Guy just rolled his shoulders in a loose little shrug, and moved slightly behind the tree again, peeking out almost shyly.
"Sorry, I have a habit of questioning everything and surviving it at the same time. Usually because the life-threatening things that need to be survived happen a lot where I'm from." Another shrug. "I'm a good many-tasker."
Apparently his language's concept of "multitasker" translated a little oddly.
"And, you know, I'm trying to understand. But I'll take a look and makes sure we're still alone." With that, he tucked his knife in his belt and started to climb the tree he was standing next to, though he was cautious enough to make sure he was climbing the side facing away from them. He scurried up it faster than most people would have been capable, not even using branches at times, just jamming his fingers in the bark of the tree.
"The whole view, though," he said as he climbed, hardly out of breath. "The whole view's important."
He peered around carefully, trying to make out any movement in the underbrush.
"And if you have assumptions about what I am, what I'm capable of, about the past you think I'm from, other people might." He peered around a branch at them with a gaze that was just a little sharper than before. "Knowing what people like you might expect of me, about what they might assume I'm capable of, might not help you, but it might help keep me not dead."
He briefly stopped, dangling from a branch with one hand, feet still against the tree trunk, and nodded to Joan. "Like you seemed almost surprised I understood some of that stuff with the different worlds and about ideas with time. It was almost like you were surprised I was smart. Are there going to be other people that see the stripes and the messy hair and the stone weapons and think I'm not smart, too? Because I can definitely work with that."
He started climbing again.
He could see the possibilities there. Ugh ugh, growl a little, throw a rock, make himself seem as if he's just trying to bash his way through a fight, run away as if he's afraid of losing but not so fast he actually gets away, lead the person chasing him into a trap...
Not that he'd do it to anyone innocent but for this even to work, for it to be a battle to the death more than once (since Signless said it wasn't his first time) that meant there had to be killers. There had to be predators hunting the people like Joan that didn't seem to want to kill. There had to be people willing to kill the ones whose instinctual response to a distressed person was to try to calm them down and give them kindness.
The idea of that left a bad taste in his mouth. There were only a few reasons that it was okay to kill another person. 1) Self defense. Especially if you'd tried to talk your way out of the situation. 2) If they were trying to steal your food or water when you'd starve or die of thirst without, which fell under self defense. 3) Defending someone else. And then there was 4) Out of mercy. If someone was already dying or in so much pain they wanted to be dead.
Being told "you have to kill, there can be only one survivor" and then doing it was not self defense. Not when people were apparently not killing and coming back to life anyway. Joan seemed to be talking with experience, Signless said people died and came back...
No one had to really be that brutal, did they? And what if everyone banded together to not be brutal? What if the ones that were savage were killed and only those who weren't were left? What kind of "game" would their kidnappers have on their hands then? What if they tried to work together rather than let themselves be danced around like toys?
Even if that wouldn't work, didn't the people who didn't want to fight deserve to die on their own terms? Shouldn't the ones that killed indiscriminately deserve to be hunted down for it? Rather than dying at the hands of other people tossed into this wilderness, their kidnappers should be the ones to get their hands bloody if the people who didn't want to fight had to die.
As he perched there in the branches, he went quiet for a moment, to listen for anyone possibly approaching, using the height he was now at to look around a bit, just to make sure they hadn't been approached while talking.
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"Sorry, I have a habit of questioning everything and surviving it at the same time. Usually because the life-threatening things that need to be survived happen a lot where I'm from." Another shrug. "I'm a good many-tasker."
Apparently his language's concept of "multitasker" translated a little oddly.
"And, you know, I'm trying to understand. But I'll take a look and makes sure we're still alone." With that, he tucked his knife in his belt and started to climb the tree he was standing next to, though he was cautious enough to make sure he was climbing the side facing away from them. He scurried up it faster than most people would have been capable, not even using branches at times, just jamming his fingers in the bark of the tree.
"The whole view, though," he said as he climbed, hardly out of breath. "The whole view's important."
He peered around carefully, trying to make out any movement in the underbrush.
"And if you have assumptions about what I am, what I'm capable of, about the past you think I'm from, other people might." He peered around a branch at them with a gaze that was just a little sharper than before. "Knowing what people like you might expect of me, about what they might assume I'm capable of, might not help you, but it might help keep me not dead."
He briefly stopped, dangling from a branch with one hand, feet still against the tree trunk, and nodded to Joan. "Like you seemed almost surprised I understood some of that stuff with the different worlds and about ideas with time. It was almost like you were surprised I was smart. Are there going to be other people that see the stripes and the messy hair and the stone weapons and think I'm not smart, too? Because I can definitely work with that."
He started climbing again.
He could see the possibilities there. Ugh ugh, growl a little, throw a rock, make himself seem as if he's just trying to bash his way through a fight, run away as if he's afraid of losing but not so fast he actually gets away, lead the person chasing him into a trap...
Not that he'd do it to anyone innocent but for this even to work, for it to be a battle to the death more than once (since Signless said it wasn't his first time) that meant there had to be killers. There had to be predators hunting the people like Joan that didn't seem to want to kill. There had to be people willing to kill the ones whose instinctual response to a distressed person was to try to calm them down and give them kindness.
The idea of that left a bad taste in his mouth. There were only a few reasons that it was okay to kill another person. 1) Self defense. Especially if you'd tried to talk your way out of the situation. 2) If they were trying to steal your food or water when you'd starve or die of thirst without, which fell under self defense. 3) Defending someone else. And then there was 4) Out of mercy. If someone was already dying or in so much pain they wanted to be dead.
Being told "you have to kill, there can be only one survivor" and then doing it was not self defense. Not when people were apparently not killing and coming back to life anyway. Joan seemed to be talking with experience, Signless said people died and came back...
No one had to really be that brutal, did they? And what if everyone banded together to not be brutal? What if the ones that were savage were killed and only those who weren't were left? What kind of "game" would their kidnappers have on their hands then? What if they tried to work together rather than let themselves be danced around like toys?
Even if that wouldn't work, didn't the people who didn't want to fight deserve to die on their own terms? Shouldn't the ones that killed indiscriminately deserve to be hunted down for it? Rather than dying at the hands of other people tossed into this wilderness, their kidnappers should be the ones to get their hands bloody if the people who didn't want to fight had to die.
As he perched there in the branches, he went quiet for a moment, to listen for anyone possibly approaching, using the height he was now at to look around a bit, just to make sure they hadn't been approached while talking.