fuzzbombs and ore

[death_gone_mad]

A hand comes through the front door and pushed it aside as if it where a curtain. The owner of that hand, the woman who has been introducing herself her as Sarah to most people, stands for a bit, sniffing.

Milliways looks like it usually does and it smells like there was an upward blip in the kitten population, but the extra kittens are no longer present. Cubefall must be over! Sarah disappears behind the the front door-curtain again for a while and comes back bearing her staff of light (A svardstaff looking thing) over her shoulder with two large sacks of rock and a cage full of chinchillas red furred chinchompas hanging off it.

"Bar, could you get this iron ore and coal to Skaði?" she asks the bar as she leaves the sack of rock on the countertop. The sacks of ore and coal disappear, obligingly.

That taken care of, she puts the staff back on her shoulder and looks about for someone. Even if you aren't that someone, she can be convinced to bring out one of the cute fuzzies for petting purposes.

Comments

[herr_bookman]

Oh, hey! Autor might fit into the class of someone's she's looking for. Even if he isn't, he has been looking for her.

"Sarah," he says, once he's a fairly respectful distance away. He decided that approaching her quickly would be foolhardy as soon as he saw her, given her decked-out-in-pointy-things-and-live-animals state.

[death_gone_mad]

"Autor, there you are." She sets the staff and cage down and pulls the staff free from the cage's handle. She can carry the cage and staff separately, though it is much more awkward.

It looks safer, at least.

She makes her way over to where Autor is and sets the cage on a table. "These furry things are chinchompas," she says with a bit of flourish.

[herr_bookman]

Autor almost jumps when she says his name. Few people know it, and even the ones who do rarely say it out loud.

"Ah, so I see," he says. The boy makes sure to stay far, far away from the staff; no need to trip into a chinchompa cage. "How many of them were you looking to blow up today?"

It's as close to a welcome back as she's going to get.

[death_gone_mad]

Oh, she never expects a welcome.

"Why not use them all? It would be cruel to keep them in that cage any longer than necessary," she says with a grin.

[herr_bookman]

Autor laughs. "I almost feel badly for them," he says, peering at the fuzzy sources of explosive entertainment. "You're sure these are vermin who naturally explode, right?"

Otherwise it'd be cruel...

"Same practice range as last time?"

[death_gone_mad]

"Oh, yes, its quite natural; it must be some kind of defence mechanism. For the defence of the species, I am sure. Not of the individual, obviously."

Honestly! She lies about many things, but not this. No one actually knows why red chinchompas explode. They are difficult to experiment on. Then again, no one has really bothered to do so.

"That was just what I was thinking."

[herr_bookman]

"Well," he says, amused already. "Shall we?"

He'd offer to carry the cage. Or the staff. But one is explodey and the other is--well, the other almost chopped his leg off last time. Augh.

"Do you need help with carrying"--the staff, sure, why not; it's less likely to blow him to bits--"the staff?"

[death_gone_mad]

She considers it a bit, then agrees. "Yes, that would help, just keep it upright. Or just lean it on your shoulder."

In reality, it would be safer if she carried but the was she was when she came in, but she wants to see what Autor will do.

[herr_bookman]

He does keep it upright. For about a second. The boy is a runner and a pianist; upper body strength isn't his forte.

Whoa! he thinks, and carefully, carefully lays the blade on his shou--no, the end slides against the floor, and cuts right into his blazer before he steadies it again.

He takes a moment to laugh--one inch more, and it'd be the same cut Lohengrin made a thousand years ago--and then hoists the staff up.

"Well?" he says, turning to her with a grin.

[death_gone_mad]

She nearly giggles at his antics.

"To the practice range, then," She says, picking up the cage and leading the way.

[herr_bookman]

That would make two of them. He manages not to take his arm off along the way.

"If these explode when they die, how did you manage to trap so many?" he asks once they've arrived at the range. "Have you ever had any blow up en masse once they've been caged?"

Because that's another reason to stay as far away from the cage as possible.

[death_gone_mad]

"I didn't trap these myself; I bought them. But box traps are usually what is used on them, with some sort of spicy food as bait." She opens the cage and lifts a chinchompa out by its apparently very steady tail,but is very quick about closing the cage again. "Luckily, they aren't claustrophobic; they live in burrow in herd groups, I believe."

She pets the rotund little rodent. Their fur is luxurious, but shamefully there is no easy way to skin a chinchompa.

A chinchompa fur coat would probably be the most expensive thing ever, and that is without considering the insane exchange rate for gold pieces from her world.

"I've never had a reason to toss a whole cage at someone."

She tosses the chinchompa hard into the grenade range and ducks for cover. The poor rodent lands hard and

Kaboom!

[herr_bookman]

"Stars and garters I didn't realize they were that unstable!" he says, dropping the staff as he follows her scramble for cover.

"A whole cage would be a hilarious improved weapon," he remarks, sizing up the remains of the blast. He's starting to think he should stay far, far out of whatever her throwing range is.

"There's no way to dissect them, is there? If we could find out what reaction makes them explode, we may be able to neutralize it."

[death_gone_mad]

Unfortunately, anaesthesia isn't a thing on her world. Well, there is cadava potion and Braindeath 'rum' both which will knock most people out cold but who wants to be the person who gets the dosage for a Chinchompa wrong?

Unconscious chinchompas may not help things anyway.

"Neutralize it? Why would you want to do that?" she ask, incredulous.

[herr_bookman]

Autor shrugs. "If you can neutralize the reaction, you might be able to learn how it works, and then reproduce it in other things."

He adjusts his glasses. "Are they fast runners? Should we let them loose and hunt them down, or just toss them? And why grab them by the tail?"

[death_gone_mad]

"Oh, to make better artificial explosives. I see your point. But these breed so fast that it would be irresponsible to do anything to encourage people to stop hunting them. They don't have very many natural predators, as you can imagine."

She does her part by stirring up wars where such explosive rodents might be used. Amascut is a very responsible and caring goddess

"They can move their little limbs quickly, but they are such stubby little things all that movement doesn't result in much speed. Their tails are the most convenient place to grab them. They are a bit touchy about their necks and is a bit too easy to grab them their by mistake if you hold them any other way. They squirm a lot."

[herr_bookman]

Autor nods, and then shakes his head. "I can't even fathom how these have evolved to this point. A death in a burrow would set off such a nasty chain reaction."

The rest of her explanation is met with more nodding. "Well," he says, and leans the Staff of Light up on one of the practice range's barriers. "Did we want to bother setting up targets, or just start flinging a few?"

Later on, they can experiment with fuses of sorts.

[death_gone_mad]

"I prefer flinging, but what kind or targets did you have in mind?"

[herr_bookman]

Autor shrugs. "Not sure. We could set a few loose and throw them at one another, though that would use them up twice as quickly."

[death_gone_mad]

"That might not be a good idea. If we miss some of them they might make themselves at home here. Although, last time they got loose here the demon bunnies seemed to take care of the problem. The chinchompas were under the influence of a strange spell back then, however."

The chaos that a population of chinchompas would cause here would be super fun and so would be watching the efforts to exterminate them. She could even participate! It is part of her area of expertise, after all. But there are nature gods and tree gods and various other people who would complain and make things not fun. Someone might have noticed that she brought the rodents in and make her clean up the mess they make.

Someday she'll find out how the demon bunnies were sneaked into Milliways.

[herr_bookman]

Autor laughs. Nervously. A bit. He wouldn't want to be among the first three or four people discovering how the chinchompas work.

"They must have made a terrible mess," he says, edging away from the cage again. "I wonder if anyone took bets. Who cast the spell?"

[death_gone_mad]

"Bets?"

"I don't know if anyone cast that spell. There was just a very strange incident involving evil sausages. Were-sausages according to the people who tried to find the cause. I... fed one to the chinchompas and it made them aggressive and bitey and then someone went behind my back and released a whole cage of them." The rodents were unusually focused on making her go kaboom.

She got better.

[herr_bookman]

"Were-sausages?" the kid parrots, blinking at her. "Nothing about that is remotely kosher."

He adjusts his glasses. "Why would you feed one to the chinchompas?" he asks, and then holds up a hand. "No, wait. Never mind. I would have done it, too. Actually, does anyone know what they eat regularly?"

Autor's slowly becoming more and more fascinated with these creatures. She may want to start blowing them up.

[death_gone_mad]

"Well there are two species of these left, and one prefers peppers and these like meat. They are usually insectivores but they love spicy beef."

She plucks out a chinchompa and dangles it in front of Autor. "Want to try one?"

[herr_bookman]

Oh, I'm going to get bitten or blown up or even--"Certainly," he says, and seizes it at the base of the tail. It only takes him a moment to fling it away--he has an arm conditioned from his grenades--and the resulting rodent explosion is disgustingly satisfying.

"These," he says, "are delightful. Though I do still feel badly for them."