A Hazy Shade of Winter

[Dracos]

"Sure.  We're in arizona though.  It's all fuckin' parkland."

Dracos switches on Oingo Boingo superdisc and flicks it to track, "No One Lives Forever".

"Rez, drive on!"

Dracos

[Rezantis]

Rez . . . drives on!

And looks for somewhere mildly appropriate to stop (hell, nice, open, and with a tree stump would do) so he can try plinking something with arrows for a few minutes.

[Brian]

Finding such a place is remarkably easy, where you are.  The terrain is all open, save a few ridges of rock, and filled with low scrub.  Not too many trees, but after an hour or so of driving, you find a large flat spot that's difficult to see from the highway, and near a wide gravel shoulder that already has two cars parked in it.  Seems to be a somewhat unofficial 'scenic viewpoint'.

[Dracos]

Dracos shook his head, "Eh, we're crazed tourists.  This good for you Rez?"

Dracos

[Rezantis]

Rez pulls the car over a small ways away from the other ones, and looks around for the people who said cars belong to.

Pocketing mobile phone and taser, he gets out of the car and grabs his archery gear.

"Coming, slackass?"

[Brian]

One of the cars is vehicle to a young couple, probably newlyweds.  It's a Lexus, something written on the back window in soap, but blurred from rain.  You guess it's rain, at least.  This is the first leg of the trip where it hasn't felt cold enough to snow ... but it feels like it's close.

Either way, view is really not that great.  The other one car is a van (the old style, from the late 60's) and has blinds up in all the windows, as someone seems to be using it for a nap spot.  Crossing over the guard-rail would take you down a steepish, weed-covered slope, and the field below was probably a pasture at one point.  It's filled with weeds, too, broken and dead in the winter.  One prominent tree-stump sticks out, and looks like it would make a decent target, though.

[Dracos]

Dracos picked up two bokkens from the trunk and shrugged, "Sure, sure, bitch."

He headed out to a clean spot, passing over the guardrail and carefully heading down with Rez following.  Moving a bit to the side, he figured he might as well get some damn exercise in after being in the car for so long and now is as good a time as any. Stretching out a bit first, he proceeded to do a few sword katas while Rez was practing his new techniques with the bow.

Dracos

[Brian]

Rez discovers quite a few things on his trial of experimentation with the bow.  Firstly, that stump was petrified.  Whoops.

Secondly, graphite shafts are durable, as the points actually penetrating a short distance attests.

Thirdly, when frustrated at the inability to really seem to do much to the stump (before discovering it was, in fact, petrified), Rez reduces one of his prized arrows into a shaft of flame two meters long that merrily sheds sparks and fire along the weeds it passed over ... which fortunately do not ignite.  It does an impressive amount of damage to the stump, though.

[Dracos]

Dracos stumbles a bit at that and turns to rez raising an eyebrow, "Rez, you shoot arrows of fire."

Dracos

[Rezantis]

Rez nods slowly, looking more than faintly surprised himself.

"That stump DESERVED it, though."

[Dracos]

"That is now an extremely EX-STUMP.  Now, rez...you set any of my shit on fire, I'm going to have to kill you, no matter how jealous I am at the moment that you can shoot fire."

Dracos

[Rezantis]

"Aww.  I thought you likes fire?"

Having finished tinkering with the sights on the bow, Rez goes and collects his arrows (whichever ones are, like, still okay after that) and packs his gear up.

[Dracos]

"Yeah, one sec before we go though... Gotta check something."

Dracos quickly sets up the sat and gets online on his laptop, putting his mad searching skills to finding the best sword place (Combat or antique, no decoration places) and best hunting goods stores in the state.

Dracos

[Brian]

This requires setting up the satellite uplink, which is simple enough.  Ginrai is sacked out in the back seat, and the suit-case containing the dish is on the seat next to him, familiar lead pipe resting atop that.  He sleeps through uplink extraction, and within a few minutes you're able to find something close to your route.  You're currently on highway 44, headed west, and will pass through Winslow on your way to California.

There's a 'Swords and Collectibles' shop there, and their website assures that they sell functional items, not just show pieces.

[Dracos]

Dracos nods, gets the directions memorized and then shuts the whole thing down, "I'm driving, let's rock."

He gets in the driver seat, waits for rez to get in the passenger seat, and burns off down the road.

~o/"Who's gonna ride with the Elevator man"/o~

Dracos