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republicscum · 6 years

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When Jumping into Battle Doesn’t Work

AN: 2,666 words

Male Sith Warrior x OC, Male Sith Warrior & Vette

I didn’t do this with anything particular in mind. I just wanted to practice my action/fight scenes and see how well my story paced prose does compared against my more Fancy(TM) pretentious prose. I also wanted to scribble things down for Grimm because he’s one of my favorite villains. I’m not sure how time is working for him yet in how my interpretation of events happens, so I just set this as though his apprenticeship happened at the same time it does in game and yadda yadda. It shouldn’t be too much different from my personal canon events except for some year transplanting.

Points to note: violence, blood, Grimm (Ansilm) treats Vette like property, and there is some mild language.

Past the Imperial barricade, the tombs were not restful. The rustles of other acolytes seeking their plunder carried through the cavernous halls from all points around, but there was a presence louder and yet all the more still to Ansilm Wx. In the murk there was an omnipotence breathing the stagnant air and biding the eons. Unheedful of things older than him, he pressed deeper into the temple.

The ground sloped into a steep fall beneath his feet. Eventually the shriek of wind blasting around sharp desert outcrops faded into a dull moan and the silence of the grave pressed in. The going for a while was painful and slow, since the sizable Pureblood had to fall back onto his haunches to avoid careening carelessly into a K’lorslug or another acolyte in the gloom. He found himself gritting his teeth. The physical part of his body told him that his muscles were expending laughably little exertion, but frustrated desires whelled so deeply in his chest that it tensed the thin band of rationality keeping him in place.

Ansilm bared his lips back so they stuck against his teeth. Strange power rested here and it would be strange power that would be the undoing of many an acolyte already pushed to fervor as they jockeyed to become Sith. But fighting ones inhibitions was discordant with the natural energy of the Force, and Ansilm did not suspend the tugging in his chest lightly.

Then the ground finally evened. He couldn’t hear the wind anymore. The tomb of Tulak Hord glowed a soft yellow from ancient lights that hid more than they exposed. But the retinal glow of the Pureblood’s eyes provided him an advantage over his human rivals. He wandered for a while encountering nothing until nothing weighed very heavily on his mind. The rooms and halls were built so similarly to the untrained eye that nothing but K’lorslug slime differentiated features. The chambers’ various meanings and purposes once common knowledge to Ansilm’s ancestors was now lost to monotony on him. Occasionally the shouts of someone being killed in darkness rang out, which was an unnatural comfort over the repetitive shuffling and mutterings.

Around the corner, a scream bellowed. Unlike the echoes that might’ve occurred a few paces over or an antechamber away, this was sharp and desperate on the ears. Not residual but real. The taste of electricity laid over the back of Ansilm’s tongue in a thin coating just a second before purple threw the caverns into stark relief. He charged forward to the strobing violet flicker of the Force energy.

The woman who’d screamed lay in the thick of a pack. From their practical minded blades and clothes they were nothing more than tomb dogs scavenging after artifacts. From the mouth of another hallway intersecting the antechamber, Ansilm could see another acolyte drawn out by the yells swiftly unsheathing his warblade. She was blissfully unware. It was an unnecessarily vulnerable position she’d put herself in to antagonize a few treasure hunters, but it was a situation he could leave to resolve itself and pick off the winner. Yet yawning tombs were lonely places for victors of petty fights.

Ansilm sprang onto the other acolyte as he brought his hands down to strike the lightening user. There was a yelp of pain as Ansilm’s warblade broke his grip and wrists, sending the combatant and his sword skittering across the floor. He lashed out with the Force in desperation, pushing Ansilm with a crack into the wall. His back hit hard knocking the wind from his lungs, but his feet and head remained steady. Lightening flared dangerously close to his wine-dark skin and danced off of it in violent crackles as he bared his teeth and advanced forward. Ansilm could barely see from the disorientation and the strobe from slowly frying bodies, but he could feel. He thrust his hand down where he could feel the other curled on the ground. He could feel the breath knocked from his cracked rib cage. One handedly, he drove downward and felt a gushing spurt of what could’ve either the living Force or blood whell into the sucking chest wound. Ansilm brought his other hand to the back of the pommel and forced the blade forward until it sparked against stone. The life drained like an ooze from his body and into the sealed tomb with his last rattling breath. Lost forever.

It fell dark again. The stench of cooked meat filled like blood in his nostrils. Ansilm wrenched his blade from the dead acolyte’s sternum with the protesting jolts of electricity propulsing violently away from sinew and bone. Behind him, the woman, a Red Sith, was poised in a textbook perfect combative stance. One hand raised to Ansilm and his heaving sweaty bulk fearlessly. Almost fearlessly. There was a line of tension down her spine that curved away from him in a guard.

“Well met, sister,” he managed between controlled but massive gasps of stale tasting air and sheathed his blade. His tongue felt thick with electrical charge and exhaustion.

The tense line of her body relaxed into a mistrusting question mark.

“I’ve no quarrel with you. Those Imps got what they deserved.” Her voice, in contrast with his even timbre was high, sharp. It danced on points, like her lightening.

Ansilm wiped away locks of black hair from his face and back over the top of his scalp. “And what was that?” he asked. Dry amusement tinged his voice.

“A dishonorable death. May they shit themselves in the place they were trying to befoul.” She stepped out of her stance to reveal a long siding of wall. The glyphs carved into the heavy rock had been removed into a long gaping trench, like a wound in the temple. From it energy flowed raw and damaged. There were many such gaps like it in other rooms.

“And what of it? Sith don’t concern themselves with petty thieves.”

“Sith? Funny word for one to use who isn’t concerned with his own heritage being raped and plundered.”

Ansilm’s eyes narrowed. She was quickly beginning to pluck at his nerves. “Sith is a legacy; it’s more than any one race. Unfortunate as the rape and plunder may be.”

She scoffed. “If that’s what you think, then you know nothing.”

Ansilm felt the band of irritation begging him to cave in to slaking his fill of power. It expanded with the adrenaline fueled rise in temper at this infuriating ungrateful woman-- It was that swell that ultimately brought him back to a steadying breath. His lungs were still shaky after the disturbed ozone and roasted flesh, but the rawness called attention to his surrounds rather than the provoked pool of emotions within. “Then you can tell me about it on our way into the tomb.”

The woman blinked. “I—I suppose a truce is a good idea. Then you feel it too? The need to give into your worst senses?”

“Yes, it’s tempting. And I think it’s the failure of many an acolyte. A smart Sith is a thinking Sith – not a beast. But at the same time, only Jedi are stupid enough to batter their true selves down. I believe an alliance is the best solution. You’re a good fighter and passionate; if nothing else, we might at least be able to have an interesting conversation.”

The woman’s sandy orange eyes sparkled with interest in the dark. She approached him and held out her hand. “You’re very flattering when you’re talking sense. My name is Jikksi. If you betray me, I'll kill you.”

"Noted." His four clawed fingers practically engulfed all of her small but corrosively smoothed hand. “But pleased to meet you Jikksi as long as you give me an honorable death. I’m Ansilm. Ansilm gestured her forward. “Well, we can’t waste the day talking.” She threaded her arm through his instead.

“What? Can’t a lady even get an escort from the big strapping man who saved her?” Jikksi fluttered her eyelashes coyly. Her tendrils swayed under smirking lips. A snide edge to the words told Ansilm she was feigning for her own amusement, but he returned the smile anyway.

“Of course the lady can.”

Since then, his trials seemed long behind him. The jungle before him.

“Figures you’d get out at the Imperial Spaceport then have to walk uphill five miles wading through man eating beasts to actually get to the city.”

Ansilm spared a sidelong glance at the Twi’lek slave and considered the shock controls in his belt. She stiffened every time his hand strayed too close, so giving her another jolt for speaking her mind seemed like overkill. All Ansilm Wx expected was obedience and competence. It was a paltry price for he would’ve demanded the same from any other companion of status.

For now she seemed content to stretch the durable woven fibers of her new armored gear. He’d had her change into the new jacket and pants during their last few uneventful hours on the Black Talon and had been relieved to see that it fit. After the simple hide tunic and pants he’d refitted her in on Korriban, she seemed reinvigorated by the proper wardrobe. More importantly, it gave her a suitable edge in combat, while reinforcing the idea that her sense of identity wellspringed from him.

“Can you keep up?”

“Uhh-h, yeah, guy. Tomb raider who got you that nifty glow stick strapped to your belt, here?”

“And I thank you for that.”

“I—you’re welcome. I think. Can we go before you start being nice to me?”

Ansilm shouldered his sparse haversack of belongings then started forward into the looming trees.

“What makes you think I wouldn’t be nice to you? You’re walking freely in the middle of dense wilderness, are you not? If I valued your servitude over your well-being I could easily have you on a drag line in front of me.”

Vette, a few paces behind his shoulder in case of threats, winced. “I’m sure you mean that nicely, but it still sounds creepy. I guess, it’s because this is a kind of everywhere to hide but nowhere to run to situation.”

Ansilm saw her glance up to the canopy cover. As they stepped over an invisible line, it swallowed them. Something made a trilling cry from deep within.

“That in no way negates what I said. I think you’re in a different arrangement for the time being and need to stop overthinking things. Your situation is plain and you’d do better taking it a day at a time for your own sanity. Paranoia will make even the strongest person go crazy.”

She fell contemplatively silent behind him and a smile curved Ansilm’s lips. Remarkably simple how punishment and kindness worked in conjunction to reform injustice to complacency. But one thing was missing in his quiet assurances: the promise of freedom. It was important that Vette not have a goal to work towards. Just a long haul day by day of getting used to her new life. When she reached that next milestone Ansilm would reward her with something nice. Something she liked. He just needed time to parse her out.

Aside from some sparse chatter where Vette asked Ansilm where he was from (Kaas City) and some comments on the weather, they continued the hike in silence. Coming from Korriban to a planet where the atmosphere was the same consistency as soup and well above sea level, the few kilometers felt like parsecs. Every step felt like an overexertion and he was beginning to feel the edge of a chill. Vette was doing better with her stamina for exploring, but even experience couldn’t negate the harsh barriers of rapid climate change. He could feel them both beginning to flag, when they encountered their first Gundark.

They had seen movement in the trees occasionally but nothing desperate enough to interfere with the man-made pathway. The exception was foraging just off the path with its head bowed and grunting into the soil.

It had been a while since Ansilm had seen a Gundark, and the reality of how gruesomely large they were was a daunting eleven-foot reality made of mealy smelling taut stretched hide.

Vette groaned. Fatigue snagging even the edges of that. “We sh—” she choked off then glanced hesitantly between Ansilm and his belt.

“We press on,” Ansilm said as if nothing was amiss.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I know you’re built, but that thing is you and then on stims on top of the stims its already on.”

“Come on,” Ansilm said again as though she hadn’t spoken and reached for his blade.

As he turned it on, the creature’s head snapped up. He felt Vette lurch back bloodlessly over his shoulder and knew she’d be useless. She had already succumbed to the terrifying elements and exhaustion. Ansilm would, as usual, have to rely on himself.

He coiled his legs into tethers of energy that he didn’t have and made an impossible leap with his arms poised in an overhead cut to bring down across the creature’s body. Hopefully the thick hide would tear like canvas and spill intestines on the ground. In slow motion, blurred by the speed of his surroundings, Ansilm watched one of the creatures tree trunklike arms come up effortlessly to bat him away. Committed now to his plan, Ansilm followed through with the cut and closed his eyes. It was like hitting a wall on a speeder bike. There was a beastial scream of pain, his bones folding into something solid, and …

Vette looked like she was vibrating; it made him feel dizzy.

...

The next thing he saw was cloth tarping and a Sith woman. She was beautiful. With a fine face, and elegant features piqued by a naturally mischievous demeanor and drips of gold piercings against her angular tendrilled ears and pouty lips.

“Jikksi? What’re you doing here?” The words came out too slow even though he was speaking normally. Almost like his tongue was too fast but his mouth too thick, but he felt good. Fresh. Cooler and softer somehow. “Korriban was a long time ago.”

“Do you know what year it is?”

Ansilm frowned. “Why would I need to? I’m fine,” he insisted a little hotly and leveraged his weight onto his arms to stand.

Quicker than he could comprehend, she grabbed his arms. The practical coarseweave was rough against his bare skin. Her fingernails dug into his slippery skin at the same time her light floral scent dug into his nose. She was strong. Ansilm – who had seen her control convulsive torrents of electricity while keeping perfect saber form - knew this, but it was another thing to feel it gird down through his muscles.

“Where’s my shirt?”

“What year is it Ansilm?”

He took a deep breath knowing there was no way to convince her he wasn’t okay when she was so assured that he needed medical attention.

“10 ATC.”

Her hands relaxed as he became less of a flight risk.

“Where are you?”

“A few miles from Kaas City.”

“Who was the master you were hoping to apprentice under as an acolyte?”

“Darth Baras, and he will be very unhappy if I’m late.”

Jikksi smiled and let go of the pinning hold on his biceps. He felt cold again after she left but not in a pleasant way. “So you were successful then.”

“Of course.” Ansilm blinked. “Vette.” He tried to bolt upright again, but a current of stiff pain that hadn’t been present before stopped him with a gasping grunt. “You took a harsh knocking. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a few fractured ribs,” Jikksi replied and compelled him back down with both hands on his shoulders. “I understand you have a lot to worry about, but if you try and get up again, I will restrain you. Anything you need, I can do.”

“You don’t understand. My slave—”

“The Twi’lek woman?”

“Yes, is she—?”

“After you were knocked out, she killed the Gundark and went looking for help. She found me, and we brought you here. She’s being attended to for her own injuries.”

Ansilm blinked back to Vette’s out of focus face and the thunderous sky framed behind her. He recalled retroactively the sharp scent of sap and ancient soil. She must have dragged him on his back.

“Here is where?”

He tried to turn his head, but found that the stiff rod of pain prevented that too. Glows of a fire danced along the dark tenting material and conversation ebbed and flowed in the distance. It wasn’t enough to make anything out.

A mysterious smile played around Jikki’s lips. “I’m not at liberty to say anything except that you’ll have to be marched out with a blindfold on. But… She’s a very loyal slave. You should consider yourself lucky.”

Ansilm slipped his fingers around Jikksi’s wrist – where her palm still rested flat and even on his shoulder, like an afterthought. “I do.”

#SWtOR #Star Wars: The Old Republic #Sith Warrior #The Grimm Legacy #Ignol Grimm #Jikksi Grimm #Vette #you can definitely tell where i got tired #and went to hell with description #but i think it works well #it carries the story #and this isnt supposed to be polished anyway #fan-fiction

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jakebraque-blog · 7 years

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I can see your house from up here.

One tyre, one wheel bearing, one CV joint, one shattered engine cooling fan, ending in a slashed radiator core (which for unrelated reasons also copped a sheared off side mounting plate, that we then bodged up with tie wire). The bearings got an emergency patch up just North of Bramwell Station and thankfully made it to Weipa where we could sort it properly. The CV got ignored (we did most of the Overland Telegraph Track in HI-2, hoping it wouldn’t explode). The radiator got bogged up with Bars-leaks and the fan got cut back into a roughly balanced profile with a cordless angle grinder (and our fearless bush mechanic got a blob of superheated plastic melted into his foot). The tyre was only a simple pop-off and clean-out type job, just packed up with mud when we crossed Gunshot creek. Oh and there was a broken spotty we stuck back on with gaffer tape. It’s hardly worth mentioning really.

So yeah, we conquered the mighty cape. With a shitload of help from our 9 carloads of new friends. Props to them for towing us up out of Palm creek at the very start of the tele track. To Shan’s Dad for basically being our mobile daycare service whenever the camp was getting set up or packed up. To Scott for being on hand with the Bars-leaks when I looked under the car and saw green shit dripping out of our radiator at Elliot Falls. There was no way in hell we’d have made it without everyone else there.

And a trip worth doing, it certainly is. We started off with a 4 day stay at the Mount Carbine caravan park, where they’ll let you leave your van all pro bono publico and shit, so long as you stay a day before you leave to do the cape and a day when you get back (because the roads north of Cooktown will shake a caravan right out into its component molecules). Mount Carbine’s dry as some very dusty old balls, there being some kind of freaky weather thing happening there where the Great Dividing Range makes all the clouds go around it in a ten kay radius. Which is grouse if you’ve just driven up from the Whitsunday coast and haven’t packed your awning away dry in weeks due to this rainforesty bullshit everywhere. A full day of actual sunshine in their old converted mining camp will straight up scour all the tropical mould off your shit.

Once we’d spent what felt like weeks unpacking and repacking and forgetting to put the wheel bearing greaser in before we left, we parked the van up in a corner, locked and chocked her and headed for the coast. Our group was heading up toward the big rendezvous at Cooktown from down in Victoria and the first one we met was Shan’s Dad, in Wonga beach. Beers were cracked, greetings exchanged and much attention was lavished upon the grandchild while we made camp at the incredibly overpriced caravan park. Like, seriously, it’s 35 bucks for a tent site and the baby bath they provide is an open-air laundry sink with the hot tap removed and rendered unusable (unless you happen to have a Leatherman handy). I really must remember to post that shitty review on Wikicamps.

Onward from there, we hit the Bloomfield track and railed it all the way up to the Lion’s Den hotel. The Bloomfield’s a pretty way to travel, with some steep-arse hills (one of the camper trailer rigs had to get towed over one bit), but it’s not what you’d call four wheel driving. We passed a couple of backpackers doing it in a Hiace halfway up.

The Lion’s Den is one of the must-sees up around Cooktown. Huge camping area out the back with a river and all. And of course the pub its self is decorated in the timeless outback style of let-everyone-scribble-shit-on-the-walls-and-hang-kooky-stuff-in-the-rafters-if-they-feel-like.

Onward to Cooktown. Cooktown’s ok. If you like that sort of thing. Though based on our admittedly small sample size, the local butchers can’t cryovac shit to save their own arses from the horrible shark attack that would inevitably happen if you took one of their leaky-arse bags out on a boat somewhere. Thanks for all the blood in our engel fuckers. I guess the captain cook museum is pretty cool too.

Heading up from there, you have to track back inland along the road you would have taken in (if you were a huge puuuuussaaaayy!) until you get to Lakeland. From lakeland you head North to Laura and then the dust hole ridden, corrugated, vehicle-destructey fun begins as you hit the Peninsula Developmental road. Or, if you were everyone else in our group, you’d go the way that was apparently planned, up through the national forest. Though if you did that you’d miss out on seeing the Hann river roadhouse. They have a pet emu and sell beer. The emu is kind of vaguely threatening. I highly recommend the experience of watching it freak out your wife for a solid ten minutes, as it slowly stalks her around and around the car while staring at her with its big, googly eyes.

After a solid 2.5 hours of being shaken the shit out of, you’ll arrive at Musgrave. Which is also just a roadhouse/pub/campground. It was at this point that the sprout decided to flip his shit at the prospect of being strapped back into his carseat and forced us into camping for the night. A half hour later, our group arrived from the forest track, asked a bunch of questions about what drugs we were on and then headed for the actual planned stop at the Archer river roadhouse. Catching them up the next day would necessitate a 7:00am start on the road, but that doesn’t happen for a couple of paragraphs, so we can focus elsewhere for the moment.

Musgrave is actually pretty cool. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a powered site in their campground, you just pay your ten bucks or whatever and then go pitch your camp wherever you feel like out by the horseyards. They don’t give a fuck if you light a fire and at 5:30 every arvo the old bloke who runs the show chucks all of the meaty kitchen scraps into what you’ll be quite surprised to learn is a freshwater crocodile infested dam, right next to your campsite. Separated by the flimsiest of three-strand wire fences, that doesn’t even reach within oh, let’s say, freshwater crocodile height of the ground. They’re actually kind of cute. The turtles in there climb all over them to get at the scraps and they don’t even notice. Carnivorous turtles may be the biggest threat brewing in this dam.

Onward from Musgrave (after packing up your tent at sparrowfart) and the road stretches a good 3 hours of travel up to Archer river. This is the really shitty section. Some bits are good but as a rule, if you don’t keep your speed above 80 or so, the corrugations will strike down upon every fibre of your vehicle with great vengeance and furious anger instead of merely being very unpleasant. The regular bitumen overtaking sections are either (and depending on your mood at the time) oases in the desert of cartilage ablating vibrations that wrack your very skeleton, or cruelly placed pauses in your torment that serve to heighten you senses for the redoubled agony to follow. Much like how the Spanish Inquisition would have a breather mid-flogging to let their victims recuperate a bit and maybe tentatively stick their head back out of their power-animal cave for a sec, before starting up with the cat o'nine tails again. This is around about where the radiator mount broke off. I cannot stress enough how much you shouldn’t bring your Festiva up this road.

Next up was Bramwell Station. The northernmost cattle station in all of Australia. They have about 14 acres of campground, a big section you can store caravans and campers on (you know, so you can replace their entirely sheared off spring packs on account of you bringing them up that "road", you doofus) and of course, a pub. The promoter of the whole deal does a big spiel about the station and the land’s history every evening and the place is always jam packed with your fellow nomads and suchlike. Top joint. The lady who owns the station also has the roadhouse at the start of the tele track and the earthmoving company that handles the constant, uphill battle of keeping the road up to Bamaga in technically passable condition. Considering how it’s under water for a big chunk of the year, I’d say they’re doing alright.

So as I said just before (unless that bit got edited out), Brawell Junction roadhouse is where the fabled Overland Telegraph Track begins. A short, meandering few minutes up, you’ll run into the first of the flaming hoops you’ve gotta jump through to make it onto the track. Of the 40 odd people we saw come in for a look at the crossing, about 10 or 15 just poked their heads in, said "nooooope" and then fucked off to the easy road up. And I can’t say I blame them. We took the chicken track and still had to get snatched out up the exit ramp. If you do it exactly right you’ll still come within an inch of stoving in your driver’s side quarter panel. Try to be a hero and you’ll put a spa sized dent in your car.

So anyway, we did that. Then came the long rolling goat track that switched between scrub and grass, rocks and and forest. You don’t go five minutes without some kind of drastic scenery alteration. Shit’s beautiful up there.

All told, to do the tele track properly you have to tackle about 20 crossings, one or two of which are real drowners. People talk in hushed tones of Nolan’s brook and Gunshot creek. As well they bloody should. Nolan’s is deep enough to have a stand up bath in and Gunshot owns its hardcore reputation all the way. If I was to recount the whole adventure front to back, you’d be bored shitless and I’d slag a bundle of neurons trying to come up with a twentieth synonym for shovelling rocks into a mudhole.

The point is we made it. 4 days later, having camped at Dulhunty, Cockatoo creek, Nolan’s brook and finally making it to the Jardine river and over to Punsand bay. We spent the next few days wandering around, photographing things and such, I hiked to the tip with a grizzly baby on my back and all of our clean washing got rained on for what felt like a week.

We snagged a new radiator for our bus in Bamaga. At a little joint called Cape York Spares and Repairs, just across from the BP. Do not go to this place if you can avoid it. There are other options nearby.

See it’s like this. Our radiator was well shagged at this point. The fan had basically turned into a claymore mine back up the track and the corrugations had sheared off some important bits as well. It looked like one of those mangled shiny things that fall off Optimus Prime when he gets a missile up the robo-colon in act three.

We wound up buggered for a fan but did happen to get sold a brand new OEX radiator that this, ahem, "gentleman" had sitting under one of the giant piles of crap in his rat’s nest of a workshop. He opened the unstapled flap on one end while explaining how it got ordered in for some job or other and then never used. One side of the box had a little hole in it, about the profile of a pack of cards. I took a peep inside, saw a perfectly serviceable core and chalked it up to some bump or other on the transport truck, no big deal. Off we went with our emergency radiator packed carefully onboard. Did you see the foreshadowing? I foreshadowed there. It was all foreshadowey and shit.

Onward to Weipa. You’d think it was shitty except for how it’s kind of ok. Go do the sunset tour. It’s amazing to see saltwater crocodiles all like close by but yet somehow not eating you, even though the guardrail on the boat is super low. And they disappear in two inch deep water, it’s fucked. Good place to buy some new wheel bearings, is Weipa.

Back down to Musgrave, we got to introduce our new friends to the magic of watching some guy in a hat feed very small crocodiles, before parting ways the next day. They went off toward Karumba and we bailed back toward Mt Carbine. Spent a night in Lakeland on the way.

Then the rest and refit. The fan we bought in Weipa turned out to be wrong. Gulf Parts and Spares were totally cool about it. It’s on its way back up for a refund as we speak. It’s the point where our new radiator came out of the box that the fuckery begins.

See it came out with a hole in it. In a spot that lined up quite well with the hole in the box, just turned over on the other side. Some surprise was expressed. A phone call was made. And in two shakes of a bullshit spackled cordless phone, we were informed that absolutely everybody in the workshop remembered how that specific box they dug out from under one of their big heaps of shit along one wall most definitely had no damage when they all absolutely saw it in the workshop. Which wasn’t suspicious as buggery in the slightest.

Now I’m inclined to believe the young parts guy (ie. the poor fucker who’s been left to absorb our hatred since his gutless maggot of a boss started refusing to take our calls, oh look, here’s his number, please don’t, you know, do anything immature with it). Adam’s obviously never laid a spanner on anything more complicated that the axle adjusters of his dirtbike. He would have paid attention to the fiftieth box of fourby-related shit to frieght in on a Tuesday morning like I would have paid attention to something (insert vapid celebrity) said in (seriously, they still print Woman’s Day Magazine? That’s kind of impressive. Wow). But when you’ve got a brand new, excessively ventilated radiator to return and a miserable pack of fucknuckles who say you broke it, not them, "nuh uh, I know are so what am I?" there’s only so much understanding you can field.

Collecting the replacement radiator took a 200km round trip down to Atherton (where the owner of the Natrad both gave us a discount on hearing our story and also insisted on taking the new unit out of the box to show John and I) and ate up a whole day, plus a big chunk of grandkid time for Poppy, who was at this point the only one with a working car. We booked an extra day at Mount Carbine to fit all the repairs in and thankfully got the hot tip about the pies at Mt Carbine servo. Homemade awesomeness. Big ups to Nikki and Darryl for putting us onto that. Plus giving up the office phone and summoning the infernal and ancient magics of the yellow pages tome to guide our radiator related quest (mobile coverage is not so much with the existing there, it’s kind of one of the good points). Hail Mount Carbine Caravan Park! Hail!

So where does this epically disjointed tale leave us now? Uh, Mount Isa actually. Look it’s taken like a week to write this, I left out a bunch of stuff, there’s obviously been about eight different mindsets at work etcetera. Kind of not looking forward to the editing process really.

We’re heading Darwinward, to find the holy grail of places we might like to settle down in. Everyone I know who moves there never comes back. I can practically hear the Barra calling.

Some other things’ve also happened since then but it turns out that travel blogging as a parent is like that old Greek thought experiment where the arrow almost hits the tortoise, but then the tortoise moves a bit but then the arrow also catches up a bit but then the tortoise moves a little bit more but then the arrow also moves a bit more and oh my god I’m so tired, seriously how how are my lungs and stuff still working shdhfhufudhfhfoiwgsdjdnf

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