numbers, no distinct details.”
She nodded. “Alright. I was old, real old and I...” she sneered as the block cut herself off. “Let me put it this way, see these things?”
Julie opened an eye to see what she was doing. She was cupping her breasts.
“They’re something I’ve never had before.”
Julie’s eyes went wide with realization.
Oh shit.
Jordan Mitchell
Time: Mid Day
Location: Forest Clearing
Jordan Mitchell was a simple guy with simple tastes if you asked him. He knew what he liked and he took it and it served him well. He was just lucky to be the right type of people. His parents were well to do enough to see to it that he got the things he needed in life so he could focus on the important things. Like Football.
He was a smart guy, one who knew his strengths. He was studious enough to get by, and even get decent grades, but he really didn’t have the drive nor the desire to dedicate his life to getting straight As. He wasn’t an idiot. He could look out the window. The economy was shit and his reward for being some studious poindexter nerd would be to spend the rest of his life as a cubicle monkey with a salaried job working overtime to make some other guy rich. If he was lucky. If he wasn’t, he’d be doomed to work a part time at minimum wage for the rest of his life, living with his parents like his dumbass brother.
Fuck that. Football was his secret to success in life. He knew what he was good at and that thing was Football. He was good enough to be the star player on the high school team. Good enough get a scholarship based on his talents. Good enough that his parents saw fit to reward his efforts with a trip to Hawaii to celebrate.
The fuck he ended up in a jungle he didn’t know, and frankly, he couldn’t deal with it right now. He had to get out of here, get some pants, and get somewhere civilized. And he knew he would, because when he put his mind to something he didn’t fail. But at least in the meantime the eye candy was good. Seriously, these two babes were downright smoking.
First girl he found, the one with that one guy hovering over her like a total creeper looked like some kind of latina goddess. Cranky chick but damn, there were porn stars who would kill for that body.
Other girl was also hot, though she didn’t show it. Looked like a damned bikini model, blonde, curvy and tanned like she’d just walked off the set of a photo shoot. They were both total tens.
He felt quite pleased himself as he enjoyed the eye candy, even when the one decided to kneel down and cover up.
Wait. They were talking? What about again? Oh yeah. The whole body swap thing. Well, yeah, he liked his body just fine but damn, he felt twice as strong and fit in this one. If they could get the hell out of wherever they were he’d go pro for sure.
“Alright. I was old, real old and I... Let me put it this way, see these things?”
His eyes tracked down to follow her hands. Oh yeah, and he loved every second of it.
“They’re something I’ve never had before.”
What.
“In fact,” she continued, “You could say I woke up missing an old friend.”
His eyes went wide and he suddenly felt a surge of bile make its way to his throat.
“No way,” he stammered. He’d been drooling over a man?!
She glared at him. “You think I’m lying, boy?”
No, but he could wish it. Wish really hard.
Jordan grimaced. “So you’re like... a guy in there?”
She paused for a moment, gritted her teeth, and nodded. “You said it, not me, because for some damned reason I can’t just out and say it.”
“That’s just not right,” He muttered.
“How do you think I felt, waking up with this hanging off of my chest?”
She, or was that he, poked at her tits again. For some reason Jordan found it less entertaining this time. Damn! What if... that could've been him! Jesus Fucking Christ!
“Hate to say it, man,” he muttered, “But better you than me.”
“Don’t think I still can’t put the boots to you. Size isn’t everything,” she growled.
“Both of you, calm down,” interrupted the guy who’d called him off on his brawl with the creeper.
“Hey,” Jordan snapped, “Don’t act like you’re the big boss here, man.”
“I know I’m not,” he replied, “But look at it this way. We were dumped alone in the jungle naked, in these strange bodies, with only the contents of these bags, and we were dumped as a team. Whoever or whatever it was that did this wants us to work as a team, and as much as I hate to play along with whatever sick game this is, there is one truth to it. I don’t think we’ll survive if we don’t act as a team.”
Jordan frowned for a moment. Then he slowly nodded. He understood. He got it. He was the big badass star, but the simple fact was that no matter how well he played he could only get so far without a solid team to back him up.
He frowned. Unfortunately he was stuck with this bunch. A creep, a guy trapped in the body of a hot chick, a wallflower, and this guy who seemed okay maybe, but he couldn’t be sure. Yeah. He hoped these guys wouldn’t hold him back.
“Alright,” he replied, “Guess we should do the meet and greet.”
The pretty boy nodded. “Alright, sounds good. Since we can’t give any personal info it seems, how about we just say what we do for a living and then why we were on the plane.”
“Alright. I’m...” He frowned as his words caught in his throat. “Damn it. I played sports in school, just got a scholarship and was going to... the islands... as a gift from my family.”
Creeper nodded. “Alright. I have a college degree and some medical experience. I was on the plane to attend a... a convention”
Blondie sighed and reluctantly began, “I’m a masters student in. Oh come on!,” she sighed, “Whip and a fedora, and I was on my way to a conference.”
“Archaeology?” Creeper stated, which Jordan thought was pretty obvious from the hints.
“Bingo,” she replied.
“Fine,” the old guy in the smoking hot body replied, “I lived in the woods up north, liked to climb mountains. Was on my way to a convention. Knew this was a bad idea, someone younger convinced me to go.”
Jordan glanced over to see Pretty Boy giving her... him... whatever a funny look. Something of a wide eyed stare actually with his mouth gaping like a goldfish.
“You got a problem, boy?” she snarled. It almost made him laugh. That voice was too damned pretty to get away with the grizzled effect and it came out more cute than anything. Kind of like an angry growling kitten. “Keep looking at me all googly eyed like that and I might have to do something untoward.”
“P-pops?!”
Benjamin Harrison
Time: Mid Day
Location: Forest Clearing
While he hid it well, Ben was on the edge of a small nervous breakdown. While his military training through both carrot and cudgel had trained him well in in controlling his instincts and maintaining control, there was a limit to what even the Army Rangers could beat into a man. And after being pulled out of an aircraft, dumped into a strange body naked in some primordial jungle via means completely unknown and frankly unknowable. This was something clear out of a comic book which left him wondering what was responsible for this, because something had to be. Was it Gods? Was it Aliens? Was it Alien Gods? What the hell and why? Was there a greater mission? Was this all some kind of twisted game?
This shit was worse than Afghanistan. It was enough to make a sane man mad!
So being on edge he forgave himself when he had his little slip. When he’d first discovered that the extremely attractive woman laying sprawled in front of him, he’d felt empathy. Dealing with being stuck in a body not your own was hard enough. He couldn’t imagine the imagine crisis of being turned into a woman.
Then the poor bastard had started talking and a mental checklist had started. Old man, check. Lives up north. Alaska? Check. Likes to climb mountains. Double check. On his way to a convention? Getting uncomfortably close. Had to be convinced to go? Oh for the love of... One? Coincidence. Twice? Deja-vu. Three times? Enemy action. Four times? Yeah, time to man up and deal because its not going away.
So his gruff, grim, grizzled, hard bitten, 72 year old grandfather had been magically transformed into a 18 year old stripper. You know what? A slip of control was completely understandable.
He stood there wide eyed with shock, his mouth moving as he tried to question, to ask, to say something but nothing came out due to the damned block.
Then the old man turned young woman did something utterly like his grandfather. He threatened to do something untoward. The man’s favorite warning when he was considering violence.
Thankfully, at that point, he managed to finally find something that could get past this damned mental block.
“P-pops?!”
A choking sound came from the his grandfather’s new throat. It was something of feminine a choking sound, as if she? had choked on her? own tongue. Meanwhile the look she? was giving him a look that could only be described as mute horror.
Christ. He’d really have to work out the proper pronouns later.
“Great. Not only do I wake up looking like a centerfold girl, but now my only real kin gets to see it,” Chuck sighed, “My humiliation is complete.”
Chuck stood up from the ground and did a little twirl in place, showing off his distressingly attractive new body. “Take a good look, boy, ain’t I just so goddamned pretty?”
“Pops, please,” Ben replied, fighting down the horribly mental disconnect between ‘Hot Mama!’ and ‘That’s my grandfather in there!’.
The muscle bound kid, who he assumed to have been a football player, laughed. “Wait, he your grandpa or something? What are you, a kid?”
“Former Special Operationsrandom ,” Ben snapped, surprised that the block actually let him say it, “Now drop the schoolyard bullshit, this isn’t the time for it.”
The boy in a man’s body puffed up. “You think you’re the boss of me?”
“Somebody has to be,” he replied cooly, before glancing to his grandfather, “And you, pull yourself together.”
The former grizzled old coot frowned and nodded. “I know, just have to get that out of my system.” He glanced down at the bag sitting next to his feet and up to the others.
“Seems whomever did this gave us a care package. Lets see what we got?”
Ben nodded and sat down next to him. “Alright,” he reached inside his and pulled out what looked like several rocks. What the fuck was he going to do with these?
The blonde girl glanced over with interest.
“You know what these are?” he asked.
She nodded. “May I?”
He nodded and handed them over to her.
“Hm,” she muttered as she closely examined them. “Interesting?”
“Can I see them.” She nodded and passed one up to him.”
He blinked and looked over it. “Is this a handaxe?”
“Yes,” she replied “Acheulean technology.”
“How’s that technology?” the teen cut in, “It’s just a lump of rock.”
“It’s a primitive stone tool,” she replied with a huff. “Early paleolithic.”
“And the rest?”
“Raw flint and iron pyrite,” she replied. “Fire starting kit.”
Ben nodded. Seemed like the girl knew her stuff. He glanced back into the bag. Beyond the bag itself there was several piece of fungus and a large pile of nuts, seeds, and what seemed to be dried fruits and meats.
“Tinder and limited rations.” he replied. “A basic cutting tool and a fire starting kit.”
“Well, at least it seems like we have the basics covered,” the man who’d been checking on his grandfathers condition replied.
They really needed to figure out something to call each other.
He looked back to the man and found that unlike the others he was missing his pouch. “Where’s your bag?”
He flushed slightly. “I heard um... a scream before I realized it was there. I came running.”
“I don’t know where it came from because it wasn’t me,” Chuck snapped.
“Sure it wasn’t,” Ben replied with a smile, before glancing back, “You should go get it. We’ll need everything we’ve got.”
“Alright,” he replied, “I’ll pick it up and then we can get started on a plan.”
He slipped off for a moment and Ben sighed and leaned back against a tree. He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He didn’t know how he’d deal with this, but at least this was a start.
“Guys!” came a cry from the woods, “You’ll want to come see this!”
He cracked an eye and looked over to the woods then glanced to the others. With a shrug he moved off of the tree and towards the woods.
Slowly, with the others behind him he pushed through the brush to find the man standing in a clearing with his bag in hand, looking somewhat shell shocked.
“There a problem?” he asked.
The response was he simply pointed off to the side. Ben’s eyes followed.
He was lucky he’d had the strap of the bag hanging off of his shoulder otherwise he would have dropped it.
On the other side of the bushes was a massive animal, at least 20 feet long. It was a quadruped covered in mottled scales. It’s head was tiny, and is neck lead to a massively arched back that ended in a long tail. Speaking of its back and tail, the back was covered with massive, bony plates while its tail was crowned by four massive spikes.
“Is that... what I think it is,” he managed to choke out after a moment of blank staring.
“Stegosaurus.”
He nodded. Right. A Dinosaur.
“A fucking Dinosaur.”
“A yep.”
It was his grandfather, of course, who summed up all their feelings the most succinctly.
“We sure as hell aren’t in Kansas anymore now are we?”
Chuck Harrison
Time: March 20, 2014, 6:37 PM
Location: Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii
Chuck Harrison groaned as he finally was able to stand up after that damned flight.
Between the fat ass, the kicking, and that strange wave of vertigo he was in a very raw mood. He was happy to be rid of the slob. He’d have to ask about the virtigo. And as for the kicking, he turned around to look at the idiot in the seat behind him.
His rage drained somewhat when he found himself looking into the skittish eyes of a short, relatively mousy looking girl in thick black glasses. Though not that much.
“Why the hell were you kicking my chair?” he growled.
She flushed and lowered her head. “Sorry sir. I get nervous when I get around people. I try to control it but...”
He sighed. Ah. A too many damned people thing. He could empathise. “Alright,” he muttered, “But you better try and fix that. Not everybody will be as understanding.”
She nodded. “I will. Thank you.”
He nodded and took a deep sigh as piggy finally whaled himself out of the way so he could get the hell out of here.
Thank god this was over. He swore, nothing could be worse than that goddamned plane.
Nothing.
Time: March 20, 2014, 2:52 PM
Location: Oceanic Airlines Flight 653, 28,000 feet above the Mid-Pacific
Chuck Harrison hated to fly. He really hated to fly.
Somehow, for some damned reason he couldn’t imagine he’d been invited to speak at some kind of Survival Experts Convention in Hawaii. What they’d want with a 72 year old mountain man in Hawaii he’d never know, but his grandson will had somehow managed to convince him to embark on this little misadventure.
And now, one layover and a two hour delay later he was stuck sandwiched next to his grandson and a fat man with body odor that could strip paint, with some asshole who seemed to delight in kicking the seat behind him.
Frankly, he could deal with Porky here. It was inevitable that on any flight you'd get stuck next to either some idiot who couldn’t shut up about things you couldn’t be less interested in, downwind of some freak with odious personal hygiene, or within ear-splitting distance of a wailing infant who simply refused to shut up. Commercial Aircraft flying was a pain in the ass when he moved to Alaska forty-five years ago, and while he found it hard to believe, it had only gotten worse in the meantime.
No, the problem was the jackass behind him, and if he kept it up he’d find old Chuck’s boot rammed so far up his ass that he’d be choking on it.
“Something the matter?”
He sighed and looked at the face of the only kin he had that would admit to being related to him, his grandson Ben. “Yeah, I’m getting tempted to do something untoward to the fool behind me. He keeps kicking the chair and I’m getting mighty tempted to kick back.”
“Relax, Pops,” Jim laughed, “It’s not worth it. Flight’ll be over before you know it.”
“It better,” he grumbled to himself. There were few things that could make this any worse.
“Attention, this is your captain speaking...”
Chuck sighed as the inner comm began to sound. Well hot damn, speak of the devil.
“We seem to be entering an area of increased turbulence. Please remain seated with your seat belts fastened and your tray table in a fixed and upright position.”
Suddenly the plane started to shake. Not a violent jerk, but more of a steady rumble. It was an overwhelmingly nauseating sensation unlike any he’d ever felt before. It both made him weak in the stomach and swim in the head. In only seconds, though it felt like an eternity, he’d gone from annoyed to an overwhelming state of vertigo that threatened to tear him from consciousness. And as he slowly blacked out, he thought to himself, that out of all the countless places in all of god’s creation, any of them would have to be better than this seat in this plane at this moment.
Chuck Harrison
Time: Unknown
Location: Unknown
Chuck slowly awoke with a low groan. He hadn’t felt this uncomfortable since the morning after his stag party. That hangover had been so bad, that he’d sworn off hard liquor for life. It was too much trouble.
His head pounded, his eyes were blinded by the light, and his mouth was dry. And he was lying down. And he could feel warm dirt on his ass.
Wait, was he naked?
Well, he sure as hell wasn’t on that goddamned damned plane, that was for sure. Slowly and with a high pitched groan he attempted to stand up, but his legs refused to obey him and instead he only managed to turn himself onto his side over and upset his stomach. It was severe and unpleasant the attempt at movement antagonizing his lingering vertigo and sending him into dry heaves.
For what felt like an eternity he lay there coughing and choking, but like all things it passed and in relief he slowly moved back onto his back and opened his eyes,
Above him he saw bright sun, blue sky, green leaves, and white clouds.
“Where the hell is...” his eyes went wide as the words caught in his throat. What had happened to his voice? It was high, sweet, and delicate. The kind of sultry voice that would never come from his rough vocal tract. Not in a thousand years.
With a jerk he sat up and looked down at himself his eyes left wide and horrified eyes at what he saw. He looked down upon a perspective that in all of his days he’d never expected to see.
What he saw was not a thought form, stout and harry, shaped by thirty years of hard living in the brush of Alaska, but something far softer and much more delicate. Something right out of a magazine. He saw smooth skin and full breasts, a flat stomach, and long, shapely legs ending in dainty feet and crowned with an absence that proclaimed to all a complete and utter lack of masculinity.
Left mute with shock, he reacted by instinct. In a desperate attempt to prove that this wasn’t real, one hand went to a breast, and another to the groin and he squeezed. His eyes went wide and he gasped as he was assault by new and alien sensations that confirmed to him that this was no sick dream or crazy hallucination. It was reality.
And to his dying day he’d always deny that he screamed like a woman.
And he sure as hell wouldn’t admit to fainting like one either!
Michael Conrad
Time: Day time?
Location: The Woods?
Michael Conrad lay in place thinking to himself wondering what the hell was going on. Last thing he knew he’d been sitting in a plane, suffering the worse case of nausea he’d had to deal with in a very long time. Now he was lying back in the muck looking at a clear sky and what seemed to be a strange set of conifer branches that lazily hug overhead.
He realized consciously that he should be freaking out about now. He was lying sprawled naked in the dirt, location unknown. He had no supplies, no equipment, and no idea where the hell he was. He’d obviously gone through some changes as he hadn’t looked this good in, well, ever.
Gone was the bloated, rotund form that was the source of much of his shame, the hateful product of the perfect storm of childhood depression compounded by an accident that had made the physical exertion needed to lose it almost impossible due to pain.
Instead he’d shed what felt like a hundred pounds of lard and had it replaced it with strong, lean muscle. For the first time in years he wasn’t dealing with a nagging chronic pain that made even the most fundamental functions of daily life a chore. He’d been enhanced in every way going from zero to hero if one wanted to quote the company of the mouse.
The sheer freakishness of the situation couldn’t help but make him laugh.
So he did. Things were completely out of his control, he had no idea what was going on. He didn’t know what to do, what to think, or what would come next, so he decided to lie in place and enjoyed the moment.
He had warm sun, clear sky, a cool breeze, and for the first time in living memory he was comfortable in his own skin. What comes will come, he accepted that. He’d after to deal with his, but first he’d spend just a little while soaking in this fresh sensation of freedom.
And then he heard the scream.
Without a moment’s thought he was moving a speed that he didn’t know he possessed, mainly because he’d never possessed it before. In what felt like a fraction of a second, he was bounding towards the source. It had only taken a moment to get there, as they were very close. Close enough, he realized that had they been up and about they’d have run into each other in minutes.
He found himself looking at a woman lying on the ground. A woman whom he had to admit was quite possibly one of the, if not the most beautiful example of the female persuasion he’d ever seen. She was lean and fit, lean in all of the right placed, with dark hair, lightly tanned skin, and gentle features and slightly almond shaped eyes that hinted to some possible slight asiatic descent. She was also naked as the day she was born and lying unmoving on the ground.
Lying next to her, seemingly discarded, was some kind of simple bag woven from dried grass. But that wasn’t what was important. What was important was the girl. And in second he was to her side.
If Mike had to describe himself he was a man of many hobbies. Knowledgeable but with few practical skills. Thankfully though, one of those skills was first aid. Before the accident he’d spent time working his way through college as an EMT. While it had been a decade since he’d been physically capable of such labor, he knew what to do.
Gently he knelt down next to her and placed his finger against her neck. He didn’t have a watch, or anything for that matter, so he couldn’t do a proper reading but he could estimate. It was slow but strong, a health pulse for a very healthy young woman.
In the same moment he placed the back of his other hand above her mouth, letting the sensitive skin on the back of his hand feel for her breath. It was low, but warm and steady.
He lowered her hand and scowled. Well, she was healthy. Time to check for responsiveness.
His first instinct was to try the sternal rub. It was a technique long used by EMS personnel to check for responsiveness, but he decided to go with something more passive first. She was out of it, but he didn’t know how badly. He doubted she’d react positively to someone grinding his knuckles into her breastplate when a simple shake would do.
So he placed his hands on her shoulders and...
Suddenly began to see stars as someone bowled into him, knocking him away from the woman.
He recoiled for a moment in shock before he felt a kick slam into his stomach.
“The fuck?!” he exclaimed, as he rolled into a ball, just in time to take another blow to the back.
“I heard her screaming and ain’t gonna let you do anything to this lady, you degenerate!”
The voice was angry and male.
“This is all a misunderstanding!” he exclaimed frantically trying to keep from being beaten by this manic.
The man scoffed. “Like I’ll believe...”
“Both of you, cut it out.”
He turned his head towards the new voice as a new figure walked into the small clearing. He was strong, tall and fit, shaggy brown hair and with good features for a man. And unlike the others he was not totally nude. Over his shoulder was a grass satchel like the one he’d found next to the girl.
“Oh thank god,” Mike muttered. A voice of reason. Just what they needed.
“What do you mean settle down?” the jerk who’d assaulted him proclaimed. “He was doing something untoward!”
“I was checking her damned vitals!” Mike snapped sitting up. “The hell is wrong with you?”
The man gritted his teeth looked down, and sighed. “Seriously?”
Mike’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
“Oh,” he shrugged, “Sorry.”
Like that made things any better.
Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the sound of moving brush. All eyes turned to the side, as a large fern frond was pushed out of the way to make room for a new arrival.
She was a nervous looking girl, blonde and buxom and just as stunningly beautiful as the first emerged from the bushes. She also had a grass bag which she was holding tightly to her chest in an attempt to preserve at least a fraction of her modesty.
“Um, hello?” she asked nervously.
Whatever they were going to say in greeting was banished to the wind as the prostrate figure lying in the dust began to groan and slip into wakefulness Slowly her eyes opened and then she sat up with a frantic jerk, her head darting back and forth to the figures surrounding her.
“Who the hell are you people?” she demanded.
Julia Ann Roberts
Time: Mid Day
Location: Forest Clearing
Julie was terrified.
No, she was beyond terrified.
While she was theoretically a country girl she wasn’t exactly what you’d call woodsy. In fact she was something of a homebody to be honest. She liked books more than people, which made it ironic that she’d chosen to major in people. Or at least dead people. Archaeology wasn’t exactly a people field. Sure, they talked to people, but besides the inevitable begging for money, their jobs were pretty much one-tenth people and nine tenths sorting gravel. And that was just the way she liked it.
She actually found being around large groups of people extremely uncomfortable and it has only been at the urging of her professor that she’d agreed to accept the invitation to that damned anthropological conference. She’d get to meet some of the best, he said. What could go wrong he said.
Well, you could wake up in the middle of a jungle naked with only a grass sack in a body not your own for one! If she had to describe herself before, she’d have called herself petite and cute in a mousy, bookish way if she wanted to pat her own back. Short, flat chested, and plain if she wanted to be brutally honest. What she wasn’t was a tall, leggy blonde with a body that it fell out of an issue of Sports Illustrated, and she didn’t just mean the Swimsuit Edition.
Except she apparently was. Which made things very uncomfortable because she looked like Kung Fu Action Barbie. And she was naked. And she was surrounded by strange men. Strange naked men. Strange naked men who looked like they fell out of a movie about Spartans and Gladiators except without the cod pieces, with their heroic features, rock hard muscles, and everything else, all on open display!
And here she’d thought that the most awkward thing she’d have to deal with today was apologizing to the poor person who’d been sitting in front of her about kicking their chair due to that nervous tic she got in her leg when she was stuck in a seat for too long!
People and nature, neither were really her field of experience and now she had to deal with both. On top of the whole Naked Spartans Kung Fu Action Barbie stuff.
Oh Joy. And now she was hovering over a naked women with three naked men, one of whom had just been beating on the other because he thought he was doing something untoward.
“Who the hell are you people?”
Amen sister.
The other woman, who Julie reluctantly had to admit looked more like her than she did. God, that was strange to think, but it was true. At least the colors were closer. The old Julie liked her dark hair and made fun of blondes. Was she going to get, like, stupid or something?
Ack! Bad brain! Treasonous brain! Don’t go blonde on me, damn it!
“Are you alright, ma’am?” the guy who’d put that little scuffle to rest said calmly, “Because we heard you scream.”
She took him in for a moment, and hot damn was he pretty!
“I didn’t scream!” the woman said, her speech artificially held low as if trying to resist the pitch of her own voice.
“Um, you kind of did,” one of the other men, the one who’d been getting beat on, commented. “And you looked like you fainted.”
She realed around and punch him in the side. “I didn’t faint either!”
“Damn it!” he exclaimed, “Will people stop hitting me, please!”
She punched him again. “Now until you explain who the hell are you, what the hell we’re doing here, and what the hell happened to my goddamned body!”
“I don’t know!”
“Then what good are any of you!” she cried out frantically, “Because if this is someone's idea of some kind of sick joke, then I swear to god, I’ll kill the bastard!”
“Calm down, lady,” the man who’d started the previous fight snapped off. “I sure as hell don’t know what’s going on.”
It was telling that the only response from anyone was an awkward pause.
She looked thoughtfully at the three men. While all of them were, for lack of a more charged discription, extremely well formed specimens of the male form, Each seemed to hover each fill a niche. If she was thinking fantasy novel, her first instincts would be to apply the Elf, the Knight, and the Barbarian.
The first guy, the one who’d arrived with her had what she’d call elven looks. While he wasn’t quite as large as the other two, he had a fit, fast, lean athletic looking frame, like a male gymnast or swimmer. Like everyone else here, his skin hovered somewhere in the range between light tan and Mocha brown. His hair though was long, and sickly, and so blonde it was almost white. His almond shaped eyes were the bluest she’d ever seen and his jawline was very angular. Simply put, he was quite possibly most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
The one who’d getting beat on was taller, and stronger, though not freakishly so. His features were what a book would call noble. He had a strong jaw, a proud nose, and dark piercing eyes with dark brown hair that formed into luxurious curls. He looked like how she’d imagine someone like Captain America, Superman, or King Arthur. Manly without being obscenely masculine, powerful without being overbuilt. Strong without being harsh. The kind of looks you’d expect from a knight in shining armor.
The final, the one who’d been beating was what she’d clinically described as a bubbling volcano of masculine virility. Everything about him was big. He was very tall, very muscular, and for lack of a better description, very very manly. He was several inches taller than either of the other men, neither of whom were anything resembling short. His face was big, with a large nose, heavy jaw, and thick brow that could only be called aesthetically primal. His muscles were huge, not freakishly huge Mr Universe body builder muscles, but about as close as you could get without looking like you lived in a gym and ate steroids breakfast. He looked like the kind of guy she could imagine running around in a fur loincloth with a battle axe in an old swords and sorcery novel.
While she was frightened and nervous, there was a part of her that lived deep in her reptile brain that only had one thing to say.
Mama like!
She flushed at the thought.
“Are you alright?” Mr. Knight asked her in a concerned tone. “You were kind of just staring out into space right about now.”
She blinked. “Oh. Sorry,” her blush deepened. “I was just distracted...”
There was a chuckle from Mr. Barbarian. “You were so checking me out.”
At this point she simply turned red. “I-I...”
“Keep it in your goddamned pants, boy,” snapped the other girl.
“What pants?” Mr. Barbarian snarked in response.
“Don’t remind me,” she hissed.
Mr Elf sighed. “Well, I think were trying to figure out what happened. Not that we’ve said much.”
Julie frowned for a moment. She was getting a sneaking suspicion and she needed to voice it. She sure as hell wasn’t her, the men all looked like they all fell out of the kind of fantasy novel you didn’t read in public, and the other girl, well, if she looked anymore like your classic exotic princess archtype, then she’d be expecting an evil wizard on a dragon to swoop down and make off with her any time now.
“I...” she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Normally they said imagine everyone else in their underwear when you got nervous, but right now she’d kill for any kind of covering. Naked people are intimidating!
Feeling a little more comfortable she lowered herself to the ground, keeping the bag she’d found held closely to her chest. While still naked, her intimates were no longer on open display which helped calm her, if only just a little bit.
“I think we’ve all been... changed.”
“Well, I could have told you that,” replied Miss Princess with a snap. “I sure as hell wasn’t born looking like this!”
“Well, I don’t think you can trade it in,” Mr Knight replied, “So just look on the bright side.”
“There’s a bright side to this?” she growled.
“Well, how old were you,” he replied, “And what condition were you in? I don’t know about you, but this is the first time I’ve been able to stand up without pain for a long time.”
“I was...”she trailed off for a moment, her jaw hanging open, then she closed it with a snap. “The hell?”
“Is something the matter,” Mr Elf asked.
“I tried to tell you, but it didn’t come out. It was like it got caught in my throat or something.”
She frowned. Wait a second. She wanted to try something.
My name is Julia Ann Roberts. I’m in the first year of my graduate studies in Archeology at Penn. I’m 23 years old and I’m a Cancer.
Or at least that was what she wanted to say.
What she said was, “My name is...” And then she trailed off and scowled.
“I can’t say any personal information,” She frowned. It seemed like someone wanted to keep who they were secret, even from each other. “Strange. Hm. I had an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Try being as vague as possible. No names, no numbers, no distinct details.”
She nodded. “Alright. I was old, real old and I...” she sneered as the block cut herself off. “Let me put it this way, see these things?”
Julie opened an eye to see what she was doing. She was cupping her breasts.
“They’re something I’ve never had before.”
Julie’s eyes went wide with realization.
Oh shit.
Jordan Mitchell
Time: Mid Day
Location: Forest Clearing
Jordan Mitchell was a simple guy with simple tastes if you asked him. He knew what he liked and he took it and it served him well. He was just lucky to be the right type of people. His parents were well to do enough to see to it that he got the things he needed in life so he could focus on the important things. Like Football.
He was a smart guy, one who knew his strengths. He was studious enough to get by, and even get decent grades, but he really didn’t have the drive nor the desire to dedicate his life to getting straight As. He wasn’t an idiot. He could look out the window. The economy was shit and his reward for being some studious poindexter nerd would be to spend the rest of his life as a cubicle monkey with a salaried job working overtime to make some other guy rich. If he was lucky. If he wasn’t, he’d be doomed to work a part time at minimum wage for the rest of his life, living with his parents like his dumbass brother.
Fuck that. Football was his secret to success in life. He knew what he was good at and that thing was Football. He was good enough to be the star player on the high school team. Good enough get a scholarship based on his talents. Good enough that his parents saw fit to reward his efforts with a trip to Hawaii to celebrate.
The fuck he ended up in a jungle he didn’t know, and frankly, he couldn’t deal with it right now. He had to get out of here, get some pants, and get somewhere civilized. And he knew he would, because when he put his mind to something he didn’t fail. But at least in the meantime the eye candy was good. Seriously, these two babes were downright smoking.
First girl he found, the one with that one guy hovering over her like a total creeper looked like some kind of latina goddess. Cranky chick but damn, there were porn stars who would kill for that body.
Other girl was also hot, though she didn’t show it. Looked like a damned bikini model, blonde, curvy and tanned like she’d just walked off the set of a photo shoot. They were both total tens.
He felt quite pleased himself as he enjoyed the eye candy, even when the one decided to kneel down and cover up.
Wait. They were talking? What about again? Oh yeah. The whole body swap thing. Well, yeah, he liked his body just fine but damn, he felt twice as strong and fit in this one. If they could get the hell out of wherever they were he’d go pro for sure.
“Alright. I was old, real old and I... Let me put it this way, see these things?”
His eyes tracked down to follow her hands. Oh yeah, and he loved every second of it.
“They’re something I’ve never had before.”
What.
“In fact,” she continued, “You could say I woke up missing an old friend.”
His eyes went wide and he suddenly felt a surge of bile make its way to his throat.
“No way,” he stammered. He’d been drooling over a man?!
She glared at him. “You think I’m lying, boy?”
No, but he could wish it. Wish really hard.
Jordan grimaced. “So you’re like... a guy in there?”
She paused for a moment, gritted her teeth, and nodded. “You said it, not me, because for some damned reason I can’t just out and say it.”
“That’s just not right,” He muttered.
“How do you think I felt, waking up with this hanging off of my chest?”
She, or was that he, poked at her tits again. For some reason Jordan found it less entertaining this time. Damn! What if... that could've been him! Jesus Fucking Christ!
“Hate to say it, man,” he muttered, “But better you than me.”
“Don’t think I still can’t put the boots to you. Size isn’t everything,” she growled.
“Both of you, calm down,” interrupted the guy who’d called him off on his brawl with the creeper.
“Hey,” Jordan snapped, “Don’t act like you’re the big boss here, man.”
“I know I’m not,” he replied, “But look at it this way. We were dumped alone in the jungle naked, in these strange bodies, with only the contents of these bags, and we were dumped as a team. Whoever or whatever it was that did this wants us to work as a team, and as much as I hate to play along with whatever sick game this is, there is one truth to it. I don’t think we’ll survive if we don’t act as a team.”
Jordan frowned for a moment. Then he slowly nodded. He understood. He got it. He was the big badass star, but the simple fact was that no matter how well he played he could only get so far without a solid team to back him up.
He frowned. Unfortunately he was stuck with this bunch. A creep, a guy trapped in the body of a hot chick, a wallflower, and this guy who seemed okay maybe, but he couldn’t be sure. Yeah. He hoped these guys wouldn’t hold him back.
“Alright,” he replied, “Guess we should do the meet and greet.”
The pretty boy nodded. “Alright, sounds good. Since we can’t give any personal info it seems, how about we just say what we do for a living and then why we were on the plane.”
“Alright. I’m...” He frowned as his words caught in his throat. “Damn it. I played sports in school, just got a scholarship and was going to... the islands... as a gift from my family.”
Creeper nodded. “Alright. I have a college degree and some medical experience. I was on the plane to attend a... a convention”
Blondie sighed and reluctantly began, “I’m a masters student in. Oh come on!,” she sighed, “Whip and a fedora, and I was on my way to a conference.”
“Archaeology?” Creeper stated, which Jordan thought was pretty obvious from the hints.
“Bingo,” she replied.
“Fine,” the old guy in the smoking hot body replied, “I lived in the woods up north, liked to climb mountains. Was on my way to a convention. Knew this was a bad idea, someone younger convinced me to go.”
Jordan glanced over to see Pretty Boy giving her... him... whatever a funny look. Something of a wide eyed stare actually with his mouth gaping like a goldfish.
“You got a problem, boy?” she snarled. It almost made him laugh. That voice was too damned pretty to get away with the grizzled effect and it came out more cute than anything. Kind of like an angry growling kitten. “Keep looking at me all googly eyed like that and I might have to do something untoward.”
“P-pops?!”
Benjamin Harrison
Time: Mid Day
Location: Forest Clearing
While he hid it well, Ben was on the edge of a small nervous breakdown. While his military training through both carrot and cudgel had trained him well in in controlling his instincts and maintaining control, there was a limit to what even the Army Rangers could beat into a man. And after being pulled out of an aircraft, dumped into a strange body naked in some primordial jungle via means completely unknown and frankly unknowable. This was something clear out of a comic book which left him wondering what was responsible for this, because something had to be. Was it Gods? Was it Aliens? Was it Alien Gods? What the hell and why? Was there a greater mission? Was this all some kind of twisted game?
This shit was worse than Afghanistan. It was enough to make a sane man mad!
So being on edge he forgave himself when he had his little slip. When he’d first discovered that the extremely attractive woman laying sprawled in front of him, he’d felt empathy. Dealing with being stuck in a body not your own was hard enough. He couldn’t imagine the imagine crisis of being turned into a woman.
Then the poor bastard had started talking and a mental checklist had started. Old man, check. Lives up north. Alaska? Check. Likes to climb mountains. Double check. On his way to a convention? Getting uncomfortably close. Had to be convinced to go? Oh for the love of... One? Coincidence. Twice? Deja-vu. Three times? Enemy action. Four times? Yeah, time to man up and deal because its not going away.
So his gruff, grim, grizzled, hard bitten, 72 year old grandfather had been magically transformed into a 18 year old stripper. You know what? A slip of control was completely understandable.
He stood there wide eyed with shock, his mouth moving as he tried to question, to ask, to say something but nothing came out due to the damned block.
Then the old man turned young woman did something utterly like his grandfather. He threatened to do something untoward. The man’s favorite warning when he was considering violence.
Thankfully, at that point, he managed to finally find something that could get past this damned mental block.
“P-pops?!”
A choking sound came from the his grandfather’s new throat. It was something of feminine a choking sound, as if she? had choked on her? own tongue. Meanwhile the look she? was giving him a look that could only be described as mute horror.
Christ. He’d really have to work out the proper pronouns later.
“Great. Not only do I wake up looking like a centerfold girl, but now my only real kin gets to see it,” Chuck sighed, “My humiliation is complete.”
Chuck stood up from the ground and did a little twirl in place, showing off his distressingly attractive new body. “Take a good look, boy, ain’t I just so goddamned pretty?”
“Pops, please,” Ben replied, fighting down the horribly mental disconnect between ‘Hot Mama!’ and ‘That’s my grandfather in there!’.
The muscle bound kid, who he assumed to have been a football player, laughed. “Wait, he your grandpa or something? What are you, a kid?”
“Former Special Operationsrandom ,” Ben snapped, surprised that the block actually let him say it, “Now drop the schoolyard bullshit, this isn’t the time for it.”
The boy in a man’s body puffed up. “You think you’re the boss of me?”
“Somebody has to be,” he replied cooly, before glancing to his grandfather, “And you, pull yourself together.”
The former grizzled old coot frowned and nodded. “I know, just have to get that out of my system.” He glanced down at the bag sitting next to his feet and up to the others.
“Seems whomever did this gave us a care package. Lets see what we got?”
Ben nodded and sat down next to him. “Alright,” he reached inside his and pulled out what looked like several rocks. What the fuck was he going to do with these?
The blonde girl glanced over with interest.
“You know what these are?” he asked.
She nodded. “May I?”
He nodded and handed them over to her.
“Hm,” she muttered as she closely examined them. “Interesting?”
“Can I see them.” She nodded and passed one up to him.”
He blinked and looked over it. “Is this a handaxe?”
“Yes,” she replied “Acheulean technology.”
“How’s that technology?” the teen cut in, “It’s just a lump of rock.”
“It’s a primitive stone tool,” she replied with a huff. “Early paleolithic.”
“And the rest?”
“Raw flint and iron pyrite,” she replied. “Fire starting kit.”
Ben nodded. Seemed like the girl knew her stuff. He glanced back into the bag. Beyond the bag itself there was several piece of fungus and a large pile of nuts, seeds, and what seemed to be dried fruits and meats.
“Tinder and limited rations.” he replied. “A basic cutting tool and a fire starting kit.”
“Well, at least it seems like we have the basics covered,” the man who’d been checking on his grandfathers condition replied.
They really needed to figure out something to call each other.
He looked back to the man and found that unlike the others he was missing his pouch. “Where’s your bag?”
He flushed slightly. “I heard um... a scream before I realized it was there. I came running.”
“I don’t know where it came from because it wasn’t me,” Chuck snapped.
“Sure it wasn’t,” Ben replied with a smile, before glancing back, “You should go get it. We’ll need everything we’ve got.”
“Alright,” he replied, “I’ll pick it up and then we can get started on a plan.”
He slipped off for a moment and Ben sighed and leaned back against a tree. He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He didn’t know how he’d deal with this, but at least this was a start.
“Guys!” came a cry from the woods, “You’ll want to come see this!”
He cracked an eye and looked over to the woods then glanced to the others. With a shrug he moved off of the tree and towards the woods.
Slowly, with the others behind him he pushed through the brush to find the man standing in a clearing with his bag in hand, looking somewhat shell shocked.
“There a problem?” he asked.
The response was he simply pointed off to the side. Ben’s eyes followed.
He was lucky he’d had the strap of the bag hanging off of his shoulder otherwise he would have dropped it.
On the other side of the bushes was a massive animal, at least 20 feet long. It was a quadruped covered in mottled scales. It’s head was tiny, and is neck lead to a massively arched back that ended in a long tail. Speaking of its back and tail, the back was covered with massive, bony plates while its tail was crowned by four massive spikes.
“Is that... what I think it is,” he managed to choke out after a moment of blank staring.
“Stegosaurus.”
He nodded. Right. A Dinosaur.
“A fucking Dinosaur.”
“A yep.”
It was his grandfather, of course, who summed up all their feelings the most succinctly.
“We sure as hell aren’t in Kansas anymore now are we?”
Chuck Harrison
Time: March 20, 2014, 6:37 PM
Location: Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii
Chuck Harrison groaned as he finally was able to stand up after that damned flight.
Between the fat ass, the kicking, and that strange wave of vertigo he was in a very raw mood. He was happy to be rid of the slob. He’d have to ask about the virtigo. And as for the kicking, he turned around to look at the idiot in the seat behind him.
His rage drained somewhat when he found himself looking into the skittish eyes of a short, relatively mousy looking girl in thick black glasses. Though not that much.
“Why the hell were you kicking my chair?” he growled.
She flushed and lowered her head. “Sorry sir. I get nervous when I get around people. I try to control it but...”
He sighed. Ah. A too many damned people thing. He could empathise. “Alright,” he muttered, “But you better try and fix that. Not everybody will be as understanding.”
She nodded. “I will. Thank you.”
He nodded and took a deep sigh as piggy finally whaled himself out of the way so he could get the hell out of here.
Thank god this was over. He swore, nothing could be worse than that goddamned plane.
Nothing.
Psyckosama- Admin
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Re: Trapped in the Jurassic
by Psyckosama Fri May 02, 2014 3:42 am
Chuck Harrison
Time: Prehistory, Midday.
Location: Forest Clearing
“What the fuck is this shit?!”
Chuck glared at muscle bound idiot who’d been ogling him ever since they’d met. He was wide eyed and painting. Frantic, and acting unaware of the fact that they were indeed looking over at a living creature the size of a trash truck with spears on its tail.
The massive herbivore turned its head and snorted, starting to swing its tail gently in warning
“The hell are you doing,” hissed the other man, the one who’d apparently tried to play medic after his... um... moment of weakness. “You’re pissing it off!”
“This isn’t right! The fuck are we?!”
“Settle down, both of you” he growled. “I think it’s time all of us sat down and had a little pow-wow.”
Medic nodded, but the idiot just wouldn’t shut up. Though the girl wasn’t much better, but while at least she was just blankly, muttering to herself rather than screaming obscenities at the damned thing.
Chuck, being an experienced hunter was not one to take this lightly. He’d seen himself how dangerous an angry moose could be and this, this thing was far larger and more vicious looking than any moose he’d ever seen.
With the speed of a striking viper, he reached out grabbing the damned fool by the ear and gave a tug. It was a girlish thing he admitted, something his grandma used to do to him when he was young and disobedient. He’d much rather have simply manhandled him but as much as he loathed to admit it, he wasn’t going to have much success.
While this body he was crammed into looked damned fit, it was still female. And he didn’t think that any woman would be able to properly force a man into submission. Especially not when he had over 12 inches and a hundred pounds of muscle on her.
“Move your ass, damn it!” he hissed as he started to back up into the brush, giving the ear a good solid twist.
“Gagh!” he exclaimed as he back peddled into the brush. “Let me the fuck go!”
“Not until we’re well away from that damned thing,” Chuck growled, giving the ear another twist.
“Argh! Fine!” he gaped. “The fuck is wrong with you!”
Chuck declined a reply and instead lead them back to the clearing where he’d first woken up. Glancing behind himself he saw Medic following dutifully, while Ben had taken the girl by the shoulders and was gently guiding her.
“There,” he snapped, letting go of the ear.
The overgrown boy snarled and twisted around, giving him a shove that send Chuck onto his back.
He saw stars for a moment and heard the sounds of a scuffle, before sitting up to see Ben standing with the idiot in an armbar, grinding his face into the ground.
It looks a bit humorous to see the muscle bound idiot being ground into the dirty by a man that he reluctantly had to admit was prettier than his ex-wife. Satisfying too because the idiot had laid hands on him. What wasn’t so pleasing was he wouldn’t have been able to handle it himself due to this damned woman’s body.
“Let the boy go, son.” he muttered.
Ben nodded and let off the pressure, stepping back. The idiot simply grunted and sat up, rubbing his arm and glaring balefully.
“You really need to learn to keep your hands to yourself,” Medic cut in, earning himself a spiteful look.
“Hey, it’s not like she’s a real girl and I refuse to let any of you push me around.”
“I will push you as hard as you need to be pushed,” Chuck replied, “And I had a good reason for tugging on your ear.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?”
“You spooked the damned dinosaur,” Ben snapped.
“Yeah,” Medic added, “A Stegosaurus weighs five tons, has a walnut for a brain, and according to paleontologists was probably easily antagonized. That Thagomizer isn’t for decoration.”
“The fuck is a Thagomizer?”
“It’s the name of the spikes on a Stegosaurus’s tail,” Medic replied dryly.
“Oh.”
“Where are we?” muttered the girl. “That thing went extinct like what, a hundred million years ago?”
“One hundred and fifty, give or take,” Medic replied.
“Alright,” Ben cut in, “So you know about these things?”
Medic nodded. “Yeah. Paleontology has always been a hobby of mine.”
“I see,” Ben muttered, “So tell me. Where do you think we are?”
Medic frowned and looked around. “You notice anything strange about this forest?”
Chuck pursed his lips for a moment and gave it a good look. He didn’t think to really take in the trees but thinking about it he did notice something awry. The plants were kind of strange. “Yeah,” he replied, “The trees look like they’re mostly redwoods and pines. Lots of ferns. What of it?”
He frowned. “Notice that there aren’t any grasses, bamboo, or broad leafed trees?”
Ben nodded. “Yes, that is kind of weird.”
“The fuck does that have to do with anything?” the idiot snapped. “I mean who cares about trees!”
“It means he’s trying to figure out where we are from the plantlife,” Chuck cut in. “So, boy, where would you guess.”
“Where’s not as much the issue as when,” he replied. “If I had to make a guess, I’d say we’re... Wyoming. Maybe Colorado?”
Ben frowned. “I’ve been to Colorado and it doesn’t look like this.”
“It used to, or rather it does now,” he replied.
The girl gasped. “You can’t be serious!”
He frowned and nodded.
“No! It can’t! It’s not possible!”
“What can’t be possible?” Ben asked. “You seem to know what’s going on. Stop beating around the bush.”
“Sorry. I tend to do that. What I mean to say is that I don’t think the issue is where but when,” he replied. “Maybe we’re back in time, maybe we’re on another world. Maybe we’ve been transported to Jurassic Park. I don’t know. But what I do know is that this environment is a pretty close match to the late Jurassic.”
“That’s fucking bullshit!” idiot snapped, “Ain’t fucking possible. No way.”
“Neither is a man waking up a woman,” Chuck replied, “But here I am and I don’t think that damned creature was the product of some shared delusion.”
“Oh man, this is just too fucked up,” the idiot sighed.
“So what are we looking at,” be asked Medic. “You seem to know something about this environment.”
“Well,” he replied, “The Morrison formation was mostly open plains interspersed with forests like this one. He gotta be careful because there are a lot of large predators in this era.”
“You mean like T-rex?” the girl asked.
Chuck frowned. What was a T-rex?
“No,” he replied. “T-rex won’t be around for millions of years. Allosaurus is the big boy of this time period.”
Chuck frowned somewhat. “Aren’t dinosaurs big and slow lizards?”
Medic just laughed. “No. They’re big, but they’re not slow. They’re more like birds than reptiles.”
“I see,” Chuck replied not liking the sound of that. Grizzly bears were problem enough, but Dinosaurs? Damn. “So what are these Allosaurus like?”
“Thirty foot long, twelve feet high. Weigh a couple tons. Heads the size of your torso full of dagger sized teeth. Can probably run at about thirty miles per hour. And was possibly a pack hunter.”
Chuck liked to think he was a hard man used to living in a hard environment. One doesn’t live in Alaska for long without getting used to grizzly bears. You respected them, you avoided them, and you hoped to god they had the good sense to do the same. That thing he just described on the other hand was enough to make his blood run cold.
“I... I take it that’s the worst of them,” Chuck asked.
He nodded. “Yes. But it’s not the only other big predator around. For example there was the Ceratosaurus and a number of man-sized carnivores I don’t remember the name of.”
Chuck took a deep breath and looked at the group. Medic seemed calm enough, at least for the moment, but he didn’t know if it was real or if the boy was just too busy reciting facts to have the reality sink in. Ben looked calm, but he could tell by the tension in his neck that he was ready for action. Idiot looked pretty much horrified, but he could tell it wasn’t quite sinking in. The girl on the other hand had a deer in headlights look.
“You know,” he muttered, “At this point, does it really matter?”
“What do you mean?” Medic asked.
“Well, right now we’re in a classic survival situation,” he replied, “We can worry about what’s going to eat us and what we’re going to eat once we figure out the basics.”
“A-and what are those?” the girl asked.
“Water, fire, shelter.” Ben replied, “We need to find a safe place to stay with water near by and get a fire started. After that we can start looking around to find out what’s going on.”
Chuck nodded. “So, I know what my boy here has in the line of survival expertise. I’m a mountain man. He’s former military. What about you three?”
“Well, I studied primitive man... and I went camping...” The girl smiled pitifully, “Once... when I was... when I was a girl. But... allergies.”
“Went camping with my family when I was young,” Medic replied, “But that mostly amounted to sleeping in a tent and going to restaurants. But... I watch a lot of survival TV shows!”
“Better than nothing,” he muttered, “How about you?”
“My parents really weren’t into nature,” the fool admitted.
Chuck sighed. The girl and medic might know some useful theory but they had no experience. The dumbass didn’t even have that.
“Alright, I expect all of you to take your leads from...” he frowned, “My boy here and myself. You get me?”
“Yeah,” Idiot replied, “I’m going to be looking for a way out but until then I know how to play as a team. But I get it. You’re the coach, right?”
“Damn right I am,” Chuck replied.
“So where are we going to start looking, Pops?” Medic asked.
Chuck frowned. “Why the hell are you calling me Pops?”
“Can’t exactly call you by name,” he replied. “I mean we can’t even say our names.”
“Alright then,” Chuck replied, “Pops it is. So how about you? I’m been calling you Medic in my head. How does that sound?”
He frowned. “Don’t really like it.”
“How about Doc then?” Ben offered.
He smiled. “Yeah. I kinda like that one.”
“Anyone got one for me?” Ben asked, “I mean I’ve never been a guy for nicknames.”
“How about Sarge,” Doc offered.
Ben and Chuck shared a smile. Ben had been a sergeant in the Rangers when he left the military.
“Done,” Ben replied.
“Hey, I got just the name for me!” the idiot replied. “Call me Ace!”
“Maybe Ace-Hole,” the girl muttered, earning a laugh. And a glare.
“I’m calling you Sport,” Doc replied.
“Sport?” he exclaimed, “Fuck that!”
“Shut up, Sport,” Chuck replied. Less insulting than idiot, but still would piss him off. Good choice there, Doc.
“Come on,” Sport frowned, “Can’t you call me something cool at least? Like I don’t know, Coach?”
“Grow up a bit, kid,” Chuck replied. “Until then, you’re Sport.”
“So, what about me?” the girl asked. “What are you going to call me?”
“How about Princess?” Ben offered.
She frowned. “I-I don’t really like that name.”
“How about Violet?” Chuck asked. He wouldn’t say it was because she sounded like a shinking violet, but it did fit.
“I guess I could be Violet...”
Chuck nodded. “Alright. We’re burning daylight. Lets try and find somewhere safe, and once we’re settled in we can think more about names.. How does that sound?”
She paused for a moment and then nodded. “Um. Alright?”
“So where are we headed?” Doc asked.
Chuck shrugged. “We need to find somewhere that we could get the lay of the area. I’m thinking up hill and in the direction that damned dinosaur isn’t.”
“You got it, Pops!”
Jordan “Sport” Mitchell
Time: Day 1, Mid Day
Location: The Woods
The forest was dense and relatively dry. Not at all like what he’d seen in Jurassic Park. That had all been tropical rainforest but this was hot but not nearly as stuffy, something which he was very grateful. The woods were thick and dark, offering only the odd glimpse of sky.
He sighed deeply and absently gave the tree branch he’d been carrying around a swing. It wasn’t much but not all of the predatory dinosaurs would be giant, right? And it made sense to have something to beat them with when he showed up.
Sarge got the idea too. He’d actually gone as far as to rip off the side branches and use his hand axe to give it a sharp tip, creating a crude spear for himself. Jordan would have done the same, but frankly he didn’t want to risk cutting his hand off. Violet swore if was a tool, but it looked more like a jagged lump of rock.
He shook his head as he followed behind Pops and Sarge. Well, more Pops than Sarge. While she might have the mind of a gnarly old bastard, she had an amazing ass and it was a distinct pleasure to watch it as he walked.
Anyways, he was starting to wonder what the hell they were doing. And more importantly, where the hell they were going. While he hadn’t been paying as much attention to the woods as he should have, instead favoring Pop’s perfect butt, he felt like they were going in circles.
“Eyes to yourself before I pluck them out,” Pops grumbled without even looking.
Jordan fought the urge to choke. How the fuck did she know? “H-hey! I ain’t looking at anything!”
Pops paused and half turned. “I was your age once and I know what I look like. There’s only good reason you’d be following this close behind someone who looks like I do is to stare at thier ass. So don’t try and pull that shit on me. Not even for an instant.”
Jordan flushed and looked down at his feet. He felt a little humiliated at getting caught and called out, so he decided to change the subject before anyone decided to laugh at him.
“Do you guys even know where we’re going?” he asked, shouldering his club. “I mean seriously, it’s like we’re going in circles.”
Pops grunted and glanced over to Sarge. “You want to handle this because I’m about five seconds from throttling the stupid out of him.”
Jordan’s blood heated slightly at being called an idiot and he puffed up his chest in challenge, only to earn a sideways glance from both Sarge and Pops.
“You remember what happened last time you tried to start shit with them?” Doc interupted.
He grit his teeth someone. Yeah. He wasn’t going to admit it, but girly-boy kicked his ass.
“Nobody’s given me any reasons.”
Sarge frowned. “Did you notice how we circled around behind the Stegosaurus, keeping at a distance?”
No. Not really. “Yeah...”
“I want you to take notice of how clear the path we’ve been walking is compared to the rest of the forest. This is a game trail. The animals use it when they travel and since they know the area a lot better than we do chances are it’ll lead us to something.”
He scoffed. “Like what.”
“Water, somewhere that we might possibly find shelter, or at least a clearing large enough to get the lay of the land. Can’t tell until we get there.”
Doc pailed somewhat. “Wait, are you sure following a game trail in the middle of the Mesozoic is a good idea? I mean don’t predators follow them too?”
Jordan tensed. He did have a point.
“The other option is wandering about blindly.”
Also a point.
“So does that explain things?”
Jordan sighed. “Fine. Right. Lead on...,” he waved to Pops.
“You can walk behind Sarge,” she snapped before starting forward again.
Jordan sighed. These people were insane.
Julia Ann “Violet” Roberts
Time: Mid Day, the Jurassic
Location: Forest Game Trail
These people were insane, Julie had decided. Whether that was entirely a good or bad thing, she wasn’t sure, but they were all crazy.
But at least some of them seemed to have a clue. The Jock was an asshole, and Doc tended to ramble, but at least Pops and Sarge had some idea where to go from here.
For her part, she kept her mouth shut and focused on one foot on top of the other. Just one foot in front of the other. As long as she kept herself from thinking about the situation, she kept herself from having a complete and total nervous breakdown into a sobbing, screaming wreck of a human being as the sheer brutal reality of their situation crashed down on her, crushing the tattered remnants of her sanity with the force of collapsing volcanic caldera!
Tee hee!
“Hold on...”
Julie glanced over. Pops had her hand out and her brow was furrowed, her eyes narrowed, and her lips pursed. It was moments like this that she really really was struck by the sheer discodome presented between behavior and appearance with that one.
On the type of foul tempered old man she imagined that Pops used to be, that look would probably seem intense and attention grabbing. Like the wizened elder had noticed something and the young whippersnappers better shut the hell up and mind their elders. On her new body, it looked like she’d just smelled something gross and was making an animated yuck face to express his displeasure.
In fact, that seemed to be her biggest problem in general. Pops’ just came off as being more like a really pissy supermodel who was pissed off because someone hadn’t put enough cream in her mocha latte than the grizzled, bitter, foul tempered weather beaten old coot that she really was deep inside.
Honestly it made her giggle. Which in turn earned a glare from Pops.
“There a problem, Violet?”
“Um, no ma’am...”
The glare intensified.
“I mean sir.”
Pops snorted. Or at least attempted to. It sounded more like a sneeze. And then she turned her head back. “Quiet down. I think I hear something.”
“Like what?” Doc asked. “Is it a good something or bad something?”
“If you will shut up I’ll try and figure it out,” she grumbled.
Doc shrugged and muttered, “Point” to himself before doing as he was bid.
Pops frowned for a moment and closed her eyes. Seeing what she was doing, Violent decided to do the same. After all, what better did she have to do?
The anthropology student closed her eyes and took a deep breath and tried to focus. For a moment it struck her how similar all of this was to trying to enter a meditative state.
She opened her eyes and frowned. She’d always sucked at meditation.
“Running water,” Pops muttered with a grin. “I think we’re nearing a stream or maybe even a slow moving river.”
Sport grinned. “Then what the hell are we waiting for! I could use a drink.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Pops replied.
“And why the hell not?” he snapped in response.
Despite herself, she rolled her eyes and snorted. Come on, even she knew this one. Pathogens in the water. Hello?
He stopped and rounded on her. “Hey, you got something to say? Well say it to my face.”
She shrank back slightly, but thankfully the others stepped up.
“I thought we told you to cut this shit out,” Sarge said cooly. “Do not make me take you down. Again.”
“Hey,” Doc interpreted. “Maybe we should let him. I mean seeing him get the shits might be funny.”
Sarge chuckled. “Nah. Too much of a risk of him dropping where we’ll step.”
Okay, Julie admitted, that was funny.
“The fuck are you guys talking about?”
“Girl seems to know,” Pops said with a drawl, “How about we ask her.”
Julie froze like a deer in headlights. “A-a what?” She stammered. “I mean, I’m not an expert or anything but...”
Doc smiled. “Neither am I. Come on, tell us what you know.”
“Well, I don’t exactly camp. I mean some of the digs I went to on had tents and stuff, but it wasn’t like we were doing the whole ‘experience the wonders of nature’ thing... But we got most of our water from a near by stream and we had to filter and boil it before we drank it. You don’t drink water that hasn’t been purified. I mean chemicals and run off might not be a problem around here, but animals can other things can contaminate water with bacteria or parasites.”
“Boil it?“ He scoffed. “In what? I don’t see any metal pots around.”
“Actually,” Doc remarked, “It’s not that hard once you think about it.”
“Yeah, so what do you do, smart guy.”
Pops chuckled. “Yeah. What do you do, smart guy.”
Sarge shook his head. “Come on, old man, be easy on the guy.”
Doc blushed. “You probably know more about this than I do.”
“No, no,” Pops replied, “I’d like to see what you’ve got to say. Consider it a test.”
Doc flushed somewhat. “Um. Alright. Well, if we don’t have a decent container we could always make or find one. For example, well, maybe find a piece of wood and burn it out into some kind of vessel with a hot coal, and use Hot Rocks to boil the water.”
Pops nodded. “Not a bad idea, though tricky. Ever burn out a wooden bowl before?”
Doc flushed. “Um. No... but I’ve seen it done,” his flush grew, “In an online video.”
Pops laughed and patted him on the back. “That’s alright. At least you’ve thinking the right way. I’ve actually made one before so I’ll show you how.”
Doc coughed. “Um. Thank you.”
She smirked. “Don’t mention it, kid.”
Pops started moving again, walking down the trail with a laugh. Giving a sigh, and thankful to be out of the limelight again, Julie followed. Though she made sure not to be in the rear. Who knows what might sneak up on them from behind!
The small group passed down the narrow trail and shared a look as they saw the river at the end of it. While it wasn’t sweltering, it was hot and she was looking forward to at least splashing some water on her face to cool down. So with a smile she started forward towards the water’s edge in hope of at least having a moment to dunk her head.
As she moved forward though, she felt a hand grip tightly around her upper left arm.
She glanced over to find Sarge holding her. Holding her so tightly it almost hurt. She was about to ask him what the hell was going on, but he spoke before she could.
“Don’t move. Don’t run,” he said tensely.
What? She wondered what he was talking about, but then she noticed he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking past her. Slowly, reluctantly he gaze followed his.
Across the wide steam, about 40 yards down the river was something out of a nightmare. Standing at about ten feet tall, it was a large, smooth, graceful looking creature with brown mottled scales and a long stripe of thin feathers running down it’s back and tail.
It’s head was large, with a small horn on its nose and three smaller ones over it’s eyes. It’s mouth was full of razor shaper and its short three fingered hands were capped with razor sharp claws. And with its long, whip like tail was at least twenty foot long.
Part of her, the analytical part, noted that she was probably looking at the largest land predator seen by human eyes since the end of the last ice age.
The rest of her mind wasn’t saying much of anything, having shut down in sheer terror.
Doc though, as always did have one little piece of trivia to add to the situation.
“Ceratosaurus...”
Benjamin “Sarge” Harrison
Time: Mid Day
Location: Forest Clearing
This is not good.
This is very not good.
Between waking up in the time of Dinosaurs and having to shepherd this pack of rookies through an unknown forest with his grandfather turned supermodel, Ben was pretty much at his wits end. Thirty seconds ago he’d have happily given his soul for a case of beer or a bottle of whiskey.
Now. Now he’d like to amend that offer and instead request an M82 .50 cal Semi-Automatic Sniper Rifle. Because right across the river, damned near within spitting distance was a big fucking monster dinosaur with a mouth the size of his torso and a clear appetite for meat.
He’d seen far too many movies and he knew exactly how this shit went down. And that was why he’d grabbed Violet’s arm. Out of everyone he knew she was most likely to run, and he also knew that once a carnivore saw something start to run a little switch would go off in their brains and they’d run it down by sheer instinct.
“Don’t move. Don’t run,” he said without looking, his eyes never leaving the animal, which seemed to be lazily drinking from the river.
He felt the girl freeze stiff as a board in his grasp. Well, that was better than nothing. Though they had to run he had a feeling they’d be eating her dust.
“Ceratosaurus...”
And thank you for that piece of information, Doc. He was sure that if he could remember his dinosaurs it would be an intensely useful piece of information. Unfortunately he hadn’t studied them in any great depth since he was 11 and thusly was completely shit out of luck.
“Just slowly back away before it sees us...” Doc said in a very low voice.
And of course, it was just that moment that the beast raised its head from the water and lifting its snout slightly and sniffed the wind. It’s head turned and its eyes came to rest directly on the group.
“You just had to jinx it, didn’t you old man,” he said tensely, his hand gripping his crude spear, wondering what the hell could he do to handle this.
“Shut up, boy,” his grandfather snapped.
He glanced to Doc for a second. “They wouldn’t happen to only see movement would they?”
“No, that’s Tyrannosaurus,” Doc whispered, “And even then, only in the movies.”
“Fuck,” he muttered, “Well, I think we should slowly back away and hopefully it will leave us alone...”
The animal cocked its head in what seemed to be curiosity. Slowly, and seemingly with some caution, it started towards the group.
“So we run now?” Sport asked, looked tense and as full of explosive energy as a racehorse about to shoot out of the gate.
“No! We run it will be driven by instinct to chase,” Pops replied, “It’s a predator thing.”
“Then what the fuck do we do now?” he snapped
“Fucked it I know, Doc, you got any ideas how to deal with this monster.”
“It’s not a monster, it’s an animal,” he replied, “A big fucking animal.”
“And animal, huh?” he frowned. “Where I’m from we scare bears off by shouting...”
“Works for me!” Sport screamed, cutting the others off as he actually stepped forward a couple feet to stare the creature down. “Fuck off! Go the fuck away!”
Much to pop’s surprise, the dinosaur actually paused for a moment. If anything it looked a little off put, probably surprised by the small, bite sized thing telling it off.
“Yeah!” Sport screamed at the top of its lungs. “You heard me! Fuck the fuck off you overgrown iguana before I turn you into a pair of boots!”
The dinosaur reared back and roared in challenge. It was a loud, bass sound. Richer and deeper than a lion’s roar with just a hint of a raptor’s cry in it.
“You want some of this! Well bring it! You heard me, bring it.”
The Dinosaur snorted and lunged forward, roaring at the challenge and snapping at the air. It was still a easily a good sixty feet away, but when when you’re dealing with something that was twenty feet long, that might as well be next door
If anything, Sarge reflected, they could run while it ate this idiot.
“Oh, shut the fuck up, you stupid, ugly fucking lizard!”
And then, the damned fool did the unthinkable.
He threw a rock.
It was about the size of a fist, and sailed through the air with a long, graceful arc. He knew this because the moment the stone left the other man’s hand, time seemed to slow to a crawl as his stomach seemed to rise into his throat.
Oh my god. We’re all going to die.
The stone struck the dinosaur right under the left eye, only missing it by mere inches. The beast recoiled in shock, letting out what he swore was a yelp of surprise.
“The fuck are you guys waiting for?” Sport asked as he picked up another rock. “A written invitation?”
In the blink of an eye, without even thinking about it, he’d released both Violet and his spear, and dived for the river rocks at his feet. He grabbed the closest good sized one he could find and hurled it with all his strength, screaming madly as he did so.
He wasn’t alone in this. His grandfather was hooting like a mad man... mad woman... whatever, and throwing stones, while Doc let out a mighty roar along with stones of his own. Violet was the surprise, as she didn’t run like he’d feared, but instead was kneeling on the ground and wildly throwing stones while screaming like a banshee.
The Ceratosaurus waved his head back and forth, obvious bothered by the mad screaming and the ceaseless and unexpected fusillade of rocks. Again it attempted to issue challenge, only to have several stones strike it in its open mouth in response.
The beast stepped back and began to hack and bobbing its head back and forth before issued turning about and issuing a loud cough and an aggravated grunt.
In moments the Ceratosaurus was gone. While it didn’t seem to be running, it didn’t seem like it was in any mood to put up with the continued screaming and bombardment.
“You!” Pops growled, stepping up to Sport. “You...”
“Oh come on!” Sport snapped, “The fuck did I do now?”
“You...” Pops cackled like he’d lost his mind, “You... are either the dumbest bastard I’ve ever met, or the ballsiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met!”
He blinked. He blinked again. And then he smiled. “Yeah, thanks!”
Doc nodded. “Quick thinking there...” He frowned. “You were thinking, right?”
Sport scowled. “Yeah, fuck you.” he glanced over to the old man, “Hey, think I earned the right to be called something besides Sport? I mean I did just face down a fucking dinosaur, right?”
“Well, maybe. You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that,” he glanced to the others. “What do the rest of you think?”
“I’m still partial to Ace-Hole,” Doc quipped, earning a glare.
“I’m alive!” Violet exclaimed manically, “I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!” She began to laugh frantically. A moment later her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she fell into a dead faint. Thankfully he was still standing close to her, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to catch her.
There was an awkward pause and Sport coughed and looked at him.
“Um, what do you think?” he asked, awkwardly.
“Ugh,” he grunted, “Listen, the old man made a point. I don’t know if you’re brave or just an idiot. Get back to me later.”
“Oh man...”
Doc
Time: Day 1, Early Afternoon
Location: Along a Large Stream
Doc took a deep breath and smiled as he looked at the river. He didn’t know exactly when he’d started to think of himself as Doc. He never liked being Michael Conrad anyways. His lot had been to simply survive day to day, a prisoner in his own broken body, existing without actually living.
But now? Now, for the first time he could remember he actually felt alive. If the sacrifice he had to make to be able to live a life was to be sentenced to the existence of a Stone Age Hunter-Gatherer trapped 155 million years in the past, then so be it. The dangers of this time period were simply hurdles to overcome, all part of a price that he was happy to pay in exchange for life and freedom.
“So, where are we headed?” Doc asked the others, his main focus on Sarge and Pops, “And before you say ‘follow the river’ I mean upstream or downstream?”
“Normally I’d say downstream,” Sarge replied, “But considering that the normal reason for going down stream is to find civilization, I think it’s a non-issue.”
“Well, unless there’s some secret civilization of the lizardfolk that they’re declined to mention,” Pops sarcastically added.
“Lizardmen aren’t big on the whole ‘civilization’ thing and live in swamps,” Violet replied, “And they eat people. So lets not go looking for them before we’re all higher than Level Three and have at least one magical item a piece. And I’m just rambling on about nonsense so please ignore me.”
Pops blinked. “The hell was all of that about?”
“Roleplaying games,” Doc replied.
“Oh, I see.”
It was pretty clear from her tone that no, she didn’t.
“Well, what exactly are we looking for at this point?” Doc asked.
“At this point our biggest concern is finding a good location to place a shelter,” Sarge replied.
Doc pursed her lips looked up to the sky. It was pretty much a white out. Thick, heavy clouds that misted out pretty much everything above them.
Doc’s eyes followed hers and he frowned slightly. Was this just the weather around here or did it mean rain, and if it mean rain, was standing next to this stream the safest option?
He sighed. The other option was wandering through the woods.
“I’m going to say we should go against conventional logic and go up stream,” she said after a moment’s thought. “If we can get a fire going it should be enough to ward away any nasties. And with all of these ferns and trees it shouldn’t be too much trouble to rig up something to keep the rain off.”
Sarge nodded. “You’re probably right, old man. If we can find a good vantage spot It’ll help us in the long run.”
Doc nodded. “While I’m no survival expert, I was thinking and the reason I asked was because... I... well... I don’t want to sound like an idiot or anything but...”
“Just spit it out,” Doc snapped, “You need to know more about this god forsaken hellhole than anyone else. You think of something you say it. You explain why and I’ll tell you if its a damned fool idea or not.”
“Alright,” he replied, “I was thinking that downstream is a bad idea.”
“Why?” asked Sarge, “Not that I’m criticizing you, I just want to know your logic.”
He nodded. “The Ceratosaurus we saw, if you noticed its tail...”
Sport scoffed. “Dude, I was more concerned with its teeth.”
“Shut up, sounds like the boy’s saying something useful,” Pops snapped, “Open your ears and you might learn something.”
Doc sighed. “It’s tail is flat and narrow. Good for swimming and pretty agile, unlike Allosaurus whoes tail was a large, semi-flexible rod. Best guess was that they lived in dense terrain and hunted along rivers like this one. If we go down stream we risk reaching areas where the woods start to open up. That’s probably where we’ll start moving into Allosaurus country.”
Sarge frowned. “How much larger is an Allosaurus again?”
“About twice the size...”
“You got me convinced. Upstream it is!” Pops replied without a second’s hesitation.
Violet nodded vigorously, her eyes wide and frantic. “My vote! My vote!”
“You know,” Sarge observed, “I never really comprehended how terrifying Jurassic Park was until now.”
“Less talking,” Sport cut in, “More walking. You really want to be standing here if that thing comes back?”
The five shared a glance and in moments they were heading against the flow of the river. The group moved silently, nervously keeping an eye out for anything dangerous. It was slow going. The banks of the stream were rocky and they had to be careful to avoid stepping on anything sharp.
“Hold on!”
Everyone froze, tense and react to react before turning to Violet who’d crouched down by the river bed. In her hands was a small piece of grey stone.
“What the hell?” Sport demanded, “Why the hell are you stopping to look at rocks?”
The girl ignored him and placed the rock down, then she picked up another rock and smashed it into the first.
Carefully the picked up the rock she’d smashed and looked over it, running her finger along the edge before pulling away with a small yelp and sticking the digit in her mouth.
“Something wrong?” Doc asked.
“No. Something important,” She looked over and up, holding out the fragment for inspection.
She offered up the rock and he took it from here as Pops and sarge gathered around. He wasn’t a real expert in geology so he looked towards the more experienced survivalists in the group.
Sarge took it from him and glanced over it. “This is flint,” he pronounced after a moment’s examination.
She grinned. “I know! And there might be more of it around here! Do you have any idea what kind of a find this is?”
“Not really,” Sport replied, crossing his arms. He looked annoyed but at least he wasn’t going off on anyone.
“I think we need to start keeping an eye out,” she replied, “I mean believe it or not, finding a decent source of flint was really important to paleolithic peoples. Sometimes you’d actually find trade routes where the local Hunter Gatherers had imported flint from hundreds of miles away! If there’s a good deposit around here, we’re set for tools and weapons!”
Doc smiled and gave her a pat on the shoulder and a friendly smile. “Good job. You said paleo was your thing, right?”
She nodded. “Well, the study of it at least. Don’t know much about practical skills...”
“That’s what we’re for,” Pops cut in, “Sarge and I, we have the skills and we can teach. You knew how people lived in the distant past. You can be taught, and honestly, you probably know a lot more than you think you do.“
She flushed.
“Yeah,” Doc added, “You’re the one we’re going to be turning for when we need to figure out a long term solution.”
“Hey, hold on about that long term shit...” Sport snapped, “I ain’t living here.”
Doc couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Stop fooling yourself. We’re not even the same people anymore and I don’t think this is a theme park. I don’t know who or what sent us here, but whatever it is, I think it’s for keeps.”
“We can talk about that later,” Sarge cut in, “If we can find a way to get rescued, great, if not we’re going to have to adapt. But right now that is immaterial. Right now, we have to keep our eye on the task: staying alive. And in survival you have to prepare for every eventuality.”
He looked over to Sport. “Right now we’re a unit, a team. We have to depend on each other. You know what its like. You drop the ball, you lose the game. Only here, if you lose, you die.”
Sport glared at the other man, and for a moment Doc wondered if he was going to take a swing. But shockingly he simply sighed. “Yeah, I get it, doesn’t mean I like it.”
He paused and frowned, “But these two better not leave me to carry all their damned slack.”
Doc frowned. Look who’s talking, jackass.
Time: Prehistory, Midday.
Location: Forest Clearing
“What the fuck is this shit?!”
Chuck glared at muscle bound idiot who’d been ogling him ever since they’d met. He was wide eyed and painting. Frantic, and acting unaware of the fact that they were indeed looking over at a living creature the size of a trash truck with spears on its tail.
The massive herbivore turned its head and snorted, starting to swing its tail gently in warning
“The hell are you doing,” hissed the other man, the one who’d apparently tried to play medic after his... um... moment of weakness. “You’re pissing it off!”
“This isn’t right! The fuck are we?!”
“Settle down, both of you” he growled. “I think it’s time all of us sat down and had a little pow-wow.”
Medic nodded, but the idiot just wouldn’t shut up. Though the girl wasn’t much better, but while at least she was just blankly, muttering to herself rather than screaming obscenities at the damned thing.
Chuck, being an experienced hunter was not one to take this lightly. He’d seen himself how dangerous an angry moose could be and this, this thing was far larger and more vicious looking than any moose he’d ever seen.
With the speed of a striking viper, he reached out grabbing the damned fool by the ear and gave a tug. It was a girlish thing he admitted, something his grandma used to do to him when he was young and disobedient. He’d much rather have simply manhandled him but as much as he loathed to admit it, he wasn’t going to have much success.
While this body he was crammed into looked damned fit, it was still female. And he didn’t think that any woman would be able to properly force a man into submission. Especially not when he had over 12 inches and a hundred pounds of muscle on her.
“Move your ass, damn it!” he hissed as he started to back up into the brush, giving the ear a good solid twist.
“Gagh!” he exclaimed as he back peddled into the brush. “Let me the fuck go!”
“Not until we’re well away from that damned thing,” Chuck growled, giving the ear another twist.
“Argh! Fine!” he gaped. “The fuck is wrong with you!”
Chuck declined a reply and instead lead them back to the clearing where he’d first woken up. Glancing behind himself he saw Medic following dutifully, while Ben had taken the girl by the shoulders and was gently guiding her.
“There,” he snapped, letting go of the ear.
The overgrown boy snarled and twisted around, giving him a shove that send Chuck onto his back.
He saw stars for a moment and heard the sounds of a scuffle, before sitting up to see Ben standing with the idiot in an armbar, grinding his face into the ground.
It looks a bit humorous to see the muscle bound idiot being ground into the dirty by a man that he reluctantly had to admit was prettier than his ex-wife. Satisfying too because the idiot had laid hands on him. What wasn’t so pleasing was he wouldn’t have been able to handle it himself due to this damned woman’s body.
“Let the boy go, son.” he muttered.
Ben nodded and let off the pressure, stepping back. The idiot simply grunted and sat up, rubbing his arm and glaring balefully.
“You really need to learn to keep your hands to yourself,” Medic cut in, earning himself a spiteful look.
“Hey, it’s not like she’s a real girl and I refuse to let any of you push me around.”
“I will push you as hard as you need to be pushed,” Chuck replied, “And I had a good reason for tugging on your ear.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?”
“You spooked the damned dinosaur,” Ben snapped.
“Yeah,” Medic added, “A Stegosaurus weighs five tons, has a walnut for a brain, and according to paleontologists was probably easily antagonized. That Thagomizer isn’t for decoration.”
“The fuck is a Thagomizer?”
“It’s the name of the spikes on a Stegosaurus’s tail,” Medic replied dryly.
“Oh.”
“Where are we?” muttered the girl. “That thing went extinct like what, a hundred million years ago?”
“One hundred and fifty, give or take,” Medic replied.
“Alright,” Ben cut in, “So you know about these things?”
Medic nodded. “Yeah. Paleontology has always been a hobby of mine.”
“I see,” Ben muttered, “So tell me. Where do you think we are?”
Medic frowned and looked around. “You notice anything strange about this forest?”
Chuck pursed his lips for a moment and gave it a good look. He didn’t think to really take in the trees but thinking about it he did notice something awry. The plants were kind of strange. “Yeah,” he replied, “The trees look like they’re mostly redwoods and pines. Lots of ferns. What of it?”
He frowned. “Notice that there aren’t any grasses, bamboo, or broad leafed trees?”
Ben nodded. “Yes, that is kind of weird.”
“The fuck does that have to do with anything?” the idiot snapped. “I mean who cares about trees!”
“It means he’s trying to figure out where we are from the plantlife,” Chuck cut in. “So, boy, where would you guess.”
“Where’s not as much the issue as when,” he replied. “If I had to make a guess, I’d say we’re... Wyoming. Maybe Colorado?”
Ben frowned. “I’ve been to Colorado and it doesn’t look like this.”
“It used to, or rather it does now,” he replied.
The girl gasped. “You can’t be serious!”
He frowned and nodded.
“No! It can’t! It’s not possible!”
“What can’t be possible?” Ben asked. “You seem to know what’s going on. Stop beating around the bush.”
“Sorry. I tend to do that. What I mean to say is that I don’t think the issue is where but when,” he replied. “Maybe we’re back in time, maybe we’re on another world. Maybe we’ve been transported to Jurassic Park. I don’t know. But what I do know is that this environment is a pretty close match to the late Jurassic.”
“That’s fucking bullshit!” idiot snapped, “Ain’t fucking possible. No way.”
“Neither is a man waking up a woman,” Chuck replied, “But here I am and I don’t think that damned creature was the product of some shared delusion.”
“Oh man, this is just too fucked up,” the idiot sighed.
“So what are we looking at,” be asked Medic. “You seem to know something about this environment.”
“Well,” he replied, “The Morrison formation was mostly open plains interspersed with forests like this one. He gotta be careful because there are a lot of large predators in this era.”
“You mean like T-rex?” the girl asked.
Chuck frowned. What was a T-rex?
“No,” he replied. “T-rex won’t be around for millions of years. Allosaurus is the big boy of this time period.”
Chuck frowned somewhat. “Aren’t dinosaurs big and slow lizards?”
Medic just laughed. “No. They’re big, but they’re not slow. They’re more like birds than reptiles.”
“I see,” Chuck replied not liking the sound of that. Grizzly bears were problem enough, but Dinosaurs? Damn. “So what are these Allosaurus like?”
“Thirty foot long, twelve feet high. Weigh a couple tons. Heads the size of your torso full of dagger sized teeth. Can probably run at about thirty miles per hour. And was possibly a pack hunter.”
Chuck liked to think he was a hard man used to living in a hard environment. One doesn’t live in Alaska for long without getting used to grizzly bears. You respected them, you avoided them, and you hoped to god they had the good sense to do the same. That thing he just described on the other hand was enough to make his blood run cold.
“I... I take it that’s the worst of them,” Chuck asked.
He nodded. “Yes. But it’s not the only other big predator around. For example there was the Ceratosaurus and a number of man-sized carnivores I don’t remember the name of.”
Chuck took a deep breath and looked at the group. Medic seemed calm enough, at least for the moment, but he didn’t know if it was real or if the boy was just too busy reciting facts to have the reality sink in. Ben looked calm, but he could tell by the tension in his neck that he was ready for action. Idiot looked pretty much horrified, but he could tell it wasn’t quite sinking in. The girl on the other hand had a deer in headlights look.
“You know,” he muttered, “At this point, does it really matter?”
“What do you mean?” Medic asked.
“Well, right now we’re in a classic survival situation,” he replied, “We can worry about what’s going to eat us and what we’re going to eat once we figure out the basics.”
“A-and what are those?” the girl asked.
“Water, fire, shelter.” Ben replied, “We need to find a safe place to stay with water near by and get a fire started. After that we can start looking around to find out what’s going on.”
Chuck nodded. “So, I know what my boy here has in the line of survival expertise. I’m a mountain man. He’s former military. What about you three?”
“Well, I studied primitive man... and I went camping...” The girl smiled pitifully, “Once... when I was... when I was a girl. But... allergies.”
“Went camping with my family when I was young,” Medic replied, “But that mostly amounted to sleeping in a tent and going to restaurants. But... I watch a lot of survival TV shows!”
“Better than nothing,” he muttered, “How about you?”
“My parents really weren’t into nature,” the fool admitted.
Chuck sighed. The girl and medic might know some useful theory but they had no experience. The dumbass didn’t even have that.
“Alright, I expect all of you to take your leads from...” he frowned, “My boy here and myself. You get me?”
“Yeah,” Idiot replied, “I’m going to be looking for a way out but until then I know how to play as a team. But I get it. You’re the coach, right?”
“Damn right I am,” Chuck replied.
“So where are we going to start looking, Pops?” Medic asked.
Chuck frowned. “Why the hell are you calling me Pops?”
“Can’t exactly call you by name,” he replied. “I mean we can’t even say our names.”
“Alright then,” Chuck replied, “Pops it is. So how about you? I’m been calling you Medic in my head. How does that sound?”
He frowned. “Don’t really like it.”
“How about Doc then?” Ben offered.
He smiled. “Yeah. I kinda like that one.”
“Anyone got one for me?” Ben asked, “I mean I’ve never been a guy for nicknames.”
“How about Sarge,” Doc offered.
Ben and Chuck shared a smile. Ben had been a sergeant in the Rangers when he left the military.
“Done,” Ben replied.
“Hey, I got just the name for me!” the idiot replied. “Call me Ace!”
“Maybe Ace-Hole,” the girl muttered, earning a laugh. And a glare.
“I’m calling you Sport,” Doc replied.
“Sport?” he exclaimed, “Fuck that!”
“Shut up, Sport,” Chuck replied. Less insulting than idiot, but still would piss him off. Good choice there, Doc.
“Come on,” Sport frowned, “Can’t you call me something cool at least? Like I don’t know, Coach?”
“Grow up a bit, kid,” Chuck replied. “Until then, you’re Sport.”
“So, what about me?” the girl asked. “What are you going to call me?”
“How about Princess?” Ben offered.
She frowned. “I-I don’t really like that name.”
“How about Violet?” Chuck asked. He wouldn’t say it was because she sounded like a shinking violet, but it did fit.
“I guess I could be Violet...”
Chuck nodded. “Alright. We’re burning daylight. Lets try and find somewhere safe, and once we’re settled in we can think more about names.. How does that sound?”
She paused for a moment and then nodded. “Um. Alright?”
“So where are we headed?” Doc asked.
Chuck shrugged. “We need to find somewhere that we could get the lay of the area. I’m thinking up hill and in the direction that damned dinosaur isn’t.”
“You got it, Pops!”
Jordan “Sport” Mitchell
Time: Day 1, Mid Day
Location: The Woods
The forest was dense and relatively dry. Not at all like what he’d seen in Jurassic Park. That had all been tropical rainforest but this was hot but not nearly as stuffy, something which he was very grateful. The woods were thick and dark, offering only the odd glimpse of sky.
He sighed deeply and absently gave the tree branch he’d been carrying around a swing. It wasn’t much but not all of the predatory dinosaurs would be giant, right? And it made sense to have something to beat them with when he showed up.
Sarge got the idea too. He’d actually gone as far as to rip off the side branches and use his hand axe to give it a sharp tip, creating a crude spear for himself. Jordan would have done the same, but frankly he didn’t want to risk cutting his hand off. Violet swore if was a tool, but it looked more like a jagged lump of rock.
He shook his head as he followed behind Pops and Sarge. Well, more Pops than Sarge. While she might have the mind of a gnarly old bastard, she had an amazing ass and it was a distinct pleasure to watch it as he walked.
Anyways, he was starting to wonder what the hell they were doing. And more importantly, where the hell they were going. While he hadn’t been paying as much attention to the woods as he should have, instead favoring Pop’s perfect butt, he felt like they were going in circles.
“Eyes to yourself before I pluck them out,” Pops grumbled without even looking.
Jordan fought the urge to choke. How the fuck did she know? “H-hey! I ain’t looking at anything!”
Pops paused and half turned. “I was your age once and I know what I look like. There’s only good reason you’d be following this close behind someone who looks like I do is to stare at thier ass. So don’t try and pull that shit on me. Not even for an instant.”
Jordan flushed and looked down at his feet. He felt a little humiliated at getting caught and called out, so he decided to change the subject before anyone decided to laugh at him.
“Do you guys even know where we’re going?” he asked, shouldering his club. “I mean seriously, it’s like we’re going in circles.”
Pops grunted and glanced over to Sarge. “You want to handle this because I’m about five seconds from throttling the stupid out of him.”
Jordan’s blood heated slightly at being called an idiot and he puffed up his chest in challenge, only to earn a sideways glance from both Sarge and Pops.
“You remember what happened last time you tried to start shit with them?” Doc interupted.
He grit his teeth someone. Yeah. He wasn’t going to admit it, but girly-boy kicked his ass.
“Nobody’s given me any reasons.”
Sarge frowned. “Did you notice how we circled around behind the Stegosaurus, keeping at a distance?”
No. Not really. “Yeah...”
“I want you to take notice of how clear the path we’ve been walking is compared to the rest of the forest. This is a game trail. The animals use it when they travel and since they know the area a lot better than we do chances are it’ll lead us to something.”
He scoffed. “Like what.”
“Water, somewhere that we might possibly find shelter, or at least a clearing large enough to get the lay of the land. Can’t tell until we get there.”
Doc pailed somewhat. “Wait, are you sure following a game trail in the middle of the Mesozoic is a good idea? I mean don’t predators follow them too?”
Jordan tensed. He did have a point.
“The other option is wandering about blindly.”
Also a point.
“So does that explain things?”
Jordan sighed. “Fine. Right. Lead on...,” he waved to Pops.
“You can walk behind Sarge,” she snapped before starting forward again.
Jordan sighed. These people were insane.
Julia Ann “Violet” Roberts
Time: Mid Day, the Jurassic
Location: Forest Game Trail
These people were insane, Julie had decided. Whether that was entirely a good or bad thing, she wasn’t sure, but they were all crazy.
But at least some of them seemed to have a clue. The Jock was an asshole, and Doc tended to ramble, but at least Pops and Sarge had some idea where to go from here.
For her part, she kept her mouth shut and focused on one foot on top of the other. Just one foot in front of the other. As long as she kept herself from thinking about the situation, she kept herself from having a complete and total nervous breakdown into a sobbing, screaming wreck of a human being as the sheer brutal reality of their situation crashed down on her, crushing the tattered remnants of her sanity with the force of collapsing volcanic caldera!
Tee hee!
“Hold on...”
Julie glanced over. Pops had her hand out and her brow was furrowed, her eyes narrowed, and her lips pursed. It was moments like this that she really really was struck by the sheer discodome presented between behavior and appearance with that one.
On the type of foul tempered old man she imagined that Pops used to be, that look would probably seem intense and attention grabbing. Like the wizened elder had noticed something and the young whippersnappers better shut the hell up and mind their elders. On her new body, it looked like she’d just smelled something gross and was making an animated yuck face to express his displeasure.
In fact, that seemed to be her biggest problem in general. Pops’ just came off as being more like a really pissy supermodel who was pissed off because someone hadn’t put enough cream in her mocha latte than the grizzled, bitter, foul tempered weather beaten old coot that she really was deep inside.
Honestly it made her giggle. Which in turn earned a glare from Pops.
“There a problem, Violet?”
“Um, no ma’am...”
The glare intensified.
“I mean sir.”
Pops snorted. Or at least attempted to. It sounded more like a sneeze. And then she turned her head back. “Quiet down. I think I hear something.”
“Like what?” Doc asked. “Is it a good something or bad something?”
“If you will shut up I’ll try and figure it out,” she grumbled.
Doc shrugged and muttered, “Point” to himself before doing as he was bid.
Pops frowned for a moment and closed her eyes. Seeing what she was doing, Violent decided to do the same. After all, what better did she have to do?
The anthropology student closed her eyes and took a deep breath and tried to focus. For a moment it struck her how similar all of this was to trying to enter a meditative state.
She opened her eyes and frowned. She’d always sucked at meditation.
“Running water,” Pops muttered with a grin. “I think we’re nearing a stream or maybe even a slow moving river.”
Sport grinned. “Then what the hell are we waiting for! I could use a drink.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Pops replied.
“And why the hell not?” he snapped in response.
Despite herself, she rolled her eyes and snorted. Come on, even she knew this one. Pathogens in the water. Hello?
He stopped and rounded on her. “Hey, you got something to say? Well say it to my face.”
She shrank back slightly, but thankfully the others stepped up.
“I thought we told you to cut this shit out,” Sarge said cooly. “Do not make me take you down. Again.”
“Hey,” Doc interpreted. “Maybe we should let him. I mean seeing him get the shits might be funny.”
Sarge chuckled. “Nah. Too much of a risk of him dropping where we’ll step.”
Okay, Julie admitted, that was funny.
“The fuck are you guys talking about?”
“Girl seems to know,” Pops said with a drawl, “How about we ask her.”
Julie froze like a deer in headlights. “A-a what?” She stammered. “I mean, I’m not an expert or anything but...”
Doc smiled. “Neither am I. Come on, tell us what you know.”
“Well, I don’t exactly camp. I mean some of the digs I went to on had tents and stuff, but it wasn’t like we were doing the whole ‘experience the wonders of nature’ thing... But we got most of our water from a near by stream and we had to filter and boil it before we drank it. You don’t drink water that hasn’t been purified. I mean chemicals and run off might not be a problem around here, but animals can other things can contaminate water with bacteria or parasites.”
“Boil it?“ He scoffed. “In what? I don’t see any metal pots around.”
“Actually,” Doc remarked, “It’s not that hard once you think about it.”
“Yeah, so what do you do, smart guy.”
Pops chuckled. “Yeah. What do you do, smart guy.”
Sarge shook his head. “Come on, old man, be easy on the guy.”
Doc blushed. “You probably know more about this than I do.”
“No, no,” Pops replied, “I’d like to see what you’ve got to say. Consider it a test.”
Doc flushed somewhat. “Um. Alright. Well, if we don’t have a decent container we could always make or find one. For example, well, maybe find a piece of wood and burn it out into some kind of vessel with a hot coal, and use Hot Rocks to boil the water.”
Pops nodded. “Not a bad idea, though tricky. Ever burn out a wooden bowl before?”
Doc flushed. “Um. No... but I’ve seen it done,” his flush grew, “In an online video.”
Pops laughed and patted him on the back. “That’s alright. At least you’ve thinking the right way. I’ve actually made one before so I’ll show you how.”
Doc coughed. “Um. Thank you.”
She smirked. “Don’t mention it, kid.”
Pops started moving again, walking down the trail with a laugh. Giving a sigh, and thankful to be out of the limelight again, Julie followed. Though she made sure not to be in the rear. Who knows what might sneak up on them from behind!
The small group passed down the narrow trail and shared a look as they saw the river at the end of it. While it wasn’t sweltering, it was hot and she was looking forward to at least splashing some water on her face to cool down. So with a smile she started forward towards the water’s edge in hope of at least having a moment to dunk her head.
As she moved forward though, she felt a hand grip tightly around her upper left arm.
She glanced over to find Sarge holding her. Holding her so tightly it almost hurt. She was about to ask him what the hell was going on, but he spoke before she could.
“Don’t move. Don’t run,” he said tensely.
What? She wondered what he was talking about, but then she noticed he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking past her. Slowly, reluctantly he gaze followed his.
Across the wide steam, about 40 yards down the river was something out of a nightmare. Standing at about ten feet tall, it was a large, smooth, graceful looking creature with brown mottled scales and a long stripe of thin feathers running down it’s back and tail.
It’s head was large, with a small horn on its nose and three smaller ones over it’s eyes. It’s mouth was full of razor shaper and its short three fingered hands were capped with razor sharp claws. And with its long, whip like tail was at least twenty foot long.
Part of her, the analytical part, noted that she was probably looking at the largest land predator seen by human eyes since the end of the last ice age.
The rest of her mind wasn’t saying much of anything, having shut down in sheer terror.
Doc though, as always did have one little piece of trivia to add to the situation.
“Ceratosaurus...”
Benjamin “Sarge” Harrison
Time: Mid Day
Location: Forest Clearing
This is not good.
This is very not good.
Between waking up in the time of Dinosaurs and having to shepherd this pack of rookies through an unknown forest with his grandfather turned supermodel, Ben was pretty much at his wits end. Thirty seconds ago he’d have happily given his soul for a case of beer or a bottle of whiskey.
Now. Now he’d like to amend that offer and instead request an M82 .50 cal Semi-Automatic Sniper Rifle. Because right across the river, damned near within spitting distance was a big fucking monster dinosaur with a mouth the size of his torso and a clear appetite for meat.
He’d seen far too many movies and he knew exactly how this shit went down. And that was why he’d grabbed Violet’s arm. Out of everyone he knew she was most likely to run, and he also knew that once a carnivore saw something start to run a little switch would go off in their brains and they’d run it down by sheer instinct.
“Don’t move. Don’t run,” he said without looking, his eyes never leaving the animal, which seemed to be lazily drinking from the river.
He felt the girl freeze stiff as a board in his grasp. Well, that was better than nothing. Though they had to run he had a feeling they’d be eating her dust.
“Ceratosaurus...”
And thank you for that piece of information, Doc. He was sure that if he could remember his dinosaurs it would be an intensely useful piece of information. Unfortunately he hadn’t studied them in any great depth since he was 11 and thusly was completely shit out of luck.
“Just slowly back away before it sees us...” Doc said in a very low voice.
And of course, it was just that moment that the beast raised its head from the water and lifting its snout slightly and sniffed the wind. It’s head turned and its eyes came to rest directly on the group.
“You just had to jinx it, didn’t you old man,” he said tensely, his hand gripping his crude spear, wondering what the hell could he do to handle this.
“Shut up, boy,” his grandfather snapped.
He glanced to Doc for a second. “They wouldn’t happen to only see movement would they?”
“No, that’s Tyrannosaurus,” Doc whispered, “And even then, only in the movies.”
“Fuck,” he muttered, “Well, I think we should slowly back away and hopefully it will leave us alone...”
The animal cocked its head in what seemed to be curiosity. Slowly, and seemingly with some caution, it started towards the group.
“So we run now?” Sport asked, looked tense and as full of explosive energy as a racehorse about to shoot out of the gate.
“No! We run it will be driven by instinct to chase,” Pops replied, “It’s a predator thing.”
“Then what the fuck do we do now?” he snapped
“Fucked it I know, Doc, you got any ideas how to deal with this monster.”
“It’s not a monster, it’s an animal,” he replied, “A big fucking animal.”
“And animal, huh?” he frowned. “Where I’m from we scare bears off by shouting...”
“Works for me!” Sport screamed, cutting the others off as he actually stepped forward a couple feet to stare the creature down. “Fuck off! Go the fuck away!”
Much to pop’s surprise, the dinosaur actually paused for a moment. If anything it looked a little off put, probably surprised by the small, bite sized thing telling it off.
“Yeah!” Sport screamed at the top of its lungs. “You heard me! Fuck the fuck off you overgrown iguana before I turn you into a pair of boots!”
The dinosaur reared back and roared in challenge. It was a loud, bass sound. Richer and deeper than a lion’s roar with just a hint of a raptor’s cry in it.
“You want some of this! Well bring it! You heard me, bring it.”
The Dinosaur snorted and lunged forward, roaring at the challenge and snapping at the air. It was still a easily a good sixty feet away, but when when you’re dealing with something that was twenty feet long, that might as well be next door
If anything, Sarge reflected, they could run while it ate this idiot.
“Oh, shut the fuck up, you stupid, ugly fucking lizard!”
And then, the damned fool did the unthinkable.
He threw a rock.
It was about the size of a fist, and sailed through the air with a long, graceful arc. He knew this because the moment the stone left the other man’s hand, time seemed to slow to a crawl as his stomach seemed to rise into his throat.
Oh my god. We’re all going to die.
The stone struck the dinosaur right under the left eye, only missing it by mere inches. The beast recoiled in shock, letting out what he swore was a yelp of surprise.
“The fuck are you guys waiting for?” Sport asked as he picked up another rock. “A written invitation?”
In the blink of an eye, without even thinking about it, he’d released both Violet and his spear, and dived for the river rocks at his feet. He grabbed the closest good sized one he could find and hurled it with all his strength, screaming madly as he did so.
He wasn’t alone in this. His grandfather was hooting like a mad man... mad woman... whatever, and throwing stones, while Doc let out a mighty roar along with stones of his own. Violet was the surprise, as she didn’t run like he’d feared, but instead was kneeling on the ground and wildly throwing stones while screaming like a banshee.
The Ceratosaurus waved his head back and forth, obvious bothered by the mad screaming and the ceaseless and unexpected fusillade of rocks. Again it attempted to issue challenge, only to have several stones strike it in its open mouth in response.
The beast stepped back and began to hack and bobbing its head back and forth before issued turning about and issuing a loud cough and an aggravated grunt.
In moments the Ceratosaurus was gone. While it didn’t seem to be running, it didn’t seem like it was in any mood to put up with the continued screaming and bombardment.
“You!” Pops growled, stepping up to Sport. “You...”
“Oh come on!” Sport snapped, “The fuck did I do now?”
“You...” Pops cackled like he’d lost his mind, “You... are either the dumbest bastard I’ve ever met, or the ballsiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met!”
He blinked. He blinked again. And then he smiled. “Yeah, thanks!”
Doc nodded. “Quick thinking there...” He frowned. “You were thinking, right?”
Sport scowled. “Yeah, fuck you.” he glanced over to the old man, “Hey, think I earned the right to be called something besides Sport? I mean I did just face down a fucking dinosaur, right?”
“Well, maybe. You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that,” he glanced to the others. “What do the rest of you think?”
“I’m still partial to Ace-Hole,” Doc quipped, earning a glare.
“I’m alive!” Violet exclaimed manically, “I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!” She began to laugh frantically. A moment later her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she fell into a dead faint. Thankfully he was still standing close to her, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to catch her.
There was an awkward pause and Sport coughed and looked at him.
“Um, what do you think?” he asked, awkwardly.
“Ugh,” he grunted, “Listen, the old man made a point. I don’t know if you’re brave or just an idiot. Get back to me later.”
“Oh man...”
Doc
Time: Day 1, Early Afternoon
Location: Along a Large Stream
Doc took a deep breath and smiled as he looked at the river. He didn’t know exactly when he’d started to think of himself as Doc. He never liked being Michael Conrad anyways. His lot had been to simply survive day to day, a prisoner in his own broken body, existing without actually living.
But now? Now, for the first time he could remember he actually felt alive. If the sacrifice he had to make to be able to live a life was to be sentenced to the existence of a Stone Age Hunter-Gatherer trapped 155 million years in the past, then so be it. The dangers of this time period were simply hurdles to overcome, all part of a price that he was happy to pay in exchange for life and freedom.
“So, where are we headed?” Doc asked the others, his main focus on Sarge and Pops, “And before you say ‘follow the river’ I mean upstream or downstream?”
“Normally I’d say downstream,” Sarge replied, “But considering that the normal reason for going down stream is to find civilization, I think it’s a non-issue.”
“Well, unless there’s some secret civilization of the lizardfolk that they’re declined to mention,” Pops sarcastically added.
“Lizardmen aren’t big on the whole ‘civilization’ thing and live in swamps,” Violet replied, “And they eat people. So lets not go looking for them before we’re all higher than Level Three and have at least one magical item a piece. And I’m just rambling on about nonsense so please ignore me.”
Pops blinked. “The hell was all of that about?”
“Roleplaying games,” Doc replied.
“Oh, I see.”
It was pretty clear from her tone that no, she didn’t.
“Well, what exactly are we looking for at this point?” Doc asked.
“At this point our biggest concern is finding a good location to place a shelter,” Sarge replied.
Doc pursed her lips looked up to the sky. It was pretty much a white out. Thick, heavy clouds that misted out pretty much everything above them.
Doc’s eyes followed hers and he frowned slightly. Was this just the weather around here or did it mean rain, and if it mean rain, was standing next to this stream the safest option?
He sighed. The other option was wandering through the woods.
“I’m going to say we should go against conventional logic and go up stream,” she said after a moment’s thought. “If we can get a fire going it should be enough to ward away any nasties. And with all of these ferns and trees it shouldn’t be too much trouble to rig up something to keep the rain off.”
Sarge nodded. “You’re probably right, old man. If we can find a good vantage spot It’ll help us in the long run.”
Doc nodded. “While I’m no survival expert, I was thinking and the reason I asked was because... I... well... I don’t want to sound like an idiot or anything but...”
“Just spit it out,” Doc snapped, “You need to know more about this god forsaken hellhole than anyone else. You think of something you say it. You explain why and I’ll tell you if its a damned fool idea or not.”
“Alright,” he replied, “I was thinking that downstream is a bad idea.”
“Why?” asked Sarge, “Not that I’m criticizing you, I just want to know your logic.”
He nodded. “The Ceratosaurus we saw, if you noticed its tail...”
Sport scoffed. “Dude, I was more concerned with its teeth.”
“Shut up, sounds like the boy’s saying something useful,” Pops snapped, “Open your ears and you might learn something.”
Doc sighed. “It’s tail is flat and narrow. Good for swimming and pretty agile, unlike Allosaurus whoes tail was a large, semi-flexible rod. Best guess was that they lived in dense terrain and hunted along rivers like this one. If we go down stream we risk reaching areas where the woods start to open up. That’s probably where we’ll start moving into Allosaurus country.”
Sarge frowned. “How much larger is an Allosaurus again?”
“About twice the size...”
“You got me convinced. Upstream it is!” Pops replied without a second’s hesitation.
Violet nodded vigorously, her eyes wide and frantic. “My vote! My vote!”
“You know,” Sarge observed, “I never really comprehended how terrifying Jurassic Park was until now.”
“Less talking,” Sport cut in, “More walking. You really want to be standing here if that thing comes back?”
The five shared a glance and in moments they were heading against the flow of the river. The group moved silently, nervously keeping an eye out for anything dangerous. It was slow going. The banks of the stream were rocky and they had to be careful to avoid stepping on anything sharp.
“Hold on!”
Everyone froze, tense and react to react before turning to Violet who’d crouched down by the river bed. In her hands was a small piece of grey stone.
“What the hell?” Sport demanded, “Why the hell are you stopping to look at rocks?”
The girl ignored him and placed the rock down, then she picked up another rock and smashed it into the first.
Carefully the picked up the rock she’d smashed and looked over it, running her finger along the edge before pulling away with a small yelp and sticking the digit in her mouth.
“Something wrong?” Doc asked.
“No. Something important,” She looked over and up, holding out the fragment for inspection.
She offered up the rock and he took it from here as Pops and sarge gathered around. He wasn’t a real expert in geology so he looked towards the more experienced survivalists in the group.
Sarge took it from him and glanced over it. “This is flint,” he pronounced after a moment’s examination.
She grinned. “I know! And there might be more of it around here! Do you have any idea what kind of a find this is?”
“Not really,” Sport replied, crossing his arms. He looked annoyed but at least he wasn’t going off on anyone.
“I think we need to start keeping an eye out,” she replied, “I mean believe it or not, finding a decent source of flint was really important to paleolithic peoples. Sometimes you’d actually find trade routes where the local Hunter Gatherers had imported flint from hundreds of miles away! If there’s a good deposit around here, we’re set for tools and weapons!”
Doc smiled and gave her a pat on the shoulder and a friendly smile. “Good job. You said paleo was your thing, right?”
She nodded. “Well, the study of it at least. Don’t know much about practical skills...”
“That’s what we’re for,” Pops cut in, “Sarge and I, we have the skills and we can teach. You knew how people lived in the distant past. You can be taught, and honestly, you probably know a lot more than you think you do.“
She flushed.
“Yeah,” Doc added, “You’re the one we’re going to be turning for when we need to figure out a long term solution.”
“Hey, hold on about that long term shit...” Sport snapped, “I ain’t living here.”
Doc couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Stop fooling yourself. We’re not even the same people anymore and I don’t think this is a theme park. I don’t know who or what sent us here, but whatever it is, I think it’s for keeps.”
“We can talk about that later,” Sarge cut in, “If we can find a way to get rescued, great, if not we’re going to have to adapt. But right now that is immaterial. Right now, we have to keep our eye on the task: staying alive. And in survival you have to prepare for every eventuality.”
He looked over to Sport. “Right now we’re a unit, a team. We have to depend on each other. You know what its like. You drop the ball, you lose the game. Only here, if you lose, you die.”
Sport glared at the other man, and for a moment Doc wondered if he was going to take a swing. But shockingly he simply sighed. “Yeah, I get it, doesn’t mean I like it.”
He paused and frowned, “But these two better not leave me to carry all their damned slack.”
Doc frowned. Look who’s talking, jackass.
Psyckosama- Admin
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Re: Trapped in the Jurassic
by Psyckosama Fri May 02, 2014 3:42 am
Julia Ann “Violet” Roberts
Time: The Late Jurassic, Day 1, Mid Afternoon
Location: Along a Stream
Again Juile sighed and looked upstream. She wasn’t in any way, shape or form a geologist, though she had to admit, she probably knew more than most average people. You didn’t study ancient people without knowing where they were going and why they were going there. That said, the people she was with were hardly average. Pops had lots of experience, Sarge was military, and Doc at least came off as being pretty well read. The only one who didn’t seem to know anything about anything was Sport.
Anyways, the reason this at all important was she was starting to notice a subtle change in biome. The trees were getting a little thinner, the water was getting faster, and the ground was getting steeper. They were about to reach a bend and she honestly hoped that around it would be something different than the same trees and rocky dirt.
“Pops,” she asked looking to the other woman, “You think we’re getting into the foothills?”
It was ironic. Even though the other woman had been a man earlier that day, she still felt more comfortable talking to her than the men. Normally she’d have been intimidated by the other woman’s beauty, but she’d walked out of whatever had been done to them just as incredible to look out. Plus there was the fact that she could look at her without seeing a giant dong waving about.
“Yes,” was the gruff reply. “Once the trees thin out a bit more we might be able to find somewhere we can get a good vantage point.”
She nodded. “I hope we find something good soon.”
“So do I,” Pops replied, “Otherwise we’re going to have to start looking to find some shelter and build a fire.”
“Fire?” Sport interrupted, earning a little more of her ire. “Does that mean we’re gonna get some food?”
“We’ll have to figure out what’s edible first,” Sarge replied, “Don’t know the flora and fauna of the area.”
“We’re probably going be going hungry tonight,” Doc added, “Food’s pretty low on the priority list.”
“What could be more important than food?” Sport wondered.
“Shelter, fire, water,” Sarge replied, “You can go up to a week without food before you start to slow down, but only three days without water.”
“Oh,” he shrugged, “Guess we’re lucky we have the stuff in our pouches.”
“We’re going to want to be careful with that,” Doc cut in. “We very well might not want to eat it.”
Sport blinked. “You crazy?”
Sarge looked over. “Hold up. I’m sure you probably have a reason for saying that, because not taking advantage of even a small resource like this would be foolish in this situation.”
He nodded. “Some of these might be modern sources. A lot of modern plants aren’t going to evolve for millions of years. Hell, it won’t be for almost a hundred million years before even grasses start to show up. If we have seeds and nuts from something modern, we plant it we don’t eat it.”
That was actually a pretty good point.If it wasn’t modern stuff, then it was probably current. And it was obvious a ration pack. Her eyes widened. One full of things they could actually eat.
“Even if its not we don’t want to eat it yet,” she added.
Pops raised an eyebrow. “You got a reason for that?”
She nodded. “Yeah. If this is stuff we can find around here, and its food... well... it might be a good idea to. Um...”
“To spend some time studying it so we can remember what’s actually edible,” Sarge completed.
She simply nodded.
As they moved, Sarge walked up next to her,making her blush a bit. After all, he looked good and they were still naked. Getting a hot guy’s attention at all in this situation was bound to cause all kinds of blood flow. “Good call there.”
Her blush grew under the positive attention. “I-it was just obvious,” she muttered.
“Don’t sell yourself short, Violet You know your stuff,” he calmly stated.
She lowered her head and smiled. Being praised felt good.
Slowly she settled into a step next to him and they just walked, occasionally stealing a glance at the man next to her. Good god was he pretty.
It was a few minutes later that they reached the bend, and what she saw on the other side took her breath away.
Unlike the winding forested streams they’d been walking through up to this point, here the water ran through a clearing and for the first time they got a good look at the area around them. In the far distance there stood an imposing mountain range with various craggy foothill all around them
It was beautiful. Terrifying but beautiful.
“Looks like a good climb,” Pops whispered.
“Lets find something close and start towards it,” Sarge said calmly.
“Shouldn’t we start thinking about shelter?” Doc asked.
“We need to keep moving,” he replied, “If we see a target of opportunity, a good location with natural cover and protection, we take it. If not, we’ll go on for another hour or two and find somewhere to settle in.”
Doc nodded. Violet on the other hand took a deep breath.
“Guys, I need to slip away for a moment,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I’ve got to... um... use the bushes.”
It was a lie. She never was comfortable with people and now she’d spent the last however many hours naked with strangers after staring down a massive predator with a mouth as big as her upper body. And that was after god knows how many hours trapped in that damned aircraft.
The fact was that while she needed to relieve herself, it wasn’t in the way she had lead them to believe. What she needed was some time to decompress. A chance to close her eyes and take a breath without having someone else watching her.
“Be my guest,” Pops replied calmly.
“Take this,” Sarge replied, handing her his large stick. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was at least something.
She nodded and started off going up what seemed to be a small feeder stream that ran back into some of the tree cover. The water was clear and fast moving, maybe 15 foot wide and barely above knee height at its deepest. Pretty. The kind of thing she liked to watch on the nature channel, though probably not visit.
She walked for five, ten minutes just clearing her mind. One of the things she’d learned early on to deal with her social anxiety was meditation. Sometimes she’d just retreat into a corner out of immediate view and clear her mind to push out some of the stress.
To be honest, she walked for maybe a little longer than she should have. the sides of the earth were quickly becoming higher. Not too high, about chest height and probably caused by periodic flooding. This stream bank wasn’t a safe place to be during a storm.
She was about ready to turn about when she heard a sound. Rushing water.
It was then, against her better instincts that she decided to carry onward.
She walked another five or so minutes before coming upon a large bluff that had been concealed by the trees. The sound had been coming from a small waterfall coming off of the cliff. And next to that waterfall she saw what probably had to be the most beautiful thing she’d seen all day.
“Target spotted,” she muttered to herself as she turned around and started back in a light jog, going just slow enough not to accidentally trip over a rock.
It wasn’t long, only a couple minutes before she ran back into the group.
Doc was looking nervous. Sport was looking board. Sarge was looking tense. And Pops? Pops was just furious.
“What the hell is the big idea running off like that, girl?!”
Yes. It was a bad idea. One she’d made worse by going on after she realize she’d been away too long. But you know what, fuck it. She’d centered herself a bit and found something awesome.
So it was according to that train of thought that she smiled brilliantly and pointed back along the brook and said what at this particular moment in time was quite possibly the most wonderful words in the english language.
“Cave!”
Chuck “Pops” Harrison
Time: The Late Jurassic, Day 1, Late Afternoon.
Location: Outside of the Cave
What a beautiful location.
That was the first thing Chuck thought when he first laid eyes on the cave that Violet had found.
Tropical looking tree ferns, a cascading waterfall, a larger pool, and water so clear you could see the bottom. And a large, inviting cave, just waiting to be explored. It was like something out of a travel brochure.
When they’d figured out she’d wandered off, he’d wanted to strangle the girl. If she’d needed some time to breath or something, she could have just said so. People need privacy. He knew that more than most. He’d moved to the middle of nowhere to get the hell away from people. And now more than any other he needed some alone time to just rage. To just look at the sky and scream and maybe beat something with a stick.
If what Doc was yapping on about was right, and they needed to live like cavemen, then by God he’d vent like a damned caveman!
He sighed. But first they needed to investigate the place.
“So, Sarge, what are you thinking?”
Ben glanced over. “You’re asking me, old man?”
He nodded. “While I’ve gone spelunking a couple of times, God only knows what’s living in there. You’re the one who’s fought in close quarters.”
“Yeah,” he his grandson replied, “But that was with modern weapons and a trained team. All I’ve got here are sticks and stones.”
“You can do a lot with sticks and stones,” Doc commented, “And besides, its not like you’re going to be dealing with dinosaurs with AK47s.”
Ben frowned for a moment and then nodded. “Alright. Sport, Pops, grab something from the brush. Anything you can use as a weapon.”
Chuck frowned for a moment, which in all honesty was his immediate response to damned near everything, and turned to his task. He walked into the brush for a moment before coming upon something that looked like it would work.
A fallen pine branch maybe about six foot long. Casually he picked it up and looked over it before beginning to strip off the various needle bearing twigs. The wood was a bit rough to the touch, and probably would need the bark stripped if he was going to use it for any length of time, but for this moment it would be alright.
He just needed to make a single modification. It’s end was a natural taper ending in a split as it divided into two lesser branches. He could do something with this.
Calmly, he reached into his bag and withdrew the hand axe they’d been given. Calmly he tested the end with his thumb and found it much to his surprise to be wildly sharp. Thankful that he didn’t draw any blood he took it in hand and studied it for a moment.
The one end was blunt for holding, one for cutting.
Alright.
Calmly he grasped it and began to whittle away at the tapered end of the branch, transforming it from a blunt end into a wicked tip. This was a softwood though and it wouldn’t hold for long. Thankfully though , it didn’t have to. He just needed it to last long enough to jab it into whatever could be inside.
It was about five minutes after he’d entered the wood that he emerged with his newly crafted short spear in hand. Ben was standing ready with his slightly more substantial weapon which he’d recovered from Violet. Sport had also returned before she had, holding a large branch that ended in a vicious looking knot. An effective club if she’d ever seen one.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked.
Ben looked over to Sport and said, “First priority is nobody gets hurt. I was soldier and this is what I do. Can I trust you to do exactly what you’re told?”
Sport looked thoughtful for a moment. “You’re not going to do anything crazy, right?”
“Probably not,” he replied, “But if I do you need to trust that I have my reasons.”
The young punk stood in place for a moment, eyes locked with his grandson. Both of them had a hard challenging expression. Then Sport smiled. “Alright, dude. I got your back.”
“And you’ll obey my orders?”
Sport sighed. “As long as there ain’t a dinosaur running up our asses, I might ask what the heck, but yeah. I got you. This is your game and I’m just playing. You’re the captain here.”
“No I’m not,” Ben replied with a smirk, “I worked for a living.”
“So what’s the plan?” Sport asked
“I’ll take point. You have my back. Pops’ll take up the rear and Doc and Violet will keep watch outside. Everybody got it?”
“Sure thing, Cap!” Sport exclaimed, earning a small glare from his grandson.
“That’s Sarge...”
Pops chuckled at the wide grin on the young man’s face.
“You’re just going to call him Cap until we stop calling you Sport, aren’t you?”
His smile grew. “Yep!”
Pops shook his head and then shot the boy a warning glare. “You try calling me some cutesy, girly name and I swear that I will stab you.”
“So you don’t want to be named Daisy?” he asked with fax innocence.
He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “What did I just tell you?”
Sport laughed and glanced over to Ben. “We doing this or what?”
His grandson grunted in annoyance and motioned for them to follow. Together the three approached the entrance but Ben stopped them before they reached it, earning a look from Sport, though he kept his mouth shut.
“Alright. We’re going to do things by the numbers,” he began. “I take the lead and Sport’ll stay behind me. When we move I want you to stand close to me at a 45 degree angle to my left. That way if anything attacks me it wouldn’t reach us both at the same time and you’ll be able to move around to attack it.”
“Got it.”
“Pops. I want you to walk behind me, moving backwards to watch the rear. When we enter the two of us are going to take up the close side side, while I want you to move over to the far side. We’re both going to look in and if we don’t see anything we move in using the pattern I just described. If we run into something, you support me on the right. If there’s another chamber we repeat the process until its too dark to see.”
“Shouldn’t we get torches or something?” Sport asked.
“Yes,” Ben replied, “We will be going deeper later to explore it, but right now we need to know if the entrance is clear. Starting a fire isn’t easy and we need to know it we can bed down here before we go through the trouble.”
“So what if we do find something?”
“If we can kill it without endangering ourselves, its dinner. If not, we back off and make a new plan, got it?”
Sport nodded.
“Alright, lets move!”
The trio quickly moved to the mouth of the cave. As directed, Chuck rushed over to the far side and readied his spear. Then, he and Ben both looked inside. Chuck narrowed his eyes trying to see as much as he could, though the cave was extremely dark.
He didn’t see anything. Just the vague outline of the interior. Looking over he saw Ben shake his head.
“Can’t really see,” he admitted. “Going to throw in a rock and see if there is any movement.”
He nodded to his grandchild who patted Sport on the shoulder and pointed back. The young man frowned but did as he was directed, returning with a large fist sized stone that he passed to Ben.
Ben underhand threw it into the entrance where it bounced about for a moment, with both keeping an eye out for any movement.
There was none.
And if there was anything in there it knew they were coming.
“Alright,” Ben said after a short wait. “Lets go.”
He entered first, his spear held at the ready with Sport following behind him.
As directed, Pops took up the rear, making sure nothing passed behind them.
The lack of light kept them from moving too deeply but they were able to at least make out the main chamber. It was comfortably large, over 20 feet wide and at least twice as long. The chamber narrowed in the rear before moving into what looked like a tunnel that vanished into the darkness.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“We’re clear,” Ben replied.
Pops nodded and walked over to the entrance. He looked out to see Doc and Violet sitting by the water.
The man seemed to have his feet dangling in the clear, running water while they girl was splashing herself and wiping it through her hair.
“Hey,” he called out. “You’re not drinking that are you?”
She jumped a bit. “Um, no...”
“Everything safe up there?” Doc asked.
Pops nodded. “We’re clear. Come on up!”
Doc lept to his feet and offered a hand to Violet, like a gentleman should. The girl took it and he all but pulled her off of the ground with a yelp.
“Sorry!” he said after she’d settled herself. “Still not quite used to my own strength.”
She smiled. It was a pretty smile, Pops had to admit. “No worries.”
Pops slipped back into the cave rather than wait for them and found a nice dark spot to sit back. It was pretty hot out, at least to someone who was used to living just south of the arctic circle. The cave on the other hand was relatively dry and cool, and the cold rocks just leached the excess heat out of his body.
He closed his eyes and permitted himself a smile. It was a good place to relax.
“Wow, this is like the Ritz!”
He cracked an eye and looked out to see Doc and Violet standing in the entrance looking downright spellbound.
Doc smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “Good call, Violet. Good call.”
“So what now?” asked Sport.
Chuck glanced over to see Ben shooting him a glance. Even though it wasn’t the same face, it was an expression he knew well. It was the one he made when he was letting him take over.
He groaned and stood up, stretching his back and discovering quite awkwardly, that his new body was almost freakishly limber.
“First step,” he said after a moment. “We get a fire going. Then we can worry about making this place more habitable.”
“What about water?” he asked. “I need a drink.”
“Not sure about drinking from these falls without boiling it. We’ll want to look upstream a bit to make sure its clean. But right now we bundle down here and try and make things comfortable.”
Doc nodded. “Take it we’re still going to the mountains? Get the lay of the land and all that?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’d say so. Though we can wait a couple days until we’ve got this place worth coming back to.”
“We’re going to want to look for the source of that flint, too,” Violet added.
“In due time,” he replied, “For now, time to give you kids a bushcraft lesson.”
Doc
Time: Late Jurassic, Day 1, Early Evening.
Location: Outside The Cave
For the past hour or so, their little impromptu band had been scouring the area around the pool and stream for the resources at hand.
Along with Violet and Sport, he’d been sent to gather firewood while Pops and Sarge went for tinder and investigated other more esoteric survival needs like fathering resin and looking for plants that might yield a decent fiber for cordage.
At least that had been the original plan. Just a couple minutes ago Violet had asked to bow out so she could rinse off in the pool. Considering that she’d put in a respectable effort, nobody had the heart to deny her. Besides, she had the body of a lightly bronzed valkyrie, any chance to see her frolicking in the water was not to be missed.
“So, think we have enough yet?” Doc asked as he carried another load of dead wood up to the mouth of the cave.
“Almost!” replied the other sex goddess of the group. Except instead of having the mind of a mild manner graduate student, this one had the mind of a grizzled, foul tempered, and utterly abrasive but somehow kind of awesome old man. “Always better to have too much wood than not enough.”
Doc nodded and glanced down at the forest edge to Sport who was also coming up with a large armful of wood. One larger than his he had to observe. That said, while he was big, probably over six feet, Sport was just downright huge.
“This sucks,” he muttered as he walked up the short path of the cave.
“Get used to it,” Doc replied.
The big man’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, just because you think we’re stuck here doesn’t mean I’m giving up.”
“Hey!” Pops cut in. “If you got the breath to bellyache, then how about you two drop off that load and get over here! Found something that could be useful.”
Violet looked up from her spot in the water and turned towards the other woman. “Um, do you need another set of hands?”
Pops thought for a moment and shook his head. “Nah, you did alright girl. You put in your fair share and earned your break. Hell, I’ll probably be joining you once we’re finish.”
Sport grinned. “Yeah, me too.”
Pop’s eyes narrowed. “Like hell you will. You wait.”
“What, not like I have to worry about seeing you naked or anything...”
“It’s the principle of the thing...”
Sport rolled his eyes. “Yes, mother...”
“Remember that discussion we had about me stabbing you? I want you to think on that real hard.”
Doc shook his head and completed his trek into the cave. Thankfully the walk up was not so steep as to make walking difficult and the entrance large enough to allow them to pass through without too much difficult.
Already the interior had undergone something of a transformation. Amazingly, after a cursory examination they’d found a second tunnel leading out of the main chamber, this one in the ceiling itself. Hoping that it had an outside outlet, and thus would make for a natural chimney, their mantel had been placed under it. They’d know after they lit it. Though this also did give him a strong reminder as to how caves really looked.
Unlike in roleplaying games, caves were not convenient flat level dungeons, they were chaotic twisting passages that went up and down, left and right shaped entirely by the ebb of the rock, the flow of the water, and the twist of the Earth. It was easy to get lost and easy to get yourself killed, especially if you were navigating with no light. Sure as hell discouraged any desire to explore deeper without a light source.
Speaking of which, a convenient located cave that seemed to be perfectly habitable right now to what just might be built in chimney. Something about this was all too convenient. Whoever planted them here wanted them, and if not them, then probably someone to find it.
To say it irked him would be something of understatement. He’d rather be here than back home living that non-life, but whomever did it had an agenda and what that was he could only imagine. But the simple fact was that this cave was perfect, and he had the feeling that if they went deeper in it would prove to be even more perfect. This was a gift horse they couldn’t afford to look in the mouth.
Still didn’t mean he’d wander around without a torch or something. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
He roughly dumped the wood into the pile and spent a moment glancing at their efforts. This was probably enough for several nights. Not bad, he had to admit.
Who knows, if they were able to survive that long, maybe they could upgrade a bit. Might not be able to pull off Bamboo Technology, but they had plenty of pine...
“Hey,” Sport snapped, interrupting his thought processes, “Stop dicking around and move.”
Doc nodded and followed the jock outside where he saw Pops’ shapely form waiting besides the pond with her normal scowl on her face.
“Took you two long enough,” she muttered.
“What do you need?” Doc asked.
She jerked her head towards the woods and started walking off with an entrancing wiggle to her bottom that had Doc struggling to keep his eyes up. Damn, they needed to make some clothing fast.
He glanced over to Sport who unlike himself was not fighting his baser instincts and said, “Stop gawking, start moving.”
“Um, yeah. Right.”
Pops glanced back to glare for a moment before continuing onwards.
What she led them to made Doc blink. Several large piles of cut leaves.
“The hell is this?” Sport wondered. “I thought you were calling us over to carry something heavy or something.”
Pop’s eyes darkened. “No, just wanted to save myself a couple trips. What, are you saying I’m weak?”
“He’d probably just saying you’re the smallest member of the party,” Doc replied wishing to avoid a confrontation, “And don’t give me that look. Even Violet is bigger than you.”
Pops frowned for a moment then shrugged. “Alright. From you, I’ll take it. You’ve got a point.”
Doc smiled then glanced around a bit. “Hold on, wait. Where’s Sarge.”
Pops paused for a moment. “We found what looks like a small path to the top of the bluff. He wanted to check it out.”
“I thought you said wandering off wasn’t safe?” Sport remarked, “You were about ready to rip Violet’s head off there for a moment.”
“He’s armed and agreed not to go to far. He’s just talking a look from the top and seeing if anything turns up.”
“So, you find what you’re looking for?” Doc asked.
Pops nodded. “Some of these plants look like they’ll give good fiber and you can’t piss around these parts on a tree without getting some pine resin wet. Got a good pile of leaves ready to make cordage on tonight. Might even make it a teaching experience.”
“Sounds good,” Doc replied, hefting one of the large bales of leaves and debris. “Going to need another trip for this stuff?”
“Probably not,” she replied, “Sarge said he’d get some it on his his way back.”
Doc nodded and waved weakly with a hand. “Well then, lead the way.”
Pops nodded and walked off, unwittingly giving the pair a comfortable view of her wonderful butt.
I’m probably going to hell for this, said a small part of his mind. But fuck it, live while you can. Besides, whatever dumped them here made them look like fitness model porn stars for a reason. What that was, he didn’t know, but you know what, he was okay with that.
Pops looked over her shoulder. “You lookin’ at my ass?”
“W-what? No!” Sport exclaimed maybe a bit too quickly.
Doc said nothing.
Pops eyes narrowed in on Sport. “I told you to stop looking at my ass.”
Sport sighed and looked into the trees before Pops turned back around and continued to the clearing.
On the top of the bluff he saw Sarge standing maybe about sixty feet above them. He was on the edge of the cliff looking down, his arms crossed and a wide smile on his face.
“So what are we looking at?” Pops called up.
“This waterfall comes out of a spring about a thirty feet from the waterfall! It looks like it should be safe to drink!”
“Well hot damn!” Pops laughed. “Looks like we won’t be needing to look for a way to boil after all!”
Sport sighed in relief. “Does this mean I can get a drink now?”
“Go right ahead!” Pops replied as she placed her load on the ground and strode into the water to get a well earned drink.
Doc though just frowned. Convenient. Way too convenient.
Benjamin “Sarge” Harrison
Time: Early Evening, Day 1
Place: The Cave
It was already starting to get dark, Ben thought to himself as he walked inside the cave. They’d waited maybe a bit too long to get the fire started and he could only hope that they could get one going in these conditions.
They were lucky to have flint and iron. He’d have hated to try a friction fire in these conditions. Or rather he’d have hated to have the old man try one in these conditions. Pops was always better with the bow drill than he was. Calmly he say down next to the entrance, in the last faiding light of the sun and readiest his tinder bundle.
It was a mix of bark and needles taken from fallen pine branches. All of it was dry, all of it was ready. It was about as ideal a firestarter mix you could get without turning to more modern materials such as cotton balls and petroleum jelly.
Taking a deep breath, he took his piece of flint and the iron marcasite and struck them together in hopes of creating a spark.
Nothing.
He frowned somewhat but didn’t let it bother him. Firestarting was difficult and iron oxidized in open air. He’d probably have to do this a dozen times before he got a spark and probably at least a dozen more before it landed where he wanted and actually caught.
So he struck again. And again. And again.
Until he got a spark.
And the tinder went up like it had been soaked in mineral spirits.
“The hell?” he exclaimed. Frantically, he scooped up the burning tinder ball and carried it to the hearth. It was burning rapidly, very rapidly. Not so rapidly that he wouldn’t make it, but much faster than he’d ever expected.
He dumped in unceremoniously in their firepit and began to lay down dried twigs, which caught fire extremely quickly, and before long he was laying branches on an already roaring fire.
“What the hell was that,” he muttered sharing a look with Pops.
“I have no idea,” Pops replied with a sigh.
Doc frowned for a moment and looked into the brightly glowing flames before turning back to the others. “Hm,” he grumbled under his breath, drawing attention to himself.
“You know something,” Pops asked in a tone that sounded eerily seductive.
He resisted the urge to shudder. Creepy.
Doc looked over and nodded. “Oxygen levels,” he said calmly, “Much higher oxygen levels. In the ‘present day’ oxygen levels are actually at the lowest they’ve been for over 200 million years. In the Jurassic,” he paused, “The right now, they’re much higher. Maybe even as high as thirty percent or more.”
“How the hell do you know all this stuff,” Ben muttered. Seriously, the guy was like an endless font of trivia.
“I read,” Doc replied, “A lot.”
Ben frowned. Okay. Well he guessed that explained it.
Well. That was as much evidence as anything else he’d seen. A part of him was hoping that this was some kind of Jurassic Park. But now, but now he had to face the facts. They really were stranded in the long ago, far away from everything and everyone they’d ever known. Well, the rest of them. At least he had his grandfather.
Kind of.
He’d always dreamed of saying to hell with the world and just getting away from it all. It’s why he’d moved up north with his homesteading grandfather. But this? This was maybe a bit more over the top than he’d ever wanted. Or imagined possible for that matter.
You know what. He wasn’t going to even think about this mess right now. Better for his sanity.
“So I guess we’re going to need more wood,” he observed after a short pause. “Good thing we got plenty.”
The entire group slowly fell silent. He could tell that Pops also was thinking about the implications of what they’d just said, while Violet seemed to have shrunk into herself. Again. As for Sport, the jackass had done little more than finding a nice place for his sleeping... um... nest, and laid down, seemingly ignoring the whole exchange.
While softer than the ground, just a pile of leaves didn’t look to comfortable in the long run. They’d really have to look into rigging up some amenities. While they didn’t exactly have high technology available they did have the experience of an advanced culture and he was sure they could come up with something to make this more livable.
In the meantime though, he’d look into making his equipment more useful. That meant upgrating from sharp stick to fire-hardened spear. Sadly though, he wasn’t at a glut for options.
Right now all they had as far as the eye could see was pine trees. While he’d never actually fire hardened anything, he had a feeling that he would do much better with some nice oak, walnut, or maple. That said, beggars can’t be choosers and you got to work with what you’ve got.
With that thought running through his mind, he placed his spear’s tip over the fire and let it sit, slowly turning it.
He did notice, with a little bit of amusement that he wasn’t the only one who’d decided to put their time to better use. Pops was sitting on the other side of the fire braiding cordage.
It made him laugh. It was really an indication of their personalities what they turned to first. Here he was, the Army Ranger, trying to make himself a weapon while Pops was making rope. The old man was a true mountaineer.
“What are you doing?”
Sarge glanced over to Violet who was looking at him with her head just slightly cocked. While he was the type of man who always tried to maintain objectivity he couldn’t help but notice how the light of the fire danced off her blonde hair and slightly bronzed skin, reflecting the generous curves of her body.
It made his throat almost go dry.
Yipe!
“I’m,” he coughed, “I’m fire hardening this spear.”
Or at least I’m trying, he amended mentally.
“Have you ever done it before?” she asked.
“No,” he admitted after a moment, “Why?”
“Because I think you’re doing it wrong,” she replied.
“Really?” he asked. While the girl didn’t have much experience, he knew that, he was never the type to ignore a suggestion made in good faith. Not only was it rude, but at the same time every once in a while something shockingly relevant would come from the mouths of babes.
“What makes you say that,” he continued.
“I don’t think it should be smoking.”
It was with a red face that he’d actually yelped, pulling his spear from the flame. The tip was charred and blackened by heat, letting off a small trail of smoke. He wasn’t quite sure what fire hardening required as he’d only ever read about it, but he knew that reducing it to char was probably not the way to go.
Though he honestly hadn’t expected it to burn so soon. The reasoning though was rather clear. He wasn’t used to everything being so flammable He’d failed to take that into account. He was just lucky that she’d been watching. Another minute or two and he’d have been holding a torch.
“You ever done this before?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, but I’ve seen it done.”
Well, he’d just read about it so that gave her a leg up. “Alright,” he asked, “What am I doing wrong?”
She flushed and lowered her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No,” he replied, “I’ve read about it but never seen it done. What did they show you.”
She thought for a and moved moved over and sat closer to him. “Well,” she said after a moment, “I think the first problem is that you’re holding it too close to the fire.”
Obviously.
“You need to clean off the char and the bark. He said it had to be clean wood at the point and a bit behind it.”
He nodded. Sounded logical. The wood was harder than the bark and work put into heating the bark could have gone into the wood. “What else?”
She paused for a moment. “I’m not sure. It’s been a little while and I need to try and remember.”
Ben nodded to the girl. She was actually trying to contribute and that was a good thing. The more he could encourage that the better.
In the meantime he looked back over the fire and smiled. Doc was sitting next to his grandfather fumbling with some fiber.
“I just can’t seem to get it,” Doc muttered, as an attempt at cordage literally unravel in his hands.
“That’s because you keep twisting it wrong,” he replied, “You keep twisting it towards you then bending it towards you. It doesn’t have any tension.”
Pops spat on her hand and rolled up a couple lengths of fiber and holding them up so Doc could see. “Remember, twist away from yourself. Then bend it over and towards you. You could do it the other way, but that lifts the bottom strand up and makes it easier. Then just pinch it so it doesn’t unravel, take the new top strand, and do it again. Away and towards, Away and towards. Away and towards. You get me?”
Doc nodded. “I think so.”
“Good, now show me. If you can get this right, maybe I’ll show you how to make three-ply.”
Ben smiled and looked away. Well, it seemed that everyone was trying to make themselves useful.
He glanced back to Sport who was laying down a little ways away and frowned.
Well, almost everyone.
“I think I remember.”
He looked back to her and nodded. “Alright, shoot.”
“Well, you have to hold it over the fire but can’t let it burn. If it starts to turn black, you’re doing it wrong. Just keep it over the fire and turn it for about... twenty minutes? Well, do it for that then let it rest a little and do it again. Maybe do two spears at once?” she shrugged. “He said it takes a while. That’s what I can remember.”
“Well, I guess that’ll help,” he replied meaning every word. He’d have to scrape the char off this one but with some time and effort they’d be well on their way to having weapons. Weapons which meant defense at the least and ideally, meat.
He was already feeling a bit hungry and some meat would help a lot.
“Do a couple fishing gigs while you’re at it,” Pops called over the fire. “This stream has to have something worth eating in it.”
He nodded. Good idea.
“So, what are you planning on doing with all that rope?” he asked.
“Traps,” was Pops reply. “Has to be something we can snare around here.”
He nodded and went back to his self appointed task. After a moment he glanced over to Violet.
“Why don’t you work on one too. Two people means twice as fast.”
She nodded lightly. “A-alright.”
“Good,” Pops cut in, “Maybe if we’re lucky we might be eating something tomorrow.”
Ben smiled. Some food would be nice. Though it did make him wonder one thing.
It Jurassic Park was right and birds evolved from dinosaurs... did that mean dinosaur tastes like chicken?
Jordan “Sport” Mitchell
Time: Day 2, Morning
Location: The Waterfall
Jordan wasn’t the type to gripe about discomfort. He saw himself as the kind of guy who could take his lumps with a smile. In fact, you could even say he liked pain and that it reflected in everything he did. He loved the fury of a good brawl. He craved the burn of a hard workout. Pain was even his favorite flavor, for he loved nothing more than to drowned everything he ate in hot sauce so potent that he had to sign a waver to buy it.
To him pain was a challenge to overcome, one that separated men from boys. He craved that challenge, he thirsted for it. It was why he loved football. To him it wasn’t just about beating the other guys, it was about overcoming his own weakness. To charge into a dozen other men, to be ground into the earth, to taste blood and grass, pain and fear. To be brought low, only to stand up and prove yourself to be the better man through skill, strategy, and pure fucking guts.
That was what it meant to be a man, and that was probably why he was in such a foul mood.
Jordan wasn’t feeling very manly right now. In fact, he felt kind of like a bitch.
He didn’t like to gripe about discomfort, but frankly last night had blown serious monkey balls. Considering how hot and shitty it was during the day, he was honestly stunned how cold and shitty it was at night. The fire had been a mixed blessing because instead of keeping him warm, it had made half of him hot while the other half had stayed cold. On top of that, while they were better than nothing, the leaves Pops had gathered hadn’t been good for much. And he’d probably been lying on a rock.
He probably hadn’t slept a wink, and on top of that, he was getting hungry.
“This shit sucks,” he muttered, throwing a stone across the shallow pool. It hit the water with a small splash and sunk to the bottom.
“You’re doing it wrong.”
Jordan glanced up to see Pops standing over him.
If he’d told himself this time yesterday that he’d ever be able to sit next to a woman that hot completely bare ass naked and wish more than anything that they had pants on, he’d have thought you were out of your mind. But here he was, looking right at the good. And they were sure as hell some nice goods, yet all he really wanted was some to cover up with.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he muttered. Seriously, you could throw a rock into the water wrong? The fuck?
Pops smiled and crouched down, looking over the rocks on the ground before finding on that clearly struck her fancy. Then she gave it a strong side arm throw with a sharp flick of the wrist. The stone bounced several times before sinking.
He blinked. He’d never seen anyone skip a rock before. That was actually kind of cool.
“If you’re going to skip rocks you’ve got to put your wrist into it. Give it the right throw,” she paused, “That was what you were trying to do, right Sport?”
Jordan’s face flushed slightly. He hated that name. His grandfather had called him Sport when he was a little kid. Well, none of them were his grandfather and he wasn’t six anymore. It just pissed him off. “The fuck are you talking about?” he snapped.
“Well, if you weren’t skipping rocks then you were sitting here feeling sorry about yourself. And if that’s that, then maybe we should see if there’s some way we can change up because I think this form suits you a hell of a lot better than me.”
Without thinking he clenched his jaw and fists, resisting the very real urge to smack the smug look off of her face. Unless she was armed or knew Kung-Fu or something like that, he wouldn’t lay hands on a girl. Not even one with the mind of a nasty old man. It was the principle of the thing.
“You calling me a bitch?” he growled.
“Nah,” she replied, “Just giving you some rock skipping advice. Why? You got a problem?”
There was a pregnant pause between them before Pops said, “This is the part where you say what's on your mind and I give you some damned advice,” he paused, “Or at least that’s what I remember from the goddamn movies.”
He sat in place for a long moment before chuckling. “Slept like shit and I’m hungry. Those leaves you grabbed didn’t make much of a bed.”
“Didn’t mean for it to,” was the response, which made him blink.
“Then why bother?”
“Because almost nothing’ll sap the heat from you faster than cold rock on naked flesh. Point wasn’t to make a cushion, point was to provide some insulation.”
“Oh,” was Jordan’s only reply.
“If you want to catch some sleep, I suggest you wait for later in the day, find a nice warm spot, and steal a nap because until we come up with some kind of beds, we are not going to be resting easy.”
“So who’s idea was this?” he asked after a moment, “I mean, somebody had to have sent you over, right?”
Pops snorted. “What, don’t think I can be nice?”
Jordan wasn’t even going to dignify that with an answer. He just shot her a look. A look that if looks could talk would have said a thousand worlds, and every one of them would have been ‘Bullshit’.
Pops chuckled in amusement. “Sarge picked up on it, but it was Doc’s idea to send me over. Said a pretty face might have better luck getting through to you.”
Her amusement faded. “Pretty face. Damn it, I’m spend years making sure I was the most foul humored prickly old bastard in three counties so people’d leave me the hell alone. Now I’m the pretty one who gets sent to make folk feel better about themselves when they’re in a funk,” she snorted, “Talk about long years of wasted effort....”
He shrugged. “Could be worse.”
Pops turned on him, her eyes wide and her teeth clenched. “I got tits, boy. Tits! And everything that goes with ‘em, how the hell could this be worse.”
“Right now you’ve got this whole hot, dark and dangerous look going. You could have easily woken up some little ginger Irish girl who looks like an elf.”
Pops scowled.
“Or maybe some delicate asian lilly...”
Make that grimaced.
He smiled. “Oh, I know! A prima ballerina!”
“Shut up!” Pops growled. “You made your damned point.”
“So what are we doing about food?”
“This,” Pops replied before handing him a spear.
It had a single sharpened point on one end and was slit into a sharpened four way prong on the other.
“The hell is this?”
“Fishing gig for dealing with anything small and fast. Spear point’s in case you see anything bigger or run into trouble.” Pops grinned. “Well, we’re going to set up some traps and see if we can find any fish in yonder stream. How you feel about some spear fishing, boy?”
He smirked as he accepted the weapon.
Spear fishing. Man versus fish in a battle to the death. If you win, it dies, you eat. If it wins, it lives, you go hungry. Speed versus speed, skill versus instinct. You know, that actually had sounded kind of cool...
Psyckosama- Admin
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Re: Trapped in the Jurassic
by Psyckosama Tue Jun 03, 2014 8:31 am
Chuck “Pops” Harrison
Time: Day 2, Mid Day
Location: Next to the Stream
“Damn it,” Chuck cursed as his quarry swept past him. The fish was small, silvery, and had an unerring resemblance to the herring of modern day. It was also tricky. Obnoxiously tricky.
He stepped back and took a deep breath and rubbed at his throat for a moment. While they were lucky enough to have a safe water source, it was not exactly next door, and after a couple hours wandering he was starting to build up a thirst. Coming up with some way to transport potable water would be a must.
But right now that was neither here nor there. Right now he had to get some damned food in his belly. And right now, that meant fish.
To be honest, Chuck was more of a rod and reel guy than he was a spearfisherman, but today his luck was just crap. Or was it even his luck? He had to wonder. Maybe the damned things hanging off his chest were throwing off his aim.
That said, most of his spear fishing experience wasn’t exactly spent wading around Horsetail beds looking for fish swimming among the reeds. Rather most of his was spent standing around a 3ft hole in the ice dangling a lure to sucker pike into getting within striking range, or using his gig to all but scoop them from the water during the yearly salmon runs.
Either way, he hadn’t caught anything in the time since they got here. He took a deep breath and stepped back, taking in his environment. One of the reasons he’d moved to Alaska was to get the hell out of the mass produced realm of ‘civilized’ men and get back to something real, something natural. To get away from concrete and smog, and back to fresh and and nature.
By those standards, he had to admit that this place was beautiful. It was alien, but beautiful. Even Alaska had its odd signs of human interaction, but this place? Here he was the first human being ever to stand in this place, to try and fish these waters.
There was part of him that found it invigorating.
That part was drowned out by the part of him that was incensed at every other damned thing even remotely involved with this damnable situation.
He narrowed his eyes once more and took in the environment again, this time from a less romantic, and more practical viewpoint. He’d noticed this spot the day before, during their walk up to the cave. It was a bend in the river fast moving water slowed and, shallowed. Between the two bends there was a small marshy area thick with horsetail and other plants he couldn’t even begin to describe. Plants that, in all honesty, probably were long extinct in his own time.
He was enough of a fishermen to know that many kinds of fish lived in or took shelter in such areas. So digging through them looking for fish was probably a good idea. Though in the past hour he’d been less than successful in his efforts.
In fact, the only solace he could take from the entire situation was that Sport wasn’t having any better luck. And even then, it was a guilty pleasure because the simple fact was that food means survival. So even that was tainted.
“Waho! Got another one!”
And so much for that.
He looked over and found the large, overly muscled form of the loud mouthed football player standing proudly holding his spear in the air, a large, fleshy finned fish speared through the middle, flopping frantically in the air.
Chuck grinned at that. The fish was pretty big, about the size of a moderate sized salmon. It was enough that all of them would be able to have something in their bellies. Another of those and they’d be eating well. Another two and they’d have enough for tomorrow as well.
“Stop playing around and deal with that fish before it jumps off the damned spear!”
Sport nodded and threw the fish onto the shoreline.
“Good catch,” he said with an approving nod. Seriously, the boy had done well.
Sport grinned and picked up a rock, probably with the intent of bashing the fish’s head in to make sure it didn’t flop back into the water. Then he blinked and cursed.
“The fuck?!”
Chuck’s gaze followed Sport’s own and he had to say that what he saw was almost surreal. The fish was making its way back to the water. It wasn’t flopping, but rather it was walking, or at least making a good show of trying as it used its fins to drag itself forward, croaking sound reminiscent of a bellows.
Not about to let his dinner go, Chuck bounded from the water and stabbed the gig of his spear into its head, before picking a rock off of the ground and dashing its head in with a heavy blow.
“The hell was that?” Sport asked. “That fish was walking.”
“Don’t know,” Chuck admitted. “We can ask Doc when we show up with lunch. So where did you find that thing?”
“Deeper reeds,” Sport replied, “Found it hanging around the bottom.”
Chuck scowled slightly. He told him to stick to the edges himself where the water was more clear. He was a little worried about what could be living in these waters. He was used to northern climates where there were no major waterborne predators, or at least ones big enough to harm a man. Here though, who knew what kinds of snakes or crocodiles could be living in these waters.
He didn’t know what urked him more, the fact that the boy had disobeyed him, the fact that he’d let it slip his mind, or the fact that it had paid off. Either way, he needed to focus and clear his head.
He turned his head to Sport, his eyes lingering for maybe a bit longer than he would have liked, and said, “Alright. But next time let me know if you’re moving in deeper. We have to keep an eye out for critters.”
“I get it,” Sport replied, cutting of anything that Chuck would have said next, “We’re a team. My bad. But still, it paid off didn’t it?”
Chuck nodded. “It did. So, deeper in the reeds?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright,” he said after a moment, “but we should keep closer to one another.”
Sport nodded and shouldered his spear. The weapon looked almost comically small in the large man’s arms.
“Don’t got any complaints from me.”
Boy was huge. He could play Hercules and get away with it with his current build. He was, well, something to look at that was for sure. He’d swear that Sport’s arms were as wide around as this girly bodies legs, and that chest of his looked like it could deflect a bullet.
He shook his head and looked up. No time to be jealous about the boy getting the better straw.
“Alright. You caught the last one so you lead the way.”
Sport smiled, flashing a pair of perfect, almost overly white teeth as he lead them deeper into the water.
What came next was rather mechanical process, but the willingness to move into deeper waters paid off more than he could have expected. While they didn’t catch any more of the strange land fish that Sport had caught, they quickly caught several others.
It was a simple process of patience and timing that after some practice became almost second nature. After about a half hour they'd manage to gather another half dozen fish. None of them were as large as sport’s first, but not a one of them was less than a foot long. Easily enough for to fill their bellies and to get them started with a hearty breakfast.
With a satisfied smile, Chuck chose a convenient looking branch on a nearby tree and assaulted it with his hand axe. A couple minutes later and he had it down, a couple minutes more and the twigs were off and the point sharpened so they could spear the fish and carry them on the stick.
“So,” Sport asked. “We going to clean these?”
Chuck nodded. “Yes, but not here. The guts are too useful.”
“Useful?” Sport blinked in confusion, “What use are smelly fish guts.”
“Right now the others are setting up traps, but they work better with bait...”
“And smelly fish guts’ll attract at least some attention,” Sport finished, sounding pleased with himself
He smiled. Boy was starting to pay attention. Maybe he wasn’t totally hopeless.
The two carefully crossed the river, returning to their own bank when Check glanced down the river and paused in a moment’s thought. Looking down, he saw a rather large stone sticking out of the dirt not far from his feet.
Carefully, he looked back to Sport to make sure he had the fish and laid down his spear.
“What’s up?” Sport asked.
“Had a thought.” he replied before moving over to a large rock and picking it up. It was heavier than it looked, or rather his new girly arms were not as strong as his old ones. But still, he had to admit most women he’d met would have had at least some trouble moving the stone, but he was managing quite well. So at least his body wasn’t totally useless.
Carefully he placed it down atop the first rock that he’d found.
“The hell are you doing?” Sport asked.
“Making a cairn,” he replied as he moved to find another big stone.
“Why?”
Chuck grunted as he lifted another rock. “Because its a marker that someone has been here. This way we can let people, if there are any people, know where we are and have been.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Sport asked, “I mean there might be some real jerks.”
“I’ll take that risk.” Chuck shrugged and lowered the other rock. “Survival in numbers.”
“I’m not sure about this,” Sport admitted.
“You against it?” he asked.
“Not really...”
“Then keep an eye out and I’ll put it together.”
“Alright.”
It took Pops about 5 minutes to get the carin to a decent height, about two feet high, large enough to be seen at a relative distance. To make it more clear he placed another line of stones next to it to indicate direction of travel. He repeated the process several times on their way back to the cave.
He just hoped that this had been a good idea.
Time: Day 2, Mid Day
Location: Next to the Stream
“Damn it,” Chuck cursed as his quarry swept past him. The fish was small, silvery, and had an unerring resemblance to the herring of modern day. It was also tricky. Obnoxiously tricky.
He stepped back and took a deep breath and rubbed at his throat for a moment. While they were lucky enough to have a safe water source, it was not exactly next door, and after a couple hours wandering he was starting to build up a thirst. Coming up with some way to transport potable water would be a must.
But right now that was neither here nor there. Right now he had to get some damned food in his belly. And right now, that meant fish.
To be honest, Chuck was more of a rod and reel guy than he was a spearfisherman, but today his luck was just crap. Or was it even his luck? He had to wonder. Maybe the damned things hanging off his chest were throwing off his aim.
That said, most of his spear fishing experience wasn’t exactly spent wading around Horsetail beds looking for fish swimming among the reeds. Rather most of his was spent standing around a 3ft hole in the ice dangling a lure to sucker pike into getting within striking range, or using his gig to all but scoop them from the water during the yearly salmon runs.
Either way, he hadn’t caught anything in the time since they got here. He took a deep breath and stepped back, taking in his environment. One of the reasons he’d moved to Alaska was to get the hell out of the mass produced realm of ‘civilized’ men and get back to something real, something natural. To get away from concrete and smog, and back to fresh and and nature.
By those standards, he had to admit that this place was beautiful. It was alien, but beautiful. Even Alaska had its odd signs of human interaction, but this place? Here he was the first human being ever to stand in this place, to try and fish these waters.
There was part of him that found it invigorating.
That part was drowned out by the part of him that was incensed at every other damned thing even remotely involved with this damnable situation.
He narrowed his eyes once more and took in the environment again, this time from a less romantic, and more practical viewpoint. He’d noticed this spot the day before, during their walk up to the cave. It was a bend in the river fast moving water slowed and, shallowed. Between the two bends there was a small marshy area thick with horsetail and other plants he couldn’t even begin to describe. Plants that, in all honesty, probably were long extinct in his own time.
He was enough of a fishermen to know that many kinds of fish lived in or took shelter in such areas. So digging through them looking for fish was probably a good idea. Though in the past hour he’d been less than successful in his efforts.
In fact, the only solace he could take from the entire situation was that Sport wasn’t having any better luck. And even then, it was a guilty pleasure because the simple fact was that food means survival. So even that was tainted.
“Waho! Got another one!”
And so much for that.
He looked over and found the large, overly muscled form of the loud mouthed football player standing proudly holding his spear in the air, a large, fleshy finned fish speared through the middle, flopping frantically in the air.
Chuck grinned at that. The fish was pretty big, about the size of a moderate sized salmon. It was enough that all of them would be able to have something in their bellies. Another of those and they’d be eating well. Another two and they’d have enough for tomorrow as well.
“Stop playing around and deal with that fish before it jumps off the damned spear!”
Sport nodded and threw the fish onto the shoreline.
“Good catch,” he said with an approving nod. Seriously, the boy had done well.
Sport grinned and picked up a rock, probably with the intent of bashing the fish’s head in to make sure it didn’t flop back into the water. Then he blinked and cursed.
“The fuck?!”
Chuck’s gaze followed Sport’s own and he had to say that what he saw was almost surreal. The fish was making its way back to the water. It wasn’t flopping, but rather it was walking, or at least making a good show of trying as it used its fins to drag itself forward, croaking sound reminiscent of a bellows.
Not about to let his dinner go, Chuck bounded from the water and stabbed the gig of his spear into its head, before picking a rock off of the ground and dashing its head in with a heavy blow.
“The hell was that?” Sport asked. “That fish was walking.”
“Don’t know,” Chuck admitted. “We can ask Doc when we show up with lunch. So where did you find that thing?”
“Deeper reeds,” Sport replied, “Found it hanging around the bottom.”
Chuck scowled slightly. He told him to stick to the edges himself where the water was more clear. He was a little worried about what could be living in these waters. He was used to northern climates where there were no major waterborne predators, or at least ones big enough to harm a man. Here though, who knew what kinds of snakes or crocodiles could be living in these waters.
He didn’t know what urked him more, the fact that the boy had disobeyed him, the fact that he’d let it slip his mind, or the fact that it had paid off. Either way, he needed to focus and clear his head.
He turned his head to Sport, his eyes lingering for maybe a bit longer than he would have liked, and said, “Alright. But next time let me know if you’re moving in deeper. We have to keep an eye out for critters.”
“I get it,” Sport replied, cutting of anything that Chuck would have said next, “We’re a team. My bad. But still, it paid off didn’t it?”
Chuck nodded. “It did. So, deeper in the reeds?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright,” he said after a moment, “but we should keep closer to one another.”
Sport nodded and shouldered his spear. The weapon looked almost comically small in the large man’s arms.
“Don’t got any complaints from me.”
Boy was huge. He could play Hercules and get away with it with his current build. He was, well, something to look at that was for sure. He’d swear that Sport’s arms were as wide around as this girly bodies legs, and that chest of his looked like it could deflect a bullet.
He shook his head and looked up. No time to be jealous about the boy getting the better straw.
“Alright. You caught the last one so you lead the way.”
Sport smiled, flashing a pair of perfect, almost overly white teeth as he lead them deeper into the water.
What came next was rather mechanical process, but the willingness to move into deeper waters paid off more than he could have expected. While they didn’t catch any more of the strange land fish that Sport had caught, they quickly caught several others.
It was a simple process of patience and timing that after some practice became almost second nature. After about a half hour they'd manage to gather another half dozen fish. None of them were as large as sport’s first, but not a one of them was less than a foot long. Easily enough for to fill their bellies and to get them started with a hearty breakfast.
With a satisfied smile, Chuck chose a convenient looking branch on a nearby tree and assaulted it with his hand axe. A couple minutes later and he had it down, a couple minutes more and the twigs were off and the point sharpened so they could spear the fish and carry them on the stick.
“So,” Sport asked. “We going to clean these?”
Chuck nodded. “Yes, but not here. The guts are too useful.”
“Useful?” Sport blinked in confusion, “What use are smelly fish guts.”
“Right now the others are setting up traps, but they work better with bait...”
“And smelly fish guts’ll attract at least some attention,” Sport finished, sounding pleased with himself
He smiled. Boy was starting to pay attention. Maybe he wasn’t totally hopeless.
The two carefully crossed the river, returning to their own bank when Check glanced down the river and paused in a moment’s thought. Looking down, he saw a rather large stone sticking out of the dirt not far from his feet.
Carefully, he looked back to Sport to make sure he had the fish and laid down his spear.
“What’s up?” Sport asked.
“Had a thought.” he replied before moving over to a large rock and picking it up. It was heavier than it looked, or rather his new girly arms were not as strong as his old ones. But still, he had to admit most women he’d met would have had at least some trouble moving the stone, but he was managing quite well. So at least his body wasn’t totally useless.
Carefully he placed it down atop the first rock that he’d found.
“The hell are you doing?” Sport asked.
“Making a cairn,” he replied as he moved to find another big stone.
“Why?”
Chuck grunted as he lifted another rock. “Because its a marker that someone has been here. This way we can let people, if there are any people, know where we are and have been.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Sport asked, “I mean there might be some real jerks.”
“I’ll take that risk.” Chuck shrugged and lowered the other rock. “Survival in numbers.”
“I’m not sure about this,” Sport admitted.
“You against it?” he asked.
“Not really...”
“Then keep an eye out and I’ll put it together.”
“Alright.”
It took Pops about 5 minutes to get the carin to a decent height, about two feet high, large enough to be seen at a relative distance. To make it more clear he placed another line of stones next to it to indicate direction of travel. He repeated the process several times on their way back to the cave.
He just hoped that this had been a good idea.
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Re: Trapped in the Jurassic
by Psyckosama Thu Jul 17, 2014 2:53 pm
Doc
Time: Day 2, Mid Day
Location: The Woods
It’s strange how quickly plans can change, Doc thought to himself as he picked the more supple branches off the fallen limb of a large pine tree. Their erstwhile trapping attempt hasn’t exactly gone to plan, or at least that was how he saw it. Sarge was pretty aware of the needs and requirements of survival, so chances were that at least in his eyes, ‘I’m going to teach you some of the basics of trapping’ was a more polite way of saying ‘I’m going to teach you how to go into the woods and not be completely useless’.
Well, that or after seeing how poor their practical skill level was, he decided that the time would be better spent getting them up to snuff. Or maybe he wanted to trap, but then realized that they were a little short on supplies and shifted focus. Or maybe it wasn’t important and he needed to focus on the job at hand. That job being to gather twigs for baskets.
He sighed and reached over for a small branch that fit the requirements set by Sarge. About two feel long, not very thick, still supple. Taking it in hand he brought his hand axe down upon its base, neatly severing it, then tossed it onto the sizable pile he was building up.
The man had shown them some trapping, even managed to set up a small twitch snare trap near what he claimed as a small game trail. To Doc it looked like any other patch of bushes, but he knew that the other man knew things he didn’t so he smiled, nodded, and hoped that eventually he would pick up on it.
He sighed and gathered another branch. The pile was growing larger and he really hopped that sooner than later he’d be able to move onto something else. He’d never realized until now how dull survival really could be. He was picking twigs for baskets, Violet was picking fronds off of a tough, fibrous plant in hopes that they’d be strong enough to use as rope. And Sarge? Sarge was splitting his attention between poking around the stream for potential food and keeping an eye out.
He sighed and looked over to Violet. “How you holding up?”
“Miserable and terrified,” she replied as she tugged off another frond, “I don’t know what’ll happen first, will we be eaten or will we starve to death? And if we manage to... I don’t know... somehow skate past the inevitable without contracting a terminal case of horrible agonizing death, that still leaves us a hundred million years from the closest cup of coffee, which is a fate worse than death in and of itself... But beyond that I’m just peachy keen!”
Doc blinked. He wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that. He doubted highly that a hand on her shoulder and a ‘it’ll all be okay’ would work in a situation this messed up. Still, he had to try something.
“Don’t think like that. Just take it one day at a time and you’ll be okay.”
God, did that sound as lame to her as it did to him.
She sighed. “Maybe you’re right its just... all this...”
Well, apparently not.
“I know,” he replied, “Maybe we need to rest a bit.”
“I’m getting thirsty,” she admitted.
He was too. They really needed to look into some kind of water container. The environment here was pretty hot, and even taking the occasional dunk in the stream to cool off, it would be nice to be able to rehydrate without returning to the cave.
“Hey, Sarge,” he glanced over to the other man was who hovering around the stream looking for signs of movement woth within and without. “I’ve been talking to Violet.”
“I heard,” he replied calmly. “Good job. We need to keep spirits up if we’re going to survive this.”
“Thanks,” Doc smiled. “So any luck over here? You see any crayfish holes?”
“I saw some holes,” he replied, “But without some traps I don’t think we’re going to have much luck catching them.”
“No luck?”
Sarge shook his head. “I’m going to go back and check the snare traps a little later, but for now lets head back and hope Pops has had better some better luck.”
Doc nodded and picked up his bundle of sticks while Violet did the same. He smiled at the beautiful girl and tried to keep his eyes off of her breasts. Seriously, whoever made these bodies went above and beyond.
“So, Violet,” he asked with a friendly smile, “Anything on your mind?”
“N-nothing really,” she said meekly. “A-at least nothing serious.”
He smiled. “Come on. There has to be something.”
She paused for a moment. “W-well, there is one thing... y-you might know might not...” she stopped then lowered her head. “Nevermind. It’s j-just silly.”
Doc laughed. “Go ahead. I’m not going to judge you. Better to ask than not.”
She nodded. “Alright. I-I haven’t seen any flowering plants. I’m just wondering w-why that is.”
“Actually, I know this one!” he smiled, “It’s because they won’t really start to seriously appear within the next 20 million years.”
The reaction he saw on her face was not the one he expected to see.
She was mortified.
Time: Day 2, Mid Day
Location: The Woods
It’s strange how quickly plans can change, Doc thought to himself as he picked the more supple branches off the fallen limb of a large pine tree. Their erstwhile trapping attempt hasn’t exactly gone to plan, or at least that was how he saw it. Sarge was pretty aware of the needs and requirements of survival, so chances were that at least in his eyes, ‘I’m going to teach you some of the basics of trapping’ was a more polite way of saying ‘I’m going to teach you how to go into the woods and not be completely useless’.
Well, that or after seeing how poor their practical skill level was, he decided that the time would be better spent getting them up to snuff. Or maybe he wanted to trap, but then realized that they were a little short on supplies and shifted focus. Or maybe it wasn’t important and he needed to focus on the job at hand. That job being to gather twigs for baskets.
He sighed and reached over for a small branch that fit the requirements set by Sarge. About two feel long, not very thick, still supple. Taking it in hand he brought his hand axe down upon its base, neatly severing it, then tossed it onto the sizable pile he was building up.
The man had shown them some trapping, even managed to set up a small twitch snare trap near what he claimed as a small game trail. To Doc it looked like any other patch of bushes, but he knew that the other man knew things he didn’t so he smiled, nodded, and hoped that eventually he would pick up on it.
He sighed and gathered another branch. The pile was growing larger and he really hopped that sooner than later he’d be able to move onto something else. He’d never realized until now how dull survival really could be. He was picking twigs for baskets, Violet was picking fronds off of a tough, fibrous plant in hopes that they’d be strong enough to use as rope. And Sarge? Sarge was splitting his attention between poking around the stream for potential food and keeping an eye out.
He sighed and looked over to Violet. “How you holding up?”
“Miserable and terrified,” she replied as she tugged off another frond, “I don’t know what’ll happen first, will we be eaten or will we starve to death? And if we manage to... I don’t know... somehow skate past the inevitable without contracting a terminal case of horrible agonizing death, that still leaves us a hundred million years from the closest cup of coffee, which is a fate worse than death in and of itself... But beyond that I’m just peachy keen!”
Doc blinked. He wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that. He doubted highly that a hand on her shoulder and a ‘it’ll all be okay’ would work in a situation this messed up. Still, he had to try something.
“Don’t think like that. Just take it one day at a time and you’ll be okay.”
God, did that sound as lame to her as it did to him.
She sighed. “Maybe you’re right its just... all this...”
Well, apparently not.
“I know,” he replied, “Maybe we need to rest a bit.”
“I’m getting thirsty,” she admitted.
He was too. They really needed to look into some kind of water container. The environment here was pretty hot, and even taking the occasional dunk in the stream to cool off, it would be nice to be able to rehydrate without returning to the cave.
“Hey, Sarge,” he glanced over to the other man was who hovering around the stream looking for signs of movement woth within and without. “I’ve been talking to Violet.”
“I heard,” he replied calmly. “Good job. We need to keep spirits up if we’re going to survive this.”
“Thanks,” Doc smiled. “So any luck over here? You see any crayfish holes?”
“I saw some holes,” he replied, “But without some traps I don’t think we’re going to have much luck catching them.”
“No luck?”
Sarge shook his head. “I’m going to go back and check the snare traps a little later, but for now lets head back and hope Pops has had better some better luck.”
Doc nodded and picked up his bundle of sticks while Violet did the same. He smiled at the beautiful girl and tried to keep his eyes off of her breasts. Seriously, whoever made these bodies went above and beyond.
“So, Violet,” he asked with a friendly smile, “Anything on your mind?”
“N-nothing really,” she said meekly. “A-at least nothing serious.”
He smiled. “Come on. There has to be something.”
She paused for a moment. “W-well, there is one thing... y-you might know might not...” she stopped then lowered her head. “Nevermind. It’s j-just silly.”
Doc laughed. “Go ahead. I’m not going to judge you. Better to ask than not.”
She nodded. “Alright. I-I haven’t seen any flowering plants. I’m just wondering w-why that is.”
“Actually, I know this one!” he smiled, “It’s because they won’t really start to seriously appear within the next 20 million years.”
The reaction he saw on her face was not the one he expected to see.
She was mortified.
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Re: Trapped in the Jurassic
by Psyckosama Wed Sep 03, 2014 3:18 pm
Julia Ann “Violet” Roberts
Time: Day 2, Late Afternoon
Location: The Waterfall.
Julie sighed as she pulled her head under the waterfall. Collecting twigs was actually surprisingly hot and hungry work, especially when the only cutting tool you had was an Acheulean hand axe.
She had to admit, between the blinding terror of being lost in time, the mute horror of realizing that this Jurassic wasn’t a Park, and the stark reality that there was a good chance they’d all starve to death... if they were not eaten alive by multi-ton predatory turkeys... that she was feeling a whole new level of respect for her distant paleolithic ancestors. It was one thing to dig in midden pits to figure out what people ate, or observing the efforts of experimental archaeologists as they attempt to revisit the past, but its was a whole other story to be in the woods hacking away with a hand axe in the name of personal survival.
A very very scary story. While she didn’t ideologically follow view that in nature the lot of humanity was to live lives that were ‘nasty, brutish and short’, in fact she knew otherwise. Up until the advent of the first world 20th century diet, hunter gatherers were actually some of the healthiest people on Earth. Their diet was extremely varied and own the whole nutritious. The problem with that was two fold.
First, those people all had a very intimate knowledge of their environment. They knew what was edible, what wasn’t, and how to process things you couldn’t even imagine into food. She didn’t. The others didn’t either. In fact, nobody did. This was the age of the Dinosaurs! Humanity wouldn’t exist in any form for a good, what 158 million years, if you squinted really hard.
Second, and possibly most importantly, Was that little horror story that Doc has just told her. It was a simple, scary little fact that she was probably the only one who really fully understood. staples didn’t exist. Her chosen profession involved more than just playing around with rocks, it required more than a passing knowledge of botany and anatomy.
Primates were primarily frugivores who when given the chance would add seeds and roots into their diet. Most species didn’t eat meat at all. Even among humans, only a small number of cultures living in extreme arctic conditions got the majority of their calories from animal sources. Most ate the same things their ancestors had been eating since the first ape decided it would be a good idea to walk around on two legs.
Now that might just sound like she was fretting, but she wasn’t, and the reason was simple. Just about every single fruit, nut, seed, tuber, and root vegetable commonly eaten as human dietary staple had one thing in common. They were all angiosperms. Flowering plants. That meant that most common human staples did not exist in any form.
They were surrounded by things they had not evolved to eat and because 80% of all plants that existed in the Holocene were flowering plants, it also meant that with precious few exceptions, they had almost no idea what they were looking at.
She gasped and shuddered as she let the cold water of the falls cascade over her annoyingly oversized breasts and took a deep breath.
It was ironic. Whatever it was that had sent them here had given them a bag of what could only be food. Food that from the looks of it was not sourced from ‘modern’ plants. Instead it seemed to all be taken from plants of the current era.
It really wasn’t a food supply, it was a guide. It was, realistically, the only way they’d know what they could actually eat without dangerous and potentially lethal experimentation. They had to study those rations intently until they could successfully source them. Now more than ever it was important that they did not eat it.
She sighed. Who was she kidding. They were all probably going to starve to death.
“Hey!”
She was snapped out of her thoughts by the boisterous and thoroughly obnoxious exclamations of that jerk, Sport.
Her head glanced over, acknowledging but not, not wanting to deal with the over-muscled moron. Part of her just wanted to tell him to go away, but it was quickly muted, both by her own insecurity and the things that he was carrying.
Fish. The jerk actually managed to get some fish.
Against her better judgement she squealed and jumped from the waterfall to take a better look.
Walking next to the meathead was Pops, and between the two of them they managed to collect what had to be half a dozen fish.
Fish. She liked fish. She really did. It was healthy and delicious, and was her favorite food barring chocolate and coffee. Which really didn’t count but what where would humanity be like without chocolate and coffee?
Well, right here, actually as both were angiosperm trees and either way they wouldn’t evolve for a good 150 million years, meaning they were about two million lifetimes out of her reach. But she didn’t think of that. After all, no chocolate and coffee? That there was the pathway to madness and she really didn’t want to deal with it right now!
Instead she’d focus on the obvious. FISH!
She laughed and ran out of the water to take a better look.
Big fish! She laughed again. “Oh, I can’t believe you found fish!” she exclaimed with an amount of uncharacteristic joy born of manic relief brought forth from the temporary reprieve of her fears of imminent death by starvation.
Pops smiled, showing a flash of perfect white teeth that seemed to contract her muddied and disheveled appearance.
“You should thank Sport here,” Pops said giving the massive muscle head a pat on the shoulder. “He’s the one who found the prime spot. Long as we keep an eye out and don’t overfish, I think we’ll be right as rain...”
Until her dying day, Julie would never understand why she did what came afterwards. She guessed it was thoughtless motion of thanks for holding off the inevitability of death, but it really wasn’t something she’d normally do. And that was squealing out loud in joy before giving him a hug.
She pauses, and looked up as the moment faded and felt the blood in her veins cool to ice as she looked up into Sport’s confused face. She was naked. And she was hugging a giant naked man.
“Uh, hi?” Sport said weakly.
She wanted to let go, but she was too petrified with equal parts shock and horror. Then it got worse.
Something was pressing up against her...
Oh for the love of...
She look down, and the feeling of ice became that of liquid nitrogen.
Then she looked back up into his stupid, smiling, utterly dumbfounded face and that feeling flashed over into a sense of feminine indignation that she’d never even imagined herself capable of. And what happened next was almost as instinctual as the hug, though much much more satisfying.
*SMACK!*
Time: Day 2, Late Afternoon
Location: The Waterfall.
Julie sighed as she pulled her head under the waterfall. Collecting twigs was actually surprisingly hot and hungry work, especially when the only cutting tool you had was an Acheulean hand axe.
She had to admit, between the blinding terror of being lost in time, the mute horror of realizing that this Jurassic wasn’t a Park, and the stark reality that there was a good chance they’d all starve to death... if they were not eaten alive by multi-ton predatory turkeys... that she was feeling a whole new level of respect for her distant paleolithic ancestors. It was one thing to dig in midden pits to figure out what people ate, or observing the efforts of experimental archaeologists as they attempt to revisit the past, but its was a whole other story to be in the woods hacking away with a hand axe in the name of personal survival.
A very very scary story. While she didn’t ideologically follow view that in nature the lot of humanity was to live lives that were ‘nasty, brutish and short’, in fact she knew otherwise. Up until the advent of the first world 20th century diet, hunter gatherers were actually some of the healthiest people on Earth. Their diet was extremely varied and own the whole nutritious. The problem with that was two fold.
First, those people all had a very intimate knowledge of their environment. They knew what was edible, what wasn’t, and how to process things you couldn’t even imagine into food. She didn’t. The others didn’t either. In fact, nobody did. This was the age of the Dinosaurs! Humanity wouldn’t exist in any form for a good, what 158 million years, if you squinted really hard.
Second, and possibly most importantly, Was that little horror story that Doc has just told her. It was a simple, scary little fact that she was probably the only one who really fully understood. staples didn’t exist. Her chosen profession involved more than just playing around with rocks, it required more than a passing knowledge of botany and anatomy.
Primates were primarily frugivores who when given the chance would add seeds and roots into their diet. Most species didn’t eat meat at all. Even among humans, only a small number of cultures living in extreme arctic conditions got the majority of their calories from animal sources. Most ate the same things their ancestors had been eating since the first ape decided it would be a good idea to walk around on two legs.
Now that might just sound like she was fretting, but she wasn’t, and the reason was simple. Just about every single fruit, nut, seed, tuber, and root vegetable commonly eaten as human dietary staple had one thing in common. They were all angiosperms. Flowering plants. That meant that most common human staples did not exist in any form.
They were surrounded by things they had not evolved to eat and because 80% of all plants that existed in the Holocene were flowering plants, it also meant that with precious few exceptions, they had almost no idea what they were looking at.
She gasped and shuddered as she let the cold water of the falls cascade over her annoyingly oversized breasts and took a deep breath.
It was ironic. Whatever it was that had sent them here had given them a bag of what could only be food. Food that from the looks of it was not sourced from ‘modern’ plants. Instead it seemed to all be taken from plants of the current era.
It really wasn’t a food supply, it was a guide. It was, realistically, the only way they’d know what they could actually eat without dangerous and potentially lethal experimentation. They had to study those rations intently until they could successfully source them. Now more than ever it was important that they did not eat it.
She sighed. Who was she kidding. They were all probably going to starve to death.
“Hey!”
She was snapped out of her thoughts by the boisterous and thoroughly obnoxious exclamations of that jerk, Sport.
Her head glanced over, acknowledging but not, not wanting to deal with the over-muscled moron. Part of her just wanted to tell him to go away, but it was quickly muted, both by her own insecurity and the things that he was carrying.
Fish. The jerk actually managed to get some fish.
Against her better judgement she squealed and jumped from the waterfall to take a better look.
Walking next to the meathead was Pops, and between the two of them they managed to collect what had to be half a dozen fish.
Fish. She liked fish. She really did. It was healthy and delicious, and was her favorite food barring chocolate and coffee. Which really didn’t count but what where would humanity be like without chocolate and coffee?
Well, right here, actually as both were angiosperm trees and either way they wouldn’t evolve for a good 150 million years, meaning they were about two million lifetimes out of her reach. But she didn’t think of that. After all, no chocolate and coffee? That there was the pathway to madness and she really didn’t want to deal with it right now!
Instead she’d focus on the obvious. FISH!
She laughed and ran out of the water to take a better look.
Big fish! She laughed again. “Oh, I can’t believe you found fish!” she exclaimed with an amount of uncharacteristic joy born of manic relief brought forth from the temporary reprieve of her fears of imminent death by starvation.
Pops smiled, showing a flash of perfect white teeth that seemed to contract her muddied and disheveled appearance.
“You should thank Sport here,” Pops said giving the massive muscle head a pat on the shoulder. “He’s the one who found the prime spot. Long as we keep an eye out and don’t overfish, I think we’ll be right as rain...”
Until her dying day, Julie would never understand why she did what came afterwards. She guessed it was thoughtless motion of thanks for holding off the inevitability of death, but it really wasn’t something she’d normally do. And that was squealing out loud in joy before giving him a hug.
She pauses, and looked up as the moment faded and felt the blood in her veins cool to ice as she looked up into Sport’s confused face. She was naked. And she was hugging a giant naked man.
“Uh, hi?” Sport said weakly.
She wanted to let go, but she was too petrified with equal parts shock and horror. Then it got worse.
Something was pressing up against her...
Oh for the love of...
She look down, and the feeling of ice became that of liquid nitrogen.
Then she looked back up into his stupid, smiling, utterly dumbfounded face and that feeling flashed over into a sense of feminine indignation that she’d never even imagined herself capable of. And what happened next was almost as instinctual as the hug, though much much more satisfying.
*SMACK!*
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