Hunting Gone Wrong with Nubi and Risu

“Sleeping Forest!” Birch exclaimed as he saw the familiar winged girl messing around with some tack for Nubila. Whatever type of reins that she had been using for her mount were tangled beyond belief. There were holes in them too from rats or mice. The storage compartment that she had stored the tack in on the ship that she took to Australia had not done a good job taking care of her stuff.

“Hey there Birch!” Sleeping waved with her free hand as she discarded the reins as a lost hope. There was no way that they could ever be used again without some MAJOR work on repairing them. “What are you doing here?” Sleeping asked as Birch led Sol over to the group. There was a mass of bags that were getting dropped off for Sleeping and for Nubi (if Birch had to guess, he would say that a lot would belong to Nubi).

“I am here for a hunting group. It is supposed to be another full-time hunter and a few that will be in and out, all are supposed to have riders though. Are you here for that?” Birch questioned as he picked out the large saddlebags with a tent by Nubi.

“Yup! I’m the other full-timer!” Sleeping cheered as she finished getting the saddlebags situated on Nubi’s saddle. “Though I’m not too sure if I can rely on Nubi enough without reins… Sol does not have reins?” Sleeping just now noticed that Sol was without reins too.

Nubi looked over at the bored looking mount, a slight nod in her gaze. They both approved of what happened to the other’s reins. Not that they would ever admit to this having ever happened, wipe it from your mind now. It never happened.

“Do you know who the part time person is going to be?” Birch asked as Sleeping jumped onto Nubi’s back. Like last time the two ballators had met, they were stoutly ignoring each other. Nubi even went far enough to avoid even looking at Sol. They would not fight each other due to the orders they had gotten on that hunting trip a few weeks back, but that did not mean that they could not pretend that each other did not exist.

“That would be me!” Meg yelled as she ran up to the group. Here ballator, a mare by the name of RIsu, was trailing behind her. Risu had bags on her back that went around her spine. Meg herself was sitting on a different ballator, another mare, but an oriental this time.

“You have a mount this time,” Birch mused as they left town. He looked at the oriental, Tactu as he would find her name out, that she was riding, she was a beautiful mare. Though Birch quickly connected the dots as to why Meg kept her at least a foot away from everyone and why she had a cross-under.

“Yup! Meet Tactu!” Meg said happily as Nubi and Sleeping took the lead. They knew where they were going anyway. This first hunting spot would be on a farm. They had an out of control wild emu terrorizing their farm’s emu so the group was hired to take down the wild emu.

“When we get to the farm, I do not want anyone or anything on the hunting ballators. Emu’s are incredibly dangerous and by taking you guys out of the equation, it would remove you from harm’s way and keep your mount from worrying about you,” Birch said sternly from his position in the back. He did not mean to be commanding, but with him always looking out for his reckless sisters, it often bled into getting that way with others.  

Sleeping and Meg gave him an odd look at that, but all Birch could do was shot them an apologetic stare, but he stood by his words. Seeing that he would not budge, Sleeping happily exclaimed, “Yes, sir!”

Coming up on the gates, Sleeping led them down a trail until they came to a series of pens that held roaming bird. Giant roaming birds. Sleeping fidgeted her wings some before flaring them out, uncomfortable with having them stayed closed for so long. Climbing off their mounts, Meg, Birch and Sleeping unleashed their mounts that would be hunting. Risu, Sol, and Nubi ran off to confront the white bird, Tactu stayed with the humanoids though, she did not have the necessary skills to help the others take down the dangerous animal. Tactu did not take kindly to the insinuations though, biting at any of the humanoid that tried to approach the moody mare.

Risu led the attack on the emu. Running just behind it, she nipped at its heels, trying to injure it and wear it down. Sol had a more dangerous job, he would try and knock it down by hitting it with his neck or rump. It would be dangerous because it would make the claws come right at him.

Preying to all of the highlords, Sol made his move. He slammed into the emu with his side and managed to unbalance it. The emu was not defenseless though, it struck out with its claws at Sol’s left side, tearing a large stripe in middle of his side, going from his should until halfway by his belly. Sol screamed out and his blood stained the grass. The emu was unbalance though and took precious seconds to right itself.

Running alongside the tiring emu, Nubi clamped her jaws around the large bird’s neck, make sure to maneuver it so that it’s legs would face away from her so that the long claws were as far as they could be from her belly and neck. Keeping her fangs pressed into the front of it’s neck, Nubi had to hold on while it thrashed as it suffocated. It did not take long for the animal to die.

Once the bird was down, Birch wasted no time in running to meet his stallion. He took his bag off of his back and took out an emergency kit. Cleaning out the gash with a water bottle, Birch made sure that there was nothing stuck there. Due to his sisters often fighting and leading to major injury, Birch had an emergency kit always and very good ointment in his wooden arm so that he would not be without it. Being careful, Birch opened a compartment on his fake arm and slathered the healing cream onto the wound, it would speed up the healing and stop the bleeding. It was made with some very good herbs from his home world so he knew there would be no lasting damage. Finishing it up, Birch wrapped up the gash on Sol’s stomach with a large bandage so that he could walk back to the camp. Sol tried to act like the walking did not affect him, but it did. He limped every so often that Risu ended up steadying him once or else he would have fallen over on Birch.

The Meg ended up setting up the sled to carry the carcass and getting the big bird onto it, she had the help of Tactu pulling on the bird to move it. Hooking it to Tactu so that the oriental could haul the emu back to the campsite, the group headed out.