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Post by Skylos on Nov 18, 2021 5:16:52 GMT -6
He has to resist the urge to throw the blue magic crystal that moves you from place to place because this time he doesn't reappear in a giant field, but back at city limits. Was the result random? He doesn't know and doesn't WANT to know. Tucking the blue stone in his pocket, Skylos shuffles into the city to bring no attention to himself having popped in out of noplace at all, heading right home. He has no idea what to make of this key. One side feels sharp and disjointed, like its half of a whole or something. Did he only receive half of it? Or was the dragon pulling his leg and giving him a piece of junk and a stupid new task to get him out of xer face. The latter, he figures. Because he didn't share any of his hard earned coins yet. Well of course not, as he opens his kennel door, and promptly has something tan and slimy drop on his head. 66 tbb 1
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Post by Skylos on Nov 18, 2021 5:21:05 GMT -6
A YOWL, and he leaps inward to the kennel, claws out and ready to attack. The thing slides down his face, large and slimy and drops into his arms. Its... a vespa. What was Kotoku doing out of their box? Turning around, he sees said box... sees said occupant... this isn't Kotoku. Nervous now, he looks down, and sees curious royal purple eyes blinking at him. Carefully, he also looks up. Did he walk into some sort of vespa nest? Because theres the drying remains of a purple sac having burst open, an amber sac and what appear to be blue and green ones too. Thats... disturbing to say the least. Without much else to do with it, he takes the vespa out to the gardens with him, the purple eyed worm hanging out under his arm like some living (and able to injure him) sack of potatoes. Some humans are probably giving him strange looks by now. 67 tbb 2
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Post by Skylos on Nov 18, 2021 5:25:32 GMT -6
The newborn vespa is Slowly booting itself up in terms of instinct and figuring out which way is up. Up is face of cat. Cat has furry face. Furry face dripping with hatch slime. Haha slime. To be honest, this is a female vespa, although nobody can see that specifically unless they know what they are looking for. She'd very briefly seen the box and sensed a male? larvae nearby. Or was that up by. Because looking upwards too when the cats head angles up is the drop zone of her sac. There are others. Did she have brothers and sisters? She's pretty lucky, the cat had saved her without realizing it from dropping to a very splat death. Not every wasp nest was built in a smart location after all. This one isn't a kodoku of different beasts fighting for survival, she had her egg sac all to herself. Which is good. 68 tbb 3
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Post by Skylos on Nov 18, 2021 5:28:45 GMT -6
Either that, or someone's playing a cruel trick. This is the second giant wasp larvae he's discovered as an egg inside his kennel alone. Was this to do with the key given to him? Skylos considers this as he opens the gate, goes in, closes the gate, and carefully puts the larvae on the ground. Its much cooler today then the last few weeks, and more leaf roughage on the ground. Hasn't figured out yet what the vespa larvae eat besides fruit and meat. Did they eat anything else? He'll have to forage a bit and find something fro it. Because even with a bit of squick from having her drop onto his head slimily, the cat has no heart to squash her and go about his time. No, he'd sooner take her to be adopted out, but he wont' do that either. He'd seen the inside of that building once. 69 tbb 4
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Post by Skylos on Nov 18, 2021 5:38:51 GMT -6
Perhaps if the kennel space he had was previously used, someone had kept giant wasps to ward off the increasing amount of sarane taking over the city one human at a time. Skylos isn't a stupid man, he knows what they look like, and how easy it is to get another. Simply walk up to the lab and ask for a brown like you're ordering a steak to order. The briefest thought crosses his mind of how sarane taste when served up for a meal. Likely disgusting. But... the option is open. Oh this one would be easy. Vespa aren't mind controllers but her instinct tells her the cat man has already been exposed to a vespa once. Where there is one, almost always comes another, says the hive mind. She's too young to be a queen. Besides, queens are typically atypical colorings; more rare and fancyful then what she would become. 70 tbb 5
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Post by Nadia on Nov 18, 2021 6:02:47 GMT -6
Red, red, red.
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Post by Skylos on Nov 18, 2021 11:16:34 GMT -6
'Sorry little wasp baby' he grumbles aloud, 'I don't have anything on the menu. We'll have to find something for you to eat.' Being a non choice carnivore, he's tried many times to attempt eating fruit or biting a vegetable wihtout spitting it out or retching from the horrid taste. His teeth aren't shaped right to eat an apple. Bunny galabex food needs teeth to cut and grind, like watching one of those large wheels that you throw noisy portions of wheat at to grind it down into grain flour. Cat people teeth are for ripping and tearing, and biting down hard. His ancestors have evolved to no longer need to hunt down their meals like a wild beast on the plains. He makes an unfamiliar hiss yowl noise, that the vespa doesn't quite grasp. Wilds don't speak the same, heck they don't sound the same. Even the chitters and trills of each vespa are different. 71 tbb 6
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Post by Skylos on Nov 19, 2021 6:19:31 GMT -6
Granted, even with the wrong teeth, he's sometimes just drawn to eating certain plants. Once tried to eat a bouquet of flowers when he was a kitten, and boy did Skylos regret that afterwards. Certain flowers are definitely poisonous to cat people and cats in general. Thank god his mother was prepared for that sort of situation. She taught him after that on which plants were not good for eating, and which made you a bit loopy after eating. While in thought, the cat checks on his drying out vine logs, rapping his knuckles upon the bark to attempt to figure out how dried out they'd gotten. Wet wood doesn't catch fire, and thus doesn't sell. Drying out wood takes such a long time... and with them sitting down on the ground like this during the soon to be wet season, the logs won't dry out in time. He's not paying attention to the little vespa for a few minutes. 72 tbb 7
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Post by Skylos on Nov 19, 2021 6:30:49 GMT -6
Yeah, these logs weren't drying out properly. With a sigh, he picks up two vine logs and knocks them together. Its dull and muffled to his ear, and thats not the excess of fur in his ears clogging the sound. Well shoot. Very few cracks, if any, developing on the edges of the logs too. 'are there any rocks about I can use to stack these on top of....' he wonders to himself, eyes sweeping the basic surrounding. Whatever is left under the undergrowth is probably rotten. What about out in the garbage thats around the outside of the gardens? The little vespa watches the cat pick up two things and start beating them together. Ugh, that sounds like beating two logs together. Whats a log anyways. She's more interested in finding something to eat in the meantime. The leaves on the ground leave little to be discovered right now. Not much at all. 73 tbb 8
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Post by Skylos on Nov 19, 2021 6:35:15 GMT -6
He's not skulking about, really. But as he'd walked into the gardens with a bug under his arm, the cat man notices that not every garden looks as pretty on the outside. Really the work is just beyond the gate separating them from the main path. And meeting the split is a bit of a compost heap, and piles of broken and unused bits of wood and clay and metal. Something that's about as high as his knee would do nicely so he won't have to reach so far down to check the bottom logs. The Warden briefly walks by, and for once he's not chatting up the breeze, bundled up in his cold weather gears. Skylos inquires on finding something to stack wood on, and he vaguely gestures at the pile before excusing himself with a mighty sneeze. Ooh. Hm. For his reasoning, a bit of digging had to go on before the cat finds some slightly cracked shipping palettes. Similar to how the humans are moving items down on the docks. 74 tbb 9
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Post by Skylos on Nov 19, 2021 6:40:54 GMT -6
It is hard work hauling the shipping pallet, a solid hunk of wood slats nailed together, out of the pile of junk. Takes him several minutes to even get it pulled out of there. Some rolled up and falling apart logs of dirt and weeds fall off and split apart on the pile further once the palette frees itself at last, nearly sending Skylos backwards from the inertia. This'll have to do. The hauling back to the garden is slow, as the pallet stubbornly is dragging through the dirt and the cobbles and catching on literally everything else. A few scrapes on the leaves starting to coat the ground, as the little amethyst vespa seeks for her first meal. The cat is busy. She can look up and see his fluffy head moving, moving like its difficult. Like he's restrained adn struggling against bindings. But comes back with soemthing large enough to squash a bug? 75 tbb 10 ladybug golossle
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Post by Nadia on Nov 19, 2021 7:50:01 GMT -6
Did you hear a twig break somewhere? No? Maybe not...
[Nothing happens.]
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Post by Skylos on Nov 23, 2021 5:36:21 GMT -6
It is kind of a good thing that the garden plots aren't attached to the main road. Some cat man hauling a partially broken down shipping pallet down the path into his garden that he has to practically kick the gate further open once it is unlatched? Weird. However, if he wants to ever dry out wood for firewood, it has to be off the ground. This will do the trick. Gradual, hard work lugs the oversized object through the gate, drifting it shut from kinetic energy build up. The pallet crashes to the ground and makes both cat and wormling jump. For Skylos, also sneeze. Because by the gods, is this thing dusty. If it has no termites, he will be a lucky man. A few more shoving adjustments before he stands back and admires the object. It is... an eyesore. Really. But the vine logs will dry now, maybe in terms for the winter season. 76 [0/5 0/10 6/20] tbb 1
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Post by Skylos on Nov 23, 2021 5:41:16 GMT -6
'I will be picking splinters out of my pads for days...' he complains to himself, picking up each vine log and setting it in a line across the pallet. Instead of a pyramid like the first time, he lets them all sit out in a single row, not touching. That should be enough. If he can avoid stubbing a toe or a tail or further on the sharp wooden edges. But the work of finding a place to dry his vine logs is finally complete. A good amount of work. There's a rock nearby just big enough to sit on but still pull his knees up towards his head. Such is the life of bipedal animalfolk. He has to stretch out his legs, digitgrade feet sticking straight up in the air as he rests. Grumbling to himself while examining pinpricks on his pads. Pinching out easier to find splinters, all while the vespa is still exploring. 77 [0/5 0/10 7/20] tbb 2
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Post by Skylos on Nov 23, 2021 5:46:57 GMT -6
'You know' he considers, flexing pricked fingers and pads 'what if there were flat rocks that raise the pallet up a bit higher' That is actually a good idea. Gently running his thumbpad over the other pads of his hands, theres no more visible splinters to be found or to be pulled at present. There will be more. Careful not to tread on the vespa as she's around as he shifts forward onto his feet and stands up slowly, holding balance with his tail. Even with a bigger build, he is still a catfolk and catfolk are quite flexible. Off he goes outside the area again to find some flat rocks that are about the same height to settle the pallet above the ground. Finally. A piece of fallen fruit from one of the overgrown bushes. The little amethyst wormling goes after the food with no further thought on it. Food is food. 78 [0/5 0/10 8/20] tbb 3
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