Scene 4: Critter Confrontations

This is pretty routine by now: power back up to the sound of rain dying down, stretch your limbs out, and gather up your things to prepare for the next cycle. This time, though, you're a bit more careful about handling your weaponry. You warily strap your explosive spear to your back with your cloak; better to keep it secure, you figure.

If you're going to stay in your waste department, you should really find some supplies. Some sort of long lasting weaponry, something you could maybe weld together, would be ideal, but that may mean coming up against the Miros quail. Of course, you have the means to fend some off now, but you'll need to be careful.

You're also running low on food. Whatever food there is here, you're not sure you want it, so you'd best leave your waste department to search for more. If there's nothing you can do here, you should really leave and search elsewhere for materials.

>Go and search for resources. And don't forget to search through any suspicious-looking piles of garbage you find! Because you never know what could be lurking in there!

You glare down at the second overseer. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" you mutter, mostly to yourself. The overseer wiggles gleefully.

Resources. Where would you find resources here? There were the flare bombs, but you already have some. You will probably need to go down to the lower levels to search, and you're not entirely inclined to do that right now.

You glance at the access point of the aeration arrays again. It's as good a good place to start with as any, right? You're going to be digging through a lot of your facility regardless. Maybe there's some sort of loose material inside that's clogging this section.

With a great deal of effort (how strong even were your creators? This is incredibly heavy), you pull the array out. It squeaks horribly as you do so, but you manage to drag it out halfway, enough for you to look inside. With a sigh, you brace your foot against the rim of the array and boost yourself up to look over the top.

The array is completely dry but—you grimace—coated in a thin layer of grime. This array hasn't had water running through it for a while. Did you divert water away from this section? Or maybe it broke on its own? Not that it matters anyway, as the microbes are too desiccated to be revived.

You bend down and lower your head to get a better look at the interior. It doesn't seem like there's any sort of blockage here; you'd be able to hear the water rumbling on the other side if so, too. There isn't anything of interest in here then.

Just as you pull away from the array, the light from your neurons glints off of something. Bracing yourself briefly, you stick your hand in and pull it out.

... it's another pearl. Why is this becoming a trend.

...

You jam the pearl back into the array, hop down, and shove on it. It grinds as it slides back into the wall, but you keep pushing until it's all the way back in again. You're not touching this array again. Whatever you're doing next, it won't be in this room.

>Try to find a way out of the area

You only just got here, and now you're planning on leaving again. All for a pearl. What a waste.

You're not really inclined to argue—you're not entirely eager to deal with whatever is below you, even if you're more prepared for it—but you only have so many places to check in here if you plan on staying. Besides your aeration facility, which is evidently damaged in some way judging by the hole in the roof, you can only access your clarifier facility, which is apparently flooded. The bridge down to your other facilities is broken. Where exactly can you go anyway?

Despite your musing, you make your way back to the exit, closing the access room door behind you as you leave. The exit opens smoothly; you leave the door open as you step out, shading your visual faculties from the sunlight. It seems brighter than before. Though maybe that shouldn't come as a surprise, since you're no longer in your can. Your contributions to the rain are dying out by now.

You walk back out to the bridge, leaning on the edge as you gaze up at the sky, watching the distant grey clouds roll towards you. Of course, you're not the only one here. His output alone is more than enough to drown your regions.

It used to be worse, back when you all were... more or less functioning normally. You were placed lower than all the rest of your siblings, and especially with Wind's placement, the storm bands from your siblings would inevitably roll towards you. You were designed with this fact held in mind, but with equipment failure and Five Pebbles' erratically increased output, your facilities clearly haven't been able to keep up.

It doesn't matter now, anyhow. You'll figure out a way around your facility. If you care enough. You're not sure how much you care, though.

>Search for food (failure)

You peer around the area, a little baffled. Where would you even find food here? An iterator's waste department is not conducive to life. If whatever finds its way here doesn't drown, it could also get crushed, or fall in acid, or... you don't actually want to continue this line of thought.

But you are low on food, so you take some time to walk around the area anyway, poking your head into every nook and cranny you can find. You don't turn anything but dust up though. Not even fungus grows here.

... maybe that's a good thing? Your facilities are damaged enough as is.

>Scrape together whatever you can and wait for the start of the next cycle to try and go down. We have got to get out of here if there’s no food.

You're not holing yourself up in that room again. The day is still young anyway, so you're just going to explore down below now. You might as well; it's not like there's anything left for you up here.

You backtrack your way back to where you entered your biological processing facility. The moment you step out of the first access shaft, your foot hits water; startled, you stumble back a few paces, casting a quick glance out over the terrain ahead of you. Clearly the water level rose while you were up higher, because you are now standing at the banks of a lake.

You... kind of knew this was an issue? Once again, the machinery in your waste department was designed to function at full capacity even when submerged, as a countermeasure to building you at a lower elevation than the others in your local group. Even so, you hadn't thought about what that would mean for traversing these areas.

... you probably shouldn't submerge your explosives. You fuss at your cloak, fiddling with the fabric in a variety of ways until your spear and your bomb are strapped just above your neck. You're going to have to swim if you're going to explore ahead, which you... probably don't mind? You've never swam before. Never needed to.

You reach up and keep a hand on your spear as you wade into the water, contemplating. What you have now is more than sufficient to take down at least one of the Miros quail; nothing biotic, even just partially as the Miros quail are, would be able to withstand the sheer explosive damage of your spear. Though being swarmed by them is of concern, the relatively narrow access shafts through the various facilities in your waste department should mostly eliminate that problem. And if you can take one down, the rest shouldn't pose any issues. The only reason anything is able to survive in your waste department is a sense of self preservation.

At least, you would hope the Miros quail would turn tail and run if you blew up one of their brethren in front of them. They were designed to be intelligent, after all.

If you could get your hands on the beak of one of the Miros quail, maybe you could fashion it into a more permanent weapon to make the rest of your journey safer. You could always hunt for more cherrybombs and make more explosives though. You just need a reliable method to defend yourself with.

And you need food. You sigh, stepping further into the water. It's cold and your cloak is getting drenched. There's probably some sort of aquatic plant here? Given how prone your waste department is to flooding, you wouldn't be surprised if something of the sort has put down roots here.

As your feet leave the ground, you flounder in the water, clumsily flailing around until you find a reliable method of paddling. This is so undignified, but you don't have a better option. You continue with a huff.

There's some faint splashing up ahead. It's not Miros quail; they can't swim. You weren't aware of something else living here though.

>Beasts in the water? Go and investigate!! I love creatures.

You're more apprehensive about it, but you carefully (and very slowly) swim in the direction of the splashing. It doesn't seem like a very big creature, at least, so if all else fails you could probably throw your bomb at it.

You immediately rescind your thought when you see the source of the splashing: a small cluster of brightly colored rodents, diving down underneath the surface of the water periodically. River mice, you recall after a brief moment. You hadn't realized they'd made their way here.

The amount of time you spend retrieving the information about the river mice is enough for them to notice you as well, and they all shriek in terror, diving down into the water and zipping away from you. You start to paddle after them, then reconsider and give up. There's no way you can catch up to them. You can barely keep yourself afloat as it is. This is a good sign though, since river mice are omnivorous. If they're here, there should be food for you too, provided that you can find it.

>Follow the cute little water creatures!!

You hate swimming. Why weren't iterator puppets designed to be seaworthy? Now you're stuck flapping your hands and legs about in the water to inch forward even slightly. Your cloak is going to be completely ruined by the time you're done with this.

Actually, why do you care about that? It's not going to matter, and your cloak was already stained with mud anyway. If anything, this is just washing it off.

You groan and push forward. This better be worth it. You hate swimming. You hate swimming. You hate swimming.

Eventually, you do get somewhere, approaching the partially submerged building you saw previously. There's more river mice here, all of which are giving you a wide berth; a few dive for a few moments, then resurface with... something in their mouths. You adjust your visual focal point.

Oh. Leeches. Of course. Now that you're paying attention, there's a few of the red annelids drifting in the water around you. Not that they pose any threat to you though.

Another river mouse is chewing on something that looks distinctly plant like. You scan the surface of the water again, and are rewarded with the presence of some sort of aquatic plant; you watch as one of the river mice stuffs the entire plant into its mouth, chewing eagerly. That would make for a good food source, and you're honestly sick of the mushrooms at this point. They're also a bit soggy now, but it's of no consequence. You have more food options.

You start swimming over to harvest some of the water weed, but pause as you hear a loud splash, followed by loud, terrified screeching from the river mice. You nearly capsize as a few of them rush past you, apparently having decided that you're less of a threat than whatever just showed up. Wiping water out of your eyes, you refocus, scanning for the source of the commotion.

In between the spray being thrown up, you see a silver lizard happily thrashing a river mouse around in its jaws, sending blood every which way. You grimace. You weren't aware they were also aquatic. Or maybe they're just opportunistic?

>Throw an explosive at that horrible, evil silver lizard! Be the hero they need!

You stare at your overseer. "No. I'm not doing that."

The bomb would be overkill for the silver lizard anyway, with how small it is, and you're not sure you can effectively throw it when you're paddling in the water like this. Nevertheless, you slowly make your way over to the lizard, sighing as the blood stained water drifts your way. This may as well happen.

As you get closer, it becomes evident that not only is the thrashing less happy than you initially thought, but it is happening because the water is too deep for the lizard. All this splashing is its poor attempt at swimming. It is also—you wipe water out of your eyes again with a grumble—smaller than usual. This is likely just a hatchling, one that got a bit overzealous when hunting.

Now that you're here, you can see a few more silver lizards perched on the building nearby, watching the scene tensely. Unlike the pack you encountered on the exterior of your can, these don't seem too eager to investigate what you are, possibly because of the hatchling floundering in the water. They merely watch as you approach it, silent.

You sigh, bracing yourself, and reach for the silver lizard. It yelps, kicking at you and subsequently flipping itself over with another splash. "Hold still," you mutter, righting the lizard and pushing it towards the nearest shore. "Did you really risk drowning yourself for this mouse?"

Arduously, with a lot of help from you, the hatchling makes it back to the building, river mouse still clutched in its jaws. It clambers out of the water and vigorously shakes itself off with a whimper before rejoining its pack. You watch as it's greeted with a flurry of licks and croons, then ushered back into the building, and sigh again. Of all places you expected these lizards to be in, your waste department was not one of them.

The sky's getting dark again; you glance up and see lighting flash in the distance. You're not sure what this building is, but you won't have enough time to swim back to the other ones here before the rain comes. You do have enough time to fetch some food, but you'll need to be quick about what you're doing next.

There's one silver lizard still perched on the wall. You make eye contact with it. It snuffles at you, swishing its tail, before skittering up the wall to reconvene with the rest of its pack. At the very least, the lizards here don't seem to see you as a threat.

>Get food and go inside as fast as you can! I would also like to add that those lizards are very cute and I'm glad you didn't hurt them! Good for you! (italics)cheerleads enthusiastically(end italics)

What is wrong with this overseer? You watch it dance around on the wall for a few moments, wriggling back and forth merrily, before turning your back to it and swimming over to the nearest patch of water weed. Baffling, irritating creature.

Figuring out how to tread water is a tremendous effort on your part, and you splash around not unlike the lizard hatchling as you struggle to coordinate your limbs. You do eventually manage to stay mostly in place though, and you quickly pick up the aquatic plant to inspect it. It's a familiar bit of flora, one you recognize from the limited gardening ventures of your citizens. They called it bubble fruit, you believe, though this seems to be a different strain of the plant. It's not exactly a fruit, either; the outer layer of the seed simply swells up when in contact with water, protecting the plant embryo inside as it is ingested by various fauna. Perhaps bubble seed would be a more fitting name for it.

Unfortunately for this plant, you cannot provide it with the intended exchange of propagating its progeny, for you have no digestive system. You still take a few of its seeds with you as food. (+5 bubble seed)

Having acquired food, you return to the building and stare up at it. It... seems to be slightly at an angle? Which is not good for its functioning. It does make climbing it slightly easier though, and combined with the various exposed parts of rebar and crumbled stone, you clamber your way up the side, finding a hole near the top where the silver lizards went. It's a bit small for you, but you squeeze in anyway, pulling your antennae back as they scrape against the top.

Thankfully, the interior is more appropriately sized for you. Unfortunately, there is machinery inside this room, and it is clearly not functioning. From the looks of it though, this used to be your fertilizer processing plant. You haven't needed fertilizer for your farm sector since global ascension completed.

There's two more holes in the walls, and a door out of this room. The lizards are nowhere to be seen currently.

>Explore the room and peek down the different exits to see which one has the best chance of offering a good shelter!

You head for the nearest hole, crouching down to peer into it. You're greeted by six sets of eyes, all blinking up at you from the dim crevice; the hatchling from earlier is among them. The biggest silver lizard snuffles at you, then turns its back to you, settling down on the ground again. The other lizards follow suit, though the hatchling keeps staring at you, eyes glimmering in the dark.

You leave them be, pulling back and heading the other way. You may have hesitantly earned their trust, but you don't want to push it. And you don't want to put your wires and neurons around a bunch of wild animals.

The other hole is set into the far side of the wall, and is more spacious than the first. It's still a bit of a cramped squeeze, but it's far enough away from where you entered that you could probably ride out the rain in here. It's still rather close to the lizards though.

The door, mercifully, opens smoothly when you try it, bringing you out into a narrow corridor with a few more doors along it. Brief inspection of the other rooms reveals more of the same machinery; this whole floor serves the same purpose. You suppose it was split up across several rooms for easier maintenance. Either way, any one of these rooms should do.

>Use the other hole as a shelter, then! (Stay close to the lizards because they are cute.)

...

... you're not actually that inclined to disagree. Closing the door to the room behind you, you go back to the larger crack in the wall and wedge yourself none too ceremoniously into it, trying to get yourself into a position that's mostly hidden from view of the lizards. You end up squished into yourself, legs pressed to your chest and heat vent nearly flush against the wall; you set your items aside and pull your cloak off to reduce the obstruction.

You get to watch the storm increase in strength from your little nook this time. It's quite the spectacle, actually, with the vibrant flashes of lightning striking down from the sky every so often, and the furious swirling of the dark clouds contorting into a variety of patterns. You would rather it stop shaking this building, but at least it's not flooding.

This is not a comfortable position to be in, but you try to settle yourself anyway as you prepare to power down.

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