Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.
Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.
Chapter 5: The Village
It took them another two days to get to the village—during that time, Quatre mainly cooked, Trowa acted as a general handy-man, Heero shot game out of the trees with a small composite crossbow, and Duo acted like a general nuisance. Of course.
Sometimes, no, all the time, Heero wondered why Duo had been invited.
Then he learned the reason.
Suddenly, there was a soft rustle, and they were surrounded. A group of natives were standing in a semi-circle around them, and Heero guessed that it was a protective stance and the village was slightly beyond them. Undoubtedly, if they tried to back up and flee, there would be scouts waiting in the bushes to capture them. He noticed immediately that the natives did not look like the other indigenous peoples of this area. Most of these had blond, red or pale chestnut hair and bright blue eyes that contrasted oddly with their deeply bronzed bodies. It must have been the effect of interbreeding with the lab techs. Also, their clothes seemed to be simplified and minimized forms of Western clothing with some variation around collars and cuffs. Spears were pointed at them.
"Hey, men. Hands out with your palms up!" Duo said cheerfully, and he stepped forward. Quickly, the other anthropologists followed Duo's direction.
The leader of the villagers rattled off a quick string of syllables, some of which sounded completely foreign, and some of which sounded oddly familiar.
"Brilliant!" Duo whispered, bouncing excitedly. "It's just English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and some of the local dialects. This is just great! Absolutely fantastic! A whole new creole!" He began rattling off some syllables, his eyes sparkling with what was undoubtedly charisma.
The leader seemed to consider, and made a hand gesture that caused his men to stand down. There was some grumbling amongst the ranks, as if the men had been looking forward to a fight, but they acceded somewhat willingly. The leader carefully introduced his men, enunciating every syllable.
So, Duo in turn, introduced his fellow anthropologists. Something that he said made all of them crack up into laughter, and hissing snickers. Heero didn't want to know; no, he really did. He was curious.
"Yo, Heero, man, can you get me some trade goods out of my bag?"
"Hn." Carefully, Heero opened up the knapsack and was greeted with the sight of unmitigated chaos.
"Um, three fishhooks from the bottom right pocket. Don't worry about your fingers really, they're in a case. And, hm, let's have some tobacco from the side pouch and some glass beads from the left below the fishhooks."
Very carefully, Heero handed the goods over and watched Duo jabber for a moment. Soon, the goods were off their hands and they were being carefully escorted to the middle of the village. Chattering excitedly, boys, girls, and women came out to greet them, along with some of the older women and men. Somehow, Duo managed to field all of the questions with remarkable ease. Especially for someone who had just figured out the basis of a language, but had never actually spoken it.
All of the other anthropologists looked just as uncomfortable as Heero felt, and were carefully listening for phrases and words that would help them pick the language up more quickly.
That night, they were invited to dine with Piop'l—that's what they called themselves, and the anthropologists thought that this was a bastardarization of the English world, "people." They ate well, meat, leaves, tubers, and some thick fleshy flowers that tasted very sweet. Heero approximated the crowd to be at slightly over two hundred people—large for a village of this nature, but too small to be the singular source of genetic material. Contact with neighboring villages was an obvious answer.
Over the course of the night, Duo learned that there were four people who led the village and upon whom the village decisions depended: the leader, who was more of a general and head hunter, the shaman who mediated conflicts and worked with the supernatural, the wisewoman who worked as domestic supervisor and healer, and the storyteller, who was a combination of babysitter and jester. All four quietly spoke to Duo over the course of the evening's entertainments.
Some of the men began to tell hunting stories with grandiose pantomimes, and then the women left to clean up for the night. It looked like that they were going to put the children to bed and clean up a bit.
As the least physically fit of the group, Quatre was nodding off, knocking against Trowa periodically and waking up when he did.
"Accomodations?" Trowa asked, gesturing at the blond.
"No, not yet. They've argued it over a bit, but right now it stands that they don't know what to make of our kinship ties, and can't decide where it would be best to put us without making a ruckus. It seems like they're mulling over the idea of handing us over an empty house tonight, but that they don't know if that would be hospitable without women to take care of us. And, they're worried that it isn't in good repair."
"Take it." Trowa said, softly. "We need a discussion before sleeping."
"Er. Um, I…well, I'll take that offer, but…" Duo rolled his eyes, and tried to explain. "You see, it's the kids and the women who have just left. If we left now…"
"We are men." Wufei stated, crossing his arms over his chest and staring into the firepit that dominated the center of the village. Oddly enough, it was call the CPU. Not even Duo had figured that one out. Yet.
Duo snickered. "Yeah, well, little short dweeby fifteen year old genius men…but, still, we really can't leave yet. I mean, there is the whole respect smishkadoodle."
"And, you call yourself a linguist…" Wuefei shook his head.
"What?" Duo grinned, glancing around as if he was looking for someone else to take his blame.
"Huh?" Quatre started, jerking upright. "What's what?"
"Nothing, Q-man." Duo shrugged him off.
Immediately, Quatre began dozing again. He looked particularly young in the firelight, as it made the worry lines that generally marred his forehead disappear, and in the humidity, his hair was curling slightly.
So, then anthropologists managed to stay up. Some time later, the women came back into the circle and the wisewoman shooed the men away, and sent her apprentice to show us to the empty house. Duo waved off their concerns about the twig and foliage house being leaky, and spread a tarp over the top. All of them pulled out their sleeping bags, and situated them around the perimeter of the house. Somehow, Heero found himself placed between Duo Maxwell and Quatre Raberba Winner, the two most talkative members of the expedition. It was not pleasing.
"Uh, so…" Quatre blinked, looking a bit more alert than he did a few minutes ago, and then he asked softly, "What are we going to here? How are we going to tackle this thing?"
"I will create genealogies." Heero volunteered. It seemed as close as he could get to physical anthropology in this situation. Perhaps he would be able to trace back the patterns of inheritance to the original technicians and villagers.
"Good." Quatre smiled. "How about you, Duo?"
"Yeah, I'll be working overtime this time around." Duo grinned, flipping his braid back over his shoulder. It was still very neat, but Heero had never seen him take it down and he briefly wondered where Duo found the place and the time. "I'll work on teaching you guys the lingo, and I'll do some old-fashioned interviews. My work'll focus on the usual, really. Death."
"Okaaay." Quatre blinked, and then looked over at Trowa.
"I will focus on assimilation." He looked down, his face shadowed. "I will record rituals, ritualistic behavior, behaviors, and I will record the village layout and the nature of the surrounding area."
"And," Wufei nodded to himself. "I will work on tracing the cultural and physical traditions relating to the original melding of the lab technicians and the villagers."
"Cool." Duo whispered. "This is going to be really great!"
"I really look forward to working with you guys." Quatre whispered, slumping down and shuffling deeper into his sleeping bag. "Most of the time I've had to work with University students who think I'm just a kid, or older anthropologists who treat me like a grandkid. I'm really tired of being condescended, because I'm a sight smarter than all of them anyway. It'll be good fun to finally have some contact with my peers."
"Yes." Wufei agreed. "It will be good to work with men as strong as I am; in other expeditions, I worked only with my inferiors. The weak should not work."
Quatre had already curled up into a little lump in his sleeping bag so that only his golden head showed, and was making a small whistling sound.
"Ne way, it'll be a complete blast, so let's go to bed already and snatch some zs out of this tropical air." Duo cut everyone off, and flopped down, tucking his braid out of the way. Squiggling around, he finally managed to turn his entire sleeping bag into something as twisted as twine, and then tie it into a pretzel and curl up in the middle of the knotted lump, somehow in a fetal shape despite the fact that his limbs were completely akimbo. It was an intriguing feat.
The way Trowa sprawled on his side allowed his bangs to flop to the floor, and Heero was almost surprised to see that he possessed a second eye, and Wufei even slept stiffly, as if it was below his dignity to relax into mortal sleep. So, Heero stayed up for a few moments, watched his new comrades sleep, and then finally settled onto his back, put his arms at his sides, and willed himself into sleep.