ToT: And Her Wonderful Toys

“Well, that didn’t work” said Aveline. She and David had spent roughly half an hour firing water guns and aura spheres at a row of the inert marshoids they’d been given as test subjects, to no real effect.

“Physical impacts were a bit more useful” said David, gesturing to a bunch of other marshoid bodies which they had variously dismembered, perforated, and splattered. “Think we should stick with those?”

“If we rely on melee combat, we’ll be overwhelmed by sheer numbers” said Aveline. “We need to be able to take these things out at range.”

“But, as the last half hour demonstrated, we don’t HAVE any way to hurt them at range” said David.  “Except for Samara, maybe.” He swung an ice punch at the nearest marshoid.

It immediately froze solid, toppled over, and shattered into a thousand pieces. David looked at his fist, and then back at Aveline. She looked at the shattered bits of marshoid, and then fired an ice beam at another one. It did the exact same thing.

“Did you find anything?” said Penny, walking over from the next test area.

“Ice” said David.

“Doesn’t help us much” said Penny.

“But it helps us plenty” said David. “What did you figure out?”

“We’ve figured out that they have a sort of typing. Dragon and Poison” said Penny.

“Probably explains our results” said Aveline, glancing at the shattered marshoid remains.

“They absorb energy attacks like nothing, and trying to hit them just makes big pieces come off in your hand” said Penny “But a forest’s curse from Birch can make them weak to fire.”

A feral grin came across David’s face. “Or ice.”

“That seems a bit like overkill” said Penny.

“Good” said Aveline. “That’s what we want when we’re dealing with a witch. Speaking of whom, I wonder if we could get this to work on Gilgamarsh himself?”

“Sure, if we could get Birch close enough” said Penny. “Which presents its own set of problems.”

“Not really” said David. “Birch ghosts in, hits Gilgamarsh with the seed, and then gets the hell out of there before the Goodra notices him.”

“Maybe” said Penny. She wasn’t really sure Birch had the nerves to stealthily pull something like that off. “Other than that… we haven’t found anything Lin Lin could do to hurt them.”

David looked at her blankly, strode over to one of the dead marshoids, hefted a boulder about the size of his torso, and brought it down hard. Bits of slime splattered for several feet. David gestured sardonically at the mess. “When in doubt…”

“We’ll keep it in mind.” Penny looked around. “I had thought Samara would be here.”

David groaned. “She’s here somewhere. Said she had an idea, grabbed one of the cadavers, and took off.”

Penny looked at David. “Samara had… an idea.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Should we go find some popcorn or just run for our lives?”

“Oh, ye of little faith!” said Samara, strolling into the area with a massive grin on her face. She was holding a small glass vial tied to a small paper bag.

“Okay, Samara, we’ll bite” said Aveline. “What have you been working on?”

“I’m glad you asked!” said Samara. She flicked her wrist and threw the vial at the dead marshoids. It hit the ground and exploded with a loud bang, sending a cloud of white dust outward. The moment the dust touched the marshoids, they started to melt, breaking down into puddles. It took out about 5 or 6 of them.

David looked at Samara. “What was-?”

“Salt” said Samara. “Menthe told us that Gilgamarsh was weak to the stuff, so I figured it would also hurt these slime zombie minions of his. Combine that with one of the unstable exploding potions that come out whenever Menthe screws up in the lab, and…”

“Oh, that’s nasty” said Aveline, grinning a little herself.

David looked at Samara. “How many of these did you make, exactly?”

Still grinning, Samara dragged a crate into the room. It was full to the brim with glass vials and paper bags. She started counting. “One, two, three… a bunch of them.”

“You have this many dud potions?” said Penny, looking uneasily at the crate as if it could explode at any second. Which it could.

“She buys them in bulk” said Aveline. “We’ve got several crates of them sitting in honeycomb storage.”

“Damn near burned out my bag of holding bringing this one through” said Samara.

It took a second for the meaning of their words to fully register with the Houndoom. “You have several crates of unstable explosives just sitting around in honeycomb storage?”

“Oh, relax” said David. “The crates have plenty of cotton padding, and the vials themselves are a lot sturdier than they look.”

“That makes me feel so much better” said Penny.

“Hey, you said Lin Lin didn’t have anything that could hurt them” said David. “Now she does.”

“So… your idea to combat the marshoids was basically to jury-rig a bunch of grenades” aid Penny. “I’m still not sure whether to be impressed or scared.”

“Don’t be like that, Penny” said Samara, throwing an arm around her shoulder. “What could possibly go wrong?”