Quest: 1.9 (Week-2: First Half (pt.1))

--- Jon ---

--- Morning ---

(And another sleepless night…)

It was becoming something he was a little too familiar with, and while it hadn’t started taking a serious toll on him yet, he knew it was going to start kicking him in the teeth soon enough if it kept up.

(I’m blaming Jack.) Ever since his run in with the man, his head had been in a weird place, especially since it turns out the strange man hadn’t been lying about the whole vigilante confiscation thing. And since the man he’d stopped had had a previous record of assault, the cops let him keep the majority of the money that Jack had taken from the criminal’s wallet.

The whole incident left him with a bad taste in his mouth, even if it meant he had a surprising two hundred dollars stashed in the bottom of his backpack.

(Just a few thousand more…) He couldn’t help but give a bitter chuckle to that thought, before sighing and shaking his head. (Better get moving…)

Like usual he finished out his usual morning routine just in time to grab breakfast before camp activities started for the day.

(Let’s see, today is… lake day.) Since it was his first time on lake watch, Andy would be taking care of the actual lifeguard duties, while he’d be in charge of teaching the younger campers how to swim if they didn’t already know.

“You ready to get going?” Andy checked once Jon made to stand up.

“Uh, if it’s not a bother then… yeah, sure.” He nodded as Andy stood.

“Alright, in that case I’ll go ahead and start herding the kids towards the lake, you go ahead and make sure everything is set up around the lake.” Counselor Andy told him.

“Got it.” He nodded once more before making his way towards the lake supply cabin, where they’d stored the floats for any of the kids that might need them. (Let’s see, we usually get about twenty kids at the lake so…) He began moving the floats and tubes from the cabin and taking them to the pier where they usually held lake activities.

Once everything was set up, he went ahead and dunked himself into the lake water so that he wouldn’t hesitate at the chill in front of the kids he’d be teaching. He already knew he wasn’t the best swimmer in camp -that title went to either Jill or Ying depending on the week- meaning he had to do as much as he could for the kids he was responsible for and letting them think there was something wrong with the water would only hurt things in the long run.

By the time he’d climbed out of the water Andy had and the kids had begun to arrive.

“Decided to take a quick dip?” Andy asked with a chuckle.

“Figured it was best to get past those first dip chills.” He explained, before looking over the kids as he walked towards the floats.

(Only a dozen… guess the camp has been losing campers…)

He shook that thought away, before putting on a smile and handing the floats and tubes out to any kid that wanted them.

“Alright, now that everyone has all of their things, who here doesn’t know how to swim?” Andy asked the kids once everyone was back together. “Come on no shame in needing to learn.”

Three of the younger kids, none of them older than ten, raised their hands.

“Okay, then you three are going to spend the day with Jon here, and he’s going to help teach you all how to swim, alright?” Once the kids had nodded Andy turned back to the other kids. “The rest of you are with me, come on.”

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While he waited for the other campers to leave, he briefly ran over a game plan on how best to teach the kids how to swim, before immediately shooting down the way he’d learned.

(Just because ma, threw me in the deep end and pulled me out, doesn’t mean their parents will be okay with that.)

“Alright, kids why don’t we make our way over this way?” He led his three kids towards the other side of the pier. “There’s a nice little outcropping under the water that’ll keep things just shallow enough that we can work on floating without any trouble.”

From there his first day as a swim instructor went a little slower than he’d been expecting, mainly because he spent the majority of the morning simply trying to convince the three kids he was in charge of to get in the water, and by the end he’d only been able to teach one of them how to float.

Scene Consequences:

-Discovered [Swimming] at rank E (Lv. 5).

-New Skill [Teaching] at rank F- (Lv.1)

--- Afternoon ---

Having finally wrapped up everything for the morning, and having a bit of free time until the campfire the counselors wanted to do later, he decided that now was a fairly good time to take a look at the book Miss Edna had given him. (I mean, even if I’m not a big reader, it’d still be rude to not at least give it a try.)

With that thought in mind he made his way back to his cabin and pulled out ‘Bewitching Blackwell’ from his backpack.

(Alright, let’s see… ‘’)

As he read through the first few pages of the book, he began to get why Miss Edna’s book probably hadn’t sold all that well, because while not bad the majority of the things covered in the first few chapters of the book were things he’d already picked up over his time in camp. That is to say, that most of it was fairly common knowledge to the people of Blackwell, making the book come off as drier than it actually was.

(At least it’s not as bad as my schoolbooks…) He could barely trudge through those.

In the end, the only reason he was making as much progress as he was, was because of the sheer number of hand drawn pictures Miss Edna had filled the book with. Ranging from dramatizations of some of the rarer sights and myths of Blackwell to more detailed ones for the ones people could more easily find.

Sadly, none of this made actually getting through the book any easier.

(Maybe it’d be easier if I looked up something specific?)

Scene Choices

I’m going to be honest; I should have asked what people wanted to study here. That said, since we did end up with a tie, we can have the tie breaker here instead.

So read which section of the book:

[] -Potions

[] -All (Reduced experience but gives experience to all relevant skills.)

--- Night ---

Having read what he could of Miss Edna’s book, he left his cabin and made his way to the camp firepit to see if any of the counselors needed a hand with anything. After all campfire night had always been one of his favorite events at the camp, even if they only held it every couple of weeks.

The whole event would usually start just before sunset with a big outdoor dinner at the center of camp where all the campers could watch the sunset. From there the whole camp would gather around a bonfire to tell ghost stories or sing camp songs. Then Miss Edna would show off some of her simpler magic, such as making motes of light dance around and letting the younger kids try and catch them.

Even before he’d become a CIT he’d tried to help the counselors with set up, since the whole thing took a surprising amount of effort to put together. Especially when you considered the fact that the counselors still did their regular duties throughout the day on top of it.

Once at the camp site he took a look around to see Miss Edna and Ying heading for the mess hall, to get dinner together. (Which with this many people could take a while.)

While Jill and Andy stuck around trying to keep the kids in some semblance of order as they slowly began to gather. (Which is easier said than done.)

Off to the side he saw Quartermaster Rogers beginning to head to the forest edge, axe in hand. (And he’s probably getting firewood for the bonfire.)

(They could all probably use some help, but there’s only one of me so…)

Scene Choices:

Who should Jon help?

[]- Help Jill and Andy round up the kids.

[]- Help Miss Edna and Ying with the food.

[]- Help the Quartermaster gather firewood.