Jelin wanted to wait until they had explored the structure before any more work was done on their underground area, minus the extra room for the baby bats. With that decided he tried to start working with the bats more and ended up underground more often. One of them had some leadership qualities and had already gotten 'Supporter' so he spent his time trying to get the poor little girl to control her adopted siblings better.
The wild girl and the curious boy were left to Emmy and Mel, respectively, for the most part. It was a difficult line to walk where he wanted all of them to develop closest to their personalities but also wanted them to be able to listen and do their future tasks appropriately. Strangely, it was the little boy that seemed to listen to him the best while the other two both seemed to like Emmy more. Mel was mostly ignored half of the time, which seemed to equally frustrate and sadden her.
When Jelin wasn't busy trying to train the bats, he spent a lot of time with the humans and foxes. He had felt like he was ignoring them a little too much even before he started his evolution sprint so he took the opportunity of preparing for the coming expedition to start making his presence a little more known. Sapphire didn't particularly care either way but she was longer lived and Jelin suspected that she didn't see time in quite the same way. The only reason he likely did, even though he was also supposed to be longer lived, was because he hadn't lived long enough yet.
Still, he was slightly surprised that the children seemed to look up to him as much as they did. The little fox still seemed to prefer staying as far away from him as possible but the children all rushed to him when he showed up and seemed to listen to any advice, knowledge, or instructions he gave. He tried to keep them somewhat entertained, of course, but the amount of calm they showed around him made even Ain jealous.
In the near month that he was paying attention to them and the bats, except for their bat whom they called 'Fluffy', he felt reasonably certain that they were ready and able to complete the tasks they would be in charge of with the coming expedition. The bats he was in charge of managed to evolve and the one he was pinning his hopes on became a [Child Leader Bat]. As they were trying to keep the three fairly equal, the other two evolved at the same time and Jelin made the other girl a [Child Hunter Bat] in the hopes that it might help curb some of her wildness, and he made the boy a [Child Ground Bat], not remembering that 'Ground' was a type or magic.
When the time came that everyone declared that there were no more preparations they could think of to complete, Jelin announced that they would finally make the trip to everyone including the humans and foxes. After a lot of careful consideration, Kai received the sad duty of staying to watch over the territory. Everyone else from his family had jobs to do and couldn't easily be replaced so Kai was the only possible choice. Jelin had to promise to let her go on a grander adventure when he next had the chance in order to convince her.
So they gathered at the edge of his territory in the morning to set out. Jelin was particularly impressed and proud of Ell at that point. She had though up and made a lot of things for their objectives. There were special pieces of clothing to help take care of the baby bats, soft cages to help the humans carry them without hurting them, various ropes and tools for the structure explorations, and so forth.
The most impressive thing, though, was how it was being carried there. Wheels had just not stuck with her too much and she couldn't seem to draw any major inspirations on how to properly use them. However, there was a nut like an acorn in the forest that had really inspired her and she understood balls fine. Once Jelin pointed out for some other project that just a little bit of give in something allowed solid things to pass by without coming back as easily, she ended up making roller balls in place of wheels.
That led to the creation of her current cart-like invention. The skeleton of the craft was made of wood and bone and formed a conical shape with all of the main surfaces, including the floor, being made of strong and stiff webbing. The whole thing, including each wooden ball acting as a wheel, was coated in her special coating to make it all slick and strong. It had a tendency to drift off to the sides of where she, acting as the cart-puller, was trying to direct it but it moved smoothly and even had a primitive braking mechanism. It looked to Jelin like a teepee on acorns.
That wasn't to say that he wasn't proud of what some of the others had worked to create, of course. Clare and Zaer had worked hard to create a mix of milk and honey with some plants and stuff that made the milk nutritious, have minor healing properties, and last longer than the milk by itself. Zaer had also teamed up with Mel and Ain to make some cooked honey meat that would last for up to at least a month just in case for the humans. Then Lei, Kai, and Sai had worked together to create special nets for throwing that were strong but soft to help prevent major injuries while capturing bats.
Jelin was quite proud of all of their achievements and took it as a sign that conflict, even small types like they were about to deal in, always brought about progress and innovation like he believed. The plan was to take two days to reach the place where they would set up and camp while achieving their goals, so Jelin took the opportunity to let the children start getting some actual experience outside the safety of his territory.
He still made sure they were being watched over, of course, but with Clare there then as long as they didn't die she could heal them back up. Jelin let them go hunting, sometimes with one of the girls, and sometimes alone with only a hidden watcher. Ain wasn't the happiest about the idea but Jelin ignored her complaints for the most part. The children seemed to be enjoying themselves and quickly found where a lot of the gaps between their training knowledge and actual experience were.
He and the girls freely offered any advice when asked, or when deemed necessary to prevent major accidents, and otherwise just let the children do hunting and gathering for the whole trip. By the time they reached the camping spot at Sai's direction, the children had become much more skilled and everyone was in a relatively good mood.
Ell locked the brakes of her cart contraption and started pulling everything out of it so that the humans would be able to use it as a temporary shelter and help keep some of the bats in place once rescue operations started. The plan was to be here for another two to three days as they scouted out the area and found the appropriate skeletons to retrieve. They would then try to bring as many as they could to the camp so they would be quicker to load up.
After that, they would do something similar to how they had found the structure the first time. Sai and Lei would be doing their thing to try and catch some mothers as they left for the night. Everyone else involved in that part would sit back and wait until the bats were gone before sending in the troops to scout the structure and retrieve the abandoned baby bats. The captured bats would be sent, along with Lei, to the humans, Ell, and Clare to be taken care of. Everything would then be loaded up and that group would begin their return trip while everyone else stayed to try and figure out the structure. Only Emmy had yet to decide if she were to return with the others or stay and wait.
PartB· Aug 13, 2023
