After a recent storm affected the mashua fields near Godbird's Eyrie, reports came in of Heligators being seen in the area. With many other ninja either recovering from training injuries or helping repair damage in other areas of the island, Aramaki took it upon himself to investigate these sightings alongside his adoptive daughter Motoko. The area had many wide puddles of slowly stagnating water when they arrived. None of the crops seemed to be damaged beyond some torn leaves, but the drainage ditches were nearly full.
Motoko rotates her prosthetic arm, checking for rust near the elbow where her blade protruded from. She turns to her father once she confirms there is nothing to hinder her movement. "Are you sure you're up to this? You haven't done any field work in a long time." Aramaki chuckled and rubs his covered wrists. He turned to look at his daughter, half a head taller than him.
"My position is more than just meetings and ceremony. Now let me show you how your old man fights. Maybe you'll learn something before the tournament." He squats to examine the ground near one of the fields. "Mud got into launch tubes." He presses the mud with a nearby stick. Upon hearing a faint hiss, he stepped back as mud was flung out of the tube. "The mechanism still works, but the poison can't get in the air when it's wet. I'll have to talk to Proto and the poison master about this. We'll need a waterproof capsule that breaks on contact with the enemy. Clay maybe?"
Motoko rubbed some mud between the fingers on her right hand. There were visible blue specks in it.
"There's still pollen in the mud. It might still work if it got into a creature's mouth or eyes." Aramaki looked at his daughter's hand. "Possibly, but that's an unlikely scenario. This poison enters the body primarily through the nasal passages and alveoli. It needs to be inhaled to be most effective." Motoko shook the mud off her hand. "Yes, I know that. I'm saying we may not need to alter the mechanism, but the poison we use. Azure lily pollen is difficult to harvest and much better used elsewhere." Aramaki scoops some mud out of the tube. "You're thinking like a leader. Long-term effectiveness is what we want here. If we could make a contact or ingested poison into a paste, it'd be able to still work in muddy conditions." He tosses the mud aside and wipes his hand on his wrist wrappings. "The point of these devices is to deter the monsters. They can't run away if they're paralyzed by poison for hours on end. Very good thinking Motoko." Behind her mask, the woman smirked. "I learned from the best chief."
Aramaki stood up and looked in the surrounding area. "If there were any Heligators, they didn't get close enough to the fields to set off the traps. Come, let's look somewhere else." A monk passed by the duo. She set her tools down and bowed as soon as Motoko made eye contact. "I didn't expect this to be a family investigation. Would you like Midori to join you playing in the mud Chief Aramaki?" Aramaki turned to the voice and bowed. "Gojoshar master Eiko. Perhaps I will once my investigation is done. It's been too long since I've seen one of the little one. May the Godbird continue to protect your family." Motoko bowed to Eiko.
"It is always nice to see you master Eiko. Have you heard any details about Heligator sightings in this area during the storm?" The woman shook her head.
"Not here, but I haven't been in this area recently. I was busy helping repair damage to the rice fields. I have heard they are more common here than in areas closer to Empycchu though. I'll ask some of my students who were assigned to this area last night if they saw anything."
"Thank you for your assistance master Eiko." The master picked her tools back up.
"Please take your mask off if you visit Midori chief. She's only recently gotten used to Motoko's. Your current one will scare her. Your usual will even more." Aramaki taps his mask.
"I will do that. We can't have the children fearing the 'scary mountain hawks' like when we were younger."
"Says the man 20 years older than me with no visible wrinkles."
"Why do you think I wear the mask and sleeves?" There was a brief silence between the two before both burst out laughing. Eiko gave one last wave to Aramaki and Motoko before going further into the fields.
The chief turned to Motoko. "She always was cheeky with me. Even when I first became chief she would crack jokes. I'm sure her master had his hands full with her until they let her develop her own style. I'll have to pay my respects to him later. He was a good friend of mine."
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After Eiko left, the duo resumed their investigation. They noticed a patch of slightly matted grass 130 feet away from the mashua fields. Aramaki kneeled to examine the grass. "No other trail leading up to it, so it must've laid here for a while before floating off." Motoko lifted her mask briefly, enough to let air flow more easily into her nose.
"Do you smell that father? Lightning struck here recently, but there's no mark on the ground where it hit." Aramaki lifted his mask slightly and smelled the air.
"You're right. This area is pretty flat, but still at a fairly high elevation. We know what happened here now. The heligator got struck by lightning and fell here. It was stunned or unconscious long enough for a patrol to see it. It got up some time between then and when we got here. Look for more spots like this. As big as they are, even heligators aren't going to be moving well after being struck by lightning. There might be little stripes of matted grass from their legs." Motoko nodded and kept her eyes to the ground while walking around the area.
After several minutes of searching, Aramaki and Motoko had found nothing. The chief sighed and rubbed his sore knees. He had been squatting or kneeling in the mud for the better part of an hour since their investigation began. "It would be so much easier to track these things if they couldn't fly." Motoko stretched her neck.
"I don't think we're going to find anything else for now. We'll tell the monks what we know and ask them to monitor the area. They might be more active during and after rainstorms. We should..." Both ninja looked to each other and drew weapons. Motoko pulled a smoke bomb from her belt and Aramaki drew a sword. The chief threw his sword over Motoko's left shoulder as she tossed her smoke bomb behind her. The smoke burst forth from the canister, distracting the beast behind Motoko before Aramaki's blade planted itself in its upper gums. A massive heligator had appeared, bearing a black spot on its hide.
Motoko quickly dove to the ground as the heligator burst through the smoke screen. She raised the blade of her prosthetic arm up, slashing against the skin of its throat and underbelly. Small trickles of blood emerge from the wounds, but the beast is undeterred. Aramaki steps to the side as the heligator snaps at him before grabbing onto its mane. He quickly climbs the monster and uses his sword to forcibly remove one of its large teeth. Motoko springs to her feet as it recoils in pain. Aramaki pulls long needles from his belt and plunges them into one of the heligator's eyes. "Behind the jaw, go." He hops off the flailing creature and rolls as he hits the ground. Motoko grabbed the mane with her right hand while swinging her blade toward the previously mentioned area. It pierced through the skin behind the temporal-mandibular joint. She let go of the mane and let herself fall to the ground, the blade tearing through skin and muscle on the way down. The heligator thrashed around, creating small impact craters in the ground with its tail, before finally falling. Motoko sprang to her feet and ran to Aramaki. The chief was a little stiff as he sat up. He removed his mask to examine it. A small spatter of blood and vitreous humor had stained the lower portion.
Motoko holds her flesh hand out to her father. "I see I wasn't the only one reading Kefka's notes. You fought incredibly well. If you fight that hard in the tournament I might..." Aramaki looked concerned as he took his daughter's hand.
"You seem troubled. It's not like you to worry about sparring." He was pulled to his feet. "The idea of facing me scares you doesn't it?" Motoko shook her head.
"It's more like I'm questioning if I could raise my hand against someone who has shown me nothing but love my entire life." The chief wiped blood off his sword with his robes before sheathing it.
"I had similar concerns when the idea of you entering the master tournament was brought up. We can discuss this over a meal after we report our findings to the farmers. I'll make your favorite." He approaches the fallen heligator. "I'll have a team dissect this as soon as possible. I want to know how these things float."
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