Territorial Beasts

“Well, aren’t you the handsome creature?”

Mercury smirked lightly at a beaver. It was eyeing her warily from where it stood on top of the partially built dam it was working on. She had been tasked by a paying client to map some of the forested areas in Sakuramori, in the interest of learning more about the local wildlife in that area. It seemed a simple enough task, one she could more than accomplish, and in a way it helped her greatly as well. She was still learning much about this planet, along with its culture and native inhabitants, so being offered a job where she had an excuse to go exploring was rather convenient.

The job itself was perhaps a bit too easy for her. The Xocili didn’t really have to actively do anything herself. Once she’d gotten to the requested area, she programmed a few key commands into her drone and set it out into the sky where it patrolled within the geographical grid she’d given it. As it scanned the area it fed information back to her handheld device, which easily logged the types of animals and their dens in the area, as well as the geographical features of the land around her from altitude to shape, resulting in a clean, digital map that she’d be able to hand over to her clients when all was done.

This meant that she had the freedom to more or less take a leisurely stroll through the woods while her drone did all the work. Mercury had to be alert, of course. She was warned ahead of time that the woods weren’t necessarily the safest place. It was just as likely that she would come across some great monster or beast as she would the more mundane, harmless residents of the forest. That didn’t worry her overly much, though it did keep her alert. Mercy was strapped to her hip, currently holstered in its gun form but with the strap loosened so that she could withdraw it at a moment’s notice if needed.

However, the woman had been roaming around for a solid hour or two now and not come across anything nefarious. The drone was finishing its last sweep of the set grid, and once that was done she’d collect it and return to her new home. Knowing better than to actually attempt to approach the wildlife or disrupt it at all, she calmly waited for the beaver to lose interest in her. Once it was at least convinced she wasn’t a threat, he went back to slapping mud on his sticks, only occasionally stopping to turn and look at her to make sure she wasn’t moving any closer.

Soon the gentle whirring of her device reached her ears as it came back within her vicinity. Using the controller in her hand, she guided the drone back to the ground in front of her where she let it feed through the final bits of information and shut it off. With a final wave to the little beaver, she began the trek back to civilization, her nose glued to her handheld electronic as she began syncing and calibrating the data and formatting it into a file that her clients could use.