Act the Third: Arthropod Time!

TheCuriousSeed

And yes, we are still in The Wilderness.



Do Whatever a Spider Needs Done

~The music challenges were loads of fun for Strawberry, but when it came time for the spiders…

~"EEEEEEEEEEE!" squealed Foxglove.

~"What a terrible way to greet a spider," said Jessie.

~"But it's so creepy!"

~"Looks like she needs help to not only get out of her web, but to repair said web, hide from a huge toad and warm up because the cold made her sick," said Daylily. "Oh, and she's also quite nervous because that cane toad is very poisonous. Cane toads are actually pretty toxic to humans, so best we avoid touching the toad too."

~"Why can't we touch this toad?" asked Jessie. "I've touched many a toad before, but never suffered any ill effects."

~"I wouldn't chance touching him," warned Heidi. "His toxins are very strong even for a cane toad."

~"As loath as I am to do this," said Daylily. "We have to shoo him away with water."

~Daylily loved animals so much she hated having to injure even an apex predator, but she knew that this toad wasn't going to leave easily even with Animal Scouts asking him politely to please depart. Holly, however…

~"Excuse me, Mr. Cane Toad? Could you please hop away from this spider? She doesn't want to come into contact with your poisons and neither do we."

~The cane toad refused because he was hungry for that spider.

~"Any other ideas?" asked Tansy.

~"Toads are amphibians, so amphibians, even when grown up, still need water," said Elva. "What if we splashed the toad with water? He'd surely leave then."

~"But where are we going to find enough water to shoo him away?"

~"I have some water here," said Pearl, pointing to her water doppelgänger.

~"Great!" said Heidi, taking the entire doppelgänger and launching her at the toad, splashing the toad away from the spider, but knocking the spider off her web too!

~"HEIDI!" exclaimed the other Scouts.

~"I had to! Besides, that toad's headed back to his crew of toads as we speak!"

~"Technically, toads congregate in a knot," explained Daylily.

~"At least the spider's in no danger of being eaten anymore!"

~"But she can't swim!" exclaimed Elva.

~"Neither can we because, wings," Quarry pointed out.

~"You're not helping!"

~"Oh, for the love of…" said Hickory as she wicked away the water from the spider and what little remained of her web. "Well, at least that splash also freed her from her web, but now we need to help her rebuild said web, build a new hiding place, warm her up and heal her before she gets any sicker."

~As the fairies and Quarry went about with the repairs, Heidi heard some other predators coming, but thankfully these predators didn't have an appetite for fairies. Wasps were fast approaching.

~"We gotta hide!" cried Heidi. "Wasps!"

~But Daylily knew these wasps weren't aiming for the fairies or the spider, they were aiming for something else… something that smelt almost like an Ever Tree before maturity, except instead of rotten tomatoes and sour milk, it smelt closer to spoiling mincemeat, which no Neverfairy can stand the sight, smell or taste of, tomatoes coated in mold, dairy gone so sour it was coated in nasty spots of mold, spoilt broccoli, long-neglected flowers with almost no petals left and a hint of a long-unwashed foot that had seen lots of adventures… at least, to her. To the wasps, however, it smelt even better than an immature Ever Tree.

~What is with these wasps and their affinity for stuff that smells so rotten? Daylily thought. At least the ones that found the Ever Tree grown so long ago by Lily had right healthy olfactory nerves on their antennae, the closest they have to noses, but this particular swarm… something is really off.

~As the other fairies and Quarry gathered some leaves to hide the spider, helped said spider fix her web and gave her some spider medicine to help her feel better, they also calmed her by sprinkling Pixie Dust on her and the Light Talents shone some light on her until she was comfortable warm. Daylily, however, couldn't help but wonder about those…

~"Poor wasps," she said. "I think they have the Olfactory Scramble Pox in their antennae because they're flying towards a really rotten-smelling… something."

~"Daylily, don't!" warned Heidi. "Not even an Animal Scout as skilled as you can placate those wasps without getting hurt!"

~"I've dealt with wasps before and escaped safely."

~"Well, I'm not letting you do this!"

~But Daylily had to.

~"Like I said," began Heidi. "I'm not letting her do this alone!"

~Heidi flew after Daylily and Holly and Phoebe followed because they didn't want to lose their chief Animal Scout to a wasp sting. Ever.

The Scouts and the Wasps

~Daylily flew as fast as she could towards the wasps, but it wasn't easy even with her larger wings. The nearer she drew to the wasps, the worse it smelt than an immature Ever Tree (mature Ever Trees have a much sweeter smell). She managed to stop a wasps, the only male wasps in the swarm, and directed him away from his cohorts. She then realised what smelt so horrible to almost all else she knew, but so good to these particular wasps: a brand new flower that was a mix of a titan arum, a rafflesia, a smooth herbaceous greenbrier, a bamboo vine, a stapelia, a Bulbophyllum beccarii, a winged calabash and a Hydnora triceps. A new Garder had found this area of the Wilderness gauntlet by accident and accidentally grew said hybrid when he was trying to grow a pretty variety of flowers! His name was Ranger Wrinklevine and this was the first ever flower he'd grown!

~"So that's why the weird stench," said Daylily in Wasps to this wasp drone.

~"Yes, and we are the only ones that've found it," answered the wasp. "Doesn't it smell heavenly?"

~"Not to me it doesn't, but…"

~Another swarm of wasps came by, but they all doubled back upon reaching that smell because they knew it smelt absolutely horrid!

~"You might want to get your olfaction nerves checked," Daylily told the wasp. "Because that plant ahead smells like a trap."

~But as Daylily and the swarm flew closer, Daylily had to shield her nose and mouth lest she gag from that disgusting stench and indeed the flower was a wasp trap!

~"Oh my goodness!" cried Daylily, grabbing a few leaves to make a protective mask for her face. "That huge flower will off with all those wasps and bees and other Hymenopteridae!"

~Indeed Ranger hadn't meant to grow such a flower that would attract Hymenopteridae only to see them once and for all done, but he was really trying to grow some pretty flowers. Butterflies, moths, bees, sawflies, you name it, a lot of Hymenopteridae flocked to this new flower… but most were deterred by the stench. A new Healer named Kernal Wrinklevine (the Wrinklevines were brothers) specialised in healing arthropods. Daylily landed close by as did the affected wasps, followed by…

~"Daylily, what in Neverland possessed you to do such a treacherous thing like that?!" cried Heidi. "Those wasps could've offed with you with just one sting!"

~"But the wasp I talked to can't sting because he's a drone," explained Daylily. "The only wasp drone affected with the Olfactory Scramble Pox. He and his female cohorts, the workers, all flocked here thanks to this flower."

~The flower smelt absolutely hideous and looked almost as hideous, but as more and more Hymenopteridae neared this flower, roughly four affected per 59 healthy, Kernal gathered some pollen from a Hydnora mixed with the nectar of a Sternbergia and a bit of crushed tea leaf and honeysuckle juice, he laid out the cure before each onto a special leaf grown by his other brothers Decker and Heron Wrinklevine, Forest and Flower Talents, respectively. With every last Hymenopterid cured, the flower closed, ceasing its noxious smell, folded, went back into the ground and every last scent nerve cured.

~"Finally!" exclaimed Holly. "Now we can finish our quest!"

~After thanking the quadruplets, the four Scouts returned to their challenges in the Wilderness gauntlet. With spider and wasps taken care of, what could possibly go wrong now?

Yes indeed, what could possibly go wrong? Stay tuned to find out!