The three former Tendou sisters, now Night Elves unrelated save in their hearts, stepped through the portal and into the world of Azeroth. Upon crossing the threshold, soft white light filled their vision, and they reflexively blinked. When they opened their eyes once more, they were standing in what looked a little like a park, if not for the fact that the trees they saw in the distance where the size of skyscrapers. They stood in something of a courtyard; a circular flat stone space with benches around the edge. Beyond it, the ground was a fairly level mix of vine and fallen leaves, as one might typically find at the forest floor of some enormous jungle. Not too far off, they spotted what appeared to be a huge building built in, around, and of a gigantic tree. It was difficult to tell just where the tree ended and the building began, but the true wonder, to their eyes, was the fact that despite having a great deal of it hollowed out, the giant tree was still alive and flourishing.
While they had been looking around in awe, they had not failed to notice the tall Night Elf man standing at the edge of the courtyard. However, as he appeared to be waiting patiently for them to get their bearings, they did not rush their admiration of the huge and beautiful forest setting.
After a minute or so, Kasumi's good manners demanded they introduce themselves to the gentleman. She approached him and bowed low. "Thank you for waiting for us so patiently. My name is Kasumi Ten-- um... just Kasumi. And these are my younger sisters, Nabiki and Akane."
The man bowed, though in a way which reminded them more of the Chinese style of showing respect. "Greetings, young ones, and welcome to Shadowglen. I am Conservator Ilthalaine. My purpose here is to maintain the balance of nature in this area. I am glad you sisters have come to lend your hands, for there is much to be done. The spring rains were especially heavy, what with the world climate still somewhat unstable from all the trauma inflicted upon it during the Burning Legion's invasion four years ago. It may be some time yet before the various ecosystems stabilise properly, and until then it is our duty as guardians of the forests to maintain the proper balance. This past season, some animals flourished while other's suffered. The boars and nightsabers born this year are far too large to sustain themselves. Food that could feed 25 well will starve 200. It falls to us to cull their inflated numbers that they do not become extinct entirely. This will be your task then: Hunt for me seven Young Nightsabers, and four Young Thistle Boars... each. In return I will of course offer a reward appropriate for your help in maintaining the harmony of the forest."
The girls looked around. Sure enough, the area was practically crawling with what looked like small purple panthers and little yellow boars. They seemed to be just wandering around, unattended by any adults of their species, looking for food that likely wasn't there, or at least not in a quantity to feed them all.
"Wai! They're so cute!"
"Kasumi... we're supposed to kill them in large quantities." Nabiki deadpanned.
"Do we really have to Oneechan? Those kitties are adorable! Maybe I could tame one and name it N-chan?"
"Enchan?"
"'N' for nightsaber, 'chan' for cute. The guy here said that's what they're called; Nightsabers."
"Ladies... Sisters... may I remind you yet again that, no matter how cute they are, we're supposed to be killing them off? Besides Akane, these aren't pets, they're wild animals. I'm sure the 'kitties' would just as soon claw a bloody strip off your leg as let you pet them."
Kasumi looked miserable, and Akane hardly much better. Though violent, the youngest (former) Tendou had always had a weak spot for cute little animals. The young Druidess hesitantly approached the Conservator.
"Ilthalaine-sensei... is this really necessary? You said it was for the harmony of the forest, but I always thought killing was an inharmonious act."
The older man sighed. "Harmony comes from balance, young one, and the balance here is severely uneven. Killing is a part of the natural order, when done for food or survival. Killing for sport or bloodthirst is, indeed, disharmonious, but what you are tasked to do here is done to save these animals' lives. As things are now, this entire generation of beasts will all die of starvation, whereas if we cut their numbers to 1/8, those remaining will be able to eat well, survive, grow and flourish. Keeping nature in balance requires more than just a tender touch. It requires thought, consideration, and occasionally quite harsh-seeming actions when inaction would lead to disaster. Now, you were sent here to gain experience in your newly accepted vocations. If you cannot complete even this simple task, do not expect many others to be offered to you in the future. Do I make myself clear?"
Kasumi sighed and bowed her head. "Yes Sir. Please forgive my childishness."
The Conservator nodded, smiling once again. "Ours is a harsh world, child. Be strong and you will do well in it. Now then, be off about your task, and be careful. These younger beasts may be weak, but they are not completely helpless. It would be a shame for any of you to be injured through carelessness."
Kasumi bowed again. "We will be, Sir. Thank you for taking the time to explain things so patiently."
The older man (though not much older, by his physical appearance, at least) smiled warmly, and seemed to chuckle a bit nervously as his cheeks shifted in tone from a soft violet to a darker purple.
"Oneechan's honest charm strikes again." Nabiki whispered in her younger sister's ear. Akane merely sighed and rolled her eyes in response.
Kasumi led them away from the little courtyard, towards the nearest of the aimlessly wandering animals. "I suppose we should get this over with. I admit, I would like to try out my nature magic. I'm not sure how I know this, but I seem to have two spells, one to heal, and another to attack."
Akane nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I only know a few basic attacking and defending moves, but I also seem to have some kind of special move... except I can't pull it off unless I've got my blood pumping a bit. I'm not sure why."
Nabiki concurred. "I think I have a move like that too, but I can pull it off any time I want as long as I haven't exhausted my... mana? What's mana? And why do I know that I have it?"
"Mana is a magical energy, Nabiki. I read about it in some of my fantasy novels." Kasumi replied, then cocked her head. "Now that you've mentioned it, I'm certain I have mana too. I suppose I can't cast too many spells in a row without resting to recover. It's sort of like physical energy, but different and separate. I feel like I could exhaust one, but not the necessarily the other. How odd."
Akane nodded. "I think it's sort of like my adrenaline thing, only it works the other way. The more I fight, the more worked up I get, and that lets me use my special strike more often."
"It seems our different classes operate under slightly different rules." Nabiki mused. "Best way I can think of to work them out is to test them, and we have been given a task to do. I suggest we get started and figure out the fine details of what we're doing as we go along."
Kasumi sighed. "Alright, but I'm not especially looking forward to this."
Akane put a hand on her oldest sister's shoulder. "If you like, Oneechan, you can just sit back and use that heal spell on us if we get hurt, while Nabiki and I do all the killing."
Kasumi seemed to consider that a moment, then shook her head. "That wouldn't be right, Akane-chan. Ilthalaine-sensei told us to kill our quota each, and that we would all be rewarded. I wouldn’t feel at all right about accepting his reward if I hadn't done my part to earn it. I suppose I'll just have to get used to all this fighting and killing things. Athena-sama did say this was a world at war."
Akane bit her lip helplessly as Nabiki merely sighed.
"Well," Nabiki said, "I'll go first." So saying, she drew out her bow and smoothly notched an arrow, taking an expert bead on one of the dog-sized purple cats. With an accuracy that surprised even herself, Nabiki's arrow flew straight and sure into the cat's side. It spun with an angry growl and charged.
"H-hey!" Nabiki squeeked in surprise as she started backing quickly away, automatically readying another arrow. When she had it notched, she paused her nervous retreat and fired off another shot. While clearly wounded, the cat didn't seem to be slowing down any. "How the heck is it running like that with two arrows sticking out of it?" Nabiki snapped. As the furious, snarling ball of claws and fangs neared her, Nabiki abandoned her new automatic instincts and made use of the older ones she'd had back when she was truly alive... and ran like hell. "AAAAH! KEEP IT AWAY!"
Akane snickered. "Want some help Sis?"
"HELL YES!"
Akane grinned and drew sword and buckler, dashing off after the young Nightsaber, which was still pursuing the panicked novice huntress. Unfortunately, Akane soon discovered that she couldn't run any faster than the cat at full charge (or Nabiki for that matter) and couldn’t close the distance. "Oneechan! Lead it back this way! It's too fast!"
Nabiki very briefly considered reversing direction directly back towards her little sister, but that would mean somehow getting past the young Nightsaber without being severely mauled. Instead she tried to run a large circle back to where Kasumi was. That would let Akane head them off and chop up the angry panther cub... or would have if her idiot baby sister would abandon the chase for a second and move to a better position. She resolved to sit the girl down and discuss some basic team strategy sometime in the near future.
Watching them from the distance, Ilthalaine chuckled. These children were so green! Still, they'd learn eventually, everyone did.
As the train circled around her a third time, Kasumi sighed and accepted the inevitable. She focused a charge of Nature Magic into her hands, and after letting it build up for a second or so, targeted the wounded Nightsaber and released the energy from her out-thrust palms, crying out as she did the name of the spell.
"WRATH!"
Akane actually stopped her pointless chase as her mouth fell open at the crackling ball of green lightning (or so it appeared to be) zipped across the clearing and impacted with the wounded cat, causing it to let out a yelp and collapse, dead. Kasumi sighed. It was the first time she'd killed something more substantial than a fish for her family's dinner. It was not a very good feeling, but one she would have to inure herself too.
"Whoa Oneechan! What was THAT?" Akane demanded in awe.
"Nature's Wrath, or Wrath for short." Kasumi sighed. "It's my basic attack spell as a druid."
Akane grinned. "Very cool!"
Kasumi smiled weakly in response.
Nabiki, panting slightly, walked over to the young Nightsaber that had given her such a fright. "Yeesh! Okay Akane, next one, you attack it first, then I shoot it from as far away as I can manage. Oh by the way Kasumi, thanks for the save!"
"No problem Nabiki-chan. Are you hurt at all? Do you need a healing spell?"
Nabiki twisted backwards, examining the scratches done to her calves. The damned cat had been just fast enough to reach her heels a few times as she performed her rabbit imitation. "I think I'm okay, Oneechan. The damage here is pretty minor, in fact it barely hurts at all, not like you'd think it would. I wonder why that is?"
"Well, Athena-sama did say something about this world not being completely realistic."
Nabiki snorted. "Well, if dampening down pain signals to the brain is a typical example of that, I think I prefer this to reality! It's kinda weird. I can feel that I've been hurt, but the pain is so little that it didn't slow me down or cause me to limp around or anything similar."
"That'd be handy in a fight." Akane noted. "Especially if it's consistent and not proportional to the wound. You could keep fighting in top form no matter how hurt you get. You wouldn't slow or have trouble moving the injured limb..."
"Unless that prompted you to get careless and die, Akane-chan." Kasumi pointed out.
"Yeah, there's that."
Nabiki stopped looking at her legs and turned to Akane. "Well anyway, Akane, pick your target and let's keep going. For the three of us, we need a total of 21 Young Nightsabers and 12 Young Thistle Boars, and I'd like to get this done before it gets too dark for me to shoot straight."
"We're called Night Elves for a reason Nabiki. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we had phenomenal night vision." Kasumi remarked.
"Oh yeah..."
"Not to mention our eyes seem to glow in the dark." Akane quipped.
"Hey wait, look at this!" Nabiki said, changing the subject away from her 'blonde moment'. The three sisters came and looked closely at the body of the cat they'd killed. A softly glowing yellow miasma floated up from the body, almost like golden steam. It was easy to see through, however, which is how the girls noted the two Chipped Claws lying on top of the body as though they'd been laid neatly on a shelf. "I'm not sure but I think this is our loot from killing the monster."
"I wouldn't call them monsters, Nabiki-chan." Kasumi scolded. Nabiki just rolled her eyes.
Akane reached down and tried to pick one of the claws up, but her fingers passed through them as if they were a hologram. "Hey, they're not real!"
"Maybe they're real, but just not yours." Nabiki pondered, then glanced at their older sister. "You put it down, Oneechan, you try taking them."
Kasumi nodded and reached for the claws, only to have her hand pass through them as Akane's had. "Oh dear, I can't touch them either. Nabiki, you shot at the kitten first, maybe that marked your claim on it."
Nabiki winced. "Could you not call them 'kittens' Oneechan? Makes me sound like some sick twisted bastard you call the Humane Society on." As Kasumi sheepishly nodded, Nabiki tried for the claws, and to her mild surprise, picked them up easily. Once she'd lifted them from the body, the yellow glow faded away.
"I guess it doesn't matter who hit the thing last. Any loot belongs to whoever hit it first. It's your kill Nabiki-oneechan, even if you didn't actually kill it."
"Well soo-rry! Those fangs and claws looked sharp, no matter how small it is! On the other hand... considering how little being clawed actually hurt my legs, I think I'd be brave enough to stand my ground next time and try finishing it with my dagger... but it was my first time so lay off about it!" Nabiki snapped.
"What are you going to do with the claws, Nabiki-chan?" Kasumi asked, smoothly changing the subject to avoid a sibling squabble (something she had a lot of practice at).
Nabiki looked at the claws in her hand and shrugged. "I dunno. Can't think of any use for them, so I guess I'll try and sell them as soon as I find a store around here."
"Maybe they'd be useful to decorate clothing with?" Kasumi noted.
Nabiki frowned thoughtfully, looking close at the claws. She had seen that sort of thing before, though animal claws were pretty gauche in modern fashions. "I doubt they'd bring much, Oneechan. They're small and all chipped. Now if they were in flawless condition, a leather goods store might buy them for that. We'll just have to see." So saying, Nabiki dumped the claws in her backpack...
...wait, backpack? She hadn't been wearing one a moment ago, but she'd been subconsciously aware that it was there and how to access it. Blinking as her sister's stared at the magic bag that disappeared when settled on her shoulders and reappeared only when she reached to take it off, Nabiki pulled the backpack completely off and flipped up the flap, looking close inside.
This was one of those not-quite-reality moments that made a literal sort of person like Nabiki's eyes cross and her brain want to go hide in a corner. The backpack wasn't any larger physically than a pair of stacked restaurant food boxes (or for those who've never been to Japan, how about a large lunch pail). Nonetheless, inside the pack was divided into 16 equal slots, sized just big enough for her to comfortably put her hand in, and each of which was completely filled by anything that went into it, be it a pebble or Nabiki's 5 foot long bow (though at present most of the slots were empty, just the claws, a bit of food and water, and a strange rock with glowing green runes carved into it). The bow shrank to fit, and the pair of claws Nabiki had blindly tossed in before actually grew slightly to fill the space. They also both shared one slot, and looked like a few more claws the same size would fill the rest of the slot. It was bizarre to watch, as Nabiki inserted and removed her long bow again and again, watching it suddenly shrink as her hand drew it closer to the open bag, down to about 1/6 its proper size, that it might neatly fit into a slot. Further testing showed that if she threw her boots (which she took off just to try something else) at the open bag from a distance, they quickly shrank and fitted themselves into a slot. She supposed this was rather handy, since she didn't have to take the pack off to put something away in it; she could just lift the flap with her left hand and toss whatever she wanted to store inside with her right, then continue on about her business.
Yeah, it was handy and obviously magic, but it still sent a stabbing pain through the part of Nabiki's brain that used to think it had a pretty solid grasp of physics and spatial relationships. She decided not to try and figure it out anymore.
After they'd all played with their packs for a while, they returned to their hunting task. Keeping in mind that it was the first hit which seemed to 'claim' the kill, they all took turns initiating the first attack, after which the other two would assist in finishing the creature off... although Akane asked once or twice if she could try it alone so she could practice blocking with her shield. She didn't have any trouble... until she got overconfident and ran by taking swings at 2 cats and a boar before turning to face all three at once...
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(Posted Fri, 28 Apr 2006 18:09)
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