Yeah, they honestly probably would. Zash is having slight feelings that Siran might be the best thing that's happened to this planet.

That is not really what he would've expected before landing here. And he still might fuck everything up! Never discount the possibility of Siran fucking everything up! But... he really hopes he can help? It seems like a better thing to do with his life than lie in the sand feeling bad about his terrible decisions.

Yeah, speaking from experience here lying in the sand feeling bad about one's terrible decisions loses its charm very quickly. If nothing else it's horribly boring.

So boring! Very few hugs! All in all not a good time.

Zash hadn't really thought about the lack of hugs as a noteworthy feature of lying in the sand feeling sorry for himself but—

[—put me down.]

(And the colour of his thoughts is one of alarm. He noticed something urgent that needs his full mobility to be dealt with.)

He sets Zash down neatly and quickly on his feet and stops, looking around to see what the problem could be.

The problem might be... those dots over there in the distance? Hard to make out what they are.

"Shit. Okay, I need somewhere to hide—"

Desert in all directions. Couple indistinct landmarks that way and that other way but definitely not close enough.

"Shit."

"...how badly do you need somewhere to hide, because I could probably dig a hole to bury you in very fast if that would actually work, and if it was worth doing magic about."

"...there's a bounty on my head—I don't know how well that translated—" He'll touch Siran to mentally convey the concept. "And those people are likely to know about it and want to collect, if they are who I think they are. ...they won't be able to, I'm not capturable if I don't want to be, but I don't want to hurt them."

Since they're touching, he can convey much faster than he could use words out loud that: he wants to dig a hole to hide Zash in. He thinks probably the side effects would be fine or at least manageable, even if he lost control of the spell, which he probably wouldn't. And... he thinks that whole decision process is highly suspect and the new shape of who he's trying to be says not to do it just on that basis, not unless Zash thinks a lot of people would get hurt in this fight, enough to be worth the small but non-negligible risk of Siran fucking up wildly and making a bottomless pit or something. He is kind of upset about this but that's just how it goes sometimes, when you're trying to be a person who doesn't make reckless decisions under pressure even when the pressure feels very important.

"It's probably not worth it," he sighs. "Uh, fair warning, they might try to shoot you. They won't succeed, I'll stop them, but they might try."

"Sure," he says agreeably. "Don't try too hard?" (The meaning underlying the words, far clearer than he managed to articulate out loud: if he gets shot, he will have a really uncomfortable time. If the people attacking them get hurt, that's a much bigger deal. If Zash ends up having to trade off Siran's safety against the safety of their attackers, probably it's a better idea to prioritize their attackers. He's not thrilled about it or anything but as a person who doesn't die when killed in a world with a real shortage of those he kind of feels like it'd be a dick move not to volunteer to be the first one dropped from the priority list if it comes up.)

...Zash has the oddest impulse to kiss Siran. Which he was incredibly not braced for and which he might accidentally leak/project even when he tries to clamp down on it. Uh, whoops. Sorry about that, Siran.

He smiles sheepishly. "Don't worry. It takes rather a lot more than three humans to really be a problem."

...cute?? Cute. Cute. Zash is cute.

"Fair enough," he says cheerfully.

"Alright, then." And he'll use this moment to detach his holster from his bare thigh—he'd reattached it there after giving Siran his pants sort of without stopping to think about it—and attach it to his mechanical arm. And then... they gotta wait.

Siran takes a few steps in the general direction they were heading and then looks back questioningly; can they wait in a more walkingish sort of way, or does Zash want to stay put?

No, let's wait, it's more aesthetic that way.

(Gunslinger aesthetic, Wild West style duels and whatnot. Not that it'll be a duel, but. Aesthetic.)

All right, all right, if he insists. Siran traipses back to stand by Zash, off to the side a little behind him and out of his way.

The people Zash has spotted take much longer to spot them, lacking the superhuman senses, but when they do they make a beeline for them.

It turns out to be three people, all covered head-to-toe in desert gear with face masks and goggles, riding horse-sized blue flightless bipedal birds. And once they're close enough to properly get a look on who exactly it is that they're seeing they speed up.

"Zash the Stampede!" calls the one in the center once they're close enough, before he makes his bird stop. "You are under arrest by the Julai Military Police. There needn't be any violence if you come quietly."

"There needn't be any violence anyway," he argues.

Siran is just gonna... stand back and let Zash handle this. He doesn't know this place or these people and would probably just make things worse if he tried to say something.