2024-01-08: The Quality of Mercy
- Cutscene: The Quality of Mercy
- Cast: Malfi
- Where: The Badlands, near Lahan and the Energy Nede portal
- Date: 2024-01-08, follow-up to Crossing the Sea
- Summary:In all her years of monster-hunting, Malfi has NEVER run across something like this!
Malfi has been hunting -- or to be more accurate, trapping. She is alone, having cached her Metal Beast companions in a cave near Lahan in hibernation mode. They will neither eat nor drink nor breathe until she wakes them. Her quarry is the bat-dragon Rille Felis told her about, and it's been slow going. She didn't bring any animal cages with her across the sea, so she's been relying on snares, baiting several with fresh meat, carrion, and even fruit, just in case the bat-dragon favors its bat half. She hopes it's not an *insectovore* -- she had no bait to use for it then.
Too bad the only fruit that could be reliably scavenged in the Badlands was the prickly pear, an overgrown monstrosity with a hard shell and knife-sharp, exaggerated poisonous spines. She'd once heard an old grizzled Drifter describe them as the only thing Nature made that was harder to eat than it was to pick. The reward for the effort of breaking into them was a soft, pulpy, slightly sweet center with masses of tiny black edible seeds. Not very tasty but it would sustain life.
She had to work with what she had.
With little luck so far. Oh, she'd glimsed the creature from a distance once or twice, and it was exactly as Rille had said: the seeming offspring of a bat and a dragon, verdigris green, black, and red, with purple wing membranes and a white ruff of fur(?) around its neck and extending down its back. Supposedly from beyond the portal! No telling what alien diseases it might be carrying. Best to stay cautious.
She'd earned that caution hard, having been mauled by a Jumbo Bearcat once. She'd be dead if it weren't for her Hyadean healing factor. She was young, but she was learning.
She made the rounds, checking each trap. Rat Monkeys again. So far she'd caught a bunch of those, a pair of Empusas, and a giant vulture -- all set free now.
It has been six days.
Today her luck will change. There it is, the bat-dragon, held captive by its left leg, struggling against the snare!
It was smaller than she expected, and cute! That wasn't going to fool her, though. Tiny Edges were as cute as they were deadly.
She tosses a net over it so it won't escape. It squawks in protest, fluttering against the confining strands.
Malfi moves in for a closer look, readying her scanner. It's a fruit-eater all right, mostly mammalian, a male. No sign of alien diseases or parasites.
But it's starving and dehydrated. Oh, right. Probably can't get past the poisonous spines. She'd had trouble enough with them herself, finally shaping her left hand and arm into a reinforced blade to cut through the rinds and suffering a piercing or two in the process. Good thing she carries Antidotes.
"Noi! Noi! Noi!" it mewls piteously. It doesn't seem aggressive or afraid of her. Weird! Most monsters would be Fight or Flighting. Not this one!
Malfi reaches for the bisected prickly pear she was going to use to re-bait the trap and offers it gingerly. The bat-dragon wolfs it down as best it can through the net, carefully avoiding the pricklies. Hungry! Then it boops her hand the way a domestic cat might.
Now that was unexpected. She's seen terrified monsters and combative monsters and sulking monsters, but never one, other than her Metal Beasts, that was actually --
--Affectionate.
Against her better judgement she reaches out to pet it. Its fur -- yes, fur -- is very soft and warm. "Vrrrrrrn," it -- or rather, he -- purrs, nuzzling as much of her as he can reach.
She untangles the net from around him and gently releases his left leg from the snare, readying the other half of the pear.
"C'mon, buddy, let's get you somethin' t'eat!"
[OOC note: Filgaian prickly pears are not the Earth variety!]