It was several weeks later. A new moon hung in the air on a cold night. Francisco slept restlessly next to his wife. So many things had gone wrong. That Robert bastard had disappeared along with Mikhail and their chance at domesticating pokégirls. Salvador… was dead; nothing could be done about that. The town was restless. Morale was abysmal. Nothing was going right.
Everything happened at once. A form crashed through the upper story window of his home showering him and his wife with shards of glass. A raptor-like pokégirl took his head in strong, dexterous digits and snapped his neck like she was twisting a cap off of a bottle. His wife screamed helplessly. The pokégirl then took off with the corpse of Francisco.
The town was in a panic. As far as they knew, they had lost two beloved people to ferals, first Salvador and his brother Francisco. Times were uncertain. Everyone was seeing ferals around every corner and trigger happy idiots were shooting their own livestock at times. Nothing was going right for them, it seemed. It was all falling apart.
Back at the camp, Charles smiled in bittersweet victory. On one hand, Francisco deserved a lot worse than had happened to him. On the other, the bastard was gone and he would poison people’s hearts and minds no more. Now that that pesky little detail had been taken care of, it was time to move onto bigger and better things.
Charles was pulled out of his musings by an excitable young man with the unfortunate curse of having his pokégirl heritage show a bit too much, a pair of horns sprouted from the side of his skull and curved forward like a bovine’s; he had recently filed them down to sharp points and strung sharp objects to them to keep people from getting a hold on them. “Yes? What is it?” Charles asked indulgently.
The excitable young man, couldn’t be more than fourteen, said: “We did it; we did it!”
Charles looked up at the pitched roof of the long house and the stabilizing beams and rafters supporting its large form. Windows with shutters and coverings made crudely tanned animal leather to substitute for glass when the elements needed to be kept out let light in from the outside, illuminating the interior of the large, wooden structure. No furnishings were available other than crude stone fireplaces and chimneys slathered with fire retardants built into the walls .
For now there was plenty of room to spread out. Everyone was very happy and felt accomplished, more than accomplished. Many of them were feeling freedom for the first time in a long time. It was a time of celebration. Many of the men were openly dancing with their pokégirls. Others were in the semi-secluded corners of the longhouse under some crude blankets with their pokégirls. Charles looked back up at the ceiling and the primitive but tenacious construction that produced it. Morale was high, and soon it would be time to plant the first crops. They would be on their feet soon and able to expand, able to begin.
Charles wiped the sweat from his brow as he sheathed his small sling blade through a loop on a rope belt holding up his tattered pants. He was shirtless as he worked. It was too hot for anything else the southern half of the aptly name Tropic League truly did become hot and humid during the vast majority of the year. The only island where it was ever cold for any length of time was Appalachia and that was because of its mountainous terrain. Here though, on Naranja, the growing season was setting in, and you could cut the air with a sharp enough blade.
Sewing seed by hand was a task most underestimated. In the time before Sukebe, hundreds of acres of land could be seeded or harvested in a single day by one man and a big enough machine. In the days since society’s fall, things were much tougher. Most farms relied on manual labor, pokégirl labor if you were lucky enough to be in a situation where you could freely acquire them. Most people forget that in the olden days before industrialization truly took off, ninety percent of a man’s labor was to make sure he could feed himself. Charles’s little group of friends, it was a much more hands-on task. Their pokégirls were feral and had no training save for a few exceptions like Yvette and the Elf, so they must be taught how to do so, shown. In addition to the grueling physical labor, everyone had to keep a watchful eye on the pokégirls to make sure that they were doing their job correctly or doing it at all.
Occasionally, one of the newly tamed ‘girls, those that used to be feral, would try to buck the system, disobey. Like a child, they would need to be punished to show them the error of their ways. Their background and life as a feral didn’t really open them to any other avenues of repercussion or reasoning since it is unlikely that they would understand. Still, the ‘girls that remained obedient had the raw force at their disposal to slap the shirking and disobeying ‘girls back down. Things smoothed out later and soon everything was a well oiled machine. More ‘girls were captured including, much to Charles’s delight, more teleport capable ‘girls who were much easier to catch when they were being hunted by psychic types like Liz.
The had been planted and were already starting to visibly grow because of the tireless efforts of the Elf and her innate abilities. Over the course of weeks, the land showed growth. Mikhail with the help of his elf organized groups of men and their pokégirls to gather all sorts of natural fertilizers to rejuvenate the soil. Apparently the Elf breed’s ability to accelerate plant growth drained the local soil of all the nutrients at an exponential rate- for obvious reasons. The fertilizers, though, greatly impressed Charles in their ability to accelerate the plant growth so visibly in tandem with the Elf’s abilities. She still repeatedly warned that the plants would die very quickly, but in the face of their survival it seemed trivial to most of the men.
Charles asked her to write her knowledge of agriculture down as she finds the time, but sadly she seemed to be illiterate. Charles asked Mikhail to write for her… but it turns out running for your life for most of your childhood makes it difficult to complete the path to literacy. In fact, it seemed as if those who could read had only an elementary grasp of the written word. It came as a bit of a shock to Charles; he was far too used to being surrounded by text and the generations of acquired wisdom contained within. When he thought about it realistically however it only made sense that it was this way what with education taking place behind closed doors amongst those who could afford it or had the background to pass their own knowledge on to their kin. It would have to remain a project for another time.
Although, it gave him an idea… a devious one. The Molyneux trained him for whatever reason. Nothing was stopping him from imparting some of the more practical aspects of that knowledge and skill, at least those applicable to what he needed done. He’d have to think of a feasible way he could impart that, a lesson plan. It would take a while, but why not? It’s not like it could hurt him any.
It was a peaceful evening and everyone was covered in sweat and dirt. Word was passed around about taking the time to visit a river. It was then that Charles suggested that they construct barrels and heat the water with hot stones. A round of cheers went up to that and plans for another day were made. Everything would have to wait for a while. He knew the Molyneux family would have feelers out for him, but he was probably safe for now. No one with any regular contact with society had even seen him since he went overboard. Hell, the family had probably stuck him on the backburner just because of the likelihood that he was dead. He had the luxury of biding his time even if it was in such primitive conditions.