After the previous evening's excitement, we decided the day was best spent being tourists. The morning's paper had news of befouled waters and dead animals, but I largely ignored it as typical American corporate greed. I met up with Sophie and Tiernan to see the sites. I only wish I remembered doing so and seeing the sites. My phone is full of great pictures of the Mormon temple grounds, Capitol building, some place called suicide rock and Antelope Island. My memories end with reading the paper and walking to the base gates for pick up. They start up again in a bar with only one beer in front of me.
We all started tracking back through our phone records to determine the events of the day. Tiernan noticed that there was an unnatural bird in one of my pictures. According to what he knew of it; it should be extinct as Hercules was supposed to have wiped them out, they are unnaturally destructive and are probably the cause of the pollution and dead animals, and they will attack anyone or anything in their territories. Again, so much for a normal day. Anything capable of causing such a lapse in us and that is as destructive as the legends paint this thing needs to be destroyed. We resolved to track it down the next day.
We drove back out to Antelope Island and tracked for it. We had to resort to renting a boat, as it wasn't on the main island. Tiernan decided that we needed a much fancier boat than would be my choice. Sophie's talking dog, Izzy, helped us track to a nest with one egg. After waiting to see if it would return to it's nest with no results, we destroyed the egg and went in search of the creature itself.
Izzy managed to scent us to where I spotted not only one, but three of the things. Rather than rush up on them, I decided that firing from range would be the best option. All three of us got shots in and managed to kill one and incapacitate the others before they reached the boat. Sophie decapitated the two that weren't killed right off. Their smell was foul enough to make my stomach a little uneasy, but Tiernan doesn't appear to have too strong a stomach. He became ill and Sophie decided to start describing the smell of charred human flesh to him just to mock his lack of constitution. By either of our standard, the poor fellow is a greenhorn.
Interesting discoveries include the fact that all I have to do is think about what firearm I want and my weapon becomes it, I tried a non-firearm once and it didn't change at all. I also had a very unpleasant chat with Tiernan and Sophie. Apparently Tiernan has been doing a lot of research. It seems that there is this quality called Fate that surrounds those of us with our parentage. This Fate means that we really are magnates for the odd. If Sophie gets called to a fire, she will discover that a bored fire elemental set it. If I go on a mission against a typical terrorist foe, I will discover a Djinn. If there is going to be something extraordinarily odd, we are the types of people drawn to it or it is drawn to. This means that any normal people who are with us will be in more danger than if they weren't with us. The others have hero stories to follow. Apparently Ra's culture doesn't have heroes. It has their deities and prized intellectuals.
Oh Hashem... please guide me in how I am to approach my superiors with this? I shall endeavor to be as Job under this test.
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