Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:16:54 GMT -6
Amonuro Level: 58 (0/5) / Loyalty: 78 (0/5) Stamina: 2 Strength: 0 Resistance: 0 Dexterity: 5 Mentality: 8 Special Abilities: Ethreal, Empethetic Link, Wind Immunity, Fly Moves: Telekenetic Powers, Wind's Blessing, Wind Burst, Winter Gust, Clarity
Darky looked at the slip of paper, lined with a few short rows of text. It seemed a fairly straight-forward, easy enough job to do - there was a garden and inside it some pests that needed removal. ‘Pests’ being a somewhat misguiding term, though.. As far as she knew (and, admittedly, she didn’t know a whole lot about actual, lush, forestry things) caterpillars probably ranked on the bottom of annoyances. Especially since most became quite beautiful butterflies later in life. However, the issuer of the quest wasn’t looking to grow caterpillars, they were looking to grow crops, and since both of those couldn’t co-exist at the same time, here they were, standing at the gate of the garden, overlooking the fields of plump and fresh produce.. speckled here and there in a more neon green, orange or brown worm-shaped things.
She breathed in and out again, only just now getting the scope of their job ahead of them. There was.. a lot of bugs. Relatively small ones, largely harmless ones, but a lot none the less. So, she hefted the long net over her shoulder, looked to the shijin and both shared a determined nod.
It was time to get to work.
(1) Amonuro: 58 (1/5)
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Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:17:46 GMT -6
Entering the garden the first order of business for the two was setting up their collection point near the gate (the closest to the edge and least likely to ‘leak’ the caterpillars back into the garden again). Early on in reading and accepting the quest the sphinx realized they probably didn’t have it in them to just go squashing the poor things. Like as not, they were just tiny creatures, doing their tiny creature things. Just because they landed in a place where they weren’t welcome wasn’t deserving of mass murder.
So, instead, she set up her shoulder bag, flap open, near the gate. The inside was lined with a cardboard box she’d found in the kennel storage room, further line with a plastic bag that had a string running along its top, allowing it to be ‘zipped up’ when done. That was an important part, since even the drowsiest caterpillar could still just crawl out otherwise.
To her hip she tied a large bottle, with the mouth large enough to fit a sizeable caterpillar through, but with a cork stopper to make sure it didn’t come back out again.
(2) Amonuro: 58 (2/5)
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Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:18:37 GMT -6
With the bottle at her hip and the net over her shoulder, the sphinx’s equipment was set. As for the shijin there was no kind of physical equipment he could possibly carry, even though he could certainly lift things. Unfortunately, as that was limited to just one item at a time, there was a better use to his powers - the caterpillars weren’t all that heavy and the shijin was much faster at moving than Darky.
So, at their ready, the sphinx pointed the shijin down the furthest left lane, while she herself took the furthest right one and the two got to work.
Amonuro dashed off, flying through the air like a blue shimmering dart and within seconds was already at the start of the row of plants. Pale blue, nearly white eyes squinted and scanned the plants as he hovered along the row uncaring of large plant leaves simply phasing through him. In that he had the ghostly benefit of searching - the caterpillars could try to hide in the depths of the plant steps, but he’d still find them.
(3) Amonuro: 58 (3/5)
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Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:19:00 GMT -6
It was mere seconds before the first offending bug was spotted, munching on a stem beneath a larger leaf and the shijin dashed to action - telekinetic force wrapped around the caterpillar and he turned head-on-tail towards the back, flying over, dumping the bug in the plastic bag, closing up the string and swooping back to his previous spot, scanning for the next one. It was only the first round trip of many, for powerful as his mind was, it could still only deal with one object at a time.
In the meantime, on the right side of the garden the sphinx has the same job, but different approach. Unlike the shijin she had to actually pause and kneel to spot caterpillars hiding under leaves, but for the ones in plainer sight on top of them or squirming along the ground, she could simply scoop them up with the net. The net’s holes were fine enough (owing to likely being intended for small fish if her current luck in fishing had shown) and the caterpillars chubby enough that they couldn’t simply fall through.
Initially she had scoured the shops for something more along the lines of a butterfly net (it didn’t matter what stage the butterfly was at) but the only nets existed at the Hook, Line ‘n Sinker. So, she made do.
(4) Amonuro: 58 (4/5)
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Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:19:18 GMT -6
Once a caterpillar was snatched up, she uncorked the bottle, stored it inside of it and re-corked it, returning to the lookout for the next one. Her method meant that she didn’t need to get back to the bags as often as Amonuro did, which was to say, for every single one. And sometimes, as she worked her way forward along the row, she could snatch several caterpillars in the net with a few quick motions, before beginning to deposit them into the bottle one at a time.
Some of them looked about as drowsy as she felt, still not quite awakened from the winter slumber and the cold. On this she could empathize - she wasn’t quite ready to tackle some of the more difficult things needing doing, but she could handle something small and simple as this, get herself ‘warmed up’ so to speak, shake the winter rust off.
And speaking of shaking things off, towards the end of the field row her bottle was getting a little too full, so she checked the last few plants, then turned around and headed back to the bag.
(5) Amonuro: 59 (0/5)
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Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:19:40 GMT -6
Once back, she uncorked the bottle, turned it up-side-down over the plastic bag and gently began tapping the bottom with her palm to dump the caterpillars down into the bag. Some tricksy ones seemed intent on clinging to the very walls of the bottle, but the glass was smooth and her taps enough to jostle even the more stubborn ones loose, making them tumble down to rejoin the rest of the brethren. Briefly, she surveyed their progress, noting that the shijin had managed to bring over a dozen and a half while she had worked on her one bottle, then gently nudged some of the caterpillars that had crawled to the edge of the bag back and pulled the string closed.
Standing, she headed back to the right, but this time around she took the second row, now that the first one had been dealt with. Amonuro was already beginning to finish his second row, despite having to make round trips for each bug, but being ghostly and able to fly, the distance is much more relative to him than the sphinx.
(6) Amonuro: 59 (1/5)
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Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:24:38 GMT -6
One caterpillar at a time the two worked their way inward, one to fly between points A and B, the other stuffing the bottle until it was more or less full, returning only to empty it. The general idea was to work their was towards the center of the garden, but the disparity of their respective speeds meant that the shijin was going to reach the center somewhat faster than the mammalian did. Regardless, the meticulous checking of every leaf and tuft of grass meant it took them a good while get the full garden worked over.
In the end, the shijin had managed to check two thirds of the rows, while the mammalian handled the remaining third. The last bottle-full emptied out, the bag interior was now a multicoloured wiggling mass, occasionally fuzzy, slowly trying to creep up and out if at all possible, but ultimately thwarted when the string was pulled to close up the bag once more.
Their first pass of the garden was complete.
(7) Amonuro: 59 (2/5)
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Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:25:04 GMT -6
The first pass.. Hardly were either of them ones to leave a job half-done, and given the magnitude of the garden and the number of their (figurative) enemies, there were still potential caterpillar left here or there, hidden beneath deeper canopies of plant leaves. So, they returned to one edge of the garden, both together this time, and began a different kind of sweet.
First the shijin flew ahead, calling up the wind to gently rustle the plants, shaking loose anything that might be clung to them, but also revealing anything hiding beneath. The sphinx walked behind, net and bottle ready as her eyes scanned the ground in the shijin’s wake, looking for anything worm-like lumpy in need of being snatched up. As soon as something wiggling was spotted, she scooped it up and put it into the bottle, then resumed walking along behind the shijin, still doing his windy thing to clear the view.
Who knew having intended for him to learn something which could clear smoke and fog would have likewise come in handy clearing out some bugs in a garden? (Tho, she made a note of it. After all, she, too, had a garden that was just a likely to be subject to some pet-related issues).
(8) Amonuro: 59 (3/5)
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Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:25:28 GMT -6
The two gradually worked their way through the rows of the field, picking up stragglers here and there. It was no surprise there larger group of stragglers was found on the sphinx’s side of the field, since unlike the shijin, she couldn’t just stick her head through a leaf and see everything beneath. Hers was a more three-dimensional perspective, complete with blind corners, whereas Amonuro was arguably more of four-dimension sort of creature. Still, with their powers combined, the second and third pass of the fields yielded a bottle and half more of the caterpillars, before they gathered at the gate once more.
The last catch dumped into the bag, then zipped up and the bottle tied to the side of the bag this time, the two stood to glance across the garden and admire a job well done. Compared to when they arrived, the place looked pristine, albeit a little nibbled upon.. The caterpillars they could gather up and remove, but without someone like the agate coming by to do some earthen-degree healing, there was little they could do about the damage already on the plants.
(9) Amonuro: 59 (4/5)
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Darky
Flea Market Artist
Veritas et Aequitas
Posts: 1,268
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Post by Darky on May 3, 2019 6:25:55 GMT -6
Of course, there was also the issue of there never being an absolute zero nor and absolute hundred percent. Thorough as they were, they were statistically unlikely to get all the bugs, short of having some sort of magic method to detect them through plant and soil, but a few caterpillars here and there wasn’t going to cause anywhere near as much damage as the slew before. And who knew? Whatever few that remained, too good at their hiding, might even wander off to adjacent gardens given time and solve the problem all on their own.
But that was them done, the job completed to the best of their ability (and in some manner also time, as the day was waning towards evening, and unless the caterpillars were the sort to glow, finding them in darkness was only going to be that much more difficult).
So, hefting the shoulder bag across her chest, the net pole across her shoulder, the sphinx and shijin shared a quiet hand-to-tail high-five, before taking their leave, ready to call it a day.
At least, on the garden part. Once having called in the results, the two cut across the City, to the far other side and found a nice little deep grove in the forest where the caterpillars were set free, far from any gardens they might damage and free to live out their lives all the way through to butterflies or, more naturally likely, get eaten by other denizens of the forest. For herself, she only kept a few in the bottle, to take to a herbarium in the kennel, hoping to see them sprout into beautiful butterflies in time.
(10) - (added) Amonuro: 60 (0/5)
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Post by Jack on May 3, 2019 10:30:13 GMT -6
Success! You have eradicated the infestation! Feel free to continue playing if you would like, but your prize will be sent to you shortly!
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