>be me
>be standing in the middle of a country field
>be looking up at the night sky through my NVGs
>pic related
>"Does Fankasia have different stars?"
>Phil drinks the rest of his soda, throwing the empty can into the corn field across from us
>"Does it look different to you?"
>"I'm not sure, I grew up in the suburbs. There was too much light pollution for quality star gazing."
>He burps
>"Then why did you take a job out in the country?"
>"Change of pace is all."
>Phil leans on the stock of his shotgun
>"Where is our employer? Did they ghost us?"
>"I'm right here!"
>He screams and falls onto the dirt road.
>I flip up my NVGs and look at the source of the voice
>all I see is corn
>"Down here!"
>It's a talking hedgehog
>no it's not blue it's not sonic shut up
>it has a tiny witch hat on
>"I'm Minerva, your employer."
>I have no words
>"What's wrong?" Minerva asks
>"Are you a furry?"
>"..."
>"Please say no."
>"I'm not."
>"Why are you a hedgehog?"
>"... I screwed up the transmutation on the way here."
>Minerva looks up at me
>"Do you want help finding your wand?"
>"Yes, please."
>Phil and I walk through the corn field
>I came across a bunch of crow harpies on the flight here and thought it'd be easier to transmute myself into a hawk or something to scare them. Holding my broom in my talons.
>"What happened?"
>"I don't want to talk about it."
>We find Minerva's broom and wand.
>There's a flash of light and a pleasant witch girl stands in front of us, adjusting her hat
>"Wew. Thanks!"

https://imgur.com/a/d9IqLVD

>"No problem, Sonic." Phil says
>the witch smacks his head with her broom
>"I WASN'T EVEN BLUE YOU DUMB HUMAN!"
>The witch flies above us, to lead us to the farm
>the bristles of her broom glowing in the moonlight
>"I do have to thank you for agreeing to take this job."
>She points at the house over the hill, surrounded by empty brown fields
>"In fact we all do."

>she lands on the porch and welcomes us inside but suddenly stops us at the door
>"You guys are good with kids right?"
>"What?"
>She opens the door and a bunch of little witches pour out
>pink, bunchy cheeks and hats bigger than their heads
>all of them elves with long ears that are longer than their hands
>they swarm us, pulling and prodding at our webbing and equipment
>"Ohhh what's this?" "Does this taste good?" "What does this do?" "Where are the rebel bases?" "Who are you?"
>Phil and I would drown under the tide of cute little witches if Minerva didn't pull them off of us
>I don't know if it's because of their hats, but I swear the little witches squeak when they bounce against the farmhouse floor
>Minerva pulls us into her office with dozens of curious eyes trying to peek through the door
>they're just a bunch of cute potatoes
>She sighs and sits at her desk
>"As you can see we're a little bit… full of students."
>"This is a school?"
>"It started as a home for wayward orphans but then we realized how much children love magic so we thought we'd try teaching them it to give them a headstart on magic schools." Minerva looks out the window at the barren brown fields around the farmhouse, "but of course we'd hit a little bump in the road."
>"Which is?" Phil asks.
>Minerva takes off her witch hat, holding it against her chest
>"We used to make a profit off growing crops to sell at the market. A dozen little witch girls doing magic tricks is great advertising. We had saved up enough money to make this farmhouse bigger." She points at a blueprint framed on the wall. "But the next kingdom over's dryads have learned how to use fertilizer, we simply cannot compete, and all that money we saved has been just trying to patch over the hole in our finances."
>"You can still pay us, right?"
>"Oh Oh! Of course!" 
>"So we do what the listing said, 'help keep farm safe and advise the growing of plants to sell to Kommandos'"
>"Yep, you start tomorrow."

>we eat dinner with the little witches who absolutely love to run around the room
>they don't throw food but are messy eaters
>Minerva smiles as she wipes stew off the witch hat of one of the little witches
>I get up to get more stew as Phil deals with witch girls asking about what he does
>"Why do you have a gun?"
>"To shoot bad people?"
>"Why are they bad?"
>"They try to hurt me."
>"Helia tried to hurt me today." She looks up with the biggest eyes. "Can you shoot her?"
>"..."
>A little witch girl plays underneath the table, bewitching spoons and forks into familiars that ballroom dance under the light of her wand
>In the kitchen I spoon more stew into my bowl
>"Hello Mr. Human!"
>I look down to see a happy, ginger haired witch looking up at me. "What are those goggles for?" She points at my NVGs
>"They're so I can see in the dark"
>her demon ears flutter with innocent curiosity
>"Are humans not able to see in the dark?!" She toddles over to the light switch and turns it off. "How many fingers am I holding up."
>"Two."
>"But then why do you need dark seeing goggles?"
>I smile as I don't want to say the light from the dining room is behind her
>"They just make it easier to see in the dark." 
>the demon witch's ears droop. Her hat falling down her forehead to get poked up by her two horns
>I taste some of the stew
>ehhh
>"What's wrong?"
>"It's kind of salty." I see it's still boiling and grab a potato to peel it. "You know if you put a potato into foods, like soup, it absorbs the salt." I drop it into the pot.
>"Like magic?"
>"Yeah… I guess it's a sort of human magic."

>that night Phil and I take turns watching over the perimeter of the farm
>apparently wolves have been prowling nearby which scares the witches
>we don't see any
>I wake up the next morning and go downstairs for breakfast
>the witches are all gathered around eating eggs and sausage
>I sit down just as one of the little witches tries to pour salt on her egg but the top falls off
>covering her egg in salt
>the ginger demon from last night suddenly stands up and runs to the kitchen
>"I can fix it!"
>she comes back with a peeled potato, dropping it onto the yolk of the egg
>splattering the witches who have gathered around to stare at it
>"I'm using your magic!" the ginger witch says to me
>looks up at me like pic related

https://imgur.com/a/7srj68e

>I smile nervously
>"Nothing's happening" a witch says
>"shouldn't there be sparks?"
>Minerva steps in, "I'll just fry you another egg dear." Throwing me the potato like it's a hand grenade
>Phil pats me on the back, "I don't think you're qualified to 'teach' magic bud."
>"Yeah…"
>I stare the potato for a minute. It's hot in my hand from the egg yolk. 
>idea
>In the toolhouse I explain my idea as I lean against a rusting Colt M1895 machine gun
>"So, we all know how MREs have a self heating element right?"
>"Right."
>"But MREs are expensive and hard to produce out here in Fankasia right?"
>"Right?"
>"But you know what isn't hard to come by? Potatoes!"
>"Potatoes…" Minerva repeats.
>"You can mash em, fry em, stick em in a stew, but the most convenient thing is to bake it."
>"Okay? You can already do that."
>"But what if it baked itself, heated itself?"
>"A literal hot potato?"
>"Exactly!"
>We start work on it. Taking inspiration from a plant from the Deadfront, the humble Wiederhaken
>it grows grenade like seeds that explode when they hit the ground by heating up
>obviously it would be poisonous to eat with all that heating fluid but if it just blows out one end when it's done?
>no problem

>the end product of our magically produced Hot potatoes even resembles a hand grenade. A bulb sticking out the top with a long grenade pin of a bullet shaped seed. 
>We pull on the potato seed to make it heat up, it blows steam and the poison out the hole left by the seed.
>only issue is
>we can grow them using magic
>but when we plant them, the seeds die
>you can imagine the disappointment the little witches have when their potatoes don't grow
>it seems that the deeper you plant them, the better they grow
>but how do we get them deep enough?
>I sit thinking, watching the witches play "dragon"
>it's their version of tag
>they transfer a light "curse" to each other, giving them a dragon tail to whoever is "it"
>it's pretty cute
>the ginger demon girl trips and her hat goes flying, the dragon taps her little horns to transfer to the tail to her
>"I don't think we can plant them deep enough." Phil says.
>"We could build some huge drilling machine."
>"With what money?"
>I can see Minerva sitting with her face in her hands on the porch. 
>"I dunno just… hire some potato diggers."
>"And what? Shoot them when we can't pay them? Use their bodies for fertilizer?"
>idea
>"I mean… we could, 'shoot' the ground."
>"To make it grow?"
>"Yeah?"
>Phil examines the bullet shaped seeds
>"We could load them into a belt? Walk along with a hammer and smack them into the ground with some magic pressure spells behind the bullets? Kinda caseless?"
>I hear crying from the toolhouse
>I get up and see that the ginger demon tripped on the tripod of the rusting Colt M1895 machine gun
>The demon managed to tag the next "dragon" tho
>I pat her heat and put her witch hat back over her two horns
>"It's alright." 
>My eyes fall on the machine gun, didn't they call these potato diggers?
>we get all the little witches to work on cleaning the gun with little magic sponges made wet with restoration spells
>they play on it, balancing on the flat top and swinging on the belt
>Phil and I load it into Potato Digger machine gun into the back of a truck, I fire as he feeds the belt of seeds in
>Every morning I catch Minerva staring at the field. Willing the green sprouts to stay alive
>"Calm down, we already got a contract to supply some dwarven army with them."
>"And if they die?"
>"They won't."
>I'm true to my word and soon we pull in our first harvest of Hot potatoes.
>the dwarven army contract paying for the renovations to the farmhouse the witches had wanted for years
>even making a separate school building for their magic classes
>no more spilling your potions on your bed by accident
>I'm told that generation of witches later became specialized in enchanting rifles and machine guns
>you can see their proof of work with a little etching of a potato on the side of your gun