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 6: First Finds
The wisewoman's apprentice was hanging around, waiting for the men to finish their breakfast. She had been sent over with wooden bowls filled with a sweet mush of roots and some smoked fish, and she was also kind enough to help them get a fire started so that they could brew some cowboy's coffee. Quatre, apparently the only morning person in the bunch, although Heero considered himself to be indifferent to such things, was chirping cheerily at nothing in particular.
"Will you shut the fuck up?" Duo snarled, from where he was hovering eagerly over the steeping coffee. "What the kind of fucking Arabian are you? You drink damned tea in the morning."
Looking hurt, Quatre slowly inhaled the scent of his tea. "It's exotic."
"Weirdo." Duo grunted, and looked over at the girl, asking her something in the villager's tongue. It sounded remarkably like, "Can I drink it yet? How about now?"
The girl replied firmly with a negative, even though she had never brewed coffee before, it was clear to everyone sitting there that it was too hot.
"Aww, fuck. It would be worth getting my tongue burned." Duo snatched the pot away from the fire, and poured himself a cup and promptly gulped it down. Then, he grabbed his canister of water, and gulped that down. "Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot!"
The wisewoman's apprentice was laughing.
And, Trowa quietly poured himself a cup and wrapped his hands around it as he waited for it to cool. "Hey, Duo, ask about bathing."
"Ugh, let me get my recorder. Jeez, what a way to wake up." Stumbling over to his backs, he jabbered at the girl and then paused.
She made a sound of curious agreement. "Si, ya ya."
"Cool, we've got an informant." Triumphantly, he pulled forth a digital recorder and pushed the record button and asked a question.
She answered as clearly as she could, frowned a little, and amended something that she said, and then smiled a little and finished answering the question.
After that, Duo asked a few more questions, and Wufei finished his breakfast and his tea, and then Quatre collected the bowls cheerfully. After the girl finished up with Duo's questions, she took the plates and left.
"Well, Wu-man, we got some of our info." Duo grinned. "You see, they boil everything here to get rid of evil spirits. All bathing water, and drinking water, and they only defecate and urinate downstream of the areas that they collect water from."
"Evil spirits, hm?" Wufei said, thoughtfully and handed his mess cup over to Quatre, who carefully dried it off and packed it away. "I wonder if these people are still susceptible to native diseases?"
"I doubt it." Duo shrugged. "I bet the lab techs were, though."
After they secured their things, they each went off in their own directions. Heero took a recorder with him as well as a camera, and began making notes in his pda on the nature of family dynamics. It seemed that the village was primarily composed of nuclear families, and that a few families contained two wives with a great age difference. He could not yet determine the nature of inheritance or what determined who took care of parents, but he made copious numbers of notes nevertheless.
Several groups of children followed him as he worked, and it was somewhat distracting, all the more so because he couldn't quite understand him, but the words were right at the edge of his comprehension. A lot of the women stopped what they were doing when he came by, as well, and that did not help. And, most of the men seemed to be gone. The disturbance made it easy to doubt the accuracy of his notes.
"Yo, Heero!" Duo shouted from across the track that connected the groups of woven houses. "Yo, you seen the guys?"
"No." Heero shrugged. "Why?"
"We should have a conference. I found out something really interesting about this whole thing." Duo bounced over, and wrapped his arm around Heero's shoulders.
Heero stiffened at the contact, but Duo did not take the hint.
"Oh, there they are!" Duo babbled happily, and waved them over. The wisewoman and her apprentice were walking next to Trowa, and he was listening to them with a look of intense concentration on his face.
They all went back to their little house, and sat down in a small circle around their packs. The wisewoman brought out some meat and food, and they ate gratefully while she talked. Sometimes, Duo would interject comments and questions, but he was actually remarkably good at listening. Satisfied, the wisewoman finally sat back and her apprentice was impatiently elbowed back.
"Well, some of the older women are going to come over later today and repair our little house and Rashid, the leader of the hunters, is going to lend us some of his extra stuff, like skins and a door. Dinner is always at the center of the village, and we'll be expected to show up there when it gets dark." Duo sighed, and looked around. "Well, boys, aside from all that fun stuff, we've got a problem."
"A problem?" Quatre asked.
"Yeah, man. Have you noticed that the natives tend to go around in pairs?"
"Yes." Trowa said, quietly.
"Well, it's a tradition around here to take a partner, generally of the same sex, as a sort of back up against raiders, when adolescence is reached." Duo combed his fingers through his bangs nervously.
"Ah." Wufei said. "We are five."
"Yeah, that is so exactly completely the essence of our problem, man."
"It is no problem." Wufei shrugged. "I will tell the truth—the only one who could ever be my partner is dead, and I am in mourning."
Duo blinked. "Okaaay. I'm sure that there must be contingencies for that sort of thing here. I think. Anyway, I claim Sir Stone Face over here. The kiddies just adore him you know, and his social skills give him immeasurable grace!"
"Hn." Heero didn't know what to say.
Quatre glanced sort of shyly at Trowa. "So that means we…"
Oddly, Trowa ducked his head. "Yes."
Smiling slightly, in a way that made his very blue eyes shine, Quatre nodded and then looked over the team. "I guess since we'll be working in pairs now, we'll have to change some of our tasks around. Duo's work will blend well with Heero's—he can get together the data base and work out relationships as Duo does the interviews. Trowa and I are more experienced at ethnography, so we will work with the people, record observations, set up interviews, and such. Wufei, try to tackle the shaman, to get your traditional tilt. I get the idea that some of the old myths around here could have true physical significance."
"Damn, what a game plan, Q-man!" Duo grinned, and whistled. A few of the natives, standing outside of the door listening to them, jumped a little and giggled. Duo exchanged easy banter with them, most of which was infuriatingly edging along the borders of Heeor's understanding. He then turned to the wisewoman and her apprentice, spoke to them concerning the new situation, and apparently, begged them for patience.
"Right, I told them that they'd care to hang a bit longer, and we'd get some for q and a 'round here done up right!" Duo grinned, and bounced where he was excitedly. "So, yeah, probably should tell ya 'bout the grammer thereabouts!
Heero's recorder was on, but he decided to take notes on his pda to reiterate the developing neural pathways and thereby facilitate maximum assimilation.
"So, okay, it's like this. You know the lexicon is primarily of English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese origin, with some local bits mixed in between." He played with his hair, a contemplative gesture. "So, if you got them down, ya got this down. Well, maybe not that in fact, but you know, all the words are like composites, you know like strongly also accented, differing connotations, that jazz. So forth, so on.
"Um, ne way, grammar'll be the hardest for all ya to get. Completely local, like totally. Some of it's based in word order. Let's see. Subject always goes in the center of sentences, adjectives when describing nouns in a prepositional phrase always go in front of the preposition, but otherwise go after the noun that they're describing. Adverbs are seldom used but usually in the front, and verbs go just about anywhere shape or form you can stick 'em. Oh, except never next to the subject. If you stick a verb next to the subject it seems to intensify it in a crude or lewd manner, like with the equivalent of changing the verb from meaning something like "sleeping" to "fucking" and from "scratching" to "scratching your genitals" and "made a mistake" to "screwed that up" and from "pooping" to—"
"Maxwell." Wufei said wearily. "We get the point."
"Right. Okay." Duo paused, in thought. "Er, yeah. Totally fucked the flow, man, totally lost it. Now, where was I? Yeah. That's about it, folks!"
"Duo." Trowa's tone held a world of significance in it.
"Well, we have people to see." Cheerily, Quatre turned and made his way out of the house, with Trowa followed at his heels like a dark jungle cat.
The wisewoman laughed something, and her apprentice made a startled sound, and then laughed as well.
Immediately, Duo's attention focused on them, and he worked on asking questions and listening very intently. Sometimes, he would blink as if startled at what he heard, or say something in an appreciative, humble sort of tone. It was very different from how he addressed his fellow anthropologists.
They asked him something, and he suddenly grasped his braid as if they had threatened to burn it off his head. He explained something, with unusual terseness, and only relaxed when the apprentice started a good natured argument with the wisewoman about something. Eventually, Duo gave in by joining in.
Once a few of the lurkers outside of the doorway felt comfortable enough to come in, the wisewoman and her apprentice left. Most of them were prepubescent and some were older women who were obviously keeping a judicious eye out. A lot of that had to do with watching Duo's every gesture, and peering over to see what Heero was fiddling with.
Heero had pulled up a text on linguistics, flash scanned it, and set up a system to differentiate words and syllables into Romanized lettering to facilitate the process of transcribing the voice records into written form. Of course, all of the transcripts would be translated later, once Heero had gained a better grasp of the tongue.
"Yo, man, I'm about wrapping it up. The kiddos have left, and so have the hens, but Cat and Tro haven't shown up yet." Duo spoke softly, almost like he didn't want to startle Heero when he was concentrating.
"Ah." Heero blinked. "I have assembled a Romanized system of recognizable syllables in order to facilitate the creation of a transcript. End recording and download data." He held out his hand.
"Oh, right!" Duo pushed the stop button, and handed the recorder over, letting Heero deal with all of the cables.
As the sound bytes downloaded onto his hard drive, Heero created an alternative form of the file naming software that would include the time, date and duration of recording as informational tags, in addition to the possible file name variations. He went over it, tweaked it, corrected a few lines, and then installed it. After downloading his recordings, both visual and audio, he restarted his computer and watched the new system take effect. It was a pleasurable sensation.
Then, in a few terse terms, he wrote the first of his mission logs.
Duo chuckled maniacally, and so Heero looked at him. The linguist seemed to be scribbling illegible scrawls into a ratty black leatherwork journal, with gold edging. It seemed reminiscent of…a popular religious text, Heero decided. It held no informative gold embossing on the spine or over, though there seemed to be an impress of the classical sign indicating a poisoned water source.
"Downloading logs would increase efficiency." Heero offered.
Startled, Duo blinked up at him, regained his aplomb, and grinned, "Uh, man, thanks! I really mean that! But, no. My baby pc's got all the punch of a trained kick-boxing kangaroo, and I log all my crapped stuff ala old school."
Heero did not understand. Perhaps, with his supreme grasp of language, Duo was simply attempting to confuse him with obscure cultural references, or perhaps, Heero lacked the necessary enculturation in order to understand his terminology.
"Heh, you know what they told me? That we had the storm cloud relationship, and like lightning and thunder, we love, fight, and need each other to work. Sounds mighty fine, don't it?" Duo kept on going before Heero could think of a reply or voice one. "They said that Trowa and Quatre are like a kitten chasing it's tail, unaware that it is a necessary part of its body. What do you make of that? Do you think our buds are going to try to knock boots or some such?"
…knock boots? Something of his confusion must have shown on his face.
"Ah, God, Heero, fuck. As in, have male on male sexual relations. Ya think?"
Oh, that? Heero hadn't known that two men who were not using sexuality as a domination technique could perpetrate sexual acts for mutual gratification. It was food for thought. "No. Any type of personal relations should be kept separate from our work in order to further group harmony and to refrain from actions that could incite the populace."
"Jeez, Heero, you are such a little bitch." Duo whined, and flopped down onto the floor so that he could rummage through his bag. "I was just thinking about it."
"Hn." Heero hooked up earphones, increased the playing speed of the clip to match his average typing speed within one standard deviation, and began typing. Duo, meanwhile, was setting up a hammock and pulling out random pieces of junk that had found a way into his bag. A lump of battered of Japanese manga were thrown on the floor, next to the junk food, rolled up wrinkled clothes, and trade goods.
Trowa and Quatre limped in tiredly after that, followed by Wufei. Once Heero informed him of his idea, they handed over their recordings and notes for download, which caused Duo to give in and let Heero download his "formal" notes from the pda.
Vaguely energetic, Quatre unpacked some of his things, and then cleaned up Duo's and told everyone. "Did you know that Trowa used to work with a circus? Isn't that cooool?"
Heero blinked.
"Working with nomads suits my nature." Trowa said, quietly. He was simply leaning against a study pole of the house, and watching the proceedings mysteriously.
Pausing, Quatre sighed, "Hm….I always wanted to run away with the circus."
Startled, Wufei looked at him. "What is wrong with you?"
"A narcotic inclusion test." Trowa said dryly. "I am unaffected."
"I! Am!" Quatre sang out, paused thoughtfully, and added. "Fine!"
Saving his work, Heero opened a new doc and asked. "Note comparison?"
"Yeah, that'd be good." He did a rough summary of what he'd learned, which wasn't much considering how many people had talked to him. He was pretty sure that a lot of them were just making up wild stories about themselves, trying to amuse the anthropologists for one reason or another. Truth would come with trust, and that was a matter of time.
"Actually, I'm surprised you got them to trust us so fast." Quatre said thoughtfully, and then grinned. "Thanks, Duo! You're the best!"
"Ugh, yeah." Duo blinked. "Sure, Q. No prob."
"I'm so glad that I can work with ya'll!" Quatre gushed.
Even Heero winced, and Wufei looked downright irate as he muttered, "Onna."
"Ne way, I think the wisewoman felt sorry for us bachelors ne way, so it wasn't a big deal. All her doing." Duo waved it off, and then looked suddenly worried. "Hey, is this…do you guys think that it's supposed to be like this? I mean, I've never been out on the field before really, so…"
Trowa shrugged. "It's fine."
"My reading suggests that all anthropologists encounter different situations and must formulate extremely different, and still ethical as well as professional, personal responses." Wufei shrugged. "The field seems somewhat subjective."
"Yeah, subjective." Quatre agreed. "I'm subjective right now."
"Give him water." Heero suggested.
"It couldn't hurt." Trowa muttered, and pulled out a water bottle. Happily, Quatre took the offering and began sucking on it.
Duo was staring at him intensely. "I really want to figure out what that stuff was."
"I will point it out." Trowa replied, though he was still paying and inordinate amount of attention to the little blond boy at this side.
All of them set to writing, recording, and sorting their various information so that they could get done as quickly as they could, and then wander the village and familiarize themselves a bit more before dinner.