The Found Arcana - Chapter 12 [IC] Options

[Gilga]

>>Well it is only like that for healing. However, fixing a car with magic is very difficult as these highly processed alloys are very difficult to enchant. I seriously only try it because it would be quicker.

[Thanee]

Between AM's spell, Tamarind's drones and expertise, and Mato's strong arms, you manage to get the tire back into place and the car running. It might not be good for a long distance, but it should hold until the two reach the next auto repair shop, which is more than enough. Bobby uses the time to seperate and prepare the Piasmas heads in the meantime. A grizzly business, but they are worth quite a bit. You should be able to turn them in, when you get to Greeley on your way to the border.

[Tecumseh]

Mato sighs at the two heads. If they're heavy, he'll pick them up by the scruff and deposit them in the back of the Gopher, taking care not to let any blood or gore drip onto his clothes. (If they're not heavy, Bobby can do it.) He DNIs a command to his commlink to provide a reminder in 24 hours to hose out the back of the truck.

"They're going to Greeley," Mato says of the Native couple. "Let's follow them to make sure they don't break down."

Mato has a sour image of their car collapsing on the highway, forcing them to ride in the back of the Gopher with the rolling heads.

"Is there a bungee cord we can use to secure these?" he asks. It's unclear whether he's joking or not, but he's looking around for rope or cord or anything else to prevent them from bouncing around the back like pinballs.

He looks at the pile of guts and wonders what scavenger will come along to clean those up.

"Time is tight. Let's get a move on."

[Thanee]

<<Monday Afternoon - 17:32 - May 15, 2079 - Greeley, Sioux Nation>>

Mato finds the Gopher well-equipped. There is some sort of canvas that they can use to wrap the Piasma's heads in, and also a tow rope that can be repurposed.

You make it to Greeley without further incident, and stop at the local police to report the incident and collect the bounty. The officers on duty are a bit surprised to say the least, but after checking regulations, and since you also have witnesses, they offer you the bounty of 20,000¥ in total and a commemorative pat on the back. They note the area of the incident, because someone will have to get there to clean the whole mess up.

The teachers are being escorted to the local auto repair shop, where you part ways. They cannot thank you enough for what you did there, and you cannot help but wonder, whether they will have nightmares or dream of your heroic deed tonight. Or maybe they just get mad drunk after escaping certain death.

Now you need to hurry a bit, and you will likely run a little late. But, considering, you were back in Seattle just a few hours ago, it's not too bad.

[Jack_Spade]

Bobby mused during the drive: "A shame that we are in such a hurry. Bonded pair like this likely had already a litter of little monster bears somewhere close by. We could have made another 30 or 40k with a lot less risk.

Been a while since I encountered one of them. Back then they would have been a real problem to deal with.

A shame that Rachel isn't with us - she could have won so many reagents from those bears.

Good call by the way, AM, to petrify those people. No-one needs to know how we managed to kill them. Even here word travels fast."

[Tecumseh]

"Huh," Mato says when he sees how well-equipped the Gopher is. "How fortuitous."

Bobby makes a fair point about how AM eliminated any complications from 'witnesses'. That said, it does make him wonder what the process of petrification feels like. He can't imagine it's pleasant, but it's certainly less unpleasant than being consumed by a couple piasma. Or who knows? Maybe the process is so sudden that the target doesn't even register what happened. One moment they're screaming and running and then the next moment there's a hairy naked man beheading the beasts.

Mato knows a little about piasma, as he started studying the basics of parazoology following the experience with the hellhounds at Pike Hall.

"Aren't they usually nocturnal?" Mato asks. "I thought sunlight bothered them. And I thought they were usually solitary, except during mating season. I wonder if they were under some sort of stress to be hunting together during the day."

Bobby brings up an interesting point about reagents. "Should we bring back a present for Rachel? I could snap the tusks off. Even if they're worthless as reagents, they would make a fine trophy."

[Jack_Spade]

"That's why I suspect they have their litter nearby - no other reason for a pair of them to show up in daylight than to defend their progeny. Or they are mutants - magic creatures change so quickly, most guides are outdated after only a few years. Though I hate getting the new editions.

Anyway, yeah I'm sure she'll appreciate them. I took a few of the claws for a new necklace. Shame I almost never get a chance to wear them."

Bobby replied.

[Beta]

After dropping off the heads, Tamarind makes sure they wash out the truck bed. She doesn't want blood raising questions at the border.

Then she returns to driving the truck, not offering the wheel to anyone else just now. She needs something to keep her hands and at least part of her mind occupied. As it is she has too much time to think over the whole incident, the oddness of the attack, the absolutely stunning deadliness that Bobby displayed, and AM's ease in transforming the couple. It is hard to wrap her mind around what it would be like to be able to just petrify someone in a blink of an eye.

Eventually her curiosity gets the better of her, and she asks AM "What if the Piasmas had attacked the petrified people, any chance with their size that they could have, I don't know, snapped apart or something? And then what would have happened when you dropped your spell? I started off thinking about how useful that spell could be to bail any of us out of danger, but then I began to wonder just how resilient one is when petrified?"

[Tecumseh]

Mato duly snaps off the tusks before hauling the heads into the police station like bags of bloody groceries.

He nods at the speed of Awakened evolution. By all accounts the weather patterns in Sioux Nation had gotten even more extreme since the Awakening. Evidently the mana just supercharges the weather systems, so it makes sense that it would have similar, unpredictable effects on the local wildlife.

"Let's go run the border," he says, slipping back into the front passenger's seat to ride shotgun.

[Gilga]

"I could use one of these if you are in a sharing mood." I tell Mato to make him a badass necklace. Perhaps a magical one with a healing spell... I had a few ideas.

I sigh when I answer Bobby . "No need to thank me; that thought has never crossed my mind. I did not even realize you wanted to kill these bears. Or that we even can." I look at Bobby as if assessing him again. "I knew you were dangerous, but not that you are the Harbinger of Doom on max difficulty dangerous. I planned to petrify the people, distract the bears, and, once they lost interest, rescue the people. They were so massive that hunting never crossed my mind. I didn't even know there was a bounty on them. "

To Tamarind, I say, "Petrification would make them more durable, but these bears could still shatter them, and it would break them and likely kill them. Still, they are animals and likely attack to hunt - and they can't eat rocks. So I hoped they would leave the people alone."

It still feels terrible to hunt such magnificent and insanely dangerous critters that were desperate. However, they might be in big trouble if the government thinks they are too dangerous to exist. They were desperate. There is some unfortunate story in there, but we don't have much time to go down that rabbit hole."

[Tecumseh]

"Oh, sure," Mato says, handing a tusk each to Bobby, Tamarind, and AM in case they have their own designs on trophies. "I'll give this one to Rachel if she wants it," he says of the fourth and final tusk.

"The bounty is nice, but how wiz would it have been to have a taxidermized piasma head over our mantel? That would make an impression on the neighbors."

He hums at the thought.

"At least it wasn't a juggernaut. Those things might be too much even for Bobby."

[Gilga]

"Perhaps in the Redmond office. " I muse. "What is a Juggernaut?" I ask. The largest thing I can imagine is a dragon, but barring that, these bears come pretty close. I have heard of elephants, but I don't think they are predators.

[Jack_Spade]

Bobby replied: "Sorry to burst your bubble, but Piasma are at a nine out of ten on the aggression index. They attack everything - even inanimate objects if they smell wrong.
And I didn't turn them into jelly fish because they have insane body mass. I might have managed that, but my chances where better to just kill them.

And yes, I didn't spend a month atop a mountain, getting pelted by lightning strikes just for the fun of it. There is power to be found in nature.

A juggernaut is a giant armadillo with natural armor hard as a tank. You usually just conjure a spirit and dominate their mind instead of fighting them.
Luckily, they aren't that aggressive."

[Gilga]

"Giant Armadillos with tank-like armor? I guess I should get out more. Where can I meet one?"

[Jack_Spade]

"Just follow the path of destruction and/or th national guard trucks..."
Bobby smiled

[Gilga]

"So to follow you then?" I say semi seriously.

[Jack_Spade]

"As I said, it's good you made sure there were no witnesses. I don't need anyone getting nervous about me - especially not people with access to my military record..."

Bobby's smile turned grim

[Gilga]

"Well, your secret is safe with me. I'll think about preserving it the next time you do that." ... By that, I mean turning into an electrical-infused animal of death.

[Jack_Spade]

"It's actually pretty funny when I turn into a little bunny with the destruction potential of a tank."

[Thanee]

<<Monday Afternoon - 17:52 - May 15, 2079 - Platteville Crossing, Sioux Nation-Denver-Border>>

As you drive down the Route 85 towards Denver, you soon approach the DMZ, the demilitarized zone, a one-kilometer wide zone around Denver, supervised by the Zone Defense Force. A mix of fences and walls, between 5 and 10 meters high, surrounds the whole city with checkpoints along each major road.

The Platteville Crossing consists of a small ZDF barracks and a fenced parking area, where you can see about half a dozen vehicles, ranging from jeeps to light tanks. There is the border gate, of course, where vehicles are stopped for scanning. The gate can handle four vehicles at a time. During afternoon, there is not a lot of traffic into the city. The automated system displays instructions via AR. Commlinks have to be active, so you can be registered as visitors of the FRFZ. You get a link to a Matrix document, that explains the most relevant laws as well as code of conduct. There is a video as well for those that cannot read. Nothing unusual, really, apart from the treatment of spirits and some pretty drastic warnings about the punishment for espionage. An array of scanners is looking for contraband, but does not find anything objectionable. The smuggling compartment's shielding does its job. All in all, the whole process takes less than a minute. Afterwards you are cleared to enter and can continue on towards the ranch.

[Gilga]

I answer to Bobby. "Well, there is more than one way to skin a bunny... " I Doubt that anyone I know would win him in melee, but that kind of massive power is also a vulnerability, mind control; Bobby and we're dead for example. I need to make sure it never happens.

On the way.

"Very nice driving, Tamarind; I didn't know you had it in you. I always figured you'd be more subtle, but there you dashed into danger with stunts! It was like a scene from a movie." I will tell Tamarind once we're done with the bounties and on route to Denver.

Denver.
I am relieved when we manage to enter Denver with my deck and guns. Even if, realistically, my gun is a pea shooter compared to the kind of punch Bobby is packing. The Sigma still makes me feel safer. I try to prepare my mind to maximize our revenue during the drive to the farm. Thinking how negotiations would be, perhaps for the first time - not wishing Jawsie was there. My new role grew on me over time, or it is the new bigger body, but I feel less anxious about negotiations. Perhaps it is also that money has lost its magic once I did not owe buckets to the Finnigans.

[Jack_Spade]

Bobby just nodded and smiled while they crossed the border.
The closer they got to the client the more somber he became again.
"Remember - we might be doing this as a favor, but we still ask for what we are worth."

[Gilga]

"I don't do favors to strangers."

[Tecumseh]

"Not to get into semantics," Mato begins. "But wouldn't you call petrifying a couple strangers so that they don't get eaten alive a favor?"

Mato seems a bit lost in his thoughts. He studies the border as they pass through it, somewhat surprised by the ease of the crossing. Perhaps Ghostwalker's reputation is so ferocious that it acts as another layer of border security.

The comment about influencing a juggernaut has him thinking. He has no more resistance to such a thing than a juggernaut would. Mind control isn't really discussed in polite society, unless it is to excoriate the notion of it. Kill someone and you have a good chance of getting away with it, but use mind control and they will find you. Or so he hopes, because otherwise it seems like it would be commonplace.

"Bobby has the force of a wrecking ball but he's right: we should keep it under wraps. We've made it this far with discretion and a soft touch. Let's not throw that away for expediency. We're a scalpel, not a sword."

[Gilga]

Iktomi may disapprove of my actions, but I am not sorry for petrifying them. They would not learn anything by getting eaten by bears. However, fixing their car was an arrogant mistake as it was not for me to solve their problems. I was weak, motivated by their meaningless gratitude.