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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:47:28 GMT -6
The girl laughed again, shaking her head as she walked out of the room. Alma heard the girl say something to the thundergug, voice only loud enough for her to pick out the tone before the girl broke out into another bout of laughter. Alma walked around the nearest pile of grain as she made her way to the cage, staring intently at nothing. Some days, when he had just finished eating the pounds of meat that kept him fed, or had chosen one of the dustier parts of his cage to sleep in, she could pick out a hint of where he stood.
Today was not one of those days, so she merely rested a hand on one of the cage bars. “Well, Anon, at least she’s cheerful about it, right?” There was no response from the cage, and she hoped he was at least awake after all their chatter. It would be a waste if he spent the entire visit asleep on his mound.
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:47:48 GMT -6
“Be a good’un, alright?” She rapped the bar with her fist as she heard the girl’s voice returning to understandable levels, and smiled at the apparently empty cage. The hiss she heard might have just been her imagination or some loose pipe somewhere as she turned around to face the girl and the massive thundergug beside her. The soft grunt that followed was a little harder to ignore, but she stepped towards the pair as though she had not heard it.
In truth, the thundergug was no bigger than any of its kind, but Alma still felt her smile waiver as she drew nearer. That brought on another chuckle from the girl, and the thundergug’s owner pointed to an empty corner of the room. “You can watch from over there that we,” the girl snorted, “do what you are paying us to do.” The girl shook her head as Alma nodded and turned to walk away. [Anonymous Hardy-Start]
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:48:18 GMT -6
“Invisible,” the girl muttered, just loud enough for Alma to hear. Alma bristled at the tone, familiar with it as a slynk with rocks, and whirled around to confront the girl. What was so damned funny about her wiurn, and why was she acting like Alma was an idiot for owning one? Most customs tended to be much more dangerous than Anonymous, even if they were perfectly visible, and the idea that the girl thought she was an idiot for owning him-
Well, it did not matter, did it? She needed the girl to set her thundergug loose and wandering so that Anonymous might see something more intimidating than his usual piles of butchered meat. The girl met her eyes, grin turning into a sneer as she narrowed her eyes and waited with one hand resting on the thundergug’s side. Alma took a deep breath, and moved to a slightly different spot than the girl had gestured to, settling back to watch the cage for signs of Anonymous.
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:48:35 GMT -6
The girl laughed, slapping the side of the thundergug before retreating to her own chosen spot, magazines in hand. The thundergug stared at the cage, nostrils flaring wide as it stood still. A command from the girl as she slid down into a seated position on the ground set it to reluctantly walking, ears twitching as it watched the cage rather than immediately attacking the nearest veggie pile. Alma was not sure if it was the scent putting off the thundergug, or if it had some way of sensing the predator lurking in the cage.
Alma held a book loosely in her hands as she slid down into a squat, watching the cage with the same amount of care. Was that trickle of stones on the pile caused by the thundergug’s heavy footsteps as it walked around the cage in a giant circle, or was Anonymous scurrying up it for a better view of the thundergug?
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:49:01 GMT -6
Hells, for all she knew, he was cowering at the top of the mound and desperately hoping it did not see him. He had never been used in combat, though she had toyed with the idea back when the Genevian rebels had been rumored to be eyeing the labs and the surrounding city as a replacement for the home they had lost. She doubted he had ever even encountered a thundergug that had not been skinned and carefully chopped up, with all the choicest bits topping it, though she had hired a trainer for his basic obedience years ago. For all she knew, he might already be immune to the beast stomping around his cage, watching it with the same level of curiosity an estharne might have for a slynk.
Then the girl called out a familiar command to her thundergug, and Alma looked over to see the girl glancing at the uneaten piles of food as Alma held her hands up to her ears.
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:49:21 GMT -6
Where it might have been hesitant to circle the cage before, there was no hesitation to obey this command. The thundergug stomped it’s feet against the cement, producing a noise that sounded even louder than the last time it had been there, banging around in her very chest as she cringed away from the noise. She kept her hands at her ears until the last of the echoes had died away, the thundergug staring at the cage once more as though it expected its scented foe to finally make an appearance. When Anonymous did no such thing, the thundergug snorted and walked to the nearest of the food piles, finally starting it’s long-delayed meal.
The girl caught her eye, backing out another laugh as she shook her head and returned to her magazine. Alma could see more of the stones falling from the pile in the center, trickling down in minor avalanches, and she could barely suppress a laugh herself.
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:49:40 GMT -6
So her mighty wiurn was indeed scared of the thundergug, or at least was trying to stay away from it. It was a good thing she had learned about it here, and not in the fighting pits or against some enterprising beastmaster. It was even better that there was now plenty of time for him to learn that the thing wandering around outside his cage had about as much interest in him as the stones he stood upon.
Alma stood up, leaving her book leaning against the wall. She took a few steps to be closer to the cage, still far enough from the nearest food pile that she did not worry that the thundergug might crush her. It ambled past her without even a look in her direction, but she took a step back regardless. The damned things were huge and, even if they had been built to only eat plants, Alma could not suppress the urge herself to stay more than a foot or two away from it. [Alma-243.0]
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:50:14 GMT -6
With the thundergug gone, she made her way to the cage, freezing when the girl yelled out, “Hey! You are supposed to pay me the rest at the end of this, not get pancaked by Peace.” The girl folded the magazine open on the page she had been reading, and waved it in the direction Alma had left her own reading material. “Go wait it out there. You are not going to help anything by getting in his way and ruining the circuit.”
“I ain’t gonna get stomped. He’s trained, right?” The girl nodded and shrugged at the same time, leaving Alma feeling less comfortable about her plan to check on the wiurn. “An’ I just gotta check Anon real quick.”
“Fine. Just move if he veers in your direction, or throw a carrot.” The girl snapped open the magazine, and Alma looked back into the cage. The thundergug was walking on the other side now, and she could see the rocks and sand on the cage floor distort as something moved over them.
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:53:07 GMT -6
Alma waited until the footsteps looked to be within a meter of where she stood, and called out to the wiurn. “Oi! Anonymous! Get yer scaly ass over here.” The girl laughed as she reached out her hand past the bars, but a quick glance showed the girl to be deeply interesting in the magazine. Perhaps it had a good cartoon, Alma thought to herself as she held her hand between the bars.
She had not reached deep into the cage, only just past the point that the bars would stop a great, invisible scaly beast from biting her fingers. As she waited, she watched the rocks and sand, counting the seconds it took for Anonymous to reach her.
What surprised her was that her fingers felt nothing, not the hardened faceplate of the wiurn she expected but only open air. Something inside the cage scraped across the bars to her side.
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:53:31 GMT -6
Alma looked down at the ground in the cage as she pulled her hand back, looking at the sandy patches and stones. A moment later, the shape of a few toes was pressed into one of the patches like magic, with a single toe facing towards her, and she rapped on the bars with a fist again. “Hey, Anon, turn around ya ijit. C’mere.”
This second call provoked a hiss from within the cage, And alma slowly held up her hand to the space between the bars as they clanged once. This time, her hand’s progress was stopped by something unseen, her fingers pressed against open air that felt as hard as the metal of the bars. He hissed again, and Alma forced herself to remain in place, silently berating the labs for making a hiss ever be a sound she wanted to hear. “Ya doin’ alright in there? Peace ain’t gonna hurt ya. He just wants some crunchy bits.”
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:54:10 GMT -6
The thundergug drew near, and she felt the invisible wall pull back from her hand. She called out a quick, “Stay,” to Anonymous, then heard the voice of the girl behind her giving the stomping command to the thundergug. She whirled around to see that the gir was grinning at her, and Alma had just enough time to stick her fingers in her ears before the thundergug started doing its best attempt of breaking through the kennel floor.
When those sounds died off, the thundergug wandered closer to her, eyes locked on a mound of leafy green vegetables only a few feet away. She held her breath as it dipped its head down and grabbed its first mouthful of the vegetables, crunching them with obvious relish. But Alma turned away from the eating beast as she heard another familiar sound behind her, a sound that reminded her of bwee disturbed when hunting for truffles. Except that the grunts were deeper and loud enough that she was surprised when a look at the thundergug showed it to be as uninterested in finding the source of the noise as it was with Alma.
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:54:55 GMT -6
It was progress of a kind to have him not fleeing from the thundergug, Alma thought, even if there was little chance he was doing more than obeying her command to stay still. That gave her a new idea, and she gave Anonymous a new command as the thundergug finished decimating its current pile. After all, if he had been wiling to stay with the oversized herbivore near, who was to say he would not follow her as she walked near it?
That proved to be a little more difficult that she first thought. The girl, having noticed her new route that kept her walking within a few feet of the thundergug, began to call out commands that Alma would have sworn were designed to annoy her. The thundering was bad enough, forcing her to keep her hands clapped over her ears during the noise, and calling Anonymous back to her when it came to a blessed end.
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:55:29 GMT -6
Yes, she hated that noise, and she was sure Anonymous did as well. She missed it immensely when the girl gave the command for the thundergug to run and Alma learned that, for all the beast's massive bulk, she might as well have been a grubble trying to keep up with an equillion. Anonymous would make his grunting sounds whenever the beast suddenly took off, the noises becoming a bit more distant when the thundergug started to approach them. She did not know if yelling at him to come back actually did more than make the girl laugh at her, but it felt like he was returning to her side quicker every time.
When she heard the first growl, Alma nearly tripped and fell in the wake of the thundergug as it took another one of its running circuits. Unfortunately for her, the combined shaking of the ground beneath her and a lonely carrot that had rolled far too close to her foot finished the job.
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:56:03 GMT -6
The girl yelled out some command, hopping to her feet with the magazine free to flop onto the ground. The thundergug’s run slowed quickly, the beast stopping by a pile of yet ungrazed grains as Alma pushed herself up. “You alright there? Told you that you cannot be a pancake.” The girl strolled over to Alma, looking the older woman over as she slowly stood up. “Not until you pay me. And I think the time has come for my credits.” The girl held out a hand.
Alma took a few deep breaths, pushing aside the thought of how much she would have in common with pancakes had the thundergug been allowed to complete its run. “It ain’t been the full time yet,” she said, waving at the empty hand with one of her own. “He’s close, I think, but-”
The girl groaned, and shook her head. “Listen, whoever sold you this ‘invisible wiurn’ was conning you. No pets are invisible.” She turned to look at the thundergug, whistling for him to return to her. “I still want my money though.”
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Post by Alma on May 20, 2021 0:57:27 GMT -6
Alma stared at the girl with a slack-jaw, trying to figure out an appropriate response. The girl groaned again, and gave her a pitying look. “Alright. So, seeing as you have already been scammed, and the magazine was decent, I’ll only charge you for half the time. But I’m not going to waste anymore-”
As the girl spoke, the thundergug reached them, bumping her softly with its head. The girl patted the thundergug, then froze as audible growling came from behind Alma, the noise far too loud to be coming from a human throat. Alma shut her jaw with a click, holding the younger woman’s stare as confusion blossomed across her face. Whatever she expected the girl to say next, it certainly had not been a command for the thundergug to make the noise of its namesake.
But this time another sound rose to compete with it, a loud roar that led the thundergug to falter in its stomps and the girl to stare behind Alma with an open mouth. “Labs didn’t scam folks, at least not back in the day,” she told the girl, a smile pulling at her scars. The girl spat again, and Alma resolved to make sure the entire floor was scrubbed after the pair left.
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