A Gallah mutt shakily climbs up a rickety ladder in the market, his floppy ears blushing at the sound of applause from the floor below him. He pokes his head up through the floor and sniffs around, looking for signs of any Creens that might have escaped his notice before.

All seems clear on the second floor of the shop, although the mutt's keen nose scents a single Creen still in the market – from the strength and direction, not far from the mostly-shuttered window at the back.

Following his nose, Piper eases himself from the ladder and crawls across the floor – following the scent until his nose bumps against the Creen cage holding the small winged serpent he had captured before. "Ah! Hello again, misseur. Adapting to your new home I hope?" He hesitantly pokes at the bars to see if the Creen decides to try and snap at him .

The Creen, lying in a neat coil at the bottom of the cage with the tip of its nose tucked beneath one wing, cracks an eyelid at the dog's poke. It draws its head out for a moment and opens its mouth in a wide tongue-flicking yawn, then makes a noise sounding suspiciously like a burp. With a little "cree?" it tucks its head down again.

Piper breaks into a tongue lolling grin. "I see city life has been good for you, misseur. You've been half tamed already. I'll do my best to see to it that you'll get plenty to eat as long as you behave yourself." He carefully pulls his jacket off and drapes it around the cage before picking up his prize and climbing back down the steps.

On the lower level, the Creen pinned to a post has stopped twitching. One of the attendants, a young female bat with tan fur, watches it curiously from a yard or so away, with one hand half raised, as if she were contemplating taking it down but hadn't yet made up her mind. The graying manager is fussing over some produce, while the second attendant completes a sale with a customer.

The Gallah walks over to the younger bat. "Allow me, Madame. Do you have some paper we can wrap it in? We can just throw the body in the refuse."

The Eeee turns to Piper with a hesitant smile, squeaking something in response. She walks to the sale counter and tears off a sheet of brown butcher's paper from a roll mounted beneath it, with a cutting edge adjacent to it. She hands the sheet to the Gallah wordlessly.

Piper nods obligingly and carefully yanks his arrow from the wall, holding the dead Creen with the paper while he pulls his arrow free from its body.

The dead critter flops into the paper sadly, bright feathers spilling out of the paper to flutter to the ground.

The Gallah wipes the tip of his arrow off on the Creen's feathers before sticking it back into his quiver. This part is never pleasant… but necessary for an exterminator. He wraps the body up in the paper and looks back to the Eeee. "We should throw this out, Madame. Then I'll go and see to the tower."

The little bat ducks her head in a nod, holding out her hands for the wrapped bundle.

"Merci," the Gallah barks. He hands the bundle to the Eeee and then stoops down to pick up the Creen cage again and then turns around and plods off towards the tower.

The Creen makes a few squeaky protests at the jarring of its cage as the mongrel ventures onto the street. The winding paths of Little Babel prove more difficult to navigate on foot than they seemed from the shop, but after a few false turns, Piper manages to wend his way to the foot of the tower out of which the Creens had swarmed.

Piper gently sets the Creen cage down and walks over to the staircase, testing the sturdiness of one of the steps with his foot while his nose inquisitively sniffs at the air.

The interior of the tower stinks of mold, dirt, and Creen droppings. The air is a little stale – most of the windows are at least partly shuttered – and it's hard to tell where the scent of Creen is strongest. It seems to be coming mostly from the upper levels, but there's also a tang of it from below, as well. The step seems creaky and unstable beneath Piper's foot, but does not give way.

The Gallah whimpers to himself at the prospect of falling to his death here, but he is on a job and there is still work to be done. He growls determinedly and slowly begins to climb the staircase, hefting his pack across his shoulders in case he needs to drop it and lighten himself on a weak step.

By sticking to the inside edge of the stairs, where the supporting frame is directly beneath him, and taking great care, Piper manages to avoid incident up the first flight. The second floor has the same wooden floor that the first did, but there's no trace of any dividing wall. A few bits of rubbish occupy the corners, as well as some old rotted crates. The air here smells mustier, and the windows are all shuttered.

"I wonder what used to be stored here." The Gallah scratches one his ears and carefully walks to one of the windows, opening it to let a bit more light and air into the room.

Boards creak and tremble under Piper's weight as he goes to the window, but the fresh air smells pleasant after the unpleasant tang of the tower. The added light lets him notice a tube that runs down wall at the southwest corner of the room, from floor to ceiling.

Piper carefully tiptoes over to the pipe and raps a knuckle against it, trying to judge its thickness. "If this was a watchtower, maybe this was some kind of message tube. The fellow up top could yell into it and people from the bottom could hear him."

The tube is perhaps half to a quarter of an inch thick, and appears to be made of jointed sections of chitin. As Piper examines it, he notices what might be hinges on one edge of a chitin section, at about chest-height from the floor.

"Ah, and little doors where people lower down could give a listen as well," the Gallah chuckles. He gives the pipe a tug in the section around the hinges as he tries to open it up.

The segmented section doesn't budge at the tug.

The mutt scratches his ear, and tries pushing at the section instead.

It has no give in that direction, either. The hinges look like it should open outwards, but it must be stuck somehow.

Piper rubs his chin and shrugs; perhaps it opens up on one of the higher levels. He heads back to the steps and starts to climb again.

The third floor looks much like the second, only darker – the windows here have fewer slats missing from the shutters. Some rubbish litters the floor, but there are no crates or other furnishings.

Creeping slowly in case there might be something underfoot he might trip upon in the dark, the mutt works his way to one of the closed windows to let a bit more light in. "I should have brought a lantern with me… "

The window needs some jiggling before it opens, but at last it does. The light reveals the outlines of rubbish more distinctly, and that the same long tube runs through this room, as well.

"I suppose that if I was a Creen this wouldn't be so bad a place to live," the dog mumbles to himself as he focuses his attention on the pipe again. He traces his finger down its length to see if the section on this level has a seam and hinged section as well.

The tube on this level has the same hinged section, in the same place. This one wiggles slightly under Piper's hand when he bumps against it.

Piper's tail wags and he tugs at the little door in the tube, momentarily entertaining visions of finding a treasure trove or some secret artifact hidden inside the tube.

The tube wiggles but doesn't open, as if it were latched shut.

The Gallah licks his nose thoughtfully and then brightens. He reaches into his quiver and pulls out an arrow. He carefully starts to stick the head into any seam he can find and wiggles it, trying to use it to wedge the section open.

The arrow-tip wedges into the gap, and slides up along it for a moment as Piper pushes down against it to lever the segment open. It slips out twice, but on the third time the Gallah gets it to stay until the segment snaps open – with a cracking sound from the seam.

Piper barks in triumph and sticks his nose into the newly opened section.

Phew! The air stinks – not merely stale, but reeking of Creen and Creen droppings.

"Guh!" The Gallah quickly withdraws his nose and slaps a hand over it. He picks up a broken piece of wood and drops it into the tube, listening for how far it goes down.

The chip bounces and rattles as it falls down the tube. After a few seconds, it stops making noise.

The Gallah sneezes and brushes out his fur, then closes the segment back the way he found it. He heads back to the staircase and just in case tosses a bag of Creen repellent into the center of the room before venturing upwards to the next floor.

Sunlight brightens the fourth floor through two cracked shutters, revealing another plain, empty room. This one is mostly devoid even of rubbish.

The dog sniffs at the floor, curious if something other than a Creen might live here by the lack of garbage.

The floor itself holds no scent other than dirt or mold. Even the Creen-smell is fainter, suggesting the beasts don't often use this level.

"Now that's odd, I'd think this room would be ideal considering it's a bit more open to the outside and clean." He shrugs and steps out onto the floor, moving to examine the section of tube on this level as well.

As with the other second and third floors, the tube continues on up with the same segmented section. As on the second floor, the hinged portion seems stuck shut, not even wiggling when jarred.

Piper puts an ear to the tube and knocks on it, testing to see if this section is completely hollow or if there's something inside.

It sounds hollow.

Satisfied, the Gallah brushes his hand off on his shirt and starts up the stairs to the top level.

The fifth floor reeks of Creen far more strongly than the previous ones, and also of Creen repellent. A dozen Creen nests, formed of bits of wood, cloth, and chitin, are scattered about the walls, on the floor, along with an arrow and ruptured bag of repellent. The tube terminates on this level at waist height. Mounted about a foot above it is a pulley of some kind. The sole Creen present is wriggling and flopping a little, on the floor next to the tube.

The dog decides to deal with the Creen first. He nervously walks towards it to try and see why it stayed here while its companions left.

The Creen appears dazed. It flops one wing against the ground while the other is folded to its body. Feathers are scattered around it, including a few on the pulley and one on the top of the tube.

Piper quickly rushes up and tries to scoop the Creen up in his hands and look over the damage to its wing.

The injured animal bumps its head against Piper's palm as he lifts it. The wing does not appear broken, but the creature twitches and slithers in the dog's hand while he examines it, making a real study difficult to conduct.

"Easy now, misseur. It would appear that I accidentally jolted your perch." He tries to stroke the Creen to calm it down, setting it back on the floor while his free hand examines the pulley.

The pulley isn't currently connected to anything; it's just a simple ceramic wheel mounted on a wooden frame. No trace remains of whatever rope or wire was used on it, but by the location of the mount, it's logical to surmise that the cord would have gone down the tube. There's a sheen from a few shed Creen scales on the underside of the pulley's wheel.

The Gallah carefully pulls himself up and gets a cloth from his pack out, circling the room and digging through the nests for any eggs the Creens might have left.

Many of the nests still have eggs in them, and the mongrel soon secures fifteen of them. One nest demonstrates that the injured Creen was not the only one left behind; three baby Creen wriggle and creep within their bed of cloth.

Piper can't help but feel a pain of regret for the babies, but he also understands the laws of the wild. Once the nests are clear, he begins to knock them down, leaving the babies intact in case the parents should return. Unfortunately his job here is to keep the Creens out, and he sets himself to work assembling some bits of glass strung up on twine to make noise to scare the creatures. He also prepares a bundle of cloth and wood done up to resemble a fuff'nar placed in the middle of the room. He dumps a bottle of scent on the creature as well as in sections of the room to make it smell like a fuff'nar might den in here.

While Piper works, the baby Creens cheep querulously, and the injured one becomes more agitated, flopping and beating its good wing against the floor. As the Gallah strings one of the windows with twine and glass, a Creen flies towards the tower and him.

The Gallah arches an eyebrow and pauses in his labors. He chews on his lip and climbs partially down the steps, low enough to conceal himself but high enough to poke his head up through the stairwell and keep at the goings on in the tower.

The Creen flies through the window, making a distressed keening noise, circling close to the ceiling and keeping its distance from the unpleasant odors.

"Hmmmm." Piper rubs his chin and shrinks down a little more. He eyes the shutters and looks for one he might be able to shoot open with an arrow to air the upper chamber out a little bit.

The windows of the tower, Piper notices as he looks around, are all already unshuttered. For most of them, only the hinges remain to show that they used to have shutters at all.

Shaking his head, Piper emerges back up again into the upper floor, He moves to pick up the Creen on the floor again and watches the one flying above his head warily.

As Piper emerges, the circling feathered serpent cries out, "Creee! Cree!" and soars away again.

The Gallah carefully folds his arm over the Creen and tries to pick up the nest with the babies. "En bas age enfants, I cannot care for a mess of baby Creens but perhaps if I move you to a lower level your parents may find you there."

The nest of wriggling Creens proves a little tricky to navigate with, and while his arms and attention are occupied with the nest and the injured Creen, the Gallah puts his foot through one of the steps.

Piper yelps as his foot falls through the step and staggers with his load. He tries to regain his balance and set the nest down on one of the steps before he crushes it by tumbling down with it.

By lowering his center of gravity when he crouches to set the nest down, the dog manages to regain his balance. The baby Creens say, "Cree?" while the injured one manages to slither out of his arms and away from the distracted Gallah.

"You may have the right idea, misseur," the Gallah barks to the escaping Creen while he puts his now free hand against the wall and tries to pull his foot loose.

His foot hurts a little as he lifts it from the hole left in the rotted step, but seems otherwise all right. As he checks it for injury, he hears a slithering, bumping noise from the room behind him.

Going much slower now, Piper slowly eases the nest onto the floor where he'll be less prone to step on it and then moves to investigate the source of the noise.

It's coming from the southwest corner. It sounds like it's near the floor, but the dog can't seen anything there, although this fourth floor is not as well-lit as the one Piper just left…

The Gallah reconsiders the placement of the nest, fearing that some kind of predator might live on this floor. He picks it up again (the poor babies must be getting dizzy!) and places them at chest-level on the staircase before drawing out his bow and curiously moving towards the corner.

The sound travels up the corner of the wall. Apparently there's something in the tube.

"Ah… I see now. Something in there decided to try and take a bite out of misseur Creen." He taps at the tube with the tip of an arrow and listens for any noises inside.

The slithering, bumping sound has traveled from the floor to ceiling by now. Whatever it is will probably come out of the shaft on the fifth floor in a moment, assuming it continues at that pace.

Nodding, the Gallah crawls back up the steps after the source of the sound, carefully stepping over the damaged point in the staircase.

The mongrel emerges onto the fifth floor again just in time to see a Creen head poke out of the message tube. It seems to hesitate, then crees out sharply, and explodes upwards, narrowly missing the pulley arrangement as it escapes from the shaft and zips towards the nearest window.

Piper scratches at his ear as he ponders and then walks over to the pulley device, yanking at it with his hands and trying to pull it completely free or bend it away from the head of the tube.

Though the framework holding the pulley in place was once quite sturdy, time and rot has worn at it, and while it takes a little exertion on the Gallah's part, he manages to pry the pulley loose.

The Gallah fishes around in his pack for a net and pulls out one of his remaining bottles of the fuff'nar scent. He unfolds the net and cups most of the fringe around the neck of the pipe, leaving opening enough to uncork the bottle, drop it down the pipe, and then quickly fold the rest of it over the opening.

The bottle rattles on the way down for a few seconds, then makes a tinkling noise as it shatters, presumably at the bottom. For a second after that, nothing happens. Then, the pipe vibrates slightly, and the Gallah hears a weird but oddly familiar high-pitched keening reverberating up it. It takes him a moment to realize that the noise is made not by a single voice, but rather the blend of many Creens, all making the "alarm" cry that he earlier played on his pipes.

( So there are a bunch of them at the bottom of the pipe. Smart little things… ) He grips the bottom of the net and braces himself

"Cree! cree!" cries echo faintly up the shaft, and then the pipe starts to shiver more violently. The crees grow closer and more urgent as minutes trickle past, and scrabbling, fighting sounds join them. Piper can feel Creens moving just inside the shaft, where he grips it, and then three of the panicked creatures at once burst out and tumble, keening, into the net.

Piper's fingers pull on sections on the net to keep the Creens from forming a tangle while his palms keep pressing firmly around the neck of the pipe to hold it in place.

Even as the first three are writhing in the net, more come pouring into it, many of them looking battered and bitten, having hurt themselves and each other in their headlong dash for freedom. The tube fountains with green scales and multicolored feathers as they scramble out, filling the net with their lithe bodies.

The Gallah pants nervously as he continues to adjust his net and hold on for dear life. ( I hope my net is big enough for all of them! )

Eventually, the tide of Creens slows, and seems to have stopped as after a few minutes no more Creens show up. Piper is left holding a net filled with at least a hundred distressed, keening Creens.

"Now this is going to be an interesting chore getting down the steps, but at least I know why the previous exterminators weren't able to clean this place out." The mutt ties off the neck of the net and digs around for a rope, figuring it might be easier to lower the creatures down staircase by staircase instead of carrying them.

The Gallah manhandles the net filled with Creens down the staircase by dint of leverage and effort. He offers a good deal of sympathetic whimpering for the frantic squealing protests from the Creens, who are bruised at each thump onto a lower level, and bite at each other in their frustrated efforts to escape. At last he makes it outside, and as he takes his burden down the street, people stop and stare at him. A couple of bat-children follow him in wonder for several yards, then burst out chanting, "Creen-catcher! Creen-catcher!" in delight.