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Post by Alma on Jul 10, 2021 1:03:13 GMT -6
They fell into a comfortable, if a little boring, routine. Alma called out the command and shoved a stick through, waving it around the first few times to catch the balgor’s eye before Balboa would strike and shatter the stake with her bite. Then the balgor began to respond faster, biting the stake the instant it was in reach after the command was called, and soon they were more than halfway through the stakes and treats she had brought for the day.
Which was good. Alma did have a shift later that day.
But at that half-way point, Alma began to change up the routine to the miasma balgor’s confusion. Sometimes she would poke the end of a stake through the bars without a word, or the wrong word, yanking it back a second later so that Balboa’s teeth clicked shut on empty air. There were no treats for those attempts, no praise. [Balboa-Crunch 5]
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Post by Alma on Jul 10, 2021 1:03:57 GMT -6
Between these were the correct command, given before the stake came through and netting Balboa a treat when the balgor crunched it to pieces. She soon started to ignore the stake when it came through without a command entirely, though certain words, like a cheekily shouted, “Lunch!” caused her to again bite down on nothing but air.
The miasma balgor thought she was beginning to understand the game, and she rumbled happily as her human shouted praise, snagging the thrown treat as deftly as she had the stake. Before, when her sisters had rushed her and snapped at the stick, she had thought it was some odd game, one where they killed the stick and were given a treat. Now the sounds her human had made then made sense, that particular noise the one she was meant to crunch the stick on. It was an interesting game, one that required more thought than tug-o-war with her sisters, reminding her a little more of the hunt than fighting over dead bones. [Balboa-Crunch 6]
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Post by Alma on Jul 10, 2021 1:04:36 GMT -6
For like the hunt, she had to be aware of the right time to strike, and she was certain she had picked out which sound she was meant to strike on. As her jaws slammed shut on “Brunch!”, she snorted and shook herself. Some of the sounds were almost too similar, and she had to pay more attention to the noise to catch it. If she tried to attack too early, as she did on “Crumbs,” she stopped her jaws just in time to avoid grabbing nothing, feeling sheepish. She wanted the private treats, the praise that was hers alone. Her sisters were grand, but the time alone with the human, with choice bits of meat that she did not have to tackle another for, was making her too eager.
The miasma balgor tried to restrain herself from snapping until she was sure her human said the right word, sometimes hesitating for a full second before deciding if it was.
[Balboa-Crunch 7]
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Post by Alma on Jul 10, 2021 1:05:45 GMT -6
Alma had been having a little bit of fun with the balgor. She had to admit, yelling “Crumbs” had felt a bit silly, and she felt bad as she yanked the stake away from the balgor with a laugh. When would she yell something like that, especially with that much force in her voice anyways?
But she had got her comeuppance when the miasma balgor had started being slower to attack, the beast sometimes hesitating even when the word was clearly right or, in the case of the word “Barry”, was very obviously wrong. It took them a while to get back up to speed, and then Alma returned to poking the sticks through without a word sometimes, the miasma balgor eyeing the stick with interest but never snapping at it.
After a few seconds on one of these occasions, she called out the command, and the miasma balgor shattered an already broken end with her bite. [Balboa-Crunch 8]
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Post by Alma on Jul 10, 2021 1:06:14 GMT -6
The delayed commands started to be more common as the pile of sticks began to grow smaller, Alma starting to reuse the shorter, jagged sticks that no longer hissed or smoked. A new game grew out of this to the delight of Balboa, where Alma would leave one stake halfway in the cage, resting on the floor as she stepped away from it. Balboa looked between Alma and the stick the first time, unsure of what she was to do. The stick was there, apparently forgotten by her human as she had walked away, and Balboa was not one to miss out on something fun to gnaw on. The sticks might have been less sturdy than a bone, but she liked the feeling of pressure on her teeth.
Then came the command, and the miasma balgor stared at Alma’s empty hands for a moment before rushing to where the abandoned stake lay. [Balboa-Crunch 9]
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Post by Alma on Jul 10, 2021 1:07:05 GMT -6
They did that again and again, Alma starting to lay out more sticks at the same time. The training continued as she pointed at certain ones and called out the command, the miasma balgor earning praise and one of the remaining treats whenever Balboa crunched the pointed at stick.
As the remaining stakes were reduced to kindling and the cooler of treats had only a handful of pink lumps floating in the icy water, Alma felt fairly confident that the beast had learned when to crunch on command. She did not think Balboa would strike out at her sisters, the miasma balgor having quickly grown fond of the other balgor as far as she could tell, but she wanted to be sure just in case she ever needed to fight alongside another team, or face a group with multiple targets.
The last of the sticks were soon gone, with only the pinkish water in the cooler hinting at the treats it had held, and Alma raised the gate so Balboa could return to playing with the other balgor.
[Balboa-Crunch End?] [Balboa-19.0, Alma-258.9]
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Post by Alma on Jul 31, 2022 20:16:57 GMT -6
She could still see the words now, eyes closed with the palm of her closed fist pressed against her forehead. “Voltitans tend to be apex predators within their territories, and few can say that they've fought one with zero casualties.” Casualties that would become her problem whenever the lab-released steriles grew and their owners tossed them out, or one of the wild-released roamed far enough to claim a bit of the great river.
There were other parts of the page that had caused the same reaction, one of her favorites mentioning how the species tended to avoid heavily populated areas, but had to nest near bodies of fresh water. She could only wonder how many of the smaller villages would simply cease to be in the upcoming year, the giant turtles unlikely to tolerate such neighbors long past the moment they went to fish or fill a barrel of water. And the sea dwelling species that, as soon as they grew to adulthood, would infest the rivers and lakes nearby the city to show how fun forty feet of instantly boiling water could be.
But, of them all, the bloody magestorm were the perfect monsters, the only one of the whole damned set of voltitan that would not merely settle for killing you. No, their description made her think of the worst tales of Chaos, as though the new labs had decided that, should the gods turn a blind eye to their work, they would gladly make their own destruction.
“Which is why I’m starting with you, Twins.”
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Post by Alma on Jul 31, 2022 20:17:09 GMT -6
They were about the size of a full grown houluh the day of their hatching, and already more than willing to eat said hounds within a day of their hatching. Alma was not sure they would not try to eat each other, the clacking sound of the two heads snapping at one another audible as she had first gone to check on the newly hatched beasts. She was not sure that the beast would have survived long enough for her to check on it had its two heads been split a bit farther down, the angles available to their jaws not enough to let them do more than smack their heads against one another.
The limited range had even saved her own fingers once, both heads smacking together with a crack as they tried to go for fresher meat than the chunk of jerky she held. She had started feeding them with a stick after that, then a pair of sticks to forestall the clacking, crackling arguments the beast had with itself.
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Post by Alma on Jul 31, 2022 20:17:26 GMT -6
And while the other voltitans had been moved to fine cages that at least tried to mimic their natural habitat, though the oceanic ones merely got beaches rather than the dark depths they were meant to float through, the Twins had been left in their hatching cage for several days while Alma tried to figure out what to keep a reality-warping magical beast in. Sure, all she had seen so far was the same sparks that erupted from the green one, but she could have sworn the sparks seemed to change colors as they danced along the bars, that the cage itself seemed to twist and alter under the clean white lights.
So she watched them as they clacked and crackled, noting how sometimes the sparks seemed to reach for her an instant before branching towards the ground, trying to figure out what she could store them in. There had to be some way to store them, something that would keep them from bursting free of the cages when they grew older to mutate her own beasts into gibbering wrecks before coming for her.
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Post by Alma on Jul 31, 2022 20:17:36 GMT -6
“Maybe WELP is exaggerating.”
She had told them that during one of the feedings, poking the twin pieces of rubber-coated poles at each head, each tipped with a piece of mud-covered meat that comprised half of what she was feeding the others. Using one pole had ended with both heads clacking at each other as they fought for the food, the meat burning and the pole hot to the touch by the end. Speaking seemed to lessen the attacks on one another, though she would have sworn it resulted in more sparks sent her way.
“Wouldn’t have been the first time. Old labs made a lot of fuss about their elemental beasties, aye? ‘Spirit of fire’ my ass.”
The voltitan ate their meal, one head finishing a fraction of a moment before the other, enough time to clack and shove the other head as the latter gulped down its final piece of food.
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Post by Alma on Jul 31, 2022 20:17:50 GMT -6
She was no closer to figuring out what to do with them after the first week of feeding and watching them. A magesteel cage was going to be required no matter what, unless she wanted to return and find the damned thing had eaten her houluh one day, and that would be pricey even with the amount the kennels were able to give out at the size Twins was rumored to reach at adulthood.
To be fair though, she was not sure what a ‘car’ was. Something big and heavy, possibly rivaling a wiurn with how deadly these things were said to be. She assumed it had to be something large enough that the larger flyers would not simply take off with them and drop them on some hard mountain top. “Assuming you voltitans can even run out of shocks, right?”
The other voltitans seemed happy enough in their cages, the trickle of water simulating a fake stream apparently enough at their current sizes, so she decided to mimic the muddy, plant-choked cage the olympian wallowed in for Twins, with magesteel bars in place of cold iron. ((Twins-1.0))
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Post by Alma on Jul 31, 2022 20:18:04 GMT -6
But that cage would not be finished for a little while, her request far down the queue that had grown with the hatching of the new reptiles. So Alma had decided to move on to the one thing that might, at the least, cause the voltitan to be satisfied killing something like her floof, as much as it would pain her to lose a rare creature, rather than focusing their hate on her.
Of course, the warning stating that she could not, or should at least try to avoid, touching them made it a bit difficult to get the beast into the carrier. The small hatching cages had two doors available for access, one above from where she would normally be able to easily pick up the beast from, and a side one for if the beast was capable and safe to walk out on its own. It was not often that she found herself reluctant to unlatch the side gate at all, the four pale eyes watching her whenever she moved closer to the cage enough to unnerve her and send her scurrying off to deal with the slightly less magical breeds.
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Post by Alma on Jul 31, 2022 20:18:30 GMT -6
So went on the daily visits, some with food and others with just some nervous chatter that let her stay several meters farther back from the cage than the scorch marks on the otherwise pristine tile warranted. The bursts would seem to lessen in frequency, the heads focusing their grief on one another, only for both heads to stop their clacking and swing in her direction with their gaping, toothless maws as they tested their range and damaged more tile.
Some days she got closer than others, one head favoring her with a glance before turning its attention back to the other, and those times she found herself no more eager to approach than when they spat lightning. The warnings were for touching the beast, but how close could one get before the magic might reach out for her, to change her as the fairy tales featuring Chaos always warned of? Would she even notice the changes in time to reach a healer, to ask them to fix them?
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Post by Alma on Jul 31, 2022 20:18:51 GMT -6
Today she had the special carrier, a box so swaddled in rubber and special metals that she felt like she was daring them to try something, to prove whether or not the box was worth the exorbitant rate she had paid for such an awkward thing. It was too large to fit in her mining cart, and she intended to instead hoist it into one of the many transports that did their business running reluctant beasts to the park rather than risk bringing her sarane to the park with it. She would have to hold and drag it at a distance no greater than arm's length, but she hoped the magesteel and rubber would keep the voltitan’s powers at bay. At least the version she had purchased had wheels.
In fact, she inspected the piece of paper detailing its use for the countless time as she stood in the doorway to the hatching room, steadfastly ignoring Twins as they appeared to be ignoring her.
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Post by Alma on Jul 31, 2022 20:19:14 GMT -6
She was careful not to talk, not even a murmur as her eyes roved over the sheet of words, looking for any sudden change or misunderstood word. Yes, it was meant to contain highly magical creatures, though the writer had listed things like amphadron and unstable crossbreeds rather than the newly made magestorm. Yes, it was also insulated against shocks such that something like an electrical elemental might produce, though the manual stressed that the case might harm that specific beast if it was left in there too long. Yes, it should be able to withstand bites and scratches for a good long while, though the case was not meant to be a replacement for a permanent cage.
Alma flicked her gaze up at Twins, silently cursing that they were in fact something rare as well as praising Order that they were. With any luck, Twins would be the only one of their kind she ever had to deal with.
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