CRRRRRACK! "Timberrrrr!”
The towering mahogany tree keeled away from us, smashing into the ferns and moss in its path. It was a good haul: Angel would be able to mill about a hundred and fifty pieces of [Shaped Lumber] from the trunk, which, if we were lucky, would be all she needed to finish our base.
“Hell yeah,” I said. “That a whole lotta wood.”
"Ooo-huu!" Lulu knew the drill. After harvesting five similar trees, we had the process down to a science. Lulu was my chainsaw: she hopped around in a circle, water-sabering the tree in a ring around the base until she reached the heartwood. When the cut was deep enough, I wrapped my tentacles around it and pulled until the tree fell over. Lulu chopped the crown into branches and handed them to me, then kind of glued herself onto my ass and helped me drag the log into the water. Because neither of us could use player tools or technically craft, we weren't able to break the log down. Angel had to do that, using the [Carpentry Bench] she had set up at the entry to the cave: one of four vitally important crafting stations we'd had to build before she could even get started on the house.
Once things got going, Angel blazed through the construction with a talent I could only envy. She didn’t even need a blueprint - the design of the base had clearly been in her head a while, because she built and assembled the prefabricated sections as fast as we could deliver supplies. Watching it fly up, I felt pretty damn lucky. I’d managed to find the only structural engineering student on the whole damn island.
Within the span of about two hours, she threw together a house that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Caribbean resort - albeit one made of wood and thatch. Two bedrooms, an armory, a kitchen and open-plan living area. There was even a loft. Stairs and a bridge connected the watery cave entry to the house, so we didn’t have to track through the mud to get in and out. And once everything was lit with torches... it looked pretty homey.
"Anyone ever tell you you're talented as hell?" I nosed around inside the house, poking my head into each still-empty room. "Feel like I'm going to get the first good sleep of my life in here. What kind of floors are these?"
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"Grass. Kind of like tatami." Angel's skin was so pale that even the slightest blush turned her face and neck scarlet. "And, uh, thanks."
"My pleasure." I went back out to the largest of the rooms, turned around and around, and flopped down to the ground. The tatami was springy and dry and comfortable against my hard skin.
"Yeah." Angel flushed a bit harder, and turned away to fidget with her tools. "Sorry it's still empty. I was just taking a break before getting to the placeables."
I cocked my head, watching her as she flustered out of the living area and into the room she'd turned into her work room. "You uh... you are allowed to take a rest."
Angel didn't reply - or pretended not to read my telepathic sign, I wasn't sure. Either way, it left me feeling both amused and confused.
An hour later, and Angel had set up the essentials. A four-poster bed for her. A bed that looked like a box with a giant grass cushion in it for me. Lulu had already demonstrated her preference for the mud outside, but she also got a bed - at the foot of mine. I wasn't sure how I felt having a grown-ass adult, a skilled former nurse of unspecified age, sleeping at the end of my bed like a dog. Lulu didn't seem to mind it. After taking a nap, I found her snoozing away on top of it.
It was early evening by the time we gathered around the war table. Angel laid her paper copy of the map she'd gotten from Merc there. Paper copies of things served as master copies of any given documents. We each had digital copies, but this way, we could see it and mark it up with each other. Our own personal maps changed accordingly.
"Here's Oil Town Seven." Angel pointed at a black blot about five miles from our location. "The main entrance of the Demise is right there. That weird coal-plant pollution smell that's blown downwind from the north-east... that's from this place. Both the oil beds and the tar pits are part of the volcano there, and they're hot."
"You've looked around before?" I asked.
Angel shook her head. "Sam told me about them. She'd been all over the Centurions half of the island. Oil Town wasn't always under the control of the Hell Pigs. It's kind of gone back and forth."
"Second hand info. Huh." My eyes narrowed. "I don't like it. I want to go and scout it out.”
Angel arched a brow. “Tonight?”
“Yeah. And by myself.” I rose to my feet, shaking myself out. “And no, not because I don’t trust you gals. Just need some alone time to think.”
“Oohh…” Lulu sounded uncertain.
“No, he’s got a point, Lulu. Noodles is a Reaper. They’re ambush predators, and he’s built for hunting and tracking at night. We’d just slow him down,” Angel voiced to her. She signed to me. “Be safe, alright?”
“Sure thing. Get some sleep. I’ll be back late.” I flicked the tentacles neatly along my back, and started for the surface.