yutzen

(Another from the archives, and another with the crew, this time introducing our favorite scorching axolotl. Inspired by a prompt provided by Make Up A Criminal on Cohost)

Smuggler who is losing track of all their secret stashes

"It was somewhere in here, I swear!"

Amidst a haze of spores thicker than the morning fog, a tall, cowled figure practically crawled across knots of hyphae and slippery stalks that crunched under her paws, the packets in her cloak weighing them down. A chiropteran figure, almost but not quite a proper bat. The thick scarf she wore around her snout hid her nose, but it couldn't hide the yellow glimmer of her eyes - giving away just how weepy they were. "Right around the big ivory cap, the one with the notch", she said with a sniffle, pointing towards an off-white mushroom cap nearly a hundred feet tall, "go fifty feet to the North exactly! And then just find the little red murch I myself cut an X into! Well, myself, where the hell is it!?"

Her companion followed behind on steadier, calmer steps, with her gloved hands behind her back. An axolotl - for the most part - whose slimy skin was pitch black, save for a dragging tail so white it was near-transluscent. She wore a long, wine-red tunic bulging with loot, woven from a lustrous, near-resinous material the mud just couldn't cling to, though she walked barefoot otherwise without a care. Thick, round glasses covered her eyes, reflecting her luminous scarlet gills as she watched the cowled chiropteran scrounge through the forest. "Ziv, you don't expect a simple cut into the fungus to last, yes? I've told you before, this forest is quite lively."

"I KNOW HOW LIVELY IT IS, SHERRY! I learned my lesson the last time! Two weeks shouldn't be enough for it to be gone, right? Right!?". Ziv-Ziri was outright clawing her way through the mushy underbrush looking for anything that looked red, growling where she would once be humming as fungal remnants clung to her ears and horns. "Got my clothes proofed that time, too. And I buried it in a metal box this time, 'cause I learned that lesson too! 'cause there's nothing like having to dig through the mud for worms to drive a lesson all the way in."

Usherrimi, or rather 'Sherry', tilted her head in liew of a raised eyebrow. She pushed her glasses up into place, a measure of expression for violet eyes that had no lids to narrow. "Care to tell me what you buried your vitals in last time?" the Ifchi asked, brushing a slurry of spores and slime off her nose.

"Leather", Ziv answered, not even bothering to hide the shame in her voice. "It usually works for shorter stays, but you said it: This place is lively, and that includes the part where its fungus eats things, including leather and the stuff inside it! "

"So you forgot leather usually comes from something that used to be alive, yes? Common mistake." Sherry turned her head as she looked around, keeping one branch of glowing frills helpfully aimed at her boss. "But it shouldn't be common with the deals you've made with Pact fellows."

"It isn't now. Even with how much they pay for what little stuff they actually ban, I didn't work with the Pact of Krawgry until pretty damn recently. For reasons that should be pretty damn obvious!". As her voice rose, so did her arms, motioning towards the thick fungal rainforest and everything that came with it. "I feel like I'm packing half my weight in spores and mud right ab- aah, AAAHCHOO!". Sneezes were meant to unclog, but with a scarf in the way, all this one achieved was making things even worse for her.

Sherry slipped a thick (and slimy) scarf of her own from her many pockets, handing it over before she spoke. "The mud isn't so bad, honestly, though I will give you the spores, albeit for... different reasons. So you've switched to metal, then, to avoid that kind of incident?" Her voice was calm throughout, dropping to an almost insidious neutrality for the next question as her tiny, snaggled teeth betrayed her intent: "And then you lost it anyhow?"

"I did not lose it!" Ziv shrieked, digging her nails into a stalk. "Not for that long anyways, I found what was left! It would've been fine if I got there in less than a month, but whoops! Turns out some of the mushrooms here can sprout, peak and die in less than a month! I had to buy a mycology manual in Pact territory, from a Korve that just laughed at this, to know what to mark!" She groaned, rubbing her reddened eyes - only to groan even louder as the spore-laced mud on her gloves made things worse. "By the time I got there again, I found out even flarewood rots in here, and you wouldn't think so with how much resinous crap is in it. And I got to go hungry because of it."

"Flarewood", the Ifchi repeated, just a little incredulous. "You'd think something grown by the light of molten earth would last a little longer. An actual shame, that." She ran her fingers down her frills in thought, expecting and finding no spores on them. "Must've been a feast for whatever actually ate it."

"Someone sure ate well!" The bat's voice was as sarcastic as she could manage. "No snacks, no water, no bolts, not even bullets! There were just scraps in there!" She didn't even notice her companion's head-tilt as she went on. "That one's happened every time! With the leather, with the flarewood, with the glass too! Every time it's opened something just ransacks it even if it doesn't eat the rest!"

"Glass", Sherry asked again, just as incredulous yet ever so slightly familiar. "You mean that spot with shards where we stopped earlier-"
"Yes, that was me, and I found it just this time." Ziv tried to flash an utterly unhappy grin, but her new scarf got in the way. "Because last time a witherhorn just went and dropped dead on it! Every last ton of it! 'Stand right under the blunt stalactite and then walk three minutes South, and dig under the rock with an X in it that I also carved myself, right next to the vile and smelly mushroom that will bury it and break it and ruin it', PAH." She lowered the scarf just enough to spit at the ground, learning that lesson at least. "Now I learned, though. Heavy as it may be, murder as it may be on my back and my pockets, metal's gonna be the only thing that works." She trailed off, looking around at the underbrush she'd so fruitlessly searched. "Or so I told myself this time..."

The axolotl(?) could only shake her head, rubbing her own forehead in disbelief. "Suppose a red murch would survive something like that too. And nothing I know would feast on metal just like that..." With one hand, she covered her eyes while the others took the glasses, rubbing them against the tunic to clean off the residues. "Everything you've learned about this place, you've learned the hard way, haven't you, Ziv? You're practically a scholar of Mycon's Valley by now with that many mistakes to learn from." She allowed herself a lopsided smirk with the smallest hint of pointed teeth, once she put her glasses back on. "Wonder what we're gonna learn this time?"

Her boss - and friend - turned to her, and all she only offer was not a sardonic grin or a furious snarl, but a pout and a very audible whine. Even with the scarf on, she could see it, and those eyes hid nothing either no matter how much she'd blame on the spores... To that, Sherry only sighed deeply, and opened her arms wide. "...fine, fine. Come here. Only because no one's seen us."

Ziv often pounced violently on the chance for a hug from an associate, and this time was no exception, even with the slog of mud in the path there. The embrace was tight and messy, as it always was in Mycon's Valley, and as it always was when an Ifchi was involved. "How a ruptured pipeline of emotions like you managed to become a blockade runner is an actual mystery to me, Ziv, but somehow you make it work." Before the blockade runner in question could say anything about having good associates, Sherry cut in again. "And do not say anything about paying me extra for this. This one's on the house."

"Too late for that..." were the words from a fanged mouth that was smiling once more beneath its scarf. "It wasn't just terrain and danger, I also hired you because you're like an anchor in moments like these and I kinda expected this to happen by now. Patterns are a bitch."

The Ifchi sputtered, ending the hug to hold Ziv-Ziri by the shoulders with a baffled look. She tried to berate her, but couldn't find the words, and dropped the issue with a sigh. "You really are a Vezarym, exiled or not."

"Come on, you know I'm more of a Vez than anyone in the Consortium by now, the f-" Her reply was cut short by a squeeze on her shoulders, and a sudden, lunging movement from Sherry towards something in the mud: A cherry-red splinter of fungal "wood", much like the murch they had been looking for. And once Ziv saw it too, she could only expect the worst.

Once their search narrowed to the ground, and they knew what to look for instead, a clear trail was found across the mud. First, splinters. Then, five-clawed footsteps and a dragging tail between them, with a few more splinters all around. They both followed quietly, their steps light and kept away from the sucking mud. And once past a thin curtain of filaments hanging from the caps above, in a clearing of smashed stalks, they found...

A beast. A sturdy, shining shell on four thick and scaly legs. A tortoise, big as a horse and three times heavier at the very least, with what looked like shimmering iron lining the rims and patterns of its shell. Its beaked head had a pointed metal horn like a rhino's, one that reflected Sherry's light as the thing turned to face them with hostile eyes... showing the remains of a metal casing stuck in its mouth, which was brought back inside it with a slurp and audibly chewed on and swallowed. Scattered ration wrappings and torn-up cartridges laid all over the ground, yet with much fewer pellets and bullets than one'd expect from such a scatter. And right besides a splintered red stump that had been cleaved in half by tremendous force, there was a stack of crossbow bolts... all their heads bitten neatly off.

So that's what they would learn this time, thought Sherry as she turned to Ziv, gauging for her reaction... and she saw eyes flaring with actual fury, hearing the sound of teeth grinding together and an unnerving hum from her ridged throat, as the Vez reached into her cloak and pulled out a long, thin knife of silvery-looking metal, long as her forearm yet thin as a finger. "Alright then. Fine. Okay. Plan B: We kill and eat that thing."

At long last, Sherry allowed herself a grin, with pinprick snaggle-teeth on full display. She opened her arms, with hands stretched wide, as her frills started glowing brighter and brighter, hovering as if weightless; at the tip of each branch, a small flame like a candle's own came to life, lighting the Ifchi up like a dangerous chandelier. Betraying some actual joy for once, she chuckled to herself, and replied: "I thought you'd never ask~"