Taking the Initiative [Dark]

[Dark]

Minh was starting to think that maybe it hadn't been such a great idea after all. It had started off well enough; they had set off early, well before dawn, and sunrise on the river was a spectacular thing to see, but then around midmorning the sedative started to wear off and their guest was rather upset to find himself tied up. (Mnem had done a wonderful job with the knots, and Minh couldn't help but be slightly envious of such handy opposable thumbs.) He'd been making a fuss ever since.

"Why are you doing this?" he moaned, "They're insane. Insane, do you hear me? Turn me over and they'll kill me for sure."

Minh heard him, all too well, and was trying very desperately to ignore his incesent whining. And failing, miserably. Minh gagged him, and about started wailing herself when he just kept moaning.

[Bee]

The depths of Mnem's current apathy were so deep that even the Lowlander's whining couldn't begin to plumb them.

Though she was slightly curious as to why this miserable, rotting piece of shit was being a whinging little bitch in the face of what was probably the best thing that could have happened to him.

She looked at his gagged, wretched little face. She said, with entirely detached coolness, "You know, I don't see the point of all this moaning. You're still alive, aren't you? I would think you'd like to stay that way. Everyone else around here apparently wants you dead; why are you working so very hard to get us to want you dead as well?"

The Lowlander started to cry. Mnem blinked at him. She had never understood tears.

"Oh, woman up," she said, with an absent-minded sort of malice. "If I hear another noise out of you I didn't specifically ask for, I'll crush your larynx."

[Dark]

Minh had never been so glad for Mnem--the woman wielded malice and disdain with all the casual grace of a true artist. The very real threat seemed to penetrate the sniveling twit’s thick skull because he slowly quieted, and although there were still occasional tormented hiccup-sobs, Minh found she could live with that.

She grinned at Mnem, “You’re my hero.”

Stretching out and enjoying the relative quiet, Minh had just started to nod off in what promised to be a wonderfully refreshing mid-morning nap when Monty started to growl from hir place as lookout. Minh thought about the promise she had made--it’ll be fine--with a sinking feeling in her gut, and sat up.

“What is it, Monty?” Monty’s beady little eyes were fixed on some point down the river, hir entire body quivering with anticipation, and while Minh didn’t see anything amiss on first glance, she couldn’t shake the feeling of impeding doom.

[Bee]

As Monty could always be relied upon to sense danger--possibly because s/he was the current incarnation of pure evil and could thus always detect lesser members of hir own kind--Mnem took the growling seriously and squinted, trying to see down the river as far as she could and see whatever was making Monty so twitchy. Minh didn't look too giddy either.

With any luck this would be the evil she had predicted--the Idiot Patrol--and not some new and even more loathsome foulness. Perhaps it would be best to stop trying to play nice with the locals they encountered and just adopt a Kill 'Em All policy. That seemed the easiest course of action. Murders committed in the Range stayed in the Range.

Finally, the greens became distinguishable. A brighter green against the darker of the surrounding flora. Marshdwellers. Idiot Patrol. Mnem sighed.

"Well, it appears as though we get to test our skills at shameless lying." She wanted to add this should be easy enough but she didn't want to tempt fate.

[Dark]

Minh laughed, and chose to ignore the slightly hysterical pitch. It was terribly ironic, this journey of theirs. Minh couldn’t lie to save her life. If Mnem couldn’t convince the local yokels, they were dead.

She glanced at their unwilling guest unhappily; she should have listened to Mnem and drowned him after she was done. Now. If they made it out of this mess alive, she was never going to here the end of it from Mnem, and that was almost a worst fate than being skewered with a pitch fork by a bunch of in-bred ninnies.

They were still quite a ways up the river from the group; the raft had probably already been spotted, but if they pulled to shore they could maybe gain a few minutes while the Marshdwellers lumbered up the shore. That still didn’t give them much time to successful dispose of Lowlander-corpse. She whined, low in her throat, and forced herself to think.

Why, why, why hadn’t she drowned him? It would have made life so much easier. Minh paused, a terrible thought worming its way into her brain. They had time--

She grasped at Mnem‘s arm, urgent, “Do Lowlanders float?”

[Bee]

Mnem felt like throwing the Lowlander overboard at this point might be a little late, but it might be worth a shot. She eyed the thing with malicious interest. They had a long stretch of rope. Tie a Lowlander to the end of it, tie their anchor to the middle--drop the Lowlander in the water now, and then sink him under later while they were approaching the Idiot Patrol.

And, if the Lowlander was very, very lucky, they would finish the conversation and pull him back up before he drowned. What, three minutes? Eh. Mnem could manage. She grinned at the Lowlander. Maybe.

She explained the plan to Minh, and tied the little bastard to the end of the rope, and then shoved him over the edge. He made a satisfying little plop.

"I suggest not making so much as a ripple in the water," she said. "Stay close to the back of the boat and try not to be a dumbass."

[Dark]

The lowlander seemed too terrified to even really think of struggling, and he went over the side without too much trouble. Minh wondered how long it would take him to drowned; would he hold his breath until the last final moment, or would he panic and take that last fateful breath? Minh had the morbid compulsion to lean over the side and watch, but they had their own life-threatening situation to deal with. This wasn’t the best time to be distracted.

“Oy! Oveh here.” The local yokels from before were present, and they had brought friends; crudely armed friends, who gestured for the small vessel to pull up beside the dock with their pitchforks and sickles. Minh twitched her tail nervously. “You them ladies from before,” said the beaver-creature quite intelligibly, and just a tad suspiciously. His friends fingered their pitchforks and sickles, and stirred in discontent.

“Same river, and all,” Minh said with what she hoped was an amiable smile. Hopefully, Mnem would be able to handle them.

[Bee]

"You ladies seem t'be hangin' 'round a lot." The edge of suspicion remained sharp. Mnem felt like indulging in a little face-slapping with her good hand. She forced herself to shrug carelessly. Less than three minutes until their luggage drowned. Hn.

"We're just making our way down river, gentlemen; seeing the sights, checking out the local color, you know how it is."

"You still ain't seen that Lowlander, have ya?"

"Neither rotted hide nor greasy hair," Mnem assured them. She leaned back a bit, and looked offended. "And quite frankly, I'm insulted that you would be crass enough to insinuate that my friend and I would even deign to spit to put out a Lowlander that managed to light itself on fire."

"Ya haveta understand, we're trying to catch--"

"If we find anything, we'll get hold of you, since we seem to have a knack for locating one another. We do not appreciate being approached in this manner. My people--" She worked to project an aura of intimidating pinkness and misandry and let the implication hang there. "--have mounted testicles as trophies for lesser offenses."

Apparently the implication of axe-crazy man-hating nuttery did the trick.

"Right then. We trust ya to keep in contact."

"Of course," Mnem drawled.

[Dark]

The little boat was set back on course in silence, the current quickly catching them and carrying them downstream, around a bend and away from the crazies. Minh thrummed with the exhilaration of success; she felt amazing--like she could take on the entire world--regardless that Mnem had done all the work.

Minh kept her pleased exclamations to herself until she was sure they were out of hearing range--sound carried rather oddly over water, and she didn't want to be alerting the local yokels that they'd been duped any time soon.

"Mnem, you are my new hero; that was amazing. I especially like the part about mounting testicles," Minh paused, "You don't, really, do you?"

Minh fiddled with the rigging happily, vaguely noticing that the boat was dragging just a bit. She frowned--why had they thrown a rope over the side?--and peered over the side of the boat. Oh. Oh yeah.

"Do you think it's dead?" she tugged on the line curiously. How long had it been, anyway?

[Bee]

For the moment Mnem lacked the heart to tell her friend that castration was par for the course both as a desperate procedure on baby boys and as a disciplinary practice--though the removed articles were never displayed anywhere (that would be barbaric), merely disposed of--so she decided to let that one sit and maybe tell it to Minh later as a bedtime story.

Right now she supposed they had better fish the damn Lowlander out of the water. Mnem didn't particularly care if it were living or dead. Dead would certainly be less trouble. They could just cut the rope and let it sink into a watery grave; no more Lowlander; the fish could eat out its eyes.

"I don't know; pull it up and check." If it were alive, it was certainly unconscious. She held up her damaged hand. "I'd help, but you know how it is."