Duty Session 258: Threat to the Harvest

Uta has responded to the call of duty! Hunters' guild duty that is.

"The countryside! I love the countryside! It's so full of animals! And ingredients! I love food!", rambles the white-clad Spriggan whose attire makes her vaguely resemble... something halfway between a nurse and a martial artist, as she walks into view. Her trusty magical staff is firmly cletched in one hand, and her wings flutter with excitement.

"Thank you for coming, Noble Adventurer! I, Mister Bumpkin, welcome you to my farm!", greets a bearded and mustachioed Lander.

"...Mr. /Bumpkin/?" Uta asks, incredulous.

"Indeed. Bumpkin. Country Bumpkin."
"...Is that your full name?"

The lander bursts into laughter. "Of course not!" "Ah." "It's Country Cornelius Bumpkin." "...Okay?" "Anyway! Your fist task, should you accept it, is to- look out! Birds!", the Lander says, pointing at a bunch of, yes, birds, who are swooping down to attempt and eat the grains.

Yeowang is here to help with the harvest festival, and she nods to Uta and Tenko as they arrive to represent adventurers for the Hunters' Guild. Or that's how she understands it. She eyes Uta skeptically as she waxes enthusiastic about the countryside, but she doesn't argue. Nor does she comment about the tongue-in-cheek name for the Lander. It's just a thing. And when birds are a thing, she looks thoughtful, and begins a martial arts kata that looks supiciously like an axe kick, but the way she executes it sends a wall of air arcing out to ruffles those birds' feathers and drive them off. They're not good flying in such a windstorm.

This is what Tenko does, the kitsune ronin wanders the world, looking for Landers who need help, and assisting them. This was what she was built for.

She is standing nearby as Uta engages with the Lander, the expressionless mask hiding her grin as she hears the name of the man. This world is always fun. Though the grin is broken when the birds suddenly arrive. She practically vanishes, quickly re-appearing at the edge of the fields, blade already drawn as she strikes down any birds that get close enough to the produce.

It seems she has no intention of allowing any of them to reach their intended target. Any that manage to make it past the windstorm created by Yeowang will find themselves struck down by the kitsune's blade.

"Oh, hey! Air magic! Good idea, Yeowang!" Following the other martial artist's example, Uta spins her staff. "Begone, foul beasts!", she yells in a bout of cliche, and the ensuing whirpool of air, soon turning into a miniature tornado, is swung around like a whip, catching birds as it's whipped around, like some gigantic cone of fly paper. Uta spins in place a few times, like an athlete in an olympic hammer throw competition, and just like in that sport, she finishes off by launching the miniature tornado in the distance. She shields her eyes with one hand as, with a smile, looks at how far away the tornado touches ground again. "I think it might be a world record! I mean, uh, I don't think anyone else did that, so... I qualify by default?"

While Uta is busy rambling, there is suspicious movement among the crops. The uniform surface of cereal plants is disturbed by some shifting. Probably someone up to no good...

Yeowang nods to Uta as they blow the sky clear. The birds want no part of flying in that, or of the beating that Tenko gives them on the ground. But it looks like our problems are not over that quickly as things start moving among the crops. She's not very confident of her elemental skills, but as air served her, so does earth, though in this case, as a rolling wave of earth that buries and founders the things crawling up out of it, becoming like a sea and sucking them down under the surface, though the crops and everyone around remain as they were.

Tenko is quick to move from her sword to her bow when she spots the scouts at the edge of the forest. The transition between melee and ranged is smooth and practiced, as her bow is drawn and leveled. She does not use one of the traditional longbows, instead opting for one of the smaller, more agile bows.

"I spot several figures moving at the edge of the field. No doubt trying to determine the best course of action. We should eliminate them."

Although she doesn't actually consult the other two Adventurers before she looses her first couple of arrows, to strike down the bandit scouts quick and effectively. She doubts that's all of them, however. If she'd had more time to get behind them she could have eliminated the whole group.

Uta's the first to attempt some Earth magic on the bandits, but they are too quick, and move out of the way. Tenko's arrows hit them smack in the shoulder, though, stopping them long enough that Yeowang's magic can sort the expected result.

As one of the bandits sinks, he utters a cry of terror. "ADVENTURER MAGIC!"
"Keep your cool!", snaps back the other, who's also sinking. "No! Adventurer magic is terrifying! They're probably turning me into a dire mole were fang!" The other bandit, despite the problem at hand of being eaten up by the Earth itself, still manages to find the time to give his partner in crime a long, hard stare. "You already /are/ a dire mole were fang!" -- "IT'S ACTING FASTER THAN EXPECTED!"

All that noise, however, attracted attention. Bandits make their way out of the nearby trees, armed with swords, crossbows, and cudgels of all sorts. They are dressed in simple armor, likely not expecting to face the sort of resistance that Adventurers usually bring with them.

They head straight for the largest group of farmers, likely intending to capture or slay as many as they can in order to seize control of the fields for themselves. There is a war cry from a heavier armored bandit at the lead as he raises a sword high, rushing into the fields.

The bandits' cries are confusing, but the armored attackers are easy enough to understand. /This/ is what Yeowang is prepared for. Fighting bad guys is entirely in comfort zone, and when the bad guys go after the Landers, she'll come up behind one and smash him in the back of the head with a brutal punch. Pixels. She takes another out with a roundhouse kick before they turn back to face her, but the element of surprise is hers, and she keeps hitting them from unexpected angles, striking with pinpoint accuracy, slamming them with heavy blows that their armor can't take, or else using complicated martial arts techniques like joint locks that armor can't protect against.

Finally a straight up fight. Tenko prefers this to sneaking around like she's had to do with several other adventures as of late.

The kitsune is quick to position herself between the incoming bandit group and the fields, "Send your strongest warrior to face me!" She calls out from behind her mask, as she stands ready.

It seems the bandits are at least willing to oblige her, because one of them, a rather sizable tiger cait sith, steps up, with a pair of swords in his hands, "Oh the little girl wants to fight, huh? Well then lets fight!"

Clearly having never seen a samurai movie before, he charges at her, and there is a flash of movement as the kitsune ronin slashes her blade across him in a blaze of speed. The only evidence she's hit him is the red line across his entire torso. She sheathes her blade, and with a click the tiger man bursts into sparkles of defeat.

Tenko turns to the other bandits, and motions for them to attack, if they dare.

Once they inevitably do, she will be quick to dispatch them as well. No wasted motion.

Uta grimaces as the bandits are dispatched. "...I know people consider them NPCs and that it's murderers trying to murder Landers, but... I can't bring myself to killing them. What if they /are/ people?" Insead, she elects to sing a dark, ominous chant, and a cloud of darkness weaves its writhing tendrils out of the suddenly blackened gem of her staff, tendrils of black energy dancing in sync with the pitch of her song. The cloud wafts over the group of landers, enough to hide them from view and to make it hard for the bandits to reach them.

Still, even if Uta herself does not kill them, Yeowang eventually completes the job. Once the bandits are dispatched, things seem to quiet across the fields. There is a feeling of relief that spreads through the Landers as they return to their duties. Long hours pass without much activity at all, only the occasional animal that wanders too close to the edge of the fields and has to be shooed away.

Uta takes some time to pour herself a cup of water from a menu-summoned canteen, when all of a sudden, she blinks at her drink. She sets the cup down and-

Rippling concentric circles.

"...I have seen this in a movie once," she frowns. "What did it mean... what did it mean...", she mutters, rubbing her temples, when-

A herd of miniature dire raptors, apparently fleeing from something, stampedes towards the field.

Yeowang finishes the last of the bad guys and says to Uta, "If this were the real world, things would be different. But it is a game, and certain things are forced upon us. But remember that it is a game, and while people are due respect, computer generated enemies need not be given the same courtesies. They would kill you, if they could, and sparing them is not possible. They will try to kill us until we dispatch them." This long speech, unfortunately, delivered facing Uta, leaves her in a bad position, and she is overrun from behind by the stampede of dire raptors. It's all she can do to curl up and limit the amount of trampling she receives.

Tenko's attention is still on the bandits as the ones that don't want to fight eventually run off. Once the group is dealt with, she returns to the other Adventurers, looking at Uta's glass of water as it starts to ripple. She frowns, though it's hidden by the mask, and turns around to look at the incoming stampede.

She's quick to move again, hopping over to the edge of the field. She stomps one foot to the ground, sending up a wall of stone about six feet tall, in a relative L shape, in order to divert the creatures off to the side, away from the field. It's not a perfect solution, but it should be enough.

"...I don't know, Yeowang. That's what I used to know, but... is it reall- EEEP!"

Uta... dodges as if there was no tomorrow. A jump to the left, a jump to the right, a backflip, a lightning-air-burst leap that would put an olympic athlete to shame, a tumbling fall suddenly slowed down by spreading her wings, the movements eventually turn into a dance.

It doesn't help that she's humming along with it.

It isn't long before the source of the stampede becomes obvious. Trees are toppled over in the path of an absolutely massive creature which lumbers out of the forest. The massive thing seems to wobble back and forth on stubby legs, it's exaggerated cow-like features emphasized by enormous buck-toothed fangs.

It doesn't seem interested in either the Landers or Adventurers, only the food. One massive mouthful takes out an entire swatch of crops as it begins to chew noisily. Anything that isn't eaten, will surely be stomped under enormous feet.

Yeowang picks herself up off the ground, dazed and dirty but determined. And just in time to see the dire grunty. She only boggles for a moment befor she leaps in to the attack. It's the best attack she has that's not on cooldown, and she's delivering it with pounding fists and feet, but she just can't seem to combo up enough damage to this massive creature. She redoubles her efforts, her fists pounding, her boots pounding the grunty's flanks, but she just can't seem to bring off her combos against the giant critter. The size must be messing with her?

Tenko goes to work trying to smack around the giant grunty...But it seems even the kitsune can't quite put a dent in its HP.

And it smashed through her perfectly good wall, too! "Come on!" It's not often to see Tenko getting frustrated..

The attacks from the Adventurers seem to do little to move the health bar of the enormous grunty. It seems to have extremely high stamina and defensive stats. It isn't until it has lost almost a quarter of its health that the creature even seems to realize they are there, lifting a head and chewing before giving a somber sort of moo-roar.

Uta continues her singing from earlier. It gets louder and higher, higher and louder, a crescendo of pitch and intensity whose finale is a high C so powerful to send a shockwave of ripling air to wash all over he field and impact against the grunty.

Its senses hammered at, it feels disoriented.

It burps loudly, sending spittle and foul breath through the edge of the fields. Apparently, the adventurers' attacks had given it an upset stomach. Wobbling on those stubby legs, the creature turns and begins to toddle off towards the trees again, its cow-like tail swishing behind it.

Thankful for the aid, the Landers share tales that the grunty had been a problem in years before, almost eating them out of entire fields. The Adventurers certainly pulled their weight in keeping the farmers safe, so they're offered up some of the spoils for their troubles: chipped grunty horns.