Taking the Initiative [Dark]

[Dark]

Minh smiled, unabashed. She hadn't figured Mnem would particularly care for the idea, but you couldn't blame a cat for trying. It had been a ridiculous amount of time since her last science experiment, and she was going through withdrawl.

"Well, if you insist." She waved the Lowlander off apolegetically, "Sorry, mate. She's being a itsy bit bitchy, today. Better luck next time, eh?" With any luck he'd follow them downstream, and she could get ahold of him when Mnem's back was turned. She settled back down in the keel of the boat to enjoy the sun and was promptly asleep.

Minh woke some indeterminable time later with vague dream-memories of her lab and sparkle balls. She streched, smiling as she thought about it. When she was little, her brother had always thrown sparkle balls to keep her busy; maybe she could find some when they got home.

[Bee]

Mnem gave Minh the stink eye, less for being called a bitch (that was true in many senses of the word, so what was the point in arguing?) and more because Minh had caved remarkably easily and Mnem had the suspicion that she was probably up to something, because Minh was always up to something.

She tried to put the Lowlander out of her mind as they drifted down the river. She did not particularly want to spend the night on a vessel when both of them were sleeping and no one navigating, so when dusk approached, they made their way to a discreet spot on the shore where they could dock their little boat and get some sleep. All the purple in the sky was making her feel lethargic. But maybe that was more due to the act that they had spent most of the day pretty much inactive.

And so, bed made and food consumed, she told Minh goodnight and settled in to slumber.

[Dark]

It seemed like they’d always been on the river, and when Minh wasn’t doing river-things she was dreaming river-things. Minh dreamed of sunshine and water and lazy koi that could swallow a raft whole if they were so inclined; it was a half-memory, and she puzzled, idly, at the complexity of the subconscious and her river-dreams. The thoughts were slow to form, though, and kept slipping away into the river-dream and sunshine.

Minh woke to darkness, just as the Lowlander began rummaging in their packs; she couldn’t help but feel irate with abrupt wakefulness, and decided that she was cross. The sentiment was fleeting enough when she remembered she had planned for all this to happen. Her paw slipped under her bedroll for the syringe she had stored there before the river-dreams.

The sedative was quick-acting and she watched him slump over with lazy contentment. She took a moment to clean out and store the syringe with the rest of her supplies before she toed Mnem, “Hey. We have a guest.”

[Bee]

She wanted to break whatever was poking at her. A Minh bit. She almost grabbed at it before she heard the feline speak. A guest. The perfect dressing on the crap salad that had been their day. Their week. Their entire trip.

But she was resorting to mental melodrama. She sat up and rubbed at her eyes, and then she snarled at the Lowlander that was now lying unconscious on the ground. So she turned and snarled at Minh. It figured that she would find some way to get what she wanted in the end; Mnem had known she was up to something. Probably lured the damn ugly thing into camp while Mnem was sleeping away.

"We're going to tie some stones on him and toss him into the river, I assume?" she said, very pointedly. "It seems to be the most logical and headache-free course of action."

[Dark]

Minh smiled bemusedly--Mnem was so darling when she first woke up--and considered the snarled suggestion carefully for a moment before answering, "I don't have any kind of objection; we can drown him right after I finish running some tests!"

It seemed reasonable enough to Minh--they both got their way and everyone walked away from the situation happily; except their guest, of course. Minh didn't think he'd be very pleased to be drowned, but it wasn't exactly her problem, was it?

There were only so many tests that could be run in the field with such limited supplies, but Minh was optomistic as she laid out her equipment. She would get some skin samples--both from infected and normal looking areas--and a hair sample. A blood sample would have been preferred, but there was no way she could store it for the length of the trip; it was only good fresh out of a body.

She eyed her soon-to-be-victum thoughtfully, an idea slowly forming; Minh couldn't store the blood, but he could. "Mnem...are you sure we have to drown him?"

[Bee]

"We have to dispose of him somehow," she said, trying to appeal to logic. "Idiot One and Idiot Two are searching for him, and if we keep him with us, we're just inviting a lot of unnecessary misery upon ourselves, and unnecessary misery makes me cranky."

She didn't want to get caught up anymore with these stupid hicks and their stupid hick feuds. No wonder Shinrai was such a moron. His entire realm was full of them. So was the Range, and so was the Lowlands. It was the goddamn Moron Network.

She smiled at Minh. Sort of. Really it was just turning up the corners of her mouth and showing a lot of teeth. "Or look at it this way. We can either dump this lout after you get some samples and be on our merry way, or we can take him with us and I can make your life a miserable hell for the remainder of the journey. Because unnecessary misery makes me very, very cranky."

[Dark]

Was Mnem threatening her? Minh tilted her head and puzzled over the woman's tone. It couldn't be a threat--Mnem and she were buddies, after all, and Mnem wouldn't ever do anything to intentionally harm her. Minh chalked it up to stress and promptly forgot about it.

"Are you grimacing? Never mind. What you need to know is that my plan is brilliant. He stores his own blood until I get to a microscope! How ingenious is that?" She paused to breathe and then continued unperturbed, "And there's no need to worry; we'll just avoid trouble. Easy, yeah? Everything will be fine."

But just in case that didn't turn out to be the case--Minh took skin and hair samples. They wouldn't spoil, and she had her equipment out anyway, didn't she? She was being effecient. That's all.

[Bee]

Mnem thought that maybe Minh was being absorbed into the Moron Network. This was a little beyond typical Minh spaciness. She sighed deeply. She imagined snapping Minh's neck and standing triumphantly over her bent corpse. Perhaps she would cackle. Yes. With malevolent triumph. And then she would develop a magical power so great she could wipe the Moron Network right off the map. Then she could go home and drink all her cares away.

There we go. She felt better already.

"Minh, above and beyond the fact that, yes, people typically store their own blood, this is not some miraculous containment system you have just invented--" She nearly lost her insult. "--How do you propose we avoid the Idiot Patrol with a very conspicuous Lowlander on a very conspicuous boat?" Though she supposed she had half-answered her own question. You couldn't have an Idiot Patrol without Idiot.

[Dark]

Minh smiled, knowing she was half-way to winning the arguement; Mnem didn't want trouble, but that was about where her arguement ended. In different circumstances, Minh was sure her roommate would be perfectly happy to assist in the capture and experimentation of hapless passerby. Still, she might as well pretend to be a reasonable creature--for Mnem's sake.

"If worse comes to worse and they do happen to discover our illegal possession of a wanted criminal, you spin a waspish yarn about him sneaking into our camp in the dead of night for some dastardly purpose and how, after apprehending him, we stuck him on our boat and continued on down the river in hopes of finding the proper authorities. Good, yeah? Not that they'll catch us." Because, seriously. They were idiots, and if they had friends, they were probably idiots, too.

"Help me tie him up?"

[Bee]

Mnem almost started in on a counter-argument about how a bunch of paranoid morons would likely be suspicious of that story even it were the truth, but then her brain suddenly did the mental equivalent of throwing one's arms up in the air and letting out a huff.

They were likely fucked, one way or another, no matter what they did, so in the grand scheme of things, leaving the Lowlander probably wasn't going to stop any trouble--just make room for a different kind of trouble to step in. And Mnem would rather know what she was going to be dealing with down the road than get ambushed by an unknown horrific annoyance.

Fine. Defeatism won the day. She didn't care anymore. She would indulge Minh.

Pettily, she gave the Lowlander a sound kick to the ribcage before helping tie him up. She was the one with hands, after all.