Aetuornos Beta 3a-2

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3a-2: Encountering Foliage

While their group started out in a reasonably strict formation, it didn't take long at all for Kite to go and join Scylla up at the front of the party. And then the fox-girl went curling one of her tails up along the wolf-girl's own, drawing an initial yip from her but no apparent objection; in fact, the samurai girl soon responded by giggling and rubbing the top of Kite's head a little bit.

Franka watched this display of affection with a slightly conflicted emotion. She'd..heard of people with animal traits acting like this toward each other sometimes, even if they were just totally platonic friends, but no matter what it meant to those two, it was most definitely adorable to her—so, fun to watch on an otherwise kind of boring walk toward either their destination or a random encounter on the way.

But..the bunny-girl also felt a tinge of what might be called jealousy. Not that she wanted either Scylla or Kite to..behave that way...toward her, but she kind of wished for another person who'd be willing to do that? Glancing back, Hatchet had a quite neutral look on his face (and even his ears and tail, which were typically much more telling for animal-people), and was doing probably the most honest job out of all of them in watching out for threats in every possible direction. He..probably wouldn't be interested, even if Franka was—and she kind of wasn't. He just didn't seem like her type somehow. And anyway, maybe he already had his eyes on someone else? Regardless, she was just going to have to put up with that slight sense of frustration for now. And...just try to appreciate the cuteness of the pair in front instead.

Fortunately, Hatchet rescued her from this by starting a conversation. "You know," he said, "I know it's 'more immersive' and all, but I'm really disappointed there isn't any background music. The trailers had great music, and I was seriously hoping to be able to hear more from the composer in-game."

"Maybe they're just saving it?" Scylla suggested, looking halfway back. "Like, for major story bosses or raids or whatever? Or maybe we're just supposed to make our own music, like, if a bard hangs out in the tavern, he can play his lute or whatever."

"First problem I think of is, where'd you make it come from?" the fox-girl pitched in. "We ain't sittin' in front of monitors with speakers to play stereo sound out of; we got 'real ears' here to hear with. You'd have to come up with a sound source that works for everyone, even while we're all in motion."

"Orrr..just put the music 'in our heads'?" Franka suggested.

Kite replied, "I dunno, the first thing I expect if I start hearin' things in my head ain't 'oh, that's good music', it's 'where's the psychic attack comin' from?' And if someone don't like the music, or gets bored, or needs to hear better 'cause someone might be sneakin' up on us...ain't nothin' in place to turn it down or off."

"Sure, but those are all solvable problems," Hatchet said. "It can't be that hard to add an interface for some sound settings. And anyway, if there's enough control over our senses to make us aware of 'being hurt' without us really experiencing pain, then surely there's enough to make us hear music and quiet sounds in our surroundings at the same time."

The bunny-girl's body turned around before she'd mentally processed why: A strange sort of thwip sound, followed by Hatchet saying: "—Speaking of which!" A long, apparently-mobile vine extending out from what had appeared to be a large, but otherwise ordinary, bush as they'd passed it a moment ago had wrapped itself vertically partway around one of his eponymous weapons, probably in an effort to grab his arm, and he was now quickly chopping down into it with the weapon in his other hand. While he didn't succeed in completely severing the end of the thorny appendage, it evidently felt enough pain from his attack to withdraw that vine and throw out another at him. This one he managed to duck to one side of.

By now, Franka had called her buddy out, and—wreathing it in flames, naturally—pointed the way for the magical stuffed rabbit to go running along the ground toward the hostile plant life. It looked a lot less innocuous now, with several of those thorny vines stretching themselves out all around it and writhing and whipping around in the air.

Kite was somewhat taken aback by this new monster's appearance. "Wha—th—tentacle bush!?"

"Tentacle buuuush!" Scylla repeated, drawing her sword and rushing at it, easily overtaking Franka's bunny. When it whipped several of its vines in roughly their direction, she swatted or chopped them all aside, even catching one midway through its travel in the bunny-girl's direction. Seeing this, the fox-girl miko ran up next to Franka and firmly planted her staff thing in the ground, summoning a dome-shaped barrier around them.

"There ya go!" she said, her barrier demonstrating its use as the monster's vines whipped against it but failed to get through. "You can still control your, uh, 'buddy' through this, right?"
"Sure!"

Hatchet was similarly occupied by the thing's whipping vines, although his lower agility necessitated trying to duck aside and get out of range rather than countering them the way Scylla was. He made his way around closer to the wolf-girl, and the two of them seemed to hold enough of the monstrous bush's attention for Franka's buddy to run right up and dive into it, setting a sizable portion of it ablaze. It quickly grabbed the stuffed rabbit in a vine and threw it away, but the fiery aura had already dissipated on contact anyway—and had very much done its job.

"Go go go~!" Scylla was adroit enough to take the opening, rushing in and making a flurry of swipes at the hostile flora, cutting off several of its vines at the source. It retaliated with some vines based on the opposite side from where the damage was, managing to scratch and cut her up a bit before she leapt and backflipped away. Hatchet made a couple of expert axe-throws to prevent two particularly thick vines from grabbing her in midair and pulling her back in.

Once the stuffed rabbit was about halfway from the peak of its arc through the air to the ground, Franka raised both her hands in its direction, and the purple glow of her power surrounded it, slowing its fall to a halt about far enough off the ground for its head to be at the level of her own. Then she brought her hands out and closed them as if taking hold of invisible hilts, and her buddy's arms moved the same way, growing two long, steak-knife-like blades of bright purple light into the grip of its 'hands'.

It held one up in front of its face, wreathing it in flames like the whole rabbit had been before, then drew that arm back and moved it as though pitching a baseball. Both of these motions were imitations of what Franka was doing as well, and the end result was the fire-wreathed blade sailing through the air right at the center of the fire-and-katana-damaged part of the bush. The other knife received a similar treatment, and came flying at the monster a couple of seconds after the first.

The first knife buried itself in some central mass, seemingly causing enough pain for the outstretched vines to all recoil inward, frantically grabbing for the source of the fire to throw it away—but the knife had already burst apart into a brief puff of magical fire and vanished by then. The second one missed its mark, instead sailing right through some of those inward-facing vines, its hot, sharp blade slicing through them like they were freshly-microwaved butter.

Scylla had stuck the landing from her earlier backflip, followed by countering some more vines while Franka prepared her attack. Hatchet moved even closer to and a bit behind the wolf-girl, seemingly deciding to let her take the aggro and watch for openings to provide assistance—which he found plenty of, either chopping away some vines coming from the blind spot of her swing or occasionally sending an axe spinning through the air to counter an attack neither of them could've otherwise reacted to. After the two flaming knives made their mark, she cheered—"Whoooo~!"—and charged forward again, sheathing her blade. Putting her weapon away like that seemed a little strange at first, but when she got up close to what seemed to be the all-important core of the beast, she drew and sliced out in a wide arc with it that seemed to go faster than one's eye could see—in the sheath one instant, and well out to her side the next, with the only evidence that it had physically moved between the two locations rather than teleporting being the many pieces of plant along its path now severed and falling apart from each other.

The bunny-girl had dropped her arms, letting her buddy fall limp for a moment, and was bent slightly forward, panting from the effort of the knife-throwing trick. Hatchet was using the opening in a different way—running around and quickly retrieving his thrown weapons off the ground—and he now stopped a bit behind the wolf-girl, noticing that their enemy wasn't quite finished yet.

"Heads up!" Two axes went up on either side of Scylla, hitting some surviving vines just hard enough to knock them back briefly and give her time to recover her stance from the attack.
"Thanks~!" The wolf-girl chopped her blade up through both of the stunned vines, then stabbed it right into the center of the monster. At this, its relatively few remaining vines stretched all the way out and convulsed violently around in the air for a couple of seconds before all falling limp at once.

"...Think that did it...phew," Kite said, picking her staff up and releasing the barrier.

"Yeeaah~!" Scylla cheered. "Loot time!"

"You seemed awfully..vocal throughout the encounter," Hatchet remarked, watching her excitedly pick up and sort the few items the big bush had dropped on death.

"Nah, that was nothing. I usually taunt way more to keep the monsters' attention, but I didn't think a plant could hear me to appreciate it."

Franka stepped forward, stretching out her arms as if to hug someone. "C'mere, buddy~..." Her stuffed rabbit stood itself up and ran, leaping up into her arms. "That nasty plant made some little cuts, huh? Nothing serious, but not to be ignored either!" She took out a needle and some thread, having it float in the air in front of her to free up her hands to work. Thankfully, needing to actually know how to sew wasn't a requirement for this class; her body sort of ran on automatic for the 'healing' process.

"I guess you gotta do upkeep like that after every fight?" Kite asked, heading over to tend to Scylla's minor wounds.
"Little buddies can take damage just like people do," she said, nodding. "That's one reason Franka wants more of them!"

"Got it sorted~!" the wolf-girl announced. "Everything should be pretty much even, but you guys can double-check if you wanna. Let's see...I guess at this point, Ara would say we should 'analyze our teamfight' or something like that."
"Ara?" Hatchet asked.

"A mage we partied up with on our first session," Kite said. "Real-life friend of Scylla's."

"Well, that sounds like a reasonable suggestion anyway," he said, shaking his head. "I guess you have to stay still to do anything complicated with your, uh, doll?"

"Mm-hm," Franka nodded. "Franka can give basic commands, but powerful stuff needs focus. More friends could be used to distract bad guys later, though!"
"Sure," he said, crossing his arms, "but for now, you sticking with our barrier maiden seems like a pretty good plan."

"Don't get the idea stickin' in one place like that is all I'm good for," the fox-girl said. "Just seemed smart with so many vines flailin' around."

"Hey, you and me work pretty great together too!" the wolf-girl said. "I don't mind being the center of attention if you've got my back."

"Sure. I'm not really the 'starring role' type anyway," Hatchet agreed, nodding. "Franka, you can do more than fire halos and energy knives, right?"
"Yep~! Franka can make cold or lightning halos for this little one, too. Plus she can use other weapons like big swords 'n stuff, and can swing at close range instead of throwing them. And Franka's little buddies can be really powerful bombs too! Buut, they'll need lots of repair work afterward, so it's a pretty desperate, one-time kinda thing."

"Wellp." The fox-girl moved closer to one of the piles of loot. "I guess if you're all done with repairs, and nobody else is injured, we oughta grab our stuff and get goin'. Don't have all 'day', right?"
Scylla nodded, hurrying to grab the contents of another pile. "True, true..."

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This part was sitting there mostly finished for quite a while. The reason is I thought it needed to be longer, yet couldn't think of what to do in that extra length. I eventually decided that it was okay for it to be a bit short, just so the story could move forward. Also, I tried to come up with some way to have the title refer to "getting a shrubbery", but couldn't quite come up with anything that felt right.