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Date & Time: January 5th
Location: Columbia, 1973
Characters: Charlie Cutter and Nathan Drake
Summary: Charlie Cutter is doing his community service okay aka two guys bust into a Colombian cannabis plantation.
Warnings: Swearing, possibly some mild violence and likely lots of stupidity

He's been to Columbia before, but rarely in the country; it's hillier than he tends to remember, all green and sickeningly beautiful in the summer. Charlie isn't sure if that's got something to do with the fact that he's been in a bloody winter wasteland for the past months, a aluminium can on the moon before that, but he finds he simply can't help but bask a little.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and they're... -- well, they're hiding out on the top of a rocky outcropping, peering through binoculars at a lightly armed compound and plantation housing a major cabanas production. Charlie shifts on his belly, some small stones jabbing uncomfortably against the points of his hips and lower abdomen. He shifts his binoculars against his eyes, then passes them off so Nate can get a proper look at well.

"That warehouse beyond the fence line - the one farthest east. That'd be my guess."

Lowell's assignment for them isn't rocket science, but there were certainly easier ways to have picked him up a few bricks of marijuana.

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"Seventy-three," he says dismissively - always one for the hanging details (or more accurately: can't let it stand when someone's being imprecise, especially if that someone's name begins with 'Nathan' and ends with 'Drake').

He shifts on his elbows, taking the map and folding it up neatly enough before passing the little square of paper to Nate for safe keeping. "Mosquitoes. They don't like me; not sweet enough."

And he throws Nate a grin before he gets a knee under himself, clambering to his feet.

"Well that makes one of us," Nate groans, rolling on his back as he closes the journal and accepts the map while giving Charlie a look. He sits up and takes a second to look over his shoulder before pushing himself to his feet as well.

He almost wishes the guards weren't armed, but that would have been idiotic on this plantation's part. At the least, he wishes they weren't better armed than he was. The enhanced pistol was nice, but it was still just a pistol. One day he would have to bribe them to give him something a little meatier. He scoops up the napsack he had brought with him and slips the journal in there with his tablet for safe keeping, checking to make sure nothing fell out in the rock before looking to Charlie.

"Let's hope they're not used to visitors, yeah?"

The pair of them are rolling into this place with little more than a handgun on their persons. Charlie hasn't had need to be more well armed than what the Walther allows - or the rare instances when he has, he'd been able to scavenge more suitable equipment. His fingers are crossed for the same here if it comes down to a fire fight. Which: while he'd prefer it didn't (because the last thing they need to do when they're mucking about in the past is to stack up corpses like cordwood), he likes to consider himself a realist. Working with Nate doesn't exactly lend itself to simplicity.

"Oh come on, you speak Spanish don't you? We'll be golden." He starts to pick his way down the rocky incline, cheerful enough about getting underway. "If anyone asks, we're backpackers who were turned around."

Backpackers...without backpacks. Whatever. It'll be fine.

"Oh yeah, sure. Just an American and a Brit passing through the weed plot, don't mind us," Nate offers, snorting. "No amount of Spanish is gonna turn that one around." He checks his gun with a telltale click before putting it away as well. What he wouldn't kill for a nice grenade diversion.

He jumps down off the rock they had been laying on an starts to navigate his way toward the plantation. After a bit of walking, he speaks up again.

"So say we fuck up. They'll bail us out, right?"

"That's the gist of it." His boots slide gently on the gravely incline, though it isn't enough to make him lose his footing. "But getting shot in the face still hurts like a real bastard regardless of whether or not you wake up later, so I wouldn't exactly recommend it either."

Not that he's any experience with dying on a mission (though with the Aristeas tech? Yeah, he's plenty versed on that end of things). But given that most returns are either triggered by a timer going out or a remote trigger, his bet is that no one would be quick enough to keep their asses completely out of the fire.

"Why - you're not planning to screw us over, are you?"

"Jesus Christ, Charlie, I'm not talking about dying," Nate exclaims, stopping dead in his tracks to turn and stare at him. He's joking, right? Who would ever willingly die over marijuana? None of this is worth his life.

Sully would be proud.

"I mean, say they catch us. Or yeah, we get gunned at. They won't let them kill us, right?" Nate makes a face at the last notation Charlie adds. "Not on purpose. Never on purpose."

"Not permanently anyway." There's a certain level of flippancy to how he says it that's totally at odds with the way Nate's dealing with the issue. "I hesitate to say people die all the damned time on missions, but--" He shrugs, impassive enough to be disarming. "It's ben known to happen. Don't worry about it."

Only he pauses then, amending quickly: "Or rather do, but don't worry about it too much. It'll be fine. --Oh but don't kill one of them. They won't pop back and who knows how well Lowell's actually done his research on this one."

That, of course, stops Nate dead in his tracks. "Are you kidding me right now? They can shoot me, but I can't shoot back? People die all the time? Don't worry about it?"

Nate rarely went into a job not expecting some gunfire these days, but that didn't mean he enjoyed it. Never had he been on a job that he knew involved gunfire without some of his own. His jaw is half open.

"Did you already take a hit when I wasn't paying attention?"

"Yeah, actually." Only he's supposed to not be bothered about that sort of thing, so he shuts his mouth with a click of his teeth - takes a beat and then amends: "Look, we die - the tech back in the future hauls us back to life. But if we kill someone here, we just change the timeline. We're expendable, they're not."

Charlie does pause in his tracks then, turning to level Nate with a solid look. "Seriously mate, I'm not planning to get shot if you're not. So maybe we just do this clean and quiet for once?"

"Sorry Charlie, I planned special to have a bullet lodged in my head on this evening in particular," he snorts in return, stopping only after his partner looks back to him. At that point, Nate's spine straightens but his shoulders sag with an earnest sigh. "Clean and quiet. Right. I get it."

Things never worked out clean and quiet for him -- he had learned that trying to lift the oil lamp from that museum in particular, and years ago when he was fifteen and found himself spiraling into this profession in the first place. Oh he'll try -- Nate always tries.

But somehow, the 'tech' mentioning doesn't make him feel any better as he starts to march forward again, pushing aside foliage as he comes to it.

He spreads his hands briefly, inclines his head - roughly translated it says, 'Is that all then?' though it's clearly a hypothetical question as Charlie doesn't stay put long enough to find out before he turns his attention back to scuffing his way down the rock studded incline leaning down into the valley and to the plantation below.

All things said and done, it doesn't take them more than a few hours to bat their way through the foliage. The tree coverage isn't terribly dense, though it's likely enough to hide their progress from any sharp eyes working the plantation perimeter particularly as the sun begins to set hot and yellow, bathing the whole basin with a vibrant goldenrod. Charlie pauses briefly, humming absently in appreciation. Two months in space, nearly that long in the snowy wasteland that Exsilium now is - it's not a bad sight.

Nate stays silent for at least half the journey, excluding small mumbles about 'bugs the size of his head' or 'wonder if that's edible' in addition to 'don't touch that, you're probably allergic'. Somewhere along the line, he started a tangent on the Muiscas, but is effectively silenced when they come up on the sunkissed sight before them.

"Huh," he adds insightfully, hands on his hips. "Could probably make a nice buck with a good picture of that."

He finishes the thought without a hitch, but his thoughts afterword immediately move to Elena, and his grin loses its teeth. He distracts from it by pulling out his journal again to eye the patrol routes.

Guess who's got a camera? This guy. Charlie didn't really have any intention of taking a photo, but if Nate's going to mention it-- not that this is a vacation of course. They're on a very serious mission for the well being of an Initiative staff member. Nothing to scoff about there. But it also doesn't stop Charlie from producing his tablet, leveling it, and snapping a photo.

"Alright then, we've got maybe an hour to reach the rear perimeter. Any ideas for a distraction? Should've brought along some C4. A few well timed explosions never hurt anyone. --Well. Metaphorically speaking."

"You've been spending too much time around Chloe," Nate remarks, pausing to rethink his statement for just a moment and manages a grin in the process. "On second thought, you're just too damn alike. Either way, I know I wasn't issued any of that beforehand. Looking to make this as difficult as possible."

The fortune hunter adjusts himself to check his map against the current patrol, and starts scanning the area for possible distractions.

"The way I see it, we got two options. One, we wait until they're not looking and knock them out...or--" Nate takes the opportunity to slide next to Charlie and nudge him before pointing at a pickup truck and its cargo in the distance. "--we find whatever is fueling that thing, and blow it up. Or, plan C, pop the wheels on that thing and hope its enough. Your choice."

Charlie squints after the line of Nate's arm, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun so he can get a proper look at the thing. There's some show of considering the options given, but if anyone is surprised when he opts for "Plan B seems like the best way to cover our tracks over simply inconveniencing someone's day", then they ought to be put out of their own misery as clearly: too stupid to live.

Letting his hand fall away, he takes a moment to check the contents of the kit at his hip. Lighter's there, so fire is entirely feasible. "Alright, c'mon then," he says, downright chipper over the idea of blowing something up as he ducks forward through the underbrush.

"That's what I thought."

Nate lets Charlie get some distance, squinting one last time at the collection of patrols before hopping after him. He adjusts his pack on the way and slips the journal inside and eventually falls into step beside Charlie again.

"Think you can duck in there and do the job while I go in and find a brick? We can swing around back and meet up there while they're all distracted, yeah?"

There's no sense to them sticking shoulder to shoulder, that's for sure. Still, there's something odd in in - it's been a long time since he ran a missions and trusted the idiot along with him not to do something stupid if they parted way.

Say what you will about Nathan Drake (and Charlie'd heard plenty), but he wasn't a moron.

Charlie shrugs, mouth pulling briefly. "I don't see why not. I can handle an explosion or two - no worries mate."

"Its not the explosion I'm worried about," Nate gives back, kicking a small rock in his direction as he starts to break away. "Just do me a favor and don't stick around for the light show, alright? Hard to find good help these days."

And with a half-hearted salute, Nate disappears down his trail. It'll take him some time to circle past the patrols, but he uses their own crop against them for cover, and simply waits for the patrols to march down their routes before slipping along the way.

He won't be able to get anywhere near the entrance until Charlie distracts the guards there with his explosion, so he hovers dangerously in wait between two exchange points. So long as his partner does the job, he won't need to dance between the two for more than two minutes.

It's a faux salute that Charlie returns before disappearing back into the treeline - for a sturdy man, he's awfully good at disappearing when it suits him.

He makes his way through the underbrush, neatly cutting around the perimeter of the plantation so he can get closer to the truck. There's a wide swath of open territory between the trees and the truck that he hopes isn't studded with landmines or some other bloody death trap, but to hell with it - as the light starts to fade, he shakes free of the foliage and makes his way quickly for the truck.

No landmines, no pitfalls. Lucky that. His back his the grill of the truck, using it for cover as he peers around the bumper to get a look around the immediate area. No bloody fuel tanks, meaning they're probably elsewhere on the farm. He digs round in his pockets, pauses when his fingers close on a scrap of cloth. He peels it free - Chloe's handkerchief, balled up and forgotten some months ago. He winds it out, measuring its length and-- and quickly jams it back into his pocket, dismissing the idea out of hand.

Instead he moves around to the door, trying it and then popping it open when he finds it unlocked. There's some measure of garbage rattling around in the bottom of the cab, and some digging finds an old towel that he quickly shreds.

Stuffing that down the fuel pipe of the truck is easy and it catches fire well enough as well. When he's sure it's taken, Charlie lights out like there'd a dog at his heels, swearing absently at the tang of gasoline on his fingers. He's a good few yards off when the spark reaches the gas tank and the truck goes up like a match.

Nate can't help but flinch just a little when the explosion goes off, tearing his eyes away from the cloud that goes up on the other side of him. He hopes to hell Charlie didn't get caught in that, but by the same token, he trusts his partner not to be that much of an idiot. As the guards beneath him scurry away to inspect the damage, he starts to count.

Once he reaches zero and no further guards dart out of the warehouse, he drops down and presses himself to the wall. Naturally, some guards had stayed behind, and were now on high alert. Ok. Maybe not his best plan, but it got him inside.

What it means, of course, is that it will take Nate a bit longer to weave around and knock the guards out in order to retrieve what he came for.

If Charlie is on time to the rendezvous point...well, he might have to fend for himself for a bit.

Charlie's on time - he doesn't really have anywhere else to go once he's beyond the point of 'alright, well I'm not getting blown up quite yet so now what?' So he makes his way hastily back to the treeline, pulse hammering in his ears from the explosion, the echo of heat still at his back.

He crosses over into the trees just as he catches wind of the sound of guards shouting - close enough, no doubt, that they could've caught sight of him. He swears mildly, "Shit," and makes his way deeper into the trees, hoping to lose the bastards in the foliage. He goes for haste rather than stealth, crashing his way through the trees and brush. The more distance he can get between himself and the guards on his tail, the better. And if he leads them on a bit of a chase from a safe distance? Well then all the better.

A few sleeper holds later and Nate is out the way he came with...just one brick. He had considered trying to carry more, but they were bigger than he had expected them to be. He could only fit one comfortably in his bag, and not having the use of his hands was simply out of the question -- not when these guys were clearly armed and he wasn't allowed to kill anyone.

He sees a few guards around the perimeter line now -- no doubt the direction Charlie went in, but most are tending to the blaze off to his right in an attempt to keep it from spreading. There is a lot of shouting and running around, as well as attempts to put the fire out. Always trust Charlie to set off a nice bomb. Now he just had to get out of there before the whole warehouse caught.

Sneaking out is a far greater task than sneaking in, but Nate manages to only catch the attention of just two men, and he's long gone into the outer brush before they see him. A few gunshots ring out and snap into the trees he flees passed, but he continues bolting in an attempt to find Charlie's path.

One lost partner being chased, and he has to dodge the group following Charlie while not getting shot by the two men a couple hundred feet behind him. Sure sounds like a Sunday.

Charlie's quiet when he likes to be, causes an almighty ruckus when he'd rather not and right now he's going for the later - crashing through the undergrowth as he zigs and zags, boots catching over the occasional snarling tree roots as he goes. He swears, not entirely unhappily, as he goes - sucking down air as he runs. There are men not a few yards behind him, eager to kill him (which is obvious by the not uncommon crack of gunfire, the splinter of tree bark not entirely far away enough to be comfortable) and eventually Nate will catch up to them, he'll lose them completely or some rough shod combination of the two.

At which point he abruptly finds the ground tipping out from under his feet, sliding down a loamy incline tangled with brush and ferns. Rather than fight his way up, he lets himself go: sliding down and catching the hill with the seat of his worn jeans, bringing his arms up to shield his face as he goes. It manages two things: gives him some distance over the small, armed band pursuing him, and means he's a smaller target as he goes which - all in all - isn't the worst thing in the world. Granted, it also gives the bastards the high ground, but they're too intent on killing him to keep it and come tumbling down into the ravine after him only are less graceful and organized about it.

Which makes catching the first one on the ground by the neck and throwing him into the second a relatively simple state of affairs.

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never has this icon been more appropriate

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get ready for some hilariously morose icons

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