castadrift | open

Entry tags:

kaoru,
mari

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There's no time to consider anything beyond survival when escaping a plane wreck. Kaoru's mind was focused on swimming in the direction of land and hoping against hope that it was both real and inhabited by people that could help.

It is real. Kaoru walks once he reaches the shore, finding some pocket of willpower that disdained crawling onto the beach like some half-starved waif. His head may still pound, that swim may have been the only thing more terrifying than the fact their plan crashed onto open ocean and he didn't know how close they were either to LA or to Australia, and in retrospect was far more terrifying than the plane crash/ocean landing because of the nature of Australian fauna...

"This week hasn't been bad enough already?" he shouts, glaring at the sky. God was always a questionable concept to Kaoru, but it wasn't like he had anyone else to yell at or blame for this entire mess. "You had to crash the plane on top of everything else? Really?"

It's not the most inspired speech, but his head hurts. He looks across, instead of up, and notices how utterly blank the horizon looks.

Kaoru turns and looks behind him. Palm trees, tropical flora. It could be any of the tropical ecological zones.

No civilization. No sounds but the other people crawling out of the ocean, looking bedraggled.

He crumples as the reality of what happen sinks in, landing on his knees in the soft sand. The ocean-water laps at his knees as he stares out at the horizon again.

Stop worrying, I'll call when I get there. I promise.

Naoki was going to kill him.

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It takes Mari a few moments to locate the location the shouts come from after she hears them, wandering over and rubbing her head. The first thing she spots is Oscar the Grouch, which leaves her certain she's going mad. This is all just a dream brought on by too many glasses of wine at a high altitude. "Hello," she calls doubtfully anyway, running a hand through her hair.

Her clothes and skin are already covered in sand. She'd wash it off in the sea if that seemed like a good idea, but her jeans are already difficult to walk in thanks to salt water. Taking off her jumper, she sits down next to the giant sesame street character and wriggles a pack of soaking polo mints out of her pocket. "Oscar, right? Polo?"

Kaoru stares blankly at her. Why is she calling him Oscar? Who is she? He slept most of the trip and arrived late, so most of these people were going to be new to him.

Even so. Why Oscar? He glances at the mints ... which draw his eyes lower and to his pants.

Seriously. It was the cherry on top of the giant ice cream sundae bullshit of his life. He forgot he decided for comfort of his favorite set of pajama pants when packing this morning instead of actual clothing.

His life.

"Kaoru." He wonders what a polo is, but they looked like every other generic mint he had seen before, and holds his hand out. "Thanks. What's your name?"

"Mari," if he has a name, he's unlikely to be a hallucination. Mari squints up at him briefly, then pops a polo into her own mouth, sticking her tongue through the hole in the middle. It tastes salty, but it's minty enough to remove the horrible feeling of fur in her mouth.

Taking off her jumper she begins removing things from her pockets and laying them on top of it to dry out. Pack of cards, leather passport, keyring, iPod...ow. She frowns at the iPod as she makes sure it's turned off. No rice here. She checks her lanyard, then holds it up to him to see. "Snap, we're both immature. Were we both on the flight, too?"

Looking around, she takes off her shoes and socks, laying them next to her. "I'm pretty sure we're not dead. My head is thumping."

Her head doesn't hurt. It feels clear as a bell, but- if she were dead, she'd expect her hearing to be back. It isn't.

"Yes, I was on the flight too." The plane is now ... nowhere in sight. IS it because it sank already, or because he's facing the wrong way? Does it matter?

Yes. His clothes are on that plane.

He puts the mint in his mouth and watches her lay her items on the sand. After a few moments, he realizes that he should probably start doing the same and grabs for his backpack.

"I don't think we're dead, unless it's something like that stupid show with a bunch of people on the island. If we see a polar bear, I'm going to try my luck with the ocean." He rummages through his backpack and grabs his cell phone first. Dry - his backpack had been worth every cent he spent on it, and that was a considerable number of them. It withstood all the rain on those weekend trips and being dragged through the ocean.

He unlocks it and watches the wireless try to connect. And fail, a lot.

"So we're not dead," Mari pulls her knees into her chest, wishing she'd thought to bring her backpack with her. It'd be nice to have a change of clothes. Or even the cheese sandwiches she'd packed earlier. Goddamn, she's hungry.

"If we see a polar bear I might just jump on it and try to bite it to death. I'm starved."

Her shoulders crack when she rotates them, her neck making a noise as she stretches it. "We're going to have to make a distress beacon, if you can't get a signal," she points out listlessly. If he's got his phone out, the only reason she can think for why he's not calling emergency services is because he can't get a signal.

"No signal." With a sigh, Kaoru turns the phone off. No point in wasting the battery yet.

He starts to pull the rest of the things he threw into his backpack before he left and lay them out on the sand as well. Useless electronics. Notebooks and pens. Advil.

"If we can find things to burn, we could go with a fire. They'll have to know we never arrived and our path. A giant pillar of smoke would help." He rubs the skin by his eyes, severely tempted by his Advil. His head was aching, either because of stress or the fact he was still hungover. "How far into the flight were we when we went down?"

"Don't ask me, I was sleeping," Mari picks up her socks and squeezes them out, trying to think things through. "I don't know how to make a fire. If we get rocks, we can make them into a huge 'help' signal, though."

Help, food, water. Water? Water. That was important. Shielding her eyes, Mari looks around the beach, quickly spying the large trees. "If we can get up those palms, we can use those coconuts for food and water, at least. And the leaves probably burn too, if you can build a fire."

"So was I." Fuck this hangover. Kaoru twists to look at the palm trees for a few seconds, noting the same thing Mari did.

Food and water. A small flicker of relief went through him; Kaoru is quite fond of coconut water. The fact it already solves much of their hydration issue was a bonus.

Now they need shelter and rescue.

"I might. I've never without a match, but I know of a few ways in theory." Could they find flint here? Would that be useful when the only things he knew about flint-napping was listening to the archaeology students in his Latin classes discussing it?

"We can go with both options. It's not like one will cancel each other out."

His clothes were drying on him, salty and stiff. He pokes idly at his pants, already mourning what many days of hard living will do on them.

"Want to try and see if we can get up those palms now?" She is hungry, he remembers.

Mari stares up at the trees and winces at the thought of climbing them. "We can try."

They're like enough to fail, but trying'll do. Standing up, Mari drags her jumper further up the beach to keep anything she owns from being washed out to sea again, should the tide suddenly come in. Stretching, she eyes the trees thoughtfully. "I don't know if we can climb them too high."

Perhaps they were different from the trees at home? She'd never been good at tree climbing. He didn't look too good at it either. Hesitantly, Mari puts a hand on the nearest tree and feels the trunk. Rough. "Do you want to try first? Or are you going to look for fire stuff while I try this?"

"Have you climbed a palm tree before?" Kaoru glances around, but he didn't see much else of interest for fire burning. Discovering if they could climb a palm tree in order to get the needed coconuts was more important.

He picks a different one, smaller than hers. He hadn't climbed a palm tree in years. He remembers it being difficult then.

But he didn't have to in order to survive before.

"I've not even seen one this close," Wales wasn't exactly a prime location for growing palm trees. Mari puts her hands on the trunk, then begins to pull herself up. Her feet slip and slide against the rough trunk and she's only a foot or so up when her grip gives out and she slides back down.

"Fuck," her hands and feet are all scraped up. Giving the tree a rueful look, she glances over to see if Oscar has done any better.

This was not going to be pleasant. Kaoru watches Mari's attempt, working up his own courage to try.

He could probably get more than a foot at least. After it was obvious that she wasn't able to get any higher, he took a running start at his tree.

His hands slips at first and he winces - it was easy to forget how hard the bark was - but he frog hops up half the tree before his strength gives out on him and he has to frog hop back down before he falls down the tree entirely and breaks his neck on the landing.

Fuck indeed. "Can you see any smaller trees?" Practice will make it easier.

He didn't want to practice. He wanted to be home.

Mari wanders up and down the treeline, frowning before finally selecting one. "If I stand on your shoulders I might be able to get up there."

Doubtful, but she can't help the note of hopefulness in her voice. "Or we can try to find something to knock them down with."

Kaoru wrinkles his nose, but Mari looks light enough. Tall enough, as well; with the two of them, she'd manage to get pretty high.

"You can try standing first. You can use the trunk to balance." There better be more food than this on this island. He likes coconut water, but not enough to live on it for more than a day if he had a choice.

"Alright," Mari stretches her arms again, suddenly thankful for her lanky limbs. "Crouch down and I'll get on your shoulders."

This will end like a Laurel and Hardy episode, won't it? Oh dear. At the least, they'll have coconuts.

The potential for not starving is a good motivator. Kaoru crouches by the chosen tree, holding onto it himself in order to more easily lift her when it came to that.

This will work as a great motivator to learn to climb palm trees, he thinks. If its that or having to lift someone by his shoulders.

Climbing up, Mari wobbles precariously, grabbing the tree for balance. At least they're a good way up now, she thinks. "Be thankful I'm not wearing shoes," she calls down as she awkwardly grips the tree.

"Okay," she says. "Okay..." Pulling herself up a little further, she grips the trunk for dear life and reaches out for one of the coconuts. Not far enough. "Stand on your tiptoes or something."

This is a horrible idea. Kaoru stands as high as he can on his toes, glad that they don't have sand under them at the moment. He would be sinking right now, if he had been.

"Better?"

Mari nearly overbalances at first and has to grab the tree's trunk and grip it hard to keep from falling. Without answering, she reaches out and grabs hold of one of the coconuts. Gripping it tight, she pulls to to dislodge it--

--and ends up toppling backward off of Oscar, hitting the ground shoulders first with a loud 'oof'. Sitting up, she holds up the green coconut.

"Now we just need to work out how to open it."

The instinct to save Mari when he falls wars with his self-preservation and the fact it hurts to be landed on, and his self-preservation wins the battle.

He looks behind him at Mari, who looks thankfully unhurt and is holding a coconut.

All that effort, he thinks, for one coconut. They were doomed.

Knives were an impossibility. "Your nails? Fashion a twig into something you can slice it with. Throw it at a trunk?" Fire could be an option, but unless-

Kaoru sniffs the air. Unless the plane exploded ... "I smell smoke."

"A rock might work. What?" Mari looks up, surprised. Smoke? Ah yeah, he was right, she can smell it too now. Holding the coconut under one arm, she stands up, then gives him a look. "Slice open a coconut with a twig. Really?"

If there's fire, there's either people or they're really, really unlucky. "I'm going to check it out."

"Not a flimsy one." He gives her a look right back. With a lack of knives, they were stuck with the wild. A sharp enough twig could work for the softer flora.

Not the seed of the coconut, but the peculiar green part. Maybe.

"I'll go with." Kaoru grabs his backpack from where he left it by the tree trunk. Fire implies someone here knows something about how to survive.

He hopes.

"Alright," Mari wraps her things up in her jumper and holds them close to her chest, the coconut under her other arm. "Maybe it's Bear Grylls."

"Maybe he'll be able to build us a raft to civilization." He waits for her to finish packing, sniffing the air.

Definitely smoke, and coming from what Kaoru is currently considering the south. "Ready?"

"Yep," Mari adjusts her grip on her things, then sets off towards the smell of smoke, not waiting for Oscar to lead the way.

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