Light shines warmly onto a garden. The birds are singing, children are laughing somewhere. The sounds of a trowel hitting the dirt reaches out ears, which remains the only normal thing as we find the brightly colored Captain Arcadia working through one of the beds. Chucking a dandelion to the side, he looks up at us and smiles.

“Oh, there you are! Caught me working out in the yard a bit. With times like these, I find it’s important to find something you can find relaxing. Tending a garden is one of the best things you can do if you’ve got the space. There’s nothing quite like growing up a garden.”

He puts the trowel down, standing up and admiring the garden for a moment with a satisfied smile on his face.

“Y’know, at the end of the day, Arcadia herself is a garden. Sure, there’s all sorts of different plants and people. And sometimes you get some that don’t quite get along, or need different requirements to thrive. But at the end of the day, with all of them together it comes into a singular, beautiful symphony of life.”

Captain Arcadia’s eyes suddenly move to the dirt, which raises up in a direct beeline towards the garden. Swifter than we can think, his hand plunges into the earth and a muffled squeaking is heard.

“But even when you build something wonderful, pests come. You try the simple things at first. Traps, poisons, and the like. But their hunger for destruction is never ending. It does seem to be at times that you can’t ever put them down, an immortal problem.”

His hand emerges, a squirming mole thrashing in his hands. He holds it up for the camera to show it, before squeezing. The panicked animal thrashes around, before the faint crack as it goes limp in his grasp. He sets it down on the brick, and reaches for the trowel. The scrape of metal on brick is heard, replaced by the sound of meat and metal meeting as we look away to the edge of the garden.

Captain Arcadia comes back into the shot, holding the trowel level before swinging it. Two pieces fly off out of view, only the body being distinct as they vanish. He turns back to the camera, a smile on his face.

“Truth be told, there’s nothing quite like dealing with a pest directly. Haven’t met one that survived being decapitated yet! But when pests threaten to break the world with cursed knowledge and bad reputations? We have to stand strong, and stand together in Arcadia. We have to route out these pests, and deal with them accordingly. Or our garden itself will fall apart.”

He gives a nod, before moving back to the inner garden. The sound of metal scraping against brick rings out as he grabs his shield and marches with a pep in his step out of the garden, latching the gate behind him. We turn back, seeing blood on bricks before it cuts.