Bone Village ( Quest Line ) ( Completed )

Nothing so ominous as being contracted to dig for bones. Really, he hadn't really thought about it - he was just passing through Cetra when the opportunity for a bit of extra money popped in. It took a little convincing, because the money seemed trivial at best... but honestly, it would be nice to do a little work that didn't involve getting him possibly ambushed, stabbed, or set on fire.

So the Bone Village was his next location.

He paid half attention to the person explaining the process of excavation, and how to do it without destroying the bones they were hunting for - exercise extreme caution, use a little hand brush, call over someone...

Blah!

If he could hunt Spheres, he could dig holes in the dirt, with little training involved. He was more interested in getting into the actual digging part of the adventure - the lecture wasn't particularly interesting, and it was in that moment he realized why he liked taking the jobs with danger and bullets. Because that stuff was exciting. No amount of dirt-digging would be as exciting.

He was almost about to just sneak off, when they handed out the equipment, and told them they could go ahead and get to work.

Balls. Too late to back out.

Rubbing the back of his head uncertainly, he headed over to his assigned quadrant, towing his assigned tools, vaguely aware that they were at least going to pay for his lunch.

It took two hours for him to find anything out of the ordinary - a smooth bone, looking not entirely bone-like, but they'd told them that if the bones had been buried long enough, they wouldn't. Excitement began to build - the thought of unearthing something from ancient Gaia actually did have something of an appeal to it. Part of the reason he was a Sphere Hunter was to find parts of history that had been hidden, and give those parts to the people of today. After all, not all Spheres were Memory spheres - in fact, most were not.

He got out his little brush, and began cleaning away bits of detritus and dirt, using his tiny little scraper to dislodge particularly hard earth. He spent forty-five minutes freeing the thing, until he was able to successfully remove it from the ground. A smile tugged at his face, as he pulled himself out of his little hole-in-the-ground, and triumphantly, he tugged his find up and with him.

Lugging the ( surprisingly heavy ) object with him back to main camp, he set it on a table for inspection.

His find was met with looks of surprise from many of the regular archaeologists there - glancing at him, and back to the find.

Two of them approached him, one going so far as to wrap a hand around his shoulder. "Okay, kid. You did good, finding this. There's just a small problem." Matt wanted to point out he wasn't really a kid - but then again, compared to the old hats who were as old as the dirt they were liberating, he probably was.

"What's that?" He asked, uncertainly. Had he done the wrong thing bringing it here?

"Well..." The two looked at each other, before turning back to him. "It's a rock."

Matt looked taken aback. "Wait, what?" His voice was definitely put off - he hadn't really meant to be rock excavating. Especially since he was looking for freaking bones. "It can't be a rock - I found it, and it's all smooth, and..."

The one who was addressing him lifted a placating hand. "No no, don't worry. It's not a bad thing, exactly. It's why we ask people to call for one of us before spending time excavating stones. You have to understand, though, that even if you find nothing, that's not a problem - it helps us narrow down the search area. You haven't... failed, just helped in a different way."

Matt felt his face redden, a little bit. The excitement he'd had building - the pride at his discover - it shriveled up and died in one fell swoop. He'd take monsters and fiends any day, over dirt and the possibility of looking like a giant idiot. The words meant to calm him down had the opposite effect - but he wasn't going to let that show. He kind of wished he'd worn his mask, now.

"Well. Uh. I'm going to go get back to work. Sorry about the rock." He said, giving them a little wave, before returning to his area, a defeated look planted firmly on his face. Well, at least no one had seen him screw up - no one important, at least.

Arriving back in his location, he slumped forward into the dirt, rubbing his chin gently. He leaned against his shovel, looking at the small dirt face that had emerged. Really - this was silly. Whoever heard of excavating in a manner that was as slow as this? He poked his head out of his hole, and glanced around, trying to spot anyone like a foreman or... well, anyone who knew what they were doing.

He tossed his shovel to the side, and rubbed his hands together, through his gloves. After a few seconds, he closed his eyes, and shifted his memories around, until he was holding his casting rod in hand. Licking his lips, he pointed the rod at the dirt, and focused on the edge of it.

"Aero!" He whispered, forcefully, channeling the latent mana in his body to drive wind into a column at the dirt. The earth responded in kind, spitting up stone, larger chunks of grime. He continued this - putting effort in blasting away dirt, rather than digging in a slow and arduous method. Now, he wasn't going to use his dynamite technique, but he wasn't going to punk out and use manual labor to exhume things.

Whereas it had taken him two hours before, to get anywhere, it took only forty-five minutes for him to find anything of use. He might have wind-scoured it a little bit... but that wasn't too big a deal. Or it shouldn't be - not really. Worse things had no doubt happened.

Picking himself back up, this time he did call for one of the senior archaeologists to come over and poke around his discovery. It had a different texture than the rock before, so he was hoping that this time, he wouldn't have called someone over for nothing.

He didn't realize the problem until wild, angry eyes looked up at him.

"You! You used magic, didn't you?! We told you..." Matt took a step back, trying to decide whether the foam at the corner of the old man's mouth was a bad thing. "We told you to use the tools! That magic was too volatile. You... you..."

Matt just looked stunned.

"Look, old man, after the rock thing, I just thought it'd be better to get something done a little quicker, to make up for lost time! It's not that bad! I didn't use fire, I just kind of used wind to blow dirt away. It's not like I was going to hurt the bones, okay? It's fine." Exasperated, Matt just shook his head a couple of times. Crazy old people apparently had some really wonky priorities. After all, Matt had just delivered a bone ( or at least, what he'd hoped was a bone. ) The least the guy could do was thank him for finding it.

"You imbecile! You... you... you philistine! How could you..."

He was fairly certain if the guy had guards, he'd be calling them now. Wait, were there guards?

"By scouring away the topmost layer of bone, you may very well have compromised everything we were working for, here! how could you be so bold as to undermine us? We hired you to do a job--"

Matt crossed his arms over his chest, and felt his more Sphere Hunter-y side showing up. "Yeah. To find bones. I found a bone. Your methods weren't working. This got a bone for us in half the time it took to unearth the rock. So listen here. If you don't like what I've done, you can pay me for the bone I did find, and I'll get out of your hair. Otherwise, help me get the stupid bone out and I'll keep digging."

The other man only got more angry as Matt countered his tirade, clearly uncaring about whatever the old man was feeling.

"No. No no no. You will not lay one finger on this bone. Go back to the main tent, get your pay, and never come back to this dig site again!"

Matt rolled his eyes, and shrugged. "Whatever." He didn't call the man an old dick under his breath like he wanted to - so he could at least be proud of that. Making his way back to the main tent, he popped his head in.

"I found a bone, but the old guy didn't like the way I did it. He told me to collect my pay and get out, never to return." He waved his hand over-dramatically. "Does he do that sort of thing often?"

The younger woman ( still older than Matt, but younger than the old man ) smiled and nodded a little. "At least once a week. Give me just a minute." She stood up, and went around to some back area. How a tent had a back area was beyond him, but she vanished nonetheless - returning several minutes later with a small bag.

It was lighter than he'd like, but... well, his life hadn't been in danger. There was that, at least.

( WC - 1644 )

Locked