The Angel Who Hunted Turkey

It was going to be a team effort to try and coordinate with the town’s people to get things right. We had to somehow collect food, make shelter…it was shaping up to be a very resourceful time.

We all agreed that food was going to be the first most important thing.

“Where are we gonna get enough food for all these people?” Indena asked.

A week’s worth of meals weren't going to be cheap to have shipped here. I mean, Marek was rich as a double chocolate cake, but it would take a while too.

Yamin was deep into her book, jotting down ideas and taking notes on the surrounding area. I’m not even sure she was paying attention to the conversation.

“Yamin, do you have any ideas?” I roped her in.

“Huh?” she looked startled, then tapped her pen to her chin. “Oh! What were we talking about?”

“Seriously?” Indena barked. “Pay attention!”

Indena was getting a little worried, I could tell by how pushy she was being.

“Sorry!” Yamin said, halfheartedly. “Look, I’m trying to figure out a plan for getting all the stuff we need.”

She showcased the notes she’d been jotting down. The first few lines were just scribbles about the town and the desert itself, then about the population here...then what came next was impressive math on her part.

She figured if we wanted to get enough food for the few thousand people who lived here, we'd have to do something interesting...

“You want us to go hunting monsters?” Marek questioned.

"Yeah...I know. Weird from a vegan like me, right? But this is an emergency..."

She explained that this area had a monster known as a Pavan. A big thing that looked a lot like a turkey, but with a big crest of feathers and razor sharp talons. Supposedly tasted pretty good too. Those were the birds I spotted while we were landing, I'm sure of it!

If it wasn’t so dangerous, the people of this village probably would have went out to gather them for food, but that’s not very simple when your snowed in a church without much protection from the cold.

“Blue Boy,” Indena called out to Marek. “Ain’t it you who said your dad used to go hunting with you?”

“Well, yes.” Marek nodded. “But more people would have to help if we want to feed everyone.”

Monster hunting sounded kinda fun. It would also give me an excuse to grind out some Xp to level up.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention something. My computer systems are set up like an RPG. Somehow real life is translated into video game values. It makes getting stronger a lot of fun!

“I can help!” I waved my hands excitedly. “Uncle, is it okay if I go with Marek to hunt?”

“Sounds good.” Uncle nodded. He was always pretty supportive about letting me do stuff like that. To be fair, some monsters weren’t really a big threat to me. “Just watch over each other. In the meantime, I’ll take a look at the power grid. Indena, Yamin, you two can keep melting the snow around town.”

“I'll be the one melting the snow.” Indena clarified. “Sparkle Face over here will just keep me company so I don’t get too angry.”

“You, angery? Never...” Yamin joked.

A teen boy who’d been standing outside the door ran in with a mix of worry and anger, stepping right up to the mayor of the town. “Can we go hunting together too, papa?”

“No no…there’s no time for that.” The mayor shook his head. “I need you to keep watch over your siblings while I’m here.”

“I…” His son looked really angry, then he stormed back outside in a fit of frustration.

“What’s this all about?” Uncle asked.

“He’s hitting that age where he stops listening to me.” The mayor said. “I’ve just been giving him some space to calm down whenever he gets in that mood. I know he doesn’t like working through this, but we all have a part to play.”

Uncle gave me a quick look, communicating that he wasn't sure that's what was going on.

I agreed…it didn’t really seem like he was rebelling against parental authority. From one kid to another, it sounded like he just wanted to spend time with his dad. I know that feeling all too well because daddy…

Well, never mind. I don’t want to think about that on Christmas.

~☆☆☆~

Okay! So Marek had a hunting license and I was considered the highest military authority in all the land. We didn’t have a problem borrowing a rifle and some gear from the local guard outpost.

Uncle was very clear on me not using a gun. It was probably because a seven year old shouldn’t be using one in general. Some of those rifles were bigger then I was.

Since the snow was so high up, we couldn’t take a vehicle, so we went on foot. Well, he was on foot. I took to the skies on my wings to do some scouting for any large groups of Pavan birds.

Despite most of this land being desert, there were forests here and there, even with some evergreen trees covered in snow. An Unusually festive sight, if I might say.

A few minutes into my high fly scouting, I spotted at least two dozen of those monster birds, all scattered around and fluffing their feathers up for warmth.

I flew back to Marek, and we both snuck up on their position, keeping hidden in some brush.

“Okay, I’ll get the ones on the left.” I said, spawning my crystal spear.

“Nah ah ah…” he put pressure on my shoulder and kept me from standing up. “We are hunting. There’s an art to this.”

“An art?” I put a finger to my lips and tilted my head. How was hunting an art? I figured it would be more like a sport.

“Monsters, animals…there both part of nature. If we hunt them, we have to choose carefully. Or we may risk destroying the echo system.”

“Oh…” I nodded. “Wouldn’t not hunting be better overall for the echo system?”

“No. Well, maybe. But sometimes populations of animals get to large, they need to be thinned out a little or they might run into problems like sickness or overgrazing. And if we don’t hunt, people don’t eat. Does that make sense?”

Yeah, I guess it did make sense. Hunting wasn’t just a sport, but had a conservation aspect to it too.

If you over hunt, then nature will go out of balance. But if you do it just right, then you can actually help keep the numbers of animals at a healthy level, as well as keep your bellies warm and filled.

I honestly expected all this out of the animal lover that Yamin was, but she’d probably be against hunting all together. I kinda used to be too, but I never imagined that even monsters deserved to be protected sometimes. They could get pretty scary and violent when they wanted to be.

I guess that’s the beautiful part about nature. Sometimes it was pretty, sometimes it was ugly. It didn’t discriminate, it just wanted life to keep going anyway it could.

“So, how do we do this then?”

Marek held up his rifle, looking over each of the monsters.

“You see that one?” He pointed out a particularly skinny one. “He’s no good. No meat on him.”

“What about that one?” I pointed to a really strong looking one. Probably had a lot of meat in those muscles!

“Not him either. He doesn’t have any fat.”

“Oh…so were trying to find a fat one?”

Marek almost burst into laughter, but he had to keep quiet or he’d startle the birds.

“Not exactly. You want to find one who has a good mix of muscle and fat. It will have plenty of meat, and fat too.”

Wow, this hunting stuff was pretty complicated, wasn’t it?

“How can you tell what’s a good one or not?” I wondered if I could tune my sensors to detect the ratios we were looking for.

His hand pointed to one that was plucking at the snow covered ground a little away from all the rest. “She’s a beauty, you think?”

She looked like all the others, just a little smaller. But if he said she was a good one, I catalogued that info and gracefully flew up into the air.

My eyes scanned all across the area, picking up on at least fifteen that matched the parameters of that particular bird.

-IFF tags active!-

-Plump Pavan’s tagged; Foe-

Each of the birds we were going after now had a red outline around them. So hunting would be easy to keep track of.

“Marek…” I whispered as I slowly came back down. “I spotted fifteen of them around here just like her. And there are also a bunch more that come within a 10% margin of her size.”

“Hold on…” he sounded a little confused. “We need to remember not to hunt them all.”

“I know.” I nodded. “I made sure to adjust the ratios for that. That’s why I only pointed out fifteen of them.”

There were hundreds within a kilometer of us, so fifteen, give or take a few, wouldn’t be too bad. I'm sure we could probably even get more, and we'd need it to feed thousands.

Marek was pretty impressed, but a bit dumbfounded too.

“Alright…” He shrugged, taking aim. “One last thing before we take this life…shoot to kill. Don’t make the creature suffer more than it has to.”

“Got it.”

It was quiet while his eye’s glued to the Pavan.

BANG!

Direct hit! It went down! All the others scattered around and ran deeper into the foliage.

“Alright, my turn!” I flew in, chasing another girl down. My spear jammed right into her, taking her out quick and effortlessly! “Got one!” I smiled back at Marek, holding the monster bird up by the legs.

“Bien joué!” Marek threw a fist in the air. “Good hit! Too bad I don’t have a camera…”