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[b]”Didn’t I just post?”[/b]

[color=888888]— Nuncio[/color]
[hider=Nuncio’s stats]
[b]Age: 24/12 | Gender: Male/Male | Beast
Anatomy Doll | Regeneration | Nu
Hammerspace Handbag, Mystic artifact, Training, Masculinity, Absolute direction
Retrieval, Subtle, Supplier, Mental Link | Clueless, Alien Mind, Formless[/b]

STR: 04 | AGI: 04 |  VIT: 04 | MAG: 03 | LCK: 04

STR: 05 | AGI: 05 |  VIT: 09 | MAG: 20 | LCK: 07
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Despite the frighting pace that all the political intrigue was unfolding at, Nuncio found the time to reflect on [i]last weeks[/i] posts.

What had bothered Nuncio about the exchange between Dina and Penny was that it made him realize how frail leadership was around here. Yes, Nuncio had perhaps whipped the crowd into a frenzy, and it was probably a good thing Dina was around to quell things for the moment. But Dina had made it clear that she wanted Penny’s throne. Both the Mint and Beacon seemed to be having difficulty running their respective organizations without them erupting into a mutiny. Perhaps magical girls were too volatile to work along side each other. The ones that could were few and far between, which was all the more reason to stick to a small group. Regardless, things were at least going his way. He needed to talk to Amaryllis about this at some point. Preferably when Sammy wasn’t around to get jealous. 

[@twave]

Nuncio didn’t get far into the crowd when a doll-like girl tugged at his pants leg, asking a simple question with an answer he didn’t feel like explaining. There was also the matter that Sammy could be anywhere now, and she generally frowned on him having positive interactions with other girls. 

Still…

The plushy maker was taken back by the girl’s physique. She looked just like a doll, and was almost too small to be a real magical girl. Was it a minion of some sort? He doubted it. If only because in his dealings, such creatures weren’t capable of speaking, being curious, or anything of the sort.

[b]”Short version, Penny’s breakin’ ties with Beacon.”[/b] A crowd of people was a [i]horrible[/i] place to have a discussion. Even if the monster girls were starting to calm down, many were being as loud and obnoxious as they possibly could. [b]”You’ll get crushed down there. Here…”[/b] Nuncio picked up the doll and set her on Rosa’s back. The tiger groaned in response, but did little to protest her master’s wishes.

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[b]“Noble dark ant epiphany.”[/b]

[color=888888]— Aighorost[/color]
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One of my responsibilities at work is to water the plants. I water them every day I am there, I give them fertilizer, I care for them. The water in our area is pretty bad, so we need to collect rain water to water the plants. This means there are several plastic containers out back that I use to fill watering cans. This water attracts mosquitoes and frogs, but I want to tell you about the time I caught some ants trying to get a drink.

First I knocked them into the bucket with a splash of water. Then I lowered a jug below the water’s surface. When the water surged into the empty jug, the ants followed suit. With less than a square inch of air left in the bottle, I put a cap on it and set the jug out in the sun. It was a “clear” plastic jug, so it did nothing to hold out the summer sun. This was the end of my work week, so I did not come back for several days. I put the ants out of my mind, sure that if they didn’t drown, they would boil.

When I did come back, I waited until lunch time to check up on the little bastards. To my surprise, a few of them were still moving. They had bounded themselves together in a giant spinning ant ball, with roughly half of them below the water, and half of them above. I poured them all out, and they landed on the hot pavement in a big blob. One by one, they frantically sputtered away from their torturer. But I wasn’t interested in them anymore. Not the live ones at least. I was eagerly waiting to see how many I had killed. The ball of ants got smaller and smaller, and do you know there wasn’t a single ant corpse?

So for three days, thirty-something ants managed to survive in a bottle of stagnant rainwater, while the sun threatened to cook them like an egg, and with a limited amount of oxygen. Ants are known to be good swimmers, and carpenter ants can survive being drowned for 14 days straight. But most ants can only survive 24 hours, and that’s in ideal conditions like colder water temperatures. They can slow their metabolism so that they take twenty times less oxygen as when they are sleeping, but warmer water makes this harder to maintain.  

It was their teamwork that enabled them to survive. Had they not bound together and took turns sharing oxygen, I’m sure they would have perished. How fortunate that the ants in Penrose are incapable of teamwork. I’m not speaking of the magical girls, mind you…