He didn't end up having any destination in mind, so they're going with hers. Unfortunately, the one she has in mind has a date they need to be there by. He wasted a lot of time with his self flagellating temper tantrum. And her guide's dead so, uh, that complicates things a lot, too.

She has a map, and a compass, and honestly this is just a lot of flat desert, so. There is a direction she is driving and she will be sticking to it. If they go off track and get lost then so be it, it will still be smarter than whatever the fuck Zash was up to before.

At least this way they can keep vaguely aware of the goings on of the wider world. They have a radio.

It's been three days since the tragedy in Jeneora Rock. The chain of incidents has been linked to the wanted criminal Zash the Stampede. Additionally, a woman has been identified as a possible accomplice. The Seven Cities' Military Police are also searching for her as a person of interest.

And now, the weather for the Seven Cities...

"... You know what. That's better than it could have been. No identifying characteristics to speak of." It's not like she doesn't have them.

Tell her, oh weatherman, will it be sand or will it be sand, she's ever so curious.

It'll be sand.

...but not a ton of sand, seems like there are no sandstorms coming so uh. Yay?

Hooray.

Driving. Driving. Driving. Is Zash going to nap forever or is he just avoiding her? She's beginning to get suspicious.

He's not avoiding her per se; he's just avoiding being awake and having thoughts.

But be it coincidence or psionics, he stirs awake just as she's thinking this.

"Good news, darling! According to the radio, I'm your accomplice. With no traits or characteristics besides ostensibly being a woman."

He blinks blearily, yawns, then says, "No adjectives? Brilliant? Beautiful? Red-haired?"

"Not a one, it's a travesty. Also no mention of your very scantily clad you-alike, which makes me even with the radio, I guess."

"Unclad," he corrects. "That's his skin."

"Then I have some concerns about the state of our fake marital relations. Unless your robot arm has a vibrator setting, in which case my concerns are rescinded."

He cracks a smile. "It does, also our shapes aren't fi—"

"—wait, you saw him??? And survived?????"

"Uh? Yeah? He came for the plant, I was right there. He had many knives. They flew. Somehow."

Zash shudders.

"I'm in retrospect even more relieved you're alive."

"... You aren't going to want to hear what I said to him, then."

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, then says, "Hit me."

"Well, first he told me to, and I quote, 'get out of his way, human.' To which I refused. Because I was busy. And then he brought out his knives and asked again, and since by that time I had successfully saved the plant from a death spiral, I did in fact listen to him. And then I threatened him with my absolutely nothing to not put the poor plant all on its own like that asshole bomber had been planning to do."

"...what exactly did you say."

"Uh. ... 'Not yet, I'm not done saving it,' and then something about how he shouldn't dare to take it somewhere all by itself."

"......yeah that'd do it."

"On the not being murdered for my insolence front? Neat."

"I think if you insisted you might've died anyway but, uh, refusing to do what he told you to do because you were trying to save the plant would get you a lot of points with my brother."

"Aw. I'm even making friends with the in-laws. Look at me, now you're going to have to actually meet my parents."

He shudders again. "That sounds terrifying. I've never met the parents."

"Chin up, champ, you're immortal! Ish. Or something. Do I get to hear all of your secrets now, since I have successfully out-stubborned you."

He looks out the window. "You're not freaked out that Knives is my brother?"

"Mmmnnno? I'm freaked out about the murder, but I did also see how the Jeneorans were gun happy, so."

"Mm.

"Well, Knives is my brother. —uh, his name is Nai, I don't think he particularly cares about it either way but some other people call him Knives for the obvious reason."

"Nai entertains me more, I'll go with that. But yes, makes sense. Sooooooo. How'd that work. Did someone fuck a plant?"

"No. We just appeared fully formed as infants in the plants room of SEEDS ship 05."

"The ship itself? Before it crashed? Then. Was Nai the one who...?"

Oh goddammit he wished she hadn't made that inference.

"They called us independent plants, because we didn't need the tanks to survive like regular plants do. We weren't the first; there was a girl, before us, they called her Tesla. And they—"

Okay he's actually never told this to anyone before and he's not finding it very easy to.

".... did not see her as a person, probably, and wanted to do horrible unethical experiments upon her?"

"We found the room where they kept her, inside glass tanks. Her head was separated from her torso. Her eyes were separated from her head. We didn't find her left arm or her right leg.

"She was still alive."

"Oh. I'm. I'm sorry."

"Nai couldn't handle it. He was just... in shock, stopped responding or doing anything or even thinking, didn't wake up for days. I...

"...I tried to die. I tried to die very much."

"God. I'm sorry. And he just... I mean, I see the logic in it. The common theory was that it was some megalomaniac who wanted to build a world all by themselves with nothing but the plant ships intact, to build whatever they wanted, but. That. Also tracks."

"He had always been a bit more distant, had a harder time connecting with the humans, preferred to spend his time with other plants, or me. We can hear each other, in our heads. What we're feeling and thinking. We don't really need words to talk. And he's never been good with words, and talking to humans just felt—incomplete. To him.

"There was a woman named Rem, who raised us like a mother, to whatever extent that even makes sense when we went from infants to eight year olds over a year. I think he loved her, too. She tried so hard to be understood, to make sure he could talk to her.

"But after seeing Tesla he just... he shut down. Even from me, I didn't see what he was thinking until it was too late. He thought—still thinks—that all humans are awful."

"We can be real dicks, it's true. But that sounds... very lonely."

"They talk back. The plants. They're all... so nice. They are earnest, and innocent, and they really want to help. They see humans in need, they see they can help, and they trip over themselves to do that. They love humans, they love everyone.

"I don't think humans made them. I don't think they're artificial at all. I think you discovered them, somehow, and they found you and decided that the fact that you died was a screaming moral emergency that they had to fix.

"So I don't think he's lonely. He just got two new friends."

"... That's surprisingly cute. And also, furthermore, I am horrified. How, uh, peopley are the plants, Zash. Are they just. They are, aren't they, they're just people that we keep in little glass pods, god damn it."

"Not... exactly. I'm not sure. I don't think they're all here. In this dimension, I mean. They're not from here, and I think only a little bit of them comes over. They're simpler, in a way, in how they interact and think.

"But they're... definitely individuals. The water plant saw herself as the food plant's big sister—she stole that concept from humans.

"And you, uh, mentioned yourself, that they work best when networked. It's not just... sharing resources."

"It's presumably also talking to each other. Right. Okay. Are they all female pronouns or am I going to have to keep track of them all, because I will but I am going to be so bad at it."

"They're all female. They have collectively decided that since 'woman' is the gender that creates life in humans that's what they'll be."

"That's very cute."

"Some of the scientists on the SEEDS ship had a theory that Nai and I—and Tesla—were an attempt by the plants to talk back to humans. They can read your thoughts just fine, but they can't project, and they don't really understand. We can hear them, and understand your words, but we can't hear your thoughts—or only a little bit, with effort. And we can do..." He touches her shoulder and she can hear, very very faintly and distantly, in her mind, [this].

"Oh! Hello. So you can. Cool. Maybe not while I'm driving though, this monstrosity is a bit of a bitch. A bridge for communication makes sense, especially with how. Things were, uh, going. In those times." She winces.

"Nai can't hear your thoughts at all. It took a lot of practice for me to get even the little bit I do. To him humans are almost like... completely opaque machines. He can't understand you and he can't predict you and he sees humans mistreating and killing the people he can understand and all of the plants are so forgiving, he's...

"He's really mad that they forgive you. He wishes they'd be mad, too, only he doesn't because part of why plants are better than humans, in his head, is how they're all endlessly forgiving and kind. And he's not, and he sort of... sees himself as doing a necessary evil, in not being kind and forgiving, to actually get them to stop being tortured for decades and then killed. He thinks that if it were up to them they'd all get used up and die happy and he's not wrong about that."

"... Yeah."

"So that's my tragic backstory." He stretches his robot arm out then says, "Well, part of it."

"Okay. We'll break it up into chunks, how about, I need time to digest my entire profession and life's work being built on unethical torture slavery."

"Your work is built on making it a lot more ethical and that's what made me like you."

"Well, thank you. I wasn't planning to change professions, just. ... Okay, so in school and after, I was the weirdly sentimental one? And now I'm feeling like I wasn't sentimental enough, and often too callous with them, and. It's a change, I need time to process. .... Also the place I'm taking us to as a plant lead is, um. Maybe going to suck."

"I think you actually can't beat most of my life for suckage. —that came out wrong. I'm not expecting it to be roses, is what I mean."

"All right. It's, uh. Not that I've heard that they've been having plant troubles, it's that it is the expected result from their choices. Which is to say, uh. She's all by herself."

"...yeah. They often are."

"Less so now than they used to be! People have noticed that plants work better in groups and it's becoming less common for them to try to keep singles. But. ... Yeah." Wince.

Is that a flash of a green laser against the sky? Yeah, sure looks like it.

Zash notices, and leans forward to squint at it. "Did you see that?"

"The alarming green laser beam that just, aaaand there it is again. Yes, I did."

"We should go see what it is."

"Of course you think that." Sigh. "Fine, fine, I'm curious too, and you're bullshit enough that poking strange things is probably not suicidal."

She can't help but feel like she has a ghost over her shoulder telling her that this is dumb, but. ... That hurts too much to think about, so she won't.

Zash has a hundred and fifty years worth of these. You get used to them eventually.

Onwards to the alarming green light!

They come across a scene of destruction, smoking bodies scattered across the blood-stained sand, and a woman who has a gigantic cross standing in the middle of it all.

"Uh. Well, this is awkward."

Oh.

:(

Yvette makes a face, then pokes her head out of the window of the car.

"Hey um. Did you kill all of these people?"

"In my defense they had it coming!!"

They often do.

Zash opens the door and steps out of the car to examine the scene more closely. "What did they do?"

"Slavers. Robbed and then sold people off to various places."

The bodies do indeed have things like 'shackles' and 'nets' and 'tasers' that imply their chosen profession, but. ... There is a mysterious lack of any slaves, or tracks.

...she's not lying, Zash is certain of this. And yet, he can also observe the mysterious lack of slaves, or tracks.

Well, there sure is one explanation, isn't there, and it's one that rhymes with this person taking on this whole group of slavers and winning.

Why does this smell of Nai, again.

"Hm," is what he says in lieu of voicing any of these thoughts, because sometimes people feel compelled to fill a silence with more useful information than anything you might have thought to ask about.

"Sooo. Since you're already here, hey, can I get a ride?"

Yvette is making SUCH A FACE.

"Are you going anywhere in particular, then?"

"Nope, my business in this area has concluded!"

"... Were you hunting them?"

"Gosh. Little old me? All by myself?? Taking on a whole gang of yeah okay you're not accepting that bullshit hell yes I was hunting them."

"She's telling the truth," Zash says, possibly uselessly. "Not the whole truth, though," which is plausibly more useful. "But who amongst us is?" he adds, with a shrug, and then he smiles.

"What's your name? I'm Zash."

"Morgan! Morgan Wolfwood, pleasure to meet you."

".... Yvette. Hi."

"If you're not planning to go anywhere, why do you want to get a ride from us? And for that matter how did you get here?"

"Because I walked, and let me tell you, it is not my favorite thing in the world, walking places. So. Fancy car sounds great, actually."

"Makes sense to me. I mean, who would willingly walk somewhere when they had a car available to transport them right there."

"Someone who was actively trying to get away from the owner of the car," he replies mullishly.

"... Am I missing context here? I feel like I'm missing context here."

"I don't wanna talk about it. But if you aren't trying to stay away from a car owner for her own good and are instead fine with hitching a ride with her then hop on."

"Oh so you're just volunteering my car to strangers now? That's how this is??"

".... Do you not want me in your car?"

She sounds a bit amused with their spat.

"It's fine, get in, it's just the principle of the matter."

Zash sits on the passenger side but folds his arms and looks away, pouting.

"There, there." Since he's up here, she leans over to muss up his hair.

Meanwhile, their new passenger has to load in her gigantic cross into the backseat, and then squeeze in after. The car noticeably sinks towards the back, now.

"Is the cross a gigantic heavy laser gun."

"What?? Actually a laser gun?? My religious symbol? What a silly thing to think. It's heavy because it's full of mercy!"

"You're feeding and watering yourself and I expect some sort of payment towards the upkeep and maintenance of this thing," sniffs Yvette, and then yes, they can resume driving.

...heeeee is in a lot of trouble, is what he thinks, even as he softens and leans towards Yvette when she musses up his hair. So so so much trouble.

"Where did you even get a huge laser gun?" he asks Morgan.

"My old boss hands the fuckers out. All obnoxiously cross based. No, I don't get it either, but I kept the gun I mean my religious symbol that I am personally attached to. Yes."

Her old boss, is it. That's definitely not Nai, because Nai is not ever going to be anyone's boss, especially not a human's, but Nai has in fact acquired cadres of crazies at various times over the decade; Zash wouldn't be surprised if one of them were very religious.

Or it could just be entirely unrelated. There's other bullshit than Nai and him on this planet. A little bit of it. Not a lot, and it often gets attracted to them like metal dust to a pair of high-powered magnets, but still.

Anyway.

"What ratio of interrogation to inane small talk are you most comfortable with?"

"Iunno, let's play it by ear! It's been fine so far."

"Who's your old boss."

"Gigantic psychotic asshole. Next question!"

That narrows it down not at all.

"What's your old job?"

"I would think the laser gun gave it away but okay, sure, it was killing people."

"Um."

"I really did not have as much agency and choice in the matter as you are expecting me to have had, here. I got out as soon as I could. And now I'm a free woman who may or may not be being hunted down by an assassin cult!"

"See, 'assassin cult' is a lot more informative than just killing people! Lots of different jobs involve killing people, like the Military Police or hired hitmen. Not all killing people jobs are created the same.

"I also feel like there's something I should be saying about how having a cult of assassins coming after you is maybe something you should disclose to people you're hitching a ride from before doing that but let's be real here we picked you up after running into a fresh massacre you caused in the desert, we have no room to complain."

"You really, really don't. Honestly, this is probably the best car I could possibly be hitching a ride in right now. You introduced yourself, Zash. Or should I call you Mr. Stampede. Is that a last name, or like, a title? Mr. The Stampede?"

"We're just rapid fire removing all the mysteries present, aren't we..."

"You bet, his unnamed and featureless accomplice!"

.... she has the urge to grumble about that, because if she's going to be wanted she would like to be wanted on her own merits, damn it. But also: that would be dumb, and she should not want to be wanted at all. Grumble.

"You know, you'd think that would matter a lot, but this isn't even the first time my name's been on the news and yet I still run into people sufficiently uninformed they don't know about it. And usually the ones who do know about it go, like,"

"'Aah! Help! Zash the Stampede! The Human Typhoon! Get away!'"

He gesticulates wildly in fake terror (though not interfering with Yvette's driving) as he says it.

"Oh, hell, I'm sorry, did I ruin the reveal for you? Hold on, hold on, uh."

"A wanted criminal??? I'm in the car with The Human Typhoon??? Aaa! I, a completely uninvolved civilian with no combat experience whatsoever am doomed! Doomed!!!"

"What the hell has my life become," wonders Yvette.

Zash cracks up. "I, like, her," he says in between bouts of laughter and lack of breath. "Can we, keep her?"

"If she's not psychotic and will keep the delicate noncombatant in the car from becoming riddled with holes or squished or something, by the apparent assassin cult after her, sure, fine."

"Aw!! I've been adopted."

"Wanted fugitive buddies!" he says, offering his closed robot fist for a fist bump.

Fist bump!

"Technically speaking I'm not wanted by any actual government entities but otherwise YEAH!"

"Governments are just gangs that got enough territory they can pretend to be the good guys," he says with a shrug.

"Hah! Not wrong!"

They seem to have bonded quickly. This is confusing and strange and she misses her guide that put things into context and made the world seem like something she could maybe navigate instead of way too big and crazy for her. (Too bad she got him killed.)

Well, if the strange ex-assassin is now going to be in her car for some reason, she might as well pull her weight. And her gigantic cross's weight, too.

"Hey, how good are you at navigation?"

"Decent! Why, is this ride to anywhere in particular?"

"I'd like to get to the port of Terminal as soon as possible."

"Ooooh. Gotcha. Then you want to go thataway." She points.

.... Yvette looks at Zash for confirmation.

"Looks about right!

"So what is the situation in Terminal, anyway?" He turns to look at Morgan to add the context of, "We're planning to help a plant not die."

"Thought the gig would be stealing them but, yeah, sure, if you know how to do that then why not, right."

Yvette does, in fact, change the car's direction to go where pointed, because it's not like she has much better of an idea. She was mostly right.

"So there's a sand steamer that'll arrive there around then. It is the one with the plant, not the town. It makes a living going from place to place and making what they need and selling it elsewhere. And, uh, also transporting rich people to where they want to go, it also does that."

To Morgan: "Rumours of my crimes towards plants have been greatly exaggerated and/or were entirely fabricated."

To Yvette: "The ship has only one plant?"

"Yep. It constantly wants plant engineers to come look at her, it's gone through... a few." Wince. "Technically speaking, they wanted to hire me, I got a look at their itinerary. The idea was to go take them up on that offer, but, you know, from this side."

"Wait. You're an actual plant engineer? Out here? In a car in the middle of the desert?? Ha! Sweet, okay, I'm down. So we're all walking paydays for people!"

"Six mil for me, probably about the same if not more for Yvette, how about you, how much do you think you fetch with the cult?"

"No idea, I wasn't ever on the money side of things. I don't think I'll pull as much as either of you but I'm not sure sure about that, you know?"

"Maybe if we all surrender ourselves and then pull off daring escapes we get to keep the money and the freedom. Hard to do without hurting people, though, and that bit is non-negotiable."

"It is?"

"Well, killing people, sometimes you do have to hurt them but I don't like to."

"..... kaaaaaay I'm going to pinky promise to do my very best to follow those preferences, but if I have to kill someone to keep squishy noncombatant safe I'm gonna."

"Let's just try to avoid getting into situations where that's necessary."

"Sure, sure, I'm just telling you which way I'm gonna fall if the situation happens despite our best efforts."

"You just met me."

"And you gave me a ride in your car! You both seem nice, and you said you'd adopt me if I, quote, 'keep the delicate noncombatant in the car from becoming riddled with holes or squished or something,' and I'm saying I accept your terms. So. Hi, mom! I'll do my best to keep you safe, even if dad will be upset about how I killed someone to do that!"

Zash wishes he could really argue, but, well... he's never really demanded that others follow his own rules. Especially not humans. If humans want to decide that other humans live or die, well, that's a lot more fair than if he does. He's not human; it's just not his place.

"That's all I can really ask for."

"You're just not even going to question how she has decided to call us mom and dad. You're just fine with that."

"You haven't either!"

"Do not call me mom or any related motherly noun, please, I have complicated enough hangups about ever having children as it is, I feel like adopting an adult woman would in fact be too weird for me."

"I'm younger than I look but fair enough!"

"You can call me dad if you want." He's pretty sure he's completely infertile, at least with humans, but he's one hundred percent never going to test that assertion.

"Mmmm I'll think about it, it's not as fun if it doesn't match."

"Zash is fine, too. And 'the Stampede' is a title. Not what I would've picked, but so it goes."

"Zash, probably. If I were going to use your title I'd use it like, 'I'm running with the Stampede' or whatever, but eh."

Snort.

There aren't many roads on this planet, because it is an absolute nightmare to maintain them in the middle of the desert, between the sandstorms and the sandworms. However, it's not a very hilly planet—or at least, not the parts of it that have been settled by humans. So when it's not storming, you can see around for miles. That makes the existence of periodic manmade landmarks easier to have, even if occasionally they get defaced or taken down by a barrage of worms and sand.

One such landmark is the little rest stop they can see in the distance: a lone building that probably serves as a midway point between two or more slightly larger ports of civilisation, for people to recharge their vehicles, get some food, or just spend the night.

"Any objections to taking a pitstop?" asks the driver who is in fact the... least experienced with navigating the planet, actually. She will get a second opinion, thank you, this might somehow be a trap. Or something.

"None here."

If it's a trap it's not an obvious one. "Sounds good to me."

Then they can pull up to the rest stop and see about exchanging money for goods and services or something! She might be able to have a non travel rations based meal, that'd be nice. Maybe someone will even accept her credit chip!!!! She doubts it but let her dream.

Zash leads the way towards the building and then... stops. And raises one hand, to make the others stop, too.

He does have very good hearing. And he can't hear... anyone.

Yvette obligingly stops, and in fact scootches so that Zash is a bit more between her and the building. Her? Hiding behind Zash? Ha, ha, yes absolutely.

Their hitchhiker frowns.

Then sniffs the air, carefully.

"... Don't be weird about this, but I smell blood."

Why do things keep happening! Okay, going after the mysterious green flash of light was asking for trouble, but a rest stop in the desert shouldn't be! This is just the universe making fun of him.

He lowers his arm then lifts a finger to his lips and makes a "come hither" gesture with two fingers before starting to slowly approach the building, drawing his gun as he does so.

Yep let's go poke the thing, though Morgan doesn't precisely draw her weapon. She just continues carrying it along behind her.

Yvette wonders if she should instead go wait in the car or something, but probably she's safest between the two hypercompetent fighters?? So she does that, since Zash didn't tell her to go wait in the car. But, for the record, this is under protest.

...okay, now he can hear someone else. Faintly. And also "hear" them, even more faintly. This is definitely one of the more opaque human minds he's ever met. He pushes open the door to the main store and steps inside.

There are two bodies: one man and one woman, both lying against a pillar in a pool of their own blood. It's not completely dry; the murders were recent. But it's very unclear what happened, it doesn't look like anything was stolen or even that much of a fight took place there.

And the mind Zash can hear is hiding in that closet over there.

Morgan does not have such psychic powers, and instead is frowning, and watching the entrance suspiciously for anyone coming to ambush them.

And Yvette will go investigate the bodies themselves, because no seriously what killed them??

Slit throats, it seems?

But Zash is walking over to the closet, now, slowly, with a very severe expression on his face. And he's still holding the gun, but—backwards? He's holding it as if he's preparing to hit someone with it, not shoot them.

Slit throats??? Really??? That's so bizarre, that implies a stealth or execution style of killing. Did... this couple upset some people?? And then get killed for it???

"Uh, hey, make sure no one's out to steal our car," she says anyway, confused and bewildered. Then she looks up and sees Zash, and figures he probably has a handle on the probable killer.

Yeah he does. He walks right up to the closet, gets ready, opens it, and—

—finds a child in there, huddled into a corner, making themself as small as they can. They look up at him, looking absolutely terrified, and try to shrink into themself even more.

Zash immediately softens. "Hey. It's fine, you're fine, whoever did this is gone." He puts his gun away and kneels down to be eye level with the kid.

"Oh," says Yvette, who also softens. "Oh no. Okay, um."

She's going to immediately get to finding a blanket or something to cover up the poor kid's probable parents, so he doesn't. Have to look at them.

Morgan stares with an unreadable expression, then says, "I'm going to check outside for tracks or whatever."

And then she turns and leaves to go do that.

It's the middle of the desert, there's probably not going to be any, but then again she did manage to find the slavers so.

Anyway, yeah, let's try to get this kid out of this place filled with the smell of their parents' blood.

The kid is reluctant at first but when nothing bad happens they follow along.

There is in fact, absolutely no sign of any retreat after the murders, even to their resident apparent-tracker.

So for lack of any kind of better idea, they can in fact bury the poor souls who were apparently murdered in their own home, almost in front of their child.

Morgan stays out of it, instead lighting up a cigarette and smoking at a removed distance, looking vaguely irritated. She will not be paying any kind of respects or cooing over the kid or anything.

That's okay, Zash can do the worrying about the kid thing. He does have a way with kids, usually, and he's been around his fair share of kids who have lost their parents recently.

The kid looks like they don't particularly want to... talk. They don't give their name, and at best answer questions with nods or shakes of their head.

That's okay. They don't need to talk if they don't want to. No one's going to ask this of them.

"We're on our way to Terminal," he says, gently. "Would you like to come with us?"

Nod.

Yvette is also hovering anxiously over the poor traumatized child.

"Is... there anything from here you'd like to take with you?" she asks, softly. "Before we go?"

Probably it's bad wasteland manners to not immediately loot the place, but. But. .... she doesn't particularly want to.

The kid looks a bit uncertain...

But Zash immediately looks up, his face blanching, and cries, "Run!"

He picks the kid up in a bridal carry and starts running.

Um! Yeah okay sure she can do some running she will be following Zash because he seems to have literally any idea what they're running from.

"Figures," sighs Morgan from her spot on the sidelines, dropping her cigarette. Then, because she sees where this is going, she grabs her gun cross and runs towards the danger instead of away.

There isn't much of a "towards", here; the danger is centered right under them, and they cannot, in fact, run fast enough to escape it, so really almost any direction Morgan could go in is towards. There's a tremour, a lurching feeling as something like a sinkhole appears directly underneath them, and then four towering fleshy pincers of a gargantuan sandworm emerge from the sands around them before they close up above them and it swallows them whole.

WHAT THE FUCK WHY IS THIS A THING!

Ughhhhhhhhh.

The interior of the worm, for the record, smells awful. Furthermore, it is slimey and gross, and dark, and whatever air there is to breathe is stale. They're probably lucky that there's air at all.

Morgan has a lighter. She flicks it on. It's not the only light in the belly of the beast that has currently eaten them, because there are several glowing juvenile worm-spawn flying around in here, but it is a more immediate light source than any of those.

"You all okay?"

"Nmrrghagh???"

"Taking that as a yes. Zashy-kins! What about you?"

"I'm fine. Kid! Are you alright?" At some point during the fall he dropped the kid so he starts frantically looking for them.

"Mmmngh," the kid moans from where they fell on, in between two fleshy mounds of the inside of the worm.

"Oh thank goodness," he says, rushing over to the kid and dropping down to one knee to check on them.

They seem alright. Shaken up some, maybe bruised somewhere not visible, but they don't seem very terribly hurt.

Oh, goodie, because the state of the kid was absolutely the forefront priority in her mind, she's so relieved now.

"So my gun can probably cut through this thing but if we're underground when I do it, we're going to be shit out of luck."

"I, I, what, but, we were just. Can worms assassinate people???? Why didn't it just eat them!!"

"It probably just did. They were in the ground. It was in the ground."

"No but I mean, why would it, but if it did then it left them there, I'm. What???"

"...I'd be surprised if the worm had, uh," he spares the kid a glance and rather than saying "killed the parents" he says "done it. It seemed pretty surgical and this, uh... is a very big worm."

The kid gets it anyway and looks away, balling their hands into little fists.

"Ahuh. Unless worms can carry a knife and fit into a diner at the same time I'm not seeing how one would be responsible." She then points at the kid. "Kid did it."

Okay, so, yes the evidence does point in that direction now that she's thinking about it, but, "You can't just say that!!! They were probably his parents!!"

"Why, because he's small and vulnerable looking? That's how they get you. Kids can be cruel. And they're very easily molded to do whatever the hell someone wants. So."

...the kid throws Morgan the most hurt, upset look in the history of mankind. "I, I didn't!" Those being the first words they've said so far. "I, I, I—" And their eyes fill up with tears.

Zash shoots Morgan a pretty dirty look before looking at the kid again.

(Not that he hadn't thought of that, but... he thinks he'd have been able to tell, in the kid's mind. And while the kid is on the more opaque end of minds the emotions he can pick up are all very genuine.)

"Ignore her, she's just in a bad mood, I know you didn't do it."

The kid wipes their eyes angrily, shaking their head, then cries, "I didn't!"

And then they take off.

Oh goddamnit.

"Oh nooooo, the probable murderer is running away, deeper into the belly of the worm, my heart, it breaks."

"And if he's innocent you just consigned a child to be digested by a, a, how fucking big even is this thing, I didn't know worms could get this big."

"Well if he's innocent then clearly he was not long for this world, 'cause he just ran away from the only person who can maybe cut a way out of this thing, so. I think death by worm might be a kindness."

"HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK."

He squints at Morgan for a second.

Something here isn't adding up.

And her mind is also on the more opaque end so he can't pick up very much from her. She does seem to believe what she's saying, and also... he thinks she... has some other reason to believe it? Than just logic. Which is less the psychic stuff and more inference and gut feeling, he'd need to be closer to her and maybe touching her skin to get more than that. Still, he'll need to chase that note of confusion down.

After, that is, he chases the kid down, because the down side if Morgan is wrong is still an innocent kid being eaten by a worm bigger than anything Zash has seen in his hundred and fifty years of life. Off he goes.

"I really feel like we should be focusing on the actual problem here, which is being stuck in a fuckoff huge worm!!!" she calls after him.

"Sure, until you went and added another one to it! Even removing the possibility of innocence, which I am not, we can't just -- there are any number of reasons someone could kill, that doesn't mean they deserve to die in here."

And then yeah she'll go running off after Zash, because Zash is clearly the person to be sticking with in here.

"We are in here too! How about we worry about us instead of -- fucking damn it fine I'm coming but this is stupid!"

Zash is superhumanly strong and agile; the kid is small. In a space made of fleshy hills and unstable footing, the kid mostly wins. At least in the short run—Zash could probably have caught up to the kid if he knew exactly where the kid had gone and kept running, but after running a little bit he reaches a bifurcation.

"What kind of nightmare of biological construction has a bifurcation in a creature's guts," he growls in frustration.

"Hell if I know, man," grumbles Morgan, arriving shortly after. "You want someone who can explain worm biology to you then I am not the person to..."

"... Wheeeeeere is our nerd. We are down a nerd."

He swirls around fast enough it's almost like he instantaneously inverted mid-air. "—Yvette? Yvette!"

Ooookay time to backtrack a little bit he did not run far enough ahead that he could possibly have lost her.

Apparently not, because there is absolutely no sign of her.

Morgan’s still here, though, looking grim.

"...okay, no, this is enemy action. Morgan if you're the enemy I am going to be so upset."

“I am not your enemy, and I was against the whole running after the murderer plan.”

"I don't think you are. And I also don't think the kid is a murderer. But worms don't do this." He runs a hand through his hair. "Sorry, I'm stressed and snappish. Let's go looking for them."

“Yeah. Of course.” And they can begin looking. “I don’t know why you don’t, though. You’d thought it was him until you opened the door and saw a —“

There is the sound of several gunshots, in rapid succession. From thataway.

And it's Vernon's gun; he can tell from the noise.

Well, he does not need to be told twice.

Here is Yvette, covered in goo and looking like she just shot and clawed her way out of… something.

“The fucking bugs swarmed me and shoved me in a, a gooey pocket thing!!!” she declares without preamble, looking very unhappy.

“The bugs? Not…?”

"...the bugs?" he agrees. "What... the fuck." Then he turns around again, grimacing. "What is that noise."

“Noise? What noise?”

“I don’t hear anything, either. Except, uh, the ringing in my ears from close range gunshot, which, ow.”

"—get down!" Zash says, doing so himself.

And a huge swarm of flying blugs appears out of nowhere and flies right at their heads extremely quickly.

Yvette has by now figured out to just listen to Zash, so down she goes!

Yep, yep, all down, giant cross gun and all.

The bugs swerve around mid-air after they miss them and then try to go for a more scattershot approach to get them.

"Let's just run," he calls, but he'll bring up the rear because he can very reliably one-shot even the very small bugs and do so very quickly.

“Yeah okay sounds good!”

She’s certainly not going to be any good shooting, so: just running!

Morgan will be running in front, prepping her gigantic gun to do some shooting. This involves unwrapping it, but it’s made to unwrap quickly, so.

There are enough bugs that the main problem shooting them all out of the air runs into is his pistol's recharge rate plus how many bullets he wants to waste.

Well, since he's no longer pretending he isn't insanely bullshit, he can, in fact, pulverise these bugs by punching them, and he can, in fact, move his body fast enough that this is a viable strategy, at least for the number of bugs that are currently in the tunnel chasing them. There is a number of worms that would overwhelm him but "a couple hundred" is not it.

Cool, cool, and Morgan can handle the front and keep any bugs from off of them and focus on going up. Because she doesn’t have any better ideas. Her laser gun is on its lowest setting, which is enough to fry any bugs that happen to get in her way.

“Kinda wondering what our exit plan is here, I think we’re still underground!”

"I was planning to think about that one after we found the—"

The worm suddenly lurches and the ground tilts—

—they're falling, and there's a suction effect—

—and then the suction effect is reversed and they're violently sneezed out of the creature out to the surface. Only its "nose" is sticking out, which would make sense if it literally had to sneeze and couldn't do it underground.

Fuck fuck fuck she’ll be fine from this fall, Zash the super powered will probably be fine from this fall, but they have a squishy…

A tiny vial of liquid is imbibed. And with a superhuman speed and accuracy, a squishy is grabbed, a giant gun is aimed, and the force of the blast can soften the landing so that maybe the squishy can live through this absurdity.

—oh, good, Morgan's got this, he was going to have to try to figure something else otherwise.

He falls rolling but it still hurts like a bitch, especially given that it's on sand and super-regen or no sand is gritty. He doesn't have any time to waste on that, though, and immediately tries to find the other two, they can't have been launched too far from him.

Yvette is right there! Covered in sand (on top of her goo) and absolutely fine, if extremely unhappy!

Morgan is… less fine. She is looking more than a little injured, and bleeding profusely, because obviously she took the brunt of the landing instead of Yvette.

But she’s also rapidly healing.

“Ow,” she grumbles.

...probability of involvement by Nai or Nai-adjacents has shot right back up.

"Okay, you're both alive. Run, I'm gonna go rescue the kid," he says, turning back around to face the worm that is emerging from the sand again.

“You’re going back for the little psycho? Back into the giant worm that thinks like it’s people?! For some kid you don’t know?!?”

“Good luck,” says Yvette, who does not want to go back in the worm, thank you, and will begin running accordingly. “I’ll be with the car!”

"Yes, I am going back in the giant worm that thinks like it's people for some kid I don't know who may be a psycho, next question, and ask it fast if you want to have enough time to run."

Because the worm is very much starting to pick up speed to get to them.

"Do you have literally any exit strategy or are you just hoping you'll be sneezed out again."

"I'll figure it out."

"Well screw that noise, I'll use my gigantic gun."

Apparently she is going into the worm with him, then.

He offers her a small smile.

And then he gets ready to be eaten again.

He will have his wish.

It is not more fun the second time around!!!

"Yeah, okay, that's settled. Not calling you dad, this would be child abuse," she grumbles.

He dusts himself off as he gets to his feet again. "You chose this, I did not impose it on you. Now let's look for that kid."

"Yeah, yeah, fine."

Up she gets, and then they can get to looking. In this giant worm. How are they supposed to find someone in here again?

Well, you put your right hand on the wall and you start walking along it.

(Not literally. But metaphorically. Follow the wall.)

This is a dumb plan, but she will nonetheless support him in his choices, because without her it would in fact be even dumber. Grumble grumble, squish squish as they travel through the worm.

But they don't need to look very far; this time the kid is right there, standing in the middle of one of the open areas in the "stomach".

They turn around when they hear Zash and Morgan, let out a little squeak, then run directly towards Zash to wrap their arms around him in a tight hug.

"—oh. There you are. I was so scared, are you alright?"

Morgan, meanwhile, is frowning again. Suspiciously.

Zash—

—freezes. Then releases the kid and takes a step back. "That noise..."

The kid... starts grinning, and a whole host of flying worms starts surrounding them. "You can hear it? Wow! Normal humans usually can't."

"Yeah, funny thing, I think we left the only one we had back outside. Fresh out."

"...that couple. Did you kill them?"

The kid turns their grin to Morgan before looking at Zash again. "You should've listened to your friend. People always assume, when they see adults and a kid, that the kid must be theirs, right?" They lift their hand to touch the front of their hat. "But we're truly touched..."

"...that you came back for us," they finish, and as they pull their hat off their appearance changes, their pupils contracting into slits, a thick bumpy fleshy collar emerging around their neck.

"Yeah, okay, fuck this."

Gigantic laser gun! It's BLASTING TIME. The worm around them, not the kid, because she's increasingly suspecting that the kid is... just some kind of puppet thing.

The various smaller bugs now try to intercept the laser and absorb whatever they can of its power. The kid jumps out of the way of the laser blast anyway, and the bits of the shot that aren't absorbed by the bugs are still bad enough that they carve a hole on the worm, showing that it's... well, not underground, at the moment.

"So rude!"

"Who are you?" Zash is still not going to waste bullets on the small bugs but he's considering wasting them on whoever—or whatever—this kid is.

"Humans and their names... But we guess some of your friends have called us Zazi the Beast."

Definitely some Nai-adjacent involvement, here.

"You started it, kiddo! Zash, I say we bail out of the available exit!" calls Morgan, who is in fact still blasting and working to make that hole to the sky bigger.

Zash looks between the hole, the kid, and Morgan. "Can you kill the worm?"

"Ah! Figured us out, have you?"

They pull a strange bug mask out of the back of their head, and a set of wings shoots out the sides of it, buglike but powerful enough for the kid to take flight. "Well, good luck! Be seein' ya."

"What, murder's fine if it's not human?! Inconsistent much!?! I was just going to get us outta here!"

"Had you ever seen a worm this big? They don't get this big. The kid could send the worm somewhere inhabited."

"Oh damn it fine, I'll try, but you're giving me mixed signals here!!"

Maximum power and maximum laser slicing, then, aiming to carve this thing into itty bitty pieces instead of just ripping a hole out.

That works. Zazi doesn't seem to mind, though, and just giggles at it before flying out of the hole with a myriad other worms.

And now they need to go because a collapsing gargantuan worm is not a good place to be.

Yeah, yeah, but if it's all the same to Zash she'll let him do the heavy lifting of getting them out of the gargantuan collapsing worm, thanks. So inconsistent.

Fine. He can do that, if she insists. Bridal carry her and her gun like they weigh nothing and jump out.

And they can watch from a very nice vantage point as the enormous thing—a kaiju much more than a dinosaur or a whale—loses hold of itself and ponderously collapses, gushing blood soaking the sands.

"Well. There's dinner sorted, I guess."

He starts laughing, mostly in relief, and he drops back on his ass on the sand to watch the spectacle of the weight of the creature resettling in itself.

She flops back to a seat next to him.

"Still super weird to be fine with killing worms, but not humans, though. Where does that leave weirdos like us, huh? Do you have a flow chart or something for me."

"If it's a person it's bad to kill," he explains. "...though I confess that after today I might be needing to revise what I think a person is."

"Ahuh. And what if that person is going to go and kill other people. What then."

"I haven't yet needed to kill someone to prevent that." The times he failed to prevent people-killing were not ones where killing someone would've actually fixed it, or was actually possible.

"Well good for you, then."

She lights another cigarette, because she didn't really get to finish her first one.

"Your girlfriend's going to come pick us up, right, we don't have to walk back?"

"She's not my girlfriend. ...and probably."

"Whatever you say, man."

She does, in fact, drive out to come pick them up.

"So the diner has a built-in water purifier, a shower, and beds!" she says brightly, popping out of the car, looking perfectly clean and her clothes practically sparkling white again.

Both Zash and Morgan are covered in sand, goo, and blood, so the contrast is very drastic.

"And we have dinner," he says, gesturing at the monster.

"And, technically speaking, a source of water, too! Well done. No kid, though?"

"Kid was a worm in disguise."

"I have additional questions."

"Can I have that shower first."

"They're mostly directed at the state of the world, my understanding of it, and worm physiology, but since I do in fact have some for you and your healing factor, yes of course."

Back they can all go! She has put towels down on their seats, and they can lash a large hunk of worm meat to the top of the car.

"I'm really not sure what to make of Zazi. I did not think worms could get that intelligent."

"Zazi being the kid-who-was-a-worm? I mean, I know that they're a sort of... networked intelligence thing, smarter in larger groups, dumb as rocks in smaller groups, so. It does stand to reason that there could be enough of them to make a proper intelligence. I've just never heard of it before. Or one that large. Or there being a worm that looks human! And talks! Because he, they, it? definitely talked, right, I'm not making that up?"