Sokka the 17th - [Voice/Action]

[markofthewise]

[So after going around breaking hearts and fighting evil demons, Sokka has found a new hobby to get his mind off of how annoying Luceti can be. That hobby? Cooking!

Surprisingly enough, despite the fact he's used the smithy as his personal kitchen for the past few days, Sokka has managed to complete a batch of eel jerky (or rather, a dish of mán xiāng consisting of salt cured eel) that actually doesn't taste absolutely horrible. It's nothing exceptional, but it is rather tasty. He's set out a plate of the stuff in the smithy, along with some vinegar bowl in a display that looks nowhere near as nice as this picture. At the very least it looks edible. Anyone who for whatever reason decides to drop by the smithy today are more than welcome to try some of Sokka's latest cooking experiment. Otherwise he's going to be inviting people over the journal.]

Hey Sanji, Brook! I finished the eel jerky I told you about. If you want to drop by you can have some. Anyone else who wants some can drop by too, but it probably won't last long if everyone does, though.

Comments

[markofthewise]

Or a combination of the two. The Earth Kingdom powered most of their technology with Earthbending.

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

That might be the only way to pull so many people from different worlds, and keep doing it. But even then their powers must have limitations, because they only do it at a certain time. If they could do it just whenever they wanted, I'm sure they would be, instead of generating a sudden influx.

[markofthewise]

Well, I don't think it quite works that way. As I understand it, we arrive here by some other means... like pulling a plug on a drain, we all just sort of get flushed into this world from all these different places. Apparently the Malnosso just put us in the barrier because we're 'special' or something. I'm not sure how that relates to the cycle though, but it probably has something to do with those marks they put on the back of our necks.

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

Well, still, that would require energy to do. Plugs don't pull themselves. And I was just under the impression that the bar codes were just a way of identifying us. Do they do something else?

[markofthewise]

Well no, I don't think so. But it does mean that they have to bring us in, put those codes on us, and dump us in the village. They probably have their own reasons for releasing people in the first two weeks, rather than all the time.

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

It keeps it more organized for them, I would think.

[markofthewise]

Which means there's no telling how many they have in 'storage' at any given time.

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

Well, it's the beginning of the month, so I'm sure there are some right now. I'd be surprised if they kept people there for very long. They'd probably want to get them into the experiment as soon as possible, so I would think they're probably here only within days of being taken.

[markofthewise]

The experiments are probably why they release them like they do. So far the last two experiments took place at the end of the month, after everyone had arrived.

[Nah, it's fine. Sokka is using a lot of information he's picked up from the laptop entries, what he's been told, and the eavesdropping he does on people's conversations with the Malnosso personnel.]

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing they haven't always been that way?

[markofthewise]

Well those are the only two I've been here for, but I think they're always in the last two weeks of the month. My first month here, there apparently wasn't an experiment. But we did have three days that nobody could remember.

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

And what were the effects of that?

[markofthewise]

Like I said, none of us could remember. But it was pretty weird afterwards. Stuff had been moved around, some stuff had been messed up, most of our food was gone...

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

That would be... very disconcerting. I would think that finding out the effect that doing something like that would have could be its own experiment.

[markofthewise]

Maybe. Unless they did something so extreme that they didn't want any of us to remember.

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't put it past them, but what could something like that be?

[markofthewise]

For something like that... they must have slipped up. Something so important that it would have changed everything if we remembered it. Could have been anything, though, but I don't think it was meant to be a typical experiment.

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

I understand this has been going on for a very long time. A slip-up of that magnitude probably would have happened towards the beginning rather than so far in. I wonder if there was a power struggle within the Malnosso or one of them tried to sabotage it for some reason. My guess is that you're right, and they were covering their tracks.

[markofthewise]

Sometimes you make your biggest mistakes when you're at your most confident. Then again, with this whole war business, it could have been sabotage too.

[ooc: Fourth Wall event. So what happened? Basically everything.]

1/2

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the whole purpose of this experiment is to bring people that might be of some use in a war, or since all of us don't fight, maybe some kind of study on a dystopia. I'm genuinely curious to see how they're using and interpreting what results they're getting.

2/2

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Sokka. You've really given me something to take my mind off missing everyone back home.

[markofthewise]

[Oh. He didn't even realize he was doing that.] And here I thought I was just feeding you eel jerky.

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

No, I think we ended up a little bit off-topic. It was good eel jerky, too. I've never had that before. You'll have to teach me how to make it sometime.

[markofthewise]

Oh, do you cook?

[foodovermystery.livejournal.com]

Yes, I love to cook. It's my favorite thing to do. Did you cook a lot before you got here?