Pumpkin Treats

Walking into Hosenka for the first time in her career while clutching a travel brochure that included a handy map on the back, Victoria matched the speed of human foot traffic while looking around at the abundance of oriental architecture that surrounded her. According to a brochure she had read about Hosenka a few minutes ago, Hosenka was also known as "Spa Town" due to its abundance of spas for tourists and residents alike to patronize. Victoria was not here to go to the spas or to gawk at the buildings. She was here to meet up with Baird and to participate in a pumpkin picking festival, which sounded self-explanatory but was not something the brunette had ever done before.

Wearing a white Steel Matron t-shirt with the band's name in black letters and a black skirt with white tennis shoes, Victoria was dressed a lot more casually for the event than the locals. In contrast to the brunette, the locals all wore kimonos and other traditional clothing peculiar to the region. She wandered through the town and saw that it was decorated for the occasion with hand-carved jack-o-lanterns sitting on the ground, some people wearing black-and-orange clothing, and paper lanterns shaped like jack-o-lanterns hanging from the entrances of homes and stores. Victoria was not sure where the pumpkin patch that would host the event was, so she walked over to the side of one of Hosenka's numerous spas, stopped at the wall, and consulted the small map printed on the back of the white travel brochure.

It was so small that it was hard to read even with important places being helpfully provided. Victoria grew frustrated and looked at the front of the brochure. That was when she realized that she had made a mistake. It was not the special festival-themed one, but instead an ordinary brochure!

Victoria sighed and folded the little document back up. She jammed it into her side pocket and made for a cafe near the entrance that she had spotted earlier. She wanted some coffee, orange juice, or something before she attended the pumpkin picking event.

After spending the better part of an hour winding through foot traffic, Victoria had found a cafe that she could pick up a drink at. She also felt a magic signature coming from nearby. The brunette looked around and spotted a familiar green-haired man wearing a blue traditional garment and sipping bubbly tea.

"Oh hey Baird! I was looking for you!" Victoria greeted the green-haired dude she had once loathed but had somehow come to tolerate, if not exactly like.

[Post Word Count: 446]
[Victoria's Word Count: 446/1,500]

"Yeah, I got your letter, Baird. It was pretty easy to spot considering that not too many people use snail mail nowadays." Victoria replied in the affirmative to his question. She received the letter promptly and without issue because Baird's letters was one of the only ones delivered to the Sabertooth guild hall when the mail ran. Reading it was how she knew to meet Baird here for the pumpkin picking festival, but she did not know to meet him at the cafe that they were at now. She heard him muse aloud about obtaining an iLac and had entertained the same thought in the past, but Victoria was not certain whether she wanted to take a sensitive electronic device into the hazardous situations she tended to go into. The biggest downside to the iLac was that according to the manufacturer's rules a mage could only get one iLac ever, so if Victoria's got busted, lost, or stolen, she would be unable to procure a replacement.

The brunette extended her right hand to Baird, who kissed the back of it in a throwback to the "good old days"... whatever those were. She then grabbed Baird's elbow and they linked arms to go find a pumpkin to pick together.

"I don't care what size pumpkin we get, just as long as we get a good one. Or a few good ones. Either way, really." Victoria assured Baird that as long as they got a pumpkin she was not terribly selective about whether they got a few smaller ones or just one big pumpkin. That lack of preference was a holdover from her days on the streets of Capital Crocus, where she had to take what she could get when she could get it because she was far from the only one who wanted clean food, safe water to drink, or a halfway decent place to take shelter. Victoria had more than enough money to buy almost anything she wanted, but she was still trying to get used to freedom of choice instead of having to settle for whatever she could get.

The unlikely duo had taken two steps into the pumpkin patch when he commented on how he would not mind it raining since she was wearing a white shirt. The brunette knew what he was getting at, but surprisingly she was not angry or offended by the comment. Normally she would have been irate at the offender for pointing out her shortcoming, but she was not too upset. Instead Victoria ran with it and made a joke of her own.

"Even if it did rain, you'd probably be disappointed 'cause there's not much there." Victoria joked about her shortcoming with Baird. As the one who had originated the joke with her crude comment back during their first meeting at Silver Moon Inn so many months ago, she had the privilege of poking fun at herself. She was about to make another joke when Baird made a remark about some incoming birds and called out his oddly cute dancing fire minions with his saxophone. Victoria frowned. There were not "some" incoming birds, but a whole lot of them, a murder of crows... literally.

Some of the bystanders ran for cover, giving the brunette the window needed to bring some of her own magic into play. Victoria channeled gray magic into her hands and thrust them outward, firing a Claymore Burst of steel ball bearings at the incoming flock. While the burst hit a good many of them and brought them down, enough of them survived to be a menace; a few of the survivors made a point of flying by her head before zooming around and gaining altitude for a second pass.

[Post Word Count: 637]
[Victoria's Word Count: 1,083/1,500]

The sequence of events from them entering the pumpkin patch to Baird putting a hand under her breasts had been too fast for Victoria to comment on, but she would address that later. Right now the pair needed to fight for their lives if they wanted to act like a dating couple. Baird had been pecked on the back of the neck by one of the crows, but in between Victoria's Claymore Burst, Baird's dancing fire minions, and his fiery saxophone solo, he had gotten his revenge on the angry avians. Victoria noticed that the fallen birds had turned into a shadowy substance that coalesced into a new beast for them to fight, one with stretchable arms and lengthy claws that could shred clothing and flesh with ease. Baird offered the brunette the first crack at taking down the new enemy, an offer which she could not refuse.

Victoria's next concern was picking a decent weapon to use against it. If she were in an open space like a field she would bring out her Grenade Launcher, but she was in Hosenka, which was full of people and houses that were much more fragile than her adversary. Victoria wanted to avoid collateral damage, so she had to pick her weapons and spells with care. Meanwhile, the shadow beast sensibly decided that it was not going to wait around for the brunette to choose a weapon from her vast arsenal and made the first attack. It launched its arms and they wrapped around her waist; it then yanked her off of her feet and lifted her approximately three meters into the air.

Victoria formed her right hand into a gun and shot at its head with a Derringer spell, hitting it just below the left eye. It roared and shook her about to throw off her aim. Victoria focused and gripped the bottom of her right wrist with her left hand, taking aim with a Hand Cannon shot. She fired and hit it in the chest, causing it to roar again and drop her to the ground. The shrieking brunette landed on her back and felt a lot of pain course through her back, but the fight was not over.

The beast rushed in to take advantage of its prey's relative helplessness and stood over her, raising its arms into the air before bringing them crashing down. Victoria dodged the left hand but was grazed on the right arm by the left hand. It continued to attack and draw blood even with three near-misses; Victoria had to act fast unless she wanted to become a one-armed gunslinger.

Raising her hands diagonally and forming them in the shape of a gun, Victoria ignored the pain and focused golden energy into her fingertips before firing a point-blank Beam Cannon into its torso. The beast staggered back six steps with a quarter-sized hole in its abdomen, giving the brunette just enough time and space to get to her feet to better defend herself. It soon recovered and went on the attack, but this time Victoria had made up her mind about what to use.

She waited until it was about ten steps away before focusing golden energy into her hand. Once it was five steps away she punched forward, using a Shockwave Punch since it had power and the least chance of causing collateral damage to her surroundings. The creature was caught in the compressed cone of sound and rushed past her while clutching where its ears would be; now was the time to finish this.

Victoria formed her hands into a gun and focused golden energy into her fingertips, aiming carefully at its head. She then fired a Beam Cannon that pierced its forehead. The beast stood swaying in place before toppling over onto its left side and disintegrating into the substance which it was made of. The substance disappeared for good about fifteen seconds later and Victoria used a Field Hospital spell to heal her gashed arm; the gashes healed over about a minute later, leaving only dried blood as evidence that she had been hurt.

"Well, that was fun. I hope that's the last thing... we have to... fight." Victoria began speaking to Baird but trailed off when she spotted a scarecrow with a scythe not too far to Baird's left. She pointed at it with her right hand.

"Baird, you're up!" Victoria shouted to the green-haired musician.

[Post Word Count: 755]
[Victoria's Word Count: 1,838/1,500]

"Nice job defeating the scarecrow, Baird. Now let me patch you up before something else shows up wanting a piece of us." Victoria said to Baird, slowly walking over to the green-haired musician due to lingering back pain left over from the three-meter fall she had sustained. She did a brief examination of his wounds and saw that he had a lot of gashes all over his arms and back from the fights with the shadow beast and the scythe-wielding scarecrow. Maybe she should have taken the lead against the sinister strawman, but Baird did well for himself to not only fend off the enemy, but to win against it as well.

Victoria formed a ball of golden energy in her hand and examined Baird more closely with her special ability. He needed some serious healing, so she would use her strongest healing spell, Field Hospital. She would also pour more magic into it so that she got the most out of the spell. Victoria closed her eyes and her entire body began to glow gold, which would make her a beacon for any threats lurking beyond the pumpkin patch. After about ten seconds of charging the spell she cast Field Hospital on Baird, healing him for a good amount and inducing his numerous wounds to close up just as a sinister black fog rolled in over the pumpkin patch and engulfed the pair in a cloud of choking fog.

After fifteen seconds the fog vanished, leaving behind a mist and the orange glow of a lantern drawing closer to them. Victoria thought that it was a Hosenka town guardsman coming to look for people in the patch and bring them to safety, but she noticed that the lantern bearer was a floating person in a black robe with a grinning pumpkin for a head. Great.

"Well, looks like break time's over." Victoria commented to Baird before putting her hands together and preparing a Beam Cannon spell. The pumpkin-headed thing laughed at her as the spell reached completion, but Victoria fired the first shot and hit it in the chest with the golden beam. It lurched back and glared at her in a way that instantly communicated anger despite its face being fixed in a perpetual smile. It drew its free hand back and cast a ball of inky black energy her way.

Victoria brought up a Caduceus Shield and anticipated that the projectile would simply disintegrate on impact, but to her surprise the projectile broke through the golden half-dome and hit her in the chest, knocking her back about eleven steps and making her fight to keep her balance. It laughed and darted over to her with claws coming down to rake her face, but the brunette ducked under the attack and came up swinging with a golden fist that released a Shockwave Punch that hit it point-blank. It laughed again and clawed at her face, but she stepped back and brought out her Submachine Gun for a powerful close-range attack.

It flung another energy ball and Victoria ducked, then it darted forward as she stood up and slammed her in the face with its lantern, the hot glass turning her face bright red and causing her to shut her left eye.

"That's it, asshole. No more games." Victoria snarked. She dodged under another claw swipe and popped up, jamming her Submachine Gun against its chest and using an Empty The Magazine to fire twenty rounds into it in about three seconds. It lurched back and Victoria dispelled the "empty" weapon to bring in a personal favorite, her Light Machine Gun.

The angry brunette aimed the bulky weapon at its chest and fired a Five-Round Burst that it dodged by veering left while laughing at her. It rushed straight for her and swung its claws followed by a second lantern swing; both attacks were aimed at her face. She dodged the claws with a timely duck but was struck on the left side of the face with the lantern, receiving another burn and tumbling to the ground without her weapon.

The pumpkin laughed and floated towards her as she readied a Derringer spell. When it was ten paces away she fired and hit it to the right of its mouth. It bellowed in pain and rushed again with its claws extended and Victoria grabbed her Light Machine Gun and leveled it at its head. This was it.

Victoria held down the trigger and watched pumpkin flakes be torn off of its head as it ignored the rounds tearing into it and closed with her for one last-ditch attack. The pumpkin swung its lantern into the LMG barrel and she felt her weapon knocked out of her hand before it followed up with claws that tore into her left forearm.

Victoria dropped to her knees and powered another Beam Cannon while the pumpkin lurched back with the right side of its glass lantern broken and its face leaking vegetable matter. Her hands were shaking and her vision was blurry... its claws had to have been poisoned, but it did not matter. The one-eyed gunslinger aimed her shaking hands at its head and fired, scoring a hit between its eyes. It raised its hands to the sky and shrieked before vanishing, hopefully for good.

Victoria dispelled the LMG and stood up, healing herself with a Field Hospital spell that healed her facial wounds and her wounded left forearm. She then cast another to remove the poison from her body in case yet another enemy showed up. However, this time it felt like they were in the clear.

"Hey Baird, do you still want to pick a pumpkin or have you had enough fun for one night?" A weary Victoria asked him.

[Post Word Count: 984]
[Victoria's Word Count: 2,822/1,500]

I received OOC permission to heal Baird. Statistics for the healing are below.

Field Hospital:

Victoria's face was still hurting from being hit with the lantern wielded by that floating pumpkin thing, but her Field Hospital spell had healed the physical injury left from the impact, leaving only the burning. The burning sensation left from contact with the hot glass was a lot worse than the blunt force of being hit in the face with a glass lantern. Her left forearm was the site of a double dose of pain from being clawed and from the poison left in the wound, but her healing magic had removed the poison before it could do much worse than cause her vision to blur a bit. All in all the brunette had gotten off lightly compared to Baird and his shredded clothing.

Baird expressed an interest in picking a couple of pumpkins so that they did what they came out here to do, then pay a visit to one of the numerous spas that Hosenka was renowned for. He was a cheeky guy for suggesting a visit to the spa, but she had figured that the moment they had met at Silver Moon Inn so long ago. Victoria could not blame him for not wanting to leave empty-handed... after all the fighting that they had went through just to get to this point she too wanted a pumpkin, if only to say that she had picked one.

"Eh, why not? After all we went through, I want a pumpkin to take home. We'll grab those pumpkins, then we'll go to a spa." Victoria agreed with Baird's request, allowing him to touch her chin. Even though she had detested the green-haired musician for numerous reasons only months before, she had found herself able to have cordial interactions with him. Something about the situation felt strange and she could not put her finger on what it was. Whatever it was that made things feel strange, Victoria did not want to rock the boat unless she had to, so she would see how far things between them went.

[Post Word Count: 346]
[Victoria's Word Count: 3,168/1,500]