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]

"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."

[death_gone_mad]

"You would feel different if these were overrunning your world."

...


Its not like they are overrunning her world. They aren't even a major danger to the two peninsulas they are found on. Still a danger, though. Far far away from her usual stomping grounds, however.

Still, they very much need extermination. And there goes another of the fat little balls of fur.

Kaboom!

[herr_bookman]

Autor tilts his head. "You mentioned that these are the only two species left," he says. "Between the two, are they really that plentiful?"

They could be, they're rodents. But he still can't wrap his head around how an exploding rat population can evolve to the point where they're overrunning a planet.

Still, watching them explode reminds him, oddly, of eating unicorn mushrooms. He's not sure what he thinks about that.

"I probably would," he says, and clasps his hands behind his back.

[death_gone_mad]

"If they weren't hunted, they would be."

"Another?" she cheerfully asks as she takes out another.

[herr_bookman]

"True enough," he says, shrugging, "though I'm fairly certain that's not a justification for what we're doing. If there was a kinder way to exterminate them, then maybe we could..."

That said, he does fling the next one she offers.

[death_gone_mad]

Boom!

"There are some people that use them for target practice, but it isn't very efficient doing things that way. The explosions make the rest of the chinchompas scurry away and so they live to breed another day."

She considers something for a bit. "There's a way to make them do more than explode on impact. If you aren't going to get sentimental about things, that is."

[herr_bookman]

Autor shrugs. "I don't think it's sentimentality"--as he's never sentimental, never ever--"but just a recognition that we are not only exterminating something, but taking another life for our entertainment purposes."

Then again, people go hunting and have bear baiting and cockfights all the time. So there's that.

"What else can you do to them?"

[death_gone_mad]

"Oh, yes... I suppose that can lead to bad things down the road. Necromancy for entertainment purposes could become fashionable again," she deadpans.

"It's something I have been experimenting with," she takes out a tin of some sort of dried meat byproduct from some pocket in her dress. "Its partially inspired by the were-sausage incident here. My world also has a problem with sea slugs that like attaching themselves to a person's head and taking control of that person's mind. Luckily they don't grow as big as the old stories say they did," she says as she shows the contents of the tin to Autor. "They must do it with some chemical since ingesting one even after its been dried or crushed will leave you in a faintly suggestible state."

She sets the tin down and plucks two chinchompas out of the cage this time and hands one to Autor. "Do you think you can set one down one the range without it exploding? Or maybe we can release these two somewhere easier..." She looks around to scout for an easier spot. "Either way I hope mine can catch up to yours," she says as she picks out a bit of canned seaslug. Bad idea or BEST EVER?

[herr_bookman]

Autor stifles his laughter with a hand. "Yes," he returns with a pan just as deceased, "that would be dreadful."

The boy leans over the tin to get a look and jerks his head back when she says, "taking control." He wrinkles nose. "These sound awful. What will the slugs do to the chinchompas? Make them tipsy?"

He gingerly extracts one from her and--mindful of getting bitten or blowing his hand off--sets it down roughly ten feet away.

[death_gone_mad]

And off it scurries.

"As I said... more suggestible." With her special talents, she doesn't really need the sea slugs. But, what good would it do if only she could control the exploding rodents?

"I've only been able to teach them to run in a straight line and explode after set time, and to chase down a target and explode." She feeds the piece of seaslug to her chinchompa and whispers a command before setting it down at her feet.

It scurries after the other chinchompa. Apparently the suggestion was good enough that her chinchompa didn't try running up to the cage and blowing it up.

"Um... maybe I gave yours too much of a head start." She takes up her staff just in case.

[herr_bookman]

"How on earth were you able to teach them that?" he says, blinking. "Are you teaching the slugs and passing that on? How does that even work? Did you experiment as to what phrases would sink in?"

The kid can't wrap his head around it. Unless they're really that easily trained, she wouldn't have been able to, he thinks. But then she'd be able to teach it other things... right?

In any case, he watches the trained chinchompa waddle after the other one, and shakes his head. "Do you think mine even knows what's coming?"

[death_gone_mad]

"Teaching is the wrong word for it, sorry," she apologizes. An apology from her?! It must be because she's distracted by tracking the rodents. "But yes, phrases."

"Hopefully it doesn't know what is coming. It might make it harder for mine to catch up if it does."

[herr_bookman]

"If they can carry out simple directions like this, I wonder if you can suggest different things?" he says. "Like, for example, 'charge at the first green thing you see'."

Then he tilts his head. "Provided they see colors in the same way we do."

He crouches down and waits, watching hers scurry after his. "How long have you been working with them?"