Happily chatting with Woodland, Koi wasn't too quick to notice the chaos going on in their food storeroom. She was just telling Woodland about some tips for foraging, since they had just been out again and Koi had been taking the younger one under her wing. As she was talking, and putting stuff away, however, something pretty quickly seemed- off? She looked around for a bit, not seeing much wrong- until something small scuttled away from the corner of her vision.

 

"Woodland?" she started, still squinting at the dark, dry room, "Can you ah, go get some others?" Woodland looked at her a little strangely, but ultimately shrugged it off and dashed away. Which left Koi with the unknown enemy herself.

 

She grabbed a shovel that had been stowed away in the room, and carefully started moving aside bags of grain and such, until reinforcements arrived. Which they eventually did- in the form of Matter. Koi gave Woodland a bit of a Look, she had really hoped that the young'in would be smart enough to bring an adult- but it seemed not.

 

"I could only find Matter, but it's alright. You just wanted to rearrange some things, right?" right. She couldn't really blame Woodland for thinking that, honestly, since that was usually the reason she would ask Woodland to go fetch someone.

 

"Not quite this time," she said "just- grab a shovel, I suppose." Woodland shrugged, grabbing a shovel and Matter just- sat there. Confused.

 

"There's something here." Koi whispered quietly, not wanting to alert the stranger to her presence- if the moving stuff around hadn't already given it away.

 

Woodland and Matter's eyes widened. The storeroom was usually mostly empty only filled with food and occasionally Koi trying to organize stuff. Honestly, the colony hadn't really dealt with intruders at all- much less in their storage rooms.

 

In all honesty- Koi wasn't even sure why someone would invade their storeroom specifically. But that didn't matter- what mattered was getting whoever was inside the room, out of the room.

 

"Okay you two just watch the entrance, okay?" the two whelps nodded fiercely, and Koi couldn't help but briefly be charmed by their bravery, knowing fully well that it's fade within a moment if anything truly scary were to happen.

 

Rummaging around, Koi shouted out various warnings to the intruder, growing gradually more confused as she found and heard nothing. She even noticed some concerned looks coming from Matter and Woodland, who were dutifully standing in the corner still guarding the exit.

 

She picked up a bag of grain, moving it out of the way, only to notice a giant hole in the bottom, with the bag half-empty already. She frowned, she'd have to make sure to fill the bags up again, and check the others for holes as well.

 

As she finished this thought, she watched something dart across her vision again. "There it is!" she shouted over to the whelps, who in turn straightened up a bit, seemingly surprised Koi hadn't gone insane.

 

Koi, however, had her doubts on the insanity front. She was expecting some Xunari, and what she had seen was- much, much smaller than that. She cursed a bit under her breath, hoping that the whelps were too far away to hear (Bloo wouldn't let her hear the end of it if she gave the young ones her bad mouth).

 

She looked around the room, which was mostly empty now, Koi having carried most of it out already, and her eyes eventually landed on a single Huldah, huddled in the far corner of the room.

 

She slowly lowered her shovel. Maybe the whole situation should've been obvious from the start. She looked at the tiny creature- and pretty quickly realized that the tiny Huldah didn't seem scared of her, but was much more startled. It's bright white pelt also meant that it likely wasn't a wild creature, but instead a companion animal of some sort. She supposed it made sense that any more wild Huldah that had likely been hiding away had already ran back into their little hidey-holes.

 

She sighed, walking over to pick the small critter up.

 

"What're you gonna do with it?" A curious Woodland asked, while Matter made herself taller to take a closer look at the little critter.

 

Frowning, Koi sighed "Well, it's clearly meant to be a pet, so we can't just throw it back." she briefly looked at the whelps, who both seemed to be getting more and more excited. Probably shouldn't have put the idea of a pet in their minds. She looked at the two excited whelps and shrugged a little- Bloo's problem- "Let's go ask Bloo what we should do with it." Matter and Woodland both made excited noises, and then happily followed after Koi.