Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 263: ‘Wildlife Conservation’

“Nobody move.” Natura whispered.

Everyone froze. Perry was knelt down with his armored hand partway down a hole in the ground with a spider in it. His ground scanner didn’t give him colors, so he’d have to pull it out to see if it was one of the species he was looking for.

Without moving, he shifted his gaze up to Natura, who was looking off into the distance.

“’Roos.”

Natura pointed up and away from the bush where the group had been collecting venomous creatures that favored the cover of brush. Perry raised a brow underneath his helmet.

Out in the nearby arid clearing were fifty-some kangaroos foraging in the wilderness. Most of them were about chest height, with a few bigger males that looked like they could mess up an adult, but overall…nothing to be scared of…especially while being super and wearing power-armor.

“You mean the kangaroos?” Perry whispered back.

“’s what I said.”

“Shit.” Bob muttered, slowly reaching down to the duct tape on his hip.

“Bugger.” Dirt whispered, slowly lowering himself down to the ground and raising a lump of earth a couple inches in front of him.

Australia man tapped Paradox and Wraith on the shoulder.

“Whatever happens, don’t kill ‘em, understood? We’ve got few enough left as it is. If they get ornery, just scare ‘em off.”

Perry frowned behind his mask. There was nothing an animal could do that would necessitate him killing it. If a crocodile attacked, he could send it packing without harming it. Why would a kangaroo be more difficult? Obviously there was something more at play, here.

“Why would I–“

“They see us.” Natura whispered.

Perry shifted his gaze back to the rather large group of kangaroos, whose heads had swiveled to face their party.

Thump thump thump thump. The kangaroos started thumping the ground.

“Careful of the does,” Australia Man pointed at the slightly smaller, chest height animals.

“Why-“

Perry’s question was answered before he could finish as one of the does reached into their pouch and pulled out a Desert Eagle.

A big, shiny, fifty caliber pistol that had no earthly business being in the hands of a marsupial. How the doe operated it without thumbs was something of a mystery, and Perry could only assume Tide Shenanigans were at play.

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

Bullets ripped through the undergrowth, tearing apart their hiding spot. Dirt cursed and lifted his large chunk of hardpacked earth to shelter behind. Bob and Natura joined him.

“God I love my job!” Australia man shouted, holding his hat down on his head as a bullet ripped through it. “Yah!” he ran towards the kangaroos, waving his arms like a man trying to scare seagulls off his lawn. “Git!”

Perry caught one of the bullets and inspected it. It didn’t have any supernatural powers, and pancaked against his armor.

Okay, we’re safe enough, Perry thought, flicking it away.

“Paradox, make those ones rejoin the group! “Wraith, take the skies!” Australia man said, pointing.

There was a small group of the marsupials who had broken away from the main group as Australia man rushed them.

Perry rushed up in front of them and waved his arms.

A hail of bullets bounced off his armor as the marsupials unloaded on him before panicking and running in the opposite direction, rejoining the main group as they hopped further out into the wilderness.

A moment later, Wraith landed.

“They all together?” Australia man asked. “Not heading towards any giant sinkholes or anything?”

“They’re fine,” Heather said with a nod.

“Excellent.” Australia man said with a grin. “Everybody okay? Good. Let’s get back to it.”

“May I ask why kangaroos have guns now?” Perry asked.

“They didn’t wanna be left out.” Australia Man said with a chuckle.

“Marsupials have trouble keeping up in the new world, and kangaroos were inches away from being extinct thirty years ago,” Natura said, brushing herself off. “Some idiot Tinker got the bright idea to give them the ability to defend themselves.”

“Ah, Kangaroo Man.” Australia man said with a nod. “Good times. He used to rob banks with them, you know?

Australia man heaved a sigh, looking off into the distance after the fleeing troop. “His legacy lives on, though. Shame about the way he died.”

“Was he…shot by a kangaroo?” Perry asked wryly.

“Lung cancer, actually. Good guess, though. He was shot by kangaroos many times.” Australia man said, clapping Perry on the back. Even through the protective armor, he could feel the impact of the super’s hand.

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Shaking his head, Perry got back to it, finding the hole he’d been sticking his hand into a moment ago. Perry flipped on his ground-penetrating scanner and delicately reached in, pulling out a spider the size of his fist, currently trying to bite through his armor.

“Look at that, a big female funnel web. Nice find.” Natura said.

Perry took the collection device and waggled it in front of the spider until it attacked, sinking her massive fangs into the thin rubber bulb.

A couple drops of venom landed inside the glass vial, and Perry promply deposited the venomous spider back in its home. The little monster turned back to face him and waved her arms threateningly, as if she wanted to start something after he’d kindly let her off easy. The spider was just a jerk.

A creepy, multi-eyed, twitchy, skittery, unnatural jerk.

A moment later, the funnel-web disappeared back into her ruined home, and Perry found himself releasing a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Well, I did ruin her web, so I guess she’s not being totally unreasonable.

“Are you afraid of spiders?” Heather asked, a mischievous glint appearing in her eyes as she leaned close to him.

“If I said I wasn’t, would you believe me?” Perry asked, labelling the vial and putting it in the armored pouch.

“Nah. You know, I was thinking about getting Sera a pet…”

“You’ll only have yourself to blame for the inevitable consequences, should you choose to go down that route.” Perry said. “I’m not taking care of it, and Sera sure isn’t.”

“True…” Heather said, tapping her chin before she shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll find some way to use it against you.”

“You’re acting like someone who doesn’t want mox feathers in their clothes.”

“Noooo, being impossibly beautiful is part of my brand!” Heather said, shaking Perry by his neck-guard. “How am I supposed to sell my clothing line if I can’t make people feel bad about themselves?”

“You have a clothing line?” Perry asked.

“You don’t know everything about me.” Heather said, crossing her arms and looking away.

“You two get along well,” Natura said. “It’s cute.”

“We have the same taste in women.” Perry said, closing the cooled venom container and standing up.

“Hah!” Heather guffawed.

“Also, I accidently got her pregnant.”

The surrounding supers froze.

“So you two…”

“Nope.” Heather said.

“So how did-“

“We’re getting a little off-track here,” Perry said, making a chopping motion with his hand, indicating that conversation was over.

“We got a funnel web, how many more on our list?”

“Somany.” Bob said, shaking his head.

Throughout the day, they found and sampled at least three dozen different venomous species, while avoiding harming any of the native fauna. At least, anything that was endangered.

As the sun was beginning to set, Perry was talking to Natura, hoping to find one venomous creature in particular.

“I was talking to Ryan, and-“

“Who?” Natura asked.

“Ryan, the spider pilot?”

“You’ll have to be more specific.” She must’ve sensed Perry’s disbelief, because she clarified. “Spiders can have batches of two hundred babies, and they only live a few years.”

“The one who was in America until recently?”

“Oh him! yeah, I know Ryan. He’s cool.”

“Anyway, he told me about a critter the size of your palm that can take down just about anything regardless of size, but sometimes humans survive the same dose that would kill a spider, or a lumbering, armored behemoth. Do you know what he was talking about?” Perry asked.

“Mmm, the dickbag wasp.” Natura said, nodding.

“Excuse me?” Perry asked.

“Well, around the time they were discovered, most biologists had already died horrible deaths thanks to the outback’s…somewhat sudden change in temperment, so the guy who discovered them named them, a guy on his back porch named Phil Peterson. The last words he said before he died was a strangled ‘dickbag wasp!’

“Are you kidding me?” That was the most Australian thing Perry had ever heard.

“Hey, Aussieman!” Natura called over at Australia Man.

“Yeah?”

“Paradox wants to find some dickbags.”

“Alright. Be careful, though. Those things sting like a real bastard.” Australia man said, giving them a thumb’s-up.

“The dickbag is a Triggered variant of the mud-dauber wasp. Bigger and meaner. I’ll show you what their nests look like if we come across one.

Perry was about to ask where they put their nests, when he spotted soemthing flying through the air toward them. out of the corner of his eye. It looked like…a little piece of soil clumped together with a bit of webbing, about the size of a quarter.

“What’s-

“RUN!” Natura shouted, dodging as far away form the bit of soil as she could.

It was only because of Perry’s shy-high Nerve that he could perceive what happened.

The instant the clump hit the ground, a queen ant emerged from the carefully wrapped bit of dirt and dug into the soil.

An explosion of ants boiled out of the hole, stripping the life out of every living thing connects to the ground in a twelve-foot radius.

Which they were inside.

Perry sped up.

As the ants began to consume Natura’s feet, he cradled her neck and moved her outside the rapidly widening circle, snapping his gaze over to see the rest of them.

Dirt flung himself out of the radius with Bob’s help. The speedster-wildcard was also out of their radius.

Backdraft tucked down and created a little sphere of heat that caused the ants to swerve around him or become crispy.

Heather turned ethereal and ran away, sloughing off a shower of ants that hadn’t quite reached her face.

Australia Man just stood with his arms crossed and a massive scowl as his clothes frayed, looking like they’d aged twenty years in a second as blazingly fast insects poured over him, testing his defenses.

A moment later, the ants stopped, leaving a perfect circle of nothing in the forest, along with millions of dead ants the size of a man’s thumb.

“Outlaws.” Australia man muttered with a scowl.

“Hold on, Natura,” Bob said, sliding to a halt beside Natura, whose feet were a mess of blood.

BRRRRR

The sound of duct tape ripping elevated itself to a hum as Bob regrew large chunks of Natura’s feet by applying duct tape to the problem.

Interesting. Could’ve used him on Solaris’s head…maybe.

“Thanks,” Natura said as Perry and Bob hauled her to her feet.

Perry looked up and spotted…

He heaved a breath.

Thousands upon thousands of spiders, watching them with clinical dispassion.

Each spider was about the size of a man’s palm, hanging above them from a thick webbing covering the canopy that hadn’t existed moments ago.

“Nice try, fuckers!” Australia man said, pointing up at the spiders. “You shot your shot, but if you try again, I guarantee you you’ll lose more members than you gain in food. Now do you wanna try again, or can we call this a wash?”

One of the palm-sized creatures rappelled down towards them on a thread. It had a distinctly humped brown and yellowish brown abdomen and studied them with disdain. The creature came to a halt at about eye-level and used spider-sign.

“Leave the wounded one as tribute and we will not pursue.”

“Wrong answer, fuck-o. Backdraft, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Backdraft stepped forward and a massive swath of the communal spiderweb turned to flames in a fraction of a second, consuming hundreds of spiders as the web went up like kindling.

From hidden vantage points along the tree-trunks, Spiders came out of hiding and slung hundreds of what Perry had come to think of as ‘ant-grenades’ at their group, aiming to overwhelm them with numbers, now that surprise had been lost.

Dragor’s Kinesis.exe

Perry rounded up the hundreds of ‘grenades’ and shot them back at their owners, who were quickly devoured by an explosion of ravenous, short-lived ants.

A few seconds later, Australia man made a T with his hands.

“Time!”

Perry paused in the middle of killing another swath of the creatures.

“They’re running,” Australia man said, eyes narrowed.

“And we’re…not exterminating them?” Perry asked.

“Nah, we can’t set a precedent like that without risking turning the neutral spiders against humans, and some of the neutral spiders could wipe out a city. And…these guys do have a niche in the wild. Sometimes, wildlife conservation is part politics.”

“Anyway, let’s find you those dickbags!” Australia man said, clapping Perry on the shoulder.