(Untitled)

[ofthedream]

WHO: Ysera and OPEN
WHERE: Central Park Reservoir
WHEN: Monday afternoon
WARNINGS: Piranha, ducks being eaten
SUMMARY: Chompey fish in Central park
FORMAT: Whatever

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[ofthedream]

Ysera's eyes were closed, as usual. But she was not so engrossed in ridding the lake of the unnatural fish to not be paying attention to those around her. She could sense very clearly the fantasy-laden musings and imaginings of those watching her. Many were frightened. But quite a few more were quite fascinated or enthralled to see a fantasy come to life - even in a City as filled with fantastic people as the City had come to be since the Porter began bringing in Imports.

It was certainly enlightening to have a clear view of what the mortals of this city might believe about her when a dreadful battle wasn't going on. So she was not unaware of a woman approaching with hopeful imaginings of Ysera being friendly. But it wasn't until Jaime spoke that Ysera turned her attention from the fish to the woman.

The massive dragon swung her head around on her long neck to regard Jaime with closed eyes. She shook her head a bit and rumbled deeply before replying.

"A good dragon."

But then she had to pause and hiss in annoyance as a piranha managed to work it's jaws into the less well armored bit of flesh between the base of her claws and her cuticles. She lifted one enormous clawed foreleg out of the water, liberally decorated with piranha clamped onto her scales, and inspected it for a moment. Then she snapped her leg out to smack (lightly for something so huge) hard enough against the paved trail around the edge of the reservoir to dislodge the fish into a flopping, snapping pile.

Ysera rumbled again and then smacked the bottom of her foot down onto the fish with a truly nasty squelching sound. "'Ware the fish."

[iamjaimesommers]

"I... will." Jaime jumped back about five feet as the dragon stomped the fish, grimacing at the squashed results.

"Can... can I help somehow?" She looked around, trying to see if there was maybe a net or something with which she could corral the fish. She stepped forward again, and a still flopping fish attempted a last-ditch desperate leap to bury itself in Jaime's leg--to find it was not nibbling on anything edible.

Jaime slapped the fish away with a squeal, harder than she'd intended, and it flew a good ways away, landing safely squashed and dead in a nearby copse of trees.

[ofthedream]

Ysera turned her head sharply at the squeal, dropping her enormous head down close to the human woman, the tip of her snout only a few meters away. "Are you injured?"

[iamjaimesommers]

Jaime shook her head. "No, fortunately most of me doesn't taste very good. It just startled me."

She looked up at the big dragon head, trying not to be thoroughly intimidated by the size of the creature (and somewhat failing). "Ah... I'm Jaime. What can I do to help here?"

[ofthedream]

Ysera adjusted her wings along her back as she regarded Jaime. She did not scent any blood from Jaime, even though it looked as though the piranha had bitten her.

"I am Ysera." She drew her head back, then, so as not to loom over Jaime. "If you have a weapon, you might see to dispatching the fish on land."

[iamjaimesommers]

"Hm." Jaime looked around. She figured the trick would be to round the flopping fish up first, rather than try to squash them all individually.

She looked around and saw some filter netting rolled up outside a maintenance shed. A fence was around the shed, but with spectators gawping at the piranha hunting dragon, one lowly lady leaping over a 10 foot fence was little to attract attention. She gathered up the netting and found a titanium pole, which she wove--using bionic speed and force where necessary--the netting into, bending the pole as she worked to make a giant net.

She began to run around the edge of the lake at about... oh, 20 miles an hour, scooping up the fish and gradually depositing them into a big pile. She held herself a bit oddly, holding the big makeshift net with her right arm while holding her left arm behind her back.

[ofthedream]

Ysera continued her efforts to scoop out and shake fish onto the shore, easily attracting most of the spectator's attention. However, she kept part of her attention on the woman whom had been eager to help. So while no one else may have noticed Jaime's bionic speed and strength, Ysera did, and found herself fairly curious. She could sense no magic flowing around the woman to account for her improbable abilities.

Watching Jaime's actions, Ysera rumbled thoughtfully before stepping closer to the shoreline, within 15 feet of the shore. As she did, she scooped up a handful of piranha and crushed them before letting the remains fall into the water close to the shore. The water around her ankles already frothed with frenzied fish. As the blood entered the water near the shore, the water foamed and churned with maddened fish.

"Jaime," she called, "Use your net to gather them up."

[iamjaimesommers]

"Gotcha!" Jaime changed course and aimed for the fish in the water, trying to scoop up as much as she could without losing her balance. She could handle the weight, but she was trying to do it one-armed, keeping her lovely fleshy blood-filled left arm out of the action as much as possible. She had no desire to lose the one natural limb she had left.

She scooped a net-full out, nearly slipping and falling on the slick shore as she did so. She managed to regain her balance and looked up sheepishly at the dragon. "I suppose having multiple legs has its uses, huh?"

She continued trying to scoop, being more careful of her footing.

[ofthedream]

Seeing Jaime slipping, Ysera reached out to catch the opposite side of the impromptu net to help lift and steady it.

Although she did not smile the way humans did, Jaime might get the impression she was smiling gently in response to Jaime's sheepish comment. "Perhaps we should work together? This net is much handier than my claws."

[iamjaimesommers]

"Thanks," Jaime breathed, grateful for the help.

"Sounds good, I'll follow your lead." As she worked with Ysera, she commented, "You know, what we really need to do is find a way to kill the eggs. Or there'll be more soon enough. Trouble is, how do we do that without hurting the stuff that's supposed to be living in the reservoir?"

[ofthedream]

Ysera rumbled thoughtfully as she helped dump a netful of piranha into a depression in the grassy shore. "The difficulty is in finding their nesting areas. I would not be willing to risk someone's life in diving into the water to find out."

[iamjaimesommers]

Jaime frowned. "Ooh, yeah, that is a problem. They may not like the taste of my legs but unfortunately that... ah, 'power' doesn't extend to my whole body. We gotta find somebody, like, made of plastic or something. Or a way to keep them from scenting the blood at least."

Jaime kicked a piranha which had leapt away from the depression back into the ditch. "You know, I had to deal with crazed hungry sharks once. I think in a way these are worse."

[ofthedream]

Though Ysera did not know what the term 'plastic' referred to, she understood Jaime's meaning. "Unfortunately, I do not know of any golems, mages, or shamans in the City that we might prevail upon." She tilted her head to eye the piled piranha. "At least these are not terribly large."

"Do stand back a moment." With that warning, Ysera swung her head over the pile of fish. Her jaws gaped wide as she spat a very large glob of green mucus that quickly spread over the pile of fish... and ate its way through them down to the bare dirt as the acid did it's work.

[iamjaimesommers]

Jaime had to look away, swallowing back bile looking at the acid spit. "Ah... sorry... I'm sure that's handy."

"Mages or shamans, huh? So you're really from a whole other world?" She steadied herself and went back to grabbing one end of the net to take care of straggling piranhas. "I mean... I don't know, you look kinda like a Chinese dragon, I wasn't sure... That's a compliment, by the way, Chinese dragons are great creatures of legend here."

[ofthedream]

Not to worry, Jaime, she's not offended.

"Indeed. I am from a world called Azeroth." She tilted her head, her interest piqued, and lowered her head closer to Jaime's level. "This world once had dragons?" Perhaps she wasn't wholly alone of dragonkind here.

[iamjaimesommers]

"Well, there's certainly a lot of stories about them. From thousands of years ago, mind, but the interesting thing is they show up in legends from entirely different cultures from different parts of the world. Which makes you think--there's gotta be a reason for that, right?" She shrugged. "I mean, I have to say, no offense, I generally thought of dragons as imaginary myself, but anything's possible right? I've met aliens and Bigfoot, why can't there have been dragons here?" She was getting to her more talkative self as a means of distracting herself from the more gruesome parts of the cleanup they were doing, but still continued to help scoop up fish.