hadriel | ☢ audio

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[Newt has definitely not been up all night building salamander-proof enclosures out of spare Null parts so the fact that he sounds both tired and revved up on way too much coffee is just your imagination.]

Two questions, Hadriel. One: Tell me about the cave monsters. What all has crashlanded here before I got here? Specifically, I'm looking for stuff that a person could feasibly, like, catch. Or at least put down and drag into town for some post-mortem studying. This includes stuff that might be a good food source, maybe? I don't know. Depends on what's out there.

[The food source thing is secondary in his mind, but the masses don't need to know that. He's already expecting to catch some flak for this.]

And two: Anyone got some time to help me wrangle some salamanders, at least? I'm thinkin' two should be good. I'd like to grab some other stuff too, but again, depends on what's out there. Gonna start with the salamanders for now.

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Back home, people hunted for sport.

[She won't specify what they were hunting.]

I never really understood that.

Oh. [Well, that's not nearly as sinister as it sounded.

AS FAR AS HE KNOWS, ANYWAY.]

Like big game hunting and stuff? For trophies? Yeah, me neither. What's the point of that? There's no skill in taking down a bigger thing than the next guy. It's just random based on whatever you happen to run into.

[Clearly he knows a lot about hunting. And also just thinks it's stupid as opposed to being upset about waste. The waste is bad, sure, but mostly, it's stupid.]

[Abigail frowns.]

It is a skill. You don't simply run into animals in the wild. You have to be able to track and stalk them. A good hunter can tell an animal's size, gender all kinds of things before they even see it.

[Her father and Hannibal's version of hunting took skill too]

It's a skill that can feed a family when they have no other options. Wasting that skill is wrong.

Hmm. [He considers this. He's never been hunting himself, so she's clearly the expert here. Probably, anyway, but he's pretty good at spotting hacks. She doesn't talk like one. Expert or no, she's got more experience with this than he does. So, okay. A compromise.]

Yeah, I guess you're right. I still think it's largely luck-based, but skill's gonna go a long way to help tip luck in your favor. I used to fish when I was a kid. Same principles applied. [He shrugs. It's still stupid.]

Anyway, all that skill stuff. Tracking and stalking. You think I'll need that for the game I'm after? Remember we're talking, like, angry monsters that go out of their way to try and kill us. For fun. They're not just deer or whatever.

[Abigail takes a minute. She can't agree to hunting being anything other than a skill, especially the deer that fed her family. She knows less about fishing, that's Will's area, but he makes it sounds like a skill too.]

You need the skills then too. You can't just jump in front of a monster and hope to put it down before it kills you. You need surprise on your side. You have to be able to stay hidden, mask your scent, sneak up on it and get a kill shot out before the monster knows you're there.

[This all sounds way more complicated than he wanted it to. Man. At home he could just hire people to go do all the dirty work for him. This place is the pits.]

Right. Uh. I mean, I wasn't planning on hunting and killing any big, scary stuff. Plenty of people have already offered to collect stuff for me. I'm talking more about, like, catching the little, not as violent stuff that I can keep alive.

[He's backpedaling, but look, he's not a hunter.]

They're just animals, anyway. I'm pretty sure I can outsmart a salamander.

Don't take anything for granted around here.

I was once stung by a wasp that made me hallucinate, almost drove me crazy. The smallest things can be bad here.

[...]

Are you allergic to bees? What did the wasp look like?

[Definitely what he should've taken from that anecdote.]

Nope, not allergic. Everyone that was stung was affected. They looked like wasps, but a little bigger and they were gold coloured.

Huh. Crazy.

[Newt actually is allergic to bees though so... He's wondering what kind of effect a sting would have on him, then. Certainly couldn't be anything good.]

Any of those still in town?

[Newt...]

I haven't seen any recently.

Why would you want to find them?

[She doesn't think wasps could be eaten, especially poisonous ones.]

Uh, are you kidding? [Look he (vaguely) respects your trauma and all, kid, but how do hallucinogen-producing wasps not sound like the coolest shit ever to you???]

We have wasps where I'm from, but none that make you hallucinate. I want to study the venom. [His heart aches for proper lab equipment, but he could still run some basic tests, at least.]

You could be studying up close and personal from a sting if you're not super careful. You'd be hallucinating about the worst moments of your life, the worst monsters you've ever know coming back to haunt you here. And the stings hurt. A lot.

[Even Will was stung, and Hannibal's built him up very highly in her mind.]

Do you get how dangerous this place is?

[...Well, that certainly doesn't sound ideal, but it's not as if he hasn't put himself at risk for science before. Studying the effects from personal experience would be more than enlightening, too.

Problem is, he is allergic to bees and he's not sure if these otherworldly horror wasps would trigger that. But, uh, he's just gonna keep that detail to himself, since Abigail clearly has no faith in him already.]

Look, kid, I'm a biologist. I'm used to working in the field with stuff that could easily kill me. [That... is sort of untrue, but after having been stranded in the streets of Hong Kong with the common folk during a Kaiju double event while at least one of those Kaiju was actively hunting him, well. That's more than enough field experience to make this claim, he thinks.]

I understand the danger plenty, but do you understand the importance of this kind of research? You really think I want to risk so much just for fun? We know next to nothing about these wasps. I study them, and I find out behavior patterns, preferred habitats, ways to both provoke and prevent an attack, all kinds of stuff that would be, like, super useful for people to know around here. I could even figure out an antidote for the venom, or at the very least, remedies for the symptoms it causes. And that's just for the wasps! Imagine the kind of things I could learn from studying the common monsters around the city. If you're so concerned about the danger, you should understand why that knowledge is worth the risk.

I'm used to living with what could easily kill me.

[She means who could easily kill her, but that's an unnecessary detail.]

Things are different here. We have choices and freedom here.

You don't have to be a biologist here, if you don't want to be. And if you do decide to do that type of work - an alive and functioning biologist has to be better than one that's hurt or dead, right?

[And there's the time and resources doctors would have to put into treating him. As well as the risk to others who'd have to rescue him.]

You should at least arm yourself first.

As if I'm not? Where I come from, humanity's been on the precipice of extinction for years. I'm one of the few people standing between Earth and monsters capable of leveling entire cities in a matter of hours. If it wasn't for my work, my entire world would be dead by now.

[He is maybe just a little full of himself over this fact.]

So, obviously, I'm not stupid. If you have any information about the monsters in town that's actually useful, I'm all ears, but spare me the advice. Didn't ask for it, don't want it, don't need it. You're not telling me anything I don't already know, which is why I put up this post in the first place.

[Ugh. Despite Hadriel being the land of infinite time, he so does not have time for this. He hangs up unceremoniously. Sorry, Abigail. Manners are for chumps.]

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