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Post by Sharei on May 28, 2023 6:57:55 GMT -6
The moon hung low and full over the old swamp. A silvery mist had covered its surface, clouding the water and any unseen movement beneath it. In the distance the soft sigh of something slithering back down the bank could barely be heard under the hoot of a barred owl.
B3 stared hard at the scene from his perch atop a large, vertical rock. He was sheltered on all sides by the branches of bog birch, yet he couldn't shake the sense of being watched. His handler had already picked up and gone back to camp, leaving the asset behind with a kit and a file and standing orders to continue the search. B3 flipped open the folder again.
A subspecies of swamp Hydra. Aquatic, and a self-replicating broodmother to boot. It had recently moved into the area and Research wanted the parts, while Management wanted it dead. The only problem was that every time he killed a nest another seemed to pop up in its place.
To complicate matters, an accident at camp had compromised the supplies and they were running low on food. If he didn't end this soon the handlers would return without him, leaving the asset behind to complete the mission. Or die trying.
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Post by MP on May 28, 2023 11:38:52 GMT -6
The wetlands were rich with fish and game - and not just for her. The tracks of a hydra were enough to warn her out of her normal fishing range for days. They multiplied, ravaged the area, starved, fed on themselves, multiplied again. It was not a cycle she cared to partake in. And so the woman moved downriver, resigning herself to leaner pickings supplemented by whatever she could forage. It seemed enough to get by, but she worried at times. Lately, she forgot what she was doing, only coming back to herself once the meal was gone. If it was weakness, illness, that was something she couldn’t afford. She became bolder. Foraged more. Fretted over the continuing haze over her thoughts.
When she pulled the strange package from the river, she couldn’t believe her luck at first. Food and supplies - more than she’d ever seen in one place. And there were more behind the first, partially ruined but still salvageable. She stashed what she could, and then she began to think. Supplies meant people. New faces. New exiles. A sizable number, judging by the packages. There could be danger in that. Other survivors weren’t necessarily friendly - often the opposite. It would be better to keep her distance, and she resolved to move on. But that was easier said than done.
Over the next few days, she saw the impact of human presence. The hydras were restless, leaving their normal hunting grounds, and suddenly the predictable patterns the woman had come to rely on had shifted. She was forced to waste an entire afternoon in hiding when an egg laden broodmother wandered past. Spawn could reach full size in a matter of days, and they had a voracious appetite and a wide territory to match. She couldn’t leave that way. It would be better to move toward the grounds they’d already picked clean. It would be leaner there, but she had what supplies she could take, and fasting was better than being torn apart by dozens of hungry jaws.
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Post by Sharei on May 28, 2023 16:45:37 GMT -6
The tracks he'd found had proven fresh. They were smaller than what he could expect the broodmother's to be - hatchlings, perhaps, but still plenty dangerous - and meant that she wasn't likely here, but a nest was a nest. Exterminating the young before they did any more damage to the endemic life, not to say the human populace nearby, was paramount.
B3 hunkered down in the long reeds to watch, his scent masked by the boggy air and cool mist. The asset armor had only hindered his aquatic endeavors in this gritty bog, the many plated pieces not suited for the silt, and he'd shed it for his underclothes. His long white and blue hair was tied tightly back and bound in a wrap to keep it from giving his position away, and in the night all was silent.
The first activity came as a bark in the distance. A further, softer bark answered it. Then a third. A fourth. B3 moved on the fifth, slicing through the water at a speed not physically possible for a human. He was upon them in seconds, the flash of something in his hand catching the moonlight. The dagger descended on the hydra hatchling before it had a chance to notice him. One strike through the eye socket pierced the brain. The second one went down with a blade to the roof of the mouth. The third hit an ice wall, stymied by the delayed counterattack.
The fourth caught him in the leg with its tail, knocking the boy beneath the water and into the murky silt. He didn't rise again, but the water did. It spun where he had fallen, a whirlpool of cresting waves that acted like blades. The tops of reeds sheared off into the crash of the swamp, as did the limbs of beasts, and the startled heads of fish. When finally it calmed the trees lay silent, and B3 stood up from the depths, soaked through and bleeding from an uncertain wound just under the knee, but otherwise fine.
The boy, no older than 14, stared at the remains of the hydra for a long moment. Then he began methodically collecting the separated parts, going so far as to fish them out of the roots and reeds, and piled them on the shore. The asset dragged the bodies a ways, picked out specific organs with gory accuracy, and discarded the rest in hiding. Once he had what he wanted packaged, had redonned his stashed armor and retrieved his folder, the boy turned campward.
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Post by MP on May 28, 2023 20:18:14 GMT -6
She was well into her march when the woman realized the supplies were gone. Dropped during the river crossing? Slipped from numb fingers into the undergrowth? She hadn't thought she was so far gone. The woman was cursing her luck, cursing her foolishness, when she stumbled on the scene.
She had never seen anything like it. She watched the child turn back toward the trees. Turned to look at the water, which lay calm and placid. She had never known a hydra to move the water like a blade. And she had never known a boy to collect hydra spawn like a basket of fish.
There must be more survivors nearby, she thought, for the boy to be so bold. Perhaps the supplies had belonged to this group. Lost in a scuffle? Carelessly misplaced? For once, incredulity - the barest scrap of hope - outweighed her caution. Was it possible that the forest could be tamed? That a group of travelers could come so far? She would follow and see. Carefully - always carefully. Of all the dangers of the woods, there were none as unpredictable as men.
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Post by Sharei on May 28, 2023 21:55:01 GMT -6
B3 did not notice his tagalong as he trotted back to camp, a limp in his step, folder under one arm and organs under the other. When he paused at stray noises, head turning like a cat's, his gaze never found hers. And he noticed even less amiss when he checked over his shoulder before making the final leg of the journey.
'Camp' would turn out to be a disappointment, however. It was little more than a couple of heavily camouflaged tents containing technical equipment, a vehicle parked beneath a tent and hidden with the same camouflage, and a storage tent. He went to the storage tent first, stooping to deposit his goods. He paused, took a look around, then returned to the center of the ring of tents. It was there that he met his handler, a slip of a man with dark hair and disinterested eyes. He regarded the boy cooly, having been come upon changing tents.
"There you are," the man said. When B3 came to stand obediently before him, he regarded the blood at the boy's knee, then the storage tent. "I don't see a broodmother."
"This asset was unable to locate the broodmother-" B3 began.
"I told you not to come back until you'd killed it," the man said.
"I came to return harvested parts," B3 returned, his tone as modulated as any asset's. "This asset also needs to rest so that it might return to the hunt."
"Thought assets could go forever," the man snapped. "And you've gone and gotten yourself wounded. Jesus fucking christ. You can't do anything right."
B3's shoulder blades tightened, but he gave no other indication that the words bothered him. He simply bowed his head under the scrutiny.
"I am sorry I allowed damage to come to this asset."
"You'd better be," the handler said, his hands on his hips. "Cause we're out of food, and if you're hurt on top of that, this whole mission is fucked."
"What happened to the rest of the supplies?" B3 said, his head snapping up.
His handler shrugged. "Accident," he said. "I'm going to bed. Be ready to hunt in the morning."
"But the food-"
"Forage for something."
B3 stared at his handler in what might have passed for incredulity. It was enough of a look for his handler to swing back around, a looming presence as he towered over the boy.
"You got a problem with that?"
B3 lowered his head obediently.
"No, sir. It is just... assets are not trained to forage for food. You... You know we don't-"
"Yeah well, you're going to have to if you wanna survive. Life's tough, kid. Figure it out. I'm leaving tomorrow, and you're staying."
With a backwards wave, and no attempt at medical treatment, the handler disappeared into one of the tents. B3 remained standing where he was, casting an uncertain gaze between the tent and the dark of the woods. When his handler failed to appear with any clarifying orders the boy walked hesitantly to camp's edge and hovered uncertainly at the base of a tree. He peered into the darkness like it was an alien place he hadn't been blazing confidently through just minutes before, gathered his confidence, and stepped out to try and find food.
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Post by MP on May 29, 2023 2:39:15 GMT -6
It was a bizarre exchange she witnessed. "Asset." Exile? Slave? The woman couldn't wrap her head around the situation. Even less so when the man turned the boy loose to forage for himself. The child was surely a slave of some kind. And then there was his pointed ears, the strange shade to his hair. Nonhuman. Was the man using this child-thing to clear the hydra presence? And if so, why not treat his injuries? Why not feed him? She'd found so many supplies - surely even an idiot couldn't lose them all.
She watched from the shadow of the trees as the boy finally ventured out into the woods. He had waded into a nest of hydras without so much as a flinch, but he looked at at grass and leaves like venomous snakes. There was learning by experience, and then there was this. Death cap, deadly nightshade, cocklebur, hemlock - there were any number of deadly choices for a child. Even dredging the river for the lost supplies would be more promising. The man should have been able to point him in the right direction if he was too weak to search himself. Instead, she watched the boy wander deeper into the woods, seizing a fistful of leaves at random, and it was only by chance that he missed the patches of poison ivy scattered throughout the woods.
Though the woman didn't know it, her disgust was a chill bite of wind through the trees. Her gaze was a prickle down the spine, an ominous quiet that pressed down on the shoulders. The birds had stopped singing. The insects and amphibians in the undergrowth had gradually fallen silent. Though she was shadowed by the distant trees, her form was visible to the living eye: a slim woman of mixed descent, her features weather-beaten and thin from harsh living, her clothes worn and strangely old fashioned. A trapper, one might have thought her. Only, there was something strange in the way the shadows fell over her legs, and her fingertips were blue as if with frostbite. She blended in with the woods except where the slight turn of her head gave her away. A stare leveled directly at the boy.
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Post by Sharei on May 29, 2023 15:49:06 GMT -6
It was the silence more than the chill that turned his head. B3 went still, listening, the nervous energy bleeding out in favor of a hyperalert stare. Could it be the broodmother passing through? An ear tipped as it tried to pick up the sound of scales through the underbrush. He got nothing, and it wasn't until he'd turned his head to scan his surroundings that he finally saw the figure under the trees.
B3 turned in her direction, the bundle of plants he'd collected in one hand. If there was any question that he'd seen her, he erased that when he relaxed his posture and called out.
"Who's there?"
The words were not hostile, but nor were they gentle. They lilted with his accent, but otherwise could not have been more devoid of emotion.
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Post by MP on May 29, 2023 16:23:57 GMT -6
She met his stare, refusing to show weakness. If his looks hadn't been enough to go by, his tone convinced her. The boy was inhuman. Some kind of demon, she wondered? And the man, his witch? She didn't know why such a pair might come to the woods, or why this one would be left behind. She was sure, however, that you must never give such a creature your name or answer a question it asked of you. It was dangerous to consort with it at all. But demon or not, it treated with humans, and that was more than could be said for the hydra. She resolved, meeting that flat stare, to take the gamble.
The woman stared at the boy's handful of leaves, then up at his eyes. A pale hand raised, palm up in expectation. Blackened fingertips trembled slightly, like the flicker of something small and writhing beneath the soil. There was a clear command in her stare: bring it here. She mimicked the the air of cool expectation she'd observed in the witch. But if anything seemed off about the child, if he did anything threatening, she was prepared to run - away from the wetlands, towards the rocks and the slope where her longer stride might make the difference.
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Post by Sharei on May 29, 2023 17:20:54 GMT -6
The boy turned an uncertain look back the way he had come. Assets generally weren't supposed to interact with the locals, and Management always stressed the need for secrecy. But she'd seen him now anyway, and his handler had told him, hadn't he? Figure it out.
B3 swung his gaze back to the figure under the tree. His decision made, he approached casually and unguarded, leaves in hand. When he was close enough he held out the meager collection displayed across both hands, like a child displaying their findings for a parent's keen eye.
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Post by MP on May 29, 2023 18:28:48 GMT -6
The shadow of the woman's hand fell over his. She took the leaves delicately between thumb and forefinger, avoiding direct contact with the boy. When she was sure of her grip, she shifted to a more secure grip. Dark fingers curled around the mass of greens.
She tossed it aside with a contemptuous flick of her hand. As the leaves scattered and spiraled down back down to the forest floor, she turned, ordering the boy to follow by the smallest jerk of her head.
Foraging was never easy. The woman led them carefully, her progress interrupted by the occasional listening pause as she checked for animal presence. She led them to the waterside first, taking advantage of the boy's recent kill to search the now banks while they were empty of predatory life. There were cattails aplenty, and she gathered young stems and the lower parts of the leaves.
She gestured the boy over and dropped these into his hand. Something to tide him over as she foraged, she thought. Only, despite the fact that she had collected the plants not moments ago, the bank lay untouched. The cattails swayed undamaged, casting their shadows over unmarked ground. Though the woman collected the young flowers and extra stems for later, she carried nothing with her as she moved on.
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Post by Sharei on May 29, 2023 19:48:10 GMT -6
The boy watched all of this with a silent stare. His head turned to follow the direction the woman had gone, then looked down at his empty hands. He could have sworn she'd given him something. Reeds? Had he dropped them? B3 lowered his gaze to the dirt, then paused again when he got a good look at it.
No footprints? Here in the damp, muddy bank, where even the slightest pressure shifted the silt? The passing frogs made deeper furrows than she did.
But B3 didn't have long to puzzle over the oddity. Realizing that she was leaving him behind, he quickly gathered the imagined stems and leaves she had indicated and hustled after her. Perhaps it had just been instruction. Perhaps.
When he'd caught up with her the boy fell into step behind and slightly to the right of her, two spaces behind. Always two paces.
"... What do I do with these?"
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Post by MP on May 29, 2023 20:57:22 GMT -6
"Eat," she almost said.
The woman caught herself as her lips stirred, and not a breath made it to spoken word. Tricky. Demons could surely be cunning. She would be more so. Though, she thought as she walked, the fact that she was guiding him around at all might already mean he had gotten the better of her. She touched her fingertips to her mouth, pantomiming raising food to her lips. And she led them on.
She taught him to collect young burdock leaves and the piths of its flowers, to take the older leaves and the roots for cooking later. She showed him how find the tender tips of bracken fronds and how to chew the rhizomes for what little food could be had. They were lucky. In the dappled areas near the wetlands, she found wild asparagus and blueberry, and even the odd cloudberry growing. She found black currant too, but in this, she was stern. She made a point of showing the leaves to the boy, trying to imprint the shape and color onto his mind. Not all berries were safe to eat, and hemlock and nightshade bore the same dark fruit to the untrained eye. She watched him as he searched for berries, eyes narrowed, making sure he approached only the proper kinds. Maybe it wouldn't kill a demon anyway.
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Post by Sharei on May 29, 2023 22:15:15 GMT -6
The woman didn't answer him, just as she hadn't answered him before. The lack of communication made it a struggle for B3 to understand her and he tipped his head at her when he couldn't fathom why she kept shoving leaves in his face. Eventually, he understood that she wanted him to look at them, but for what and why, he had no clue. And when she released him to hunt for his own wild plants it was as wordlessly as she had done everything else.
The frustration was beginning to mount. He was tired after a long day on the hunt, and his belly rumbled unpleasantly. His head was starting to feel light, a sure sign he would need to rest soon, but still he pushed on. Food first. Rest could come.
It was while he was pushing through the undergrowth looking for signs of the bushes the berries grew on that he first noticed it. A piece of black metal sticking up out of the muck. B3 yanked it out of the dirt, revealing it to be a plate that perfectly matched the one on his own armored shoulder. He turned it over, inspecting the edges. Worn with age, but not so faded as to be ancient. This had probably belonged to A9, the asset assigned to the task before him. He had been a water type too.
B3 turned his attention from the bushes and began a more earnest search through the underbrush. More digging uncovered the upper half of a set of bones. The skeleton was missing both arms and had been picked clean of any meat. Nearby, a set of dog tags lay discarded and tarnished in the earth. B3 picked them up and turned them over in his palm, something softening in his eyes.
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Post by MP on May 29, 2023 23:20:36 GMT -6
A shadow fell over him. The woman had never seen that shade of black, or that texture. She had come over to look, and her eyes sharped when she saw the bones. She marked the deep score lines in the bone. Picked clean, but not snapped for the marrow the way some predators might. She guessed he wasn't the first of his kind to come for hydras. Her gaze, the color of old earth, moved from the remnants of armor to the boy and back again.
Her lips stirred. Her fingers twitched and fell still again as she wrestled with her own curiosity. These demon children would keep coming then. Until what? Did they want a specific hydra? Or all of them? Or had they come for this one?
Finally, she held out a hand for the glint of metal in the boy's palm. Though as always, she shied away a fraction from direct touch, scarcely aware she was doing it.
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Post by Sharei on May 29, 2023 23:40:17 GMT -6
The boy curled his fingers around the tag when the woman held out her hand. He hesitated, but when her hand remained outstretched expectantly, B3 gently deposited the tags into her waiting palm. His hand hovered near hers as if he wasn't strictly sure giving them to her was a good idea, but he didn't try and take them back immediately and finally dropped his hand to his side with a halted gesture.
"A9 was an older and more experienced asset," the boy said softly, his gaze on the tags rather than on her. "He was also a water genasi and best suited for this terrain, so his handler selected the extermination contract in confidence. But both he and his handler did not return."
B3's eyes, now faintly glowing in the dark, turned toward the woods.
"We are not easy to kill in the water," B3 murmured. "So this asset thinks this contract does not have the correct rating."
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