A(n Un)Familiar Problem

And as the stars align and the time is right, another chapter doth emerge... Roughly three months late: Oops.

Busy life and all that, plus my muse seems to come and go according to some pattern I've yet to discern. Maybe I should get an 'updates irregularly' tag? It'd certainly be fitting.

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You hardly even need to think about what to do here. Your hair is probably a mess, though you can't see it right now to say for sure, and you're still coated in the sticky black Rumbler-goo. It may have burned out a while ago but that doesn't mean it magically vanished afterwards and left you sparkling clean; It most assuredly did not. In fact, it almost looks dirtier than it did before. It might not be the cave-muck you've grown so familiar with, but it's still every bit as irritating as the stuff, both in the sense that it feels irritating on you and that it makes you feel irritated at the thought of being coated, even lightly, in it.

Yeah, you're heading to that lake to get clean now.

The path to the lake was long, weaving, and quite frankly uneventful. For the first time today you didn't even see a Two-legger or Rumbler as you walked, not even the most fleeting of glances. Do they not like the greenery? Sure, you don't exactly love it- that's because it's all the wrong colours compared to the world you knew -but surely they could appreciate the peace, right?

Then again if they were here there wouldn't be peace to appreciate, would there? Hmm, thoughts for later.

The lake proved to be another difference between your home and this place, and for once it was one you liked: The water was a pleasant enough blue-green that looked far more appealing than the brown-ish pools in the caves, and despite the heat of the sun directly overhead it remained refreshingly cool.

Perhaps it was just a waste of time, but you still made a point of finding a suitably hidden spot before doing anything more than testing the waters. being jumped mid-grooming wouldn't be fun now would it? Maybe it was paranoia, but it was the flavour of paranoia that helped keep you not dead in a place where plenty of things were liable to adjust that state of affairs for you if given the chance. That made it automatically healthy paranoia in your humble, yet still alive, opinion.

Internal dialogue on your possible paranoia aside, the spot you found was pretty nice: discreet, the right mix of cool shade and sunny warmth… Eyup, definitely better than anything you could have found back home.

You spare one last glance for danger, still nothing, before you begin your well-practised bathing routine, aided by the clear waters and *being able to see what you're cleaning*. A rather helpful change in your opinion. What's left of the black gunk takes a bit of work to remove but persistence, water, and sharp talons eventually scrape it from your forelegs. Well, mostly. Some of it just won't shift, too caked into narrow ridges in your carapace for you to really get at, but good enough that your forelegs aren't mostly charred black-ish anymore.

Now, clearing the gunk off your hands and out from under your claws? That was quite a bit harder to do without simply transferring it to the other hand or whatever body part you tried to wipe it off on. Side note, Rumbler goop officially tastes worse than boot. Whatever made you think using your teeth to scrape it off was a good idea you're not sure, but it did make a very strong case for skipping straight to the tooth-brushing the moment your forearms were clean.

It was a struggle to be sure. No amount of rubbing, rinsing, or clawing seemed to be making a difference to the mess you'd long since come to regret coating yourself with. Eventually though, you manage to remove the last of the infernally sticky-icky sludge with the noble assistance of some formally green- now rather blackened -plants and the odd pebble or two. Their valiant sacrifice would be remembered! Probably the next time you needed something to scrape horrible stuff off of yourself, mind, but that was better than not being remembered, right?

Before long the only thing left to groom was your lightly singed and tangled, but otherwise clean, thankfully, hair.

The pool of water gently splashed as you dipped your forelimbs into it, dampening them before carefully dragging them through your slightly wilder than usual tufts of wiry hair, crudely combing them. There simply wasn't much you could do about the small burned bits, they were simply here to stay for now. For the moment you had to be content with coming the tangles out. It wasn't too bad anyways, the blackened areas mostly blended in with your natural colours and the combing quickly neatened your hair enough that you could ignore the bits where the burns stood out.

Mostly.

You're still not sure why your appearance bothers you so much but knowing that you're not dirty is nice and knowing that you look good is an even more pleasant feeling. Perhaps that's reason enough? It makes you happy, and in a sense that's all that matters in the questions of why you do things.

One final polish leaves your carapace… well: not 'sparkling' clean, it doesn't sparkle or reflect light no matter how much you polish it, your natural colouration clearly being too matte for that as befits something meant to live in shadows. You can just about make out the slight differences the work makes in your reflection though, and that's enough for you.

A thought come up as you finish inspecting yourself in the reflection of the shallow waters in front of you: The waters in front of you are shallow, and clear enough you can see the lakebed in places. You didn't know if you could swim, a fact that was generally pretty minor back home: none of the water was deep enough that you couldn't reach the bottom and comfortably keep your head above water at the same time. Plus a lot of it was muddy and thus not something you wanted to be in anyway. Here though?

The waters around here seemed quite likely to get deeper than home so knowing if you could swim would be nicer than having to find out with your life on the line. You might not be dumb enough to jump into a river when your ability to not drown was in question, but having the answer to that question? Well, one way or another it's better to know now rather than wonder later.

You shot another quick glance around the area in search of the still clearly absent danger, and in what felt like a violation of the laws dictating your existence for the past day or so there was still nothing to be seen.

Well, there was a winged white thing waddling around on the other side of the lake that kept honking. Big-ish when compared to most of the other flyers you've seen in this place but otherwise nothing special. Certainly nothing that seems threatening, though you're probably going to avoid it anyway. Paranoia, you know? It was far enough away that you'd probably see it coming long before it got close anyways. By your reckoning it was safe enough to wade out into the lake, and you wasted no further time doing so.

It was about the point the water reached your chin that a significant thought occurred: you don't know how to swim. You know what swimming is, sure, and that being able to do it would be very helpful if you ever find yourself needing to jump into a river or something. You're just not quite sure how you're supposed to perform a breast stroke with two arms and six legs of various size and paddle-like-ness…Whatever a breaststroke is.

So, uh, what now?

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[] Try to swim anyway.

[] Investigate the Colours:
-[] Pink.
-[] Purple.
-[] Yellow.

[] Explore:
-[] Towards the Buildings.
-[] The Greenery.
-[] The far side of the river.

[] Write in?

Hey look: a distraction! *Posts chapter and runs*

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As galling as it was to have gotten this far just to stop and give up upon realising your total lack of practical knowledge on the topic of not sinking in water, it would be much more galling to end up drowning immediately after you've finished cleaning yourself up and thus having to do it again instantly. Assuming of course that you will wake up in the caves again rather than just staying dead. Perhaps you'd have to spend some time figuring out how you're supposed to swim before you try again? Later of course. There were other things on your mind right now.

Specifically, the question of 'what is that pink glow' and why is it so mind-eye-searingly bright? Simple questions, to be sure. Good ones too, at least in your book.

You're also more than a little curious about the other colours, particularly the way purple seemed to vanish and then abruptly reappear closer than before. But with Pink being the brightest by several levels of 'my eyes! They BURN!' it strikes you as the best starting point of any investigation, or at the very least the most obvious of the lot. Well, not much point standing around in the lake then, as pleasantly cool as it was, not when there was something to investigate.

At least the big white waddler didn't seem to be around to watch you sheepishly wade back towards the shore. The worst it would probably do is honk at you, but you just didn't fancy the thought of being laughed at by… whatever it was.

You might have to consider coming back at some point though, the water really is nice here.


You spotted the first few two-leggers just as you reached the boundary of the green-zone.
After not having seen them for… uh, a long time, you'd come to believe that they really didn't like the local plant life for some reason. Consider that corrected: it might not have been one of the solid walls you'd seen in the past, but it was still a sizable crowd that all seemed to be headed in, many of whom seemed to be carrying bags or boxes. A few which trailed frankly delicious smells.

Figuring out what was going on didn't take long. It only took seeing a few of them stuffing their faces as they walked to get the hint that this was both the time and apparently the place where the two-leggers liked to eat.

Some of them anyways, you noticed there were also a few eating in front of buildings as you carefully made your way in the general direction of Pink, with a good few more who seemed to be carrying what you could only conclude was food away in all sorts of directions. Far too many to keep track of while trying to navigate the busy streets without revealing your existence.

There did seem to be less of them than there were earlier, enough for you to make out smaller groups within the larger ones. Not by appearance, no, that wouldn't work with how they all seemed to vary between looking the same or wildly different. What was it with this place and having weird colours for hides and carapaces? No, it was in the way they seemed to move: how some of them would stick together as they moved, Like a herd within a herd.

It was a bit of an odd realisation, that the Two-leggers weren't homogenous, not some unthinking hordes. There seemed to be subdivides of some sort, defined enough that they could discern them instantly yet subtle enough that you could only speculate about them. Size seemed to be one of those dividers, with the smaller ones generally in their own groups separate from the larger ones. And how the smaller the two-legger, the more colourful they tended to be.

It was strangely fascinating observing them, though maybe that was because you didn't instinctively know everything about them unlike what passed for wildlife back home.
Of course, there was another realisation that had struck you: Pink was Reeeeeaaaalllly far away. You'd already passed purple some time ago, before it once again seemed to blink out of existence and reappear in the exact opposite direction to where it'd been before, but even further away. And… well, you were definitely getting closer to your goal. Slowly. Even if you still had no clue how far away it was yet.

You'd even had to cross another bridge already, though this one was much less busy than the last one.

Not being able to gauge the distance to Pink didn't make the trip any easier, in fact you actually went past it without noticing the first time. Still, looping around eventually led you to a pretty solid conclusion of Pink's rough distance and location: A relatively short but reasonably wide building surrounded by a fence made of vertical metal bars.

You're pretty sure Pink has to be somewhere around there. Maybe on top of the building? Perhaps there's another open space hidden there somewhere that you've not been able to pick out on your brief laps of the building. If so, it's so well hidden that you can't see it even from your new vantage point atop one of the nearest buildings you could scale, one that kept you a safe distance from the place Pink seemed to be.

Yellow was here too, or uh… over there, rather. You're pretty sure it's closer to you than Pink is. Actually, it seemed rather unsettled right now, moving around at what seemed like random going by what little you could perceive. Though it always seemed to favour whatever side of the weird glassy structure you were on. Weird.
Of course, the building wasn't the only thing here, no. The two-leggers were also here in force.

There were a lot of them around the building, mostly on the inside of the fence. Some were wandering around, some seemed to be sitting down, there was a group that you were pretty sure was playing some kind of game, and yet again they all seemed to have subdivided into groups. The most obvious of the new divisions was that all but a few of the two-leggers on the inside of the fence seemed to have a dull yellowy-white midsection, while those outside had a wider variety of colours.

Even within the fence there were further subdivisions though: about half-ish of the fenced off ones had the same colour down the length of their legs, while the other half-ish had some kind of black strip, followed by pale-pinkish mostly, and in turn followed by an assortment of other colours, blacks and whites being the most common, running down their legs. And lastly there was a group of generally taller two-leggers, or a smattering of individuals here and there anyway. Aside from being, once again, generally taller than the other two groups and being in a mixture of dark or gentle colours there wasn't really much uniting them. Weirdly though, you got the impression that they were 'in charge' somehow.

Those of course were just the visible divisions. It also seemed like there were more that you couldn't see any reason for, with various smaller groups being clearly distinct among the aforementioned groups.

The distant sound of a bell ringing, four chimes by your count, dragged your attention away from the surprisingly intriguing crowd watching session. Perhaps it was a sign of genuine paranoia that your first response was to duck and start searching for whatever had spotted you, but it was in most cases a very justified response in your opinion. Not this time it seemed, with the few moments of panicked searching for danger turning up nothing new.

By the time you'd accepted that no new threats were about to jump at you out of nowhere and turned your attention back to the crowds within the fence they'd all stopped whatever they'd been doing and begun moving toward the building, heading in through various doors…

Oh, right. Buildings have an inside, kinda like tunnels and caverns but intentionally made to keep the outside outside and the inside inside so stuff could get done without worrying about the weather or something. In hindsight it's obvious, you'd even looked into a few while climbing them, and yet you'd somehow failed to realise, or, uh… forgot? that little detail. Huh. You really aren't a clever spider.

Slowly the crowd trickled away into the building until the very last ones vanished from sight, mostly the taller ones interestingly enough, leaving the doors to swing shut behind them.
Keeping your distance didn't seem very likely to yield any information on what Pink was, at least not yet anyways. With your newfound epiphany at buildings having accessible insides, it was a safe conclusion that Pink had to be in the building somewhere. Yellow too.

The question is, what now?

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[]Investigate:
-[] Go into the building and search for Pink.
--[] Enter on the ground floor.
--[] Search the roof first.
-[] Check out the fenced off area.

[] Wait
-[] Take a nap.
--[] Take a really long nap.
[] Do something else
-[] Write in?