Corporal Claws grinned as she slipped between rows of sugarcane and erged onto the sands south of Tropica. To most, she was a being of pure chaos. It was a reputation she had carefully cultivated, occasionally exaggerating to a cartoonish extent. But was that not also mayhem? Did it not add to her mystique? How could anyone hope to comprehend her next course of action if they didn’t know where her bedlam ended and her facetious pandelirium began?
“Pandemonium, mistress,” hissed RPM, unhelpfully.
Claws froze midstep, then sighed her annoyance out. She would let that one slide—their subterfuge of the last few days had been a success.
Nobody had questioned the chaos-aspected mammals as they’d flown around the smithy, propelled by barbed lightning and an endless thirst for knowledge. Their subjects were all too happy for Claws and RPM to watch their crafting; it was preferable to being zippety-zapped by lighting, kicked in the shins, or sprayed with debris should Claws choose to enter the building through a wall rather than the boringly functional door.
Among all of Tropica’s denizens, only a few select souls truly knew Claws. They were the ones she had to avoid for a while—especially her master. Only they could discern her secret mission.
RPM agreed from within. He steepled his fingers, grinned in her mind, then tickled her core with his tricksy little digits. The traitorous bastard. She reached into her right pouch, withdrew his upper body, then head-butted him back down.
The scoundrel chittered with laughter as he tumbled into her core, his soul holding nary a whisper of regret. She rolled her eyes yet didn’t deny her amusent—it had been funny.
“But don’t do it again.”
“Yes, mistress.”
She resud her sneaky sneaking, each step silent as she padded across the dunes, avoiding their peaks where at all possible. So serious was Claws that when an explosion rang out from Tropica, she dropped to the floor, sand parting to conceal all but her face. There was a bird soaring high above her. Had Pelly, Bill, or one of the other pelicans scouted her out and warned Fischer?
But no. The explosion wasn’t one of teleportation, and the shape flying away was a regular seagull. She glowered skyward, reerging, shaking a paw in threat. If stealth wasn’t the na of the ga, she might have zapped up there and given the feathered oyster-stealer a piece of her mind.
“The goal, mistress,” RPM reminded with a thought, which earned him so of her ire, its veracity undermined by her lack of internal brows with which to express disdain. He was smart enough, or averse to headbutts enough, that he didn’t ntion it.
Smoother than river-tumbled stone and faster than… sothing really fast that she was moving too swiftly to think of a proper analogy for, Claws sneakily snuck once more, body tracing the dunes. She didn’t use her senses, not wanting to broadcast her position to her blessedly and frustratingly powerful master.
An explosion rang out above Tropica, and Claws buried herself. After a minute, she reerged and she sent her familiar an order—best to keep him occupied, lest he tickle her again—and he nodded in assent. He started going over the many techniques and thods he’d stolen from the apprentices in the smithy, seeking those that were most applicable.
Claws smiled at his exuberance as she let his devious mind churn, her own focused on their silent passage. She didn’t need to rely on chi, and as she crested the final dune, her heart fluttered. Or would have, if she still had one.
This was it. This was the place.
The coastal winds so common to Tropica had hidden their prize, the sands swallowing it over ti. Still, it was here. There could be no doubt. Even with her senses retracted, it called out to her, resonating with the power suffusing her soul. Which made sense, of course. The treasure they sought was of her own creation.
She summoned RPM forth, and together, they dug.
They could excavate it in a flash with their vast reserves of essence, but they took their ti to not disturb the landscape. Being discovered was unacceptable. When her nails first brushed against the hardened surface, it made a dull sound. In Claws’s internal world, however, it chid as would a hollow bowl of crystal, seeming to resonate with her core in a way that—
Her familiar tried to steal the resonance. The result was an explosion within the center of his mass, the force inflating him like one of those funny fish that turned spherical when poked. She would have ignored it, as she so often did when RPM attempted larceny, but force rippled out from her familiar, broadcasting their location.
Her fur stood on end as she waited for her master’s arrival. He would sense the strange chiming resonance and co investigate. Seconds passed, and her anxiety retreated. Maybe powering the tunnels below had left him too weak to—
Light blossod behind her, and a formidable figure arrived, his silhouette making her stomach drop.
“Stupid fracking network,” Fischer swore. “Making wait to use my own—Oh! Claws! I’ve been looking everywhere for you! Here, catch!”
An oblong being sailed through the air in slow motion, thrown underhand by the last person she’d wanted to encounter. He had sensed the resonance in her soul, using it to locate her. There was bitter yet fitting irony in this ambush. He too had helped create the prize she’d co to excavate.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
One side of Claws’s mouth tugged up as the spiky shape continued tumbling end over end, growing ever closer. Before Claws’s grin could fully form, it transford into a scowl. Why did they have to co? She was trying to do sothing cool!
Claws moved as a blur to catch the airborne crab, flooding enough electricity into her forelimbs that—
Thunk.
Claws’s vision bounced. She blinked. Where had Snips gone? Why hadn’t the crustacean landed in her waiting paws? And, more importantly, what was up with the stabbing pain atop her furry head?
“Oh…” Fischer said, eyes wide, face blanching.
There was an amused hiss, followed by bubbles of the sa emotion drifting down into Claws’s field of view. She glanced up, saw nothing, then used her connection to her master to see what he did.
“Hi,” hissed Snips, legs twitching in delight, a row of spikes having grown from a new eyepatch, whose pointed ends seed to be lodged in Claws’s fracking head!
Her indignation started in the muscles of her jaw and radiated out from there, her entire body shaking, flashing with lightning. Snips’s visible eyestalk suddenly filled with regret. She retracted the tal spikes, beginning to flood billowing power from her joints, already zooming away.
Claws was, all things considered, rather proud of her communication skills. Certain words sotis evaded her, but that was their own fault for being too long—not punchy enough to keep up with her emasculate intellect. The noises that escaped her throat now, however, held no discernible aning.
She screeched and growled and spat all at the sa ti as she launched a haymaker. It connected with the already-fleeing Sergeant Snips, who released a hiss similarly devoid of aning, an involuntary sound that ca from the depths of her being in response to losing agency over her passage.
So fast did Snips travel that, if not for their master, she would have conquered heights previously unseen by crabkind. But Fischer was as bothersoly competent as usual. His chi took a second to obey, and just as Snips started fading from view, he made her reappear before him in a flash of light.
Snips slamd into his chest. All the lightning Claws had flooded into the blasted crab transferred into him, making his limbs go rigid and consciousness waver. Both man and crustacean tottered, barely staying upright. Claws had actually done so damage to her master…
It didn’t make her feel any better.
“Leave,” she ordered, crossing her arms and glowering at them. RPM glowered too from atop her shoulders, tippy tapping his paws across the place she’d been stabbed. Stabbed! In the head! By a fracking crab! Every one of her silken fur follicles stood on end.
“I, uhhh, sorry.” Her master took a step back. “Didn’t an to actually hurt…” He trailed off, his brow furrowing, his finger pointing down at the excavation. “Wait, isn’t that—”
“Leave!” bellowed Claws, her familiar, and the very sky. Thunder bood in the cloudless sky.
“Sorry!” was all Fischer got out before his chi obeyed him. He vanished, and light flashed on the far side of Tropica to announce his arrival there.
Claws took a deep breath, smoothing her fur down as she exhaled, then shot RPM a look both blank yet filled with aning. He returned the sa expression, an almost imperceptible grin appearing a mont later.
She rocked back on her pawpads and scoffed. As if sothing so mundane as a tal spike could cause her pain, made by her master or not. Her feigned outrage had been the perfect cover—a way to stop Fischer from questioning her purpose here.
It was actually quite enjoyable seeing Snips stuck up there like a prickly seed. Though it would have been far more satisfying to see the crab-turned-conker lodged in soone else’s noggin.
“It was enjoyable,” agreed RPM, sending the view from his perspective. Claws usually would have given him a soft smack for that unsolicited cheek, but he’d earned a little leniency—his performative fury had been perfect.
“But don’t do it again.”
“Yes, mistress.”
They grinned at each other in full. RPM started giggling first, but Claws wasn’t far behind, the deviously kindred souls chittering under their breath at the joy of a plan coming together.
Without another word, they resud their excavation, this ti with much more fervor. Silence was no longer necessary. Fischer wouldn’t return.
***
I shook my head as the light of teleportation vanished, leaving only the crescent moon above to illuminate the surrounding rows of cane. I gazed down, raising a brow at Snips. She stared back, her lone stalk sohow mirroring my dubious expression. And we cackled.
My eyes bugged out as I covered my mouth, smothering the sound lest Claws hear. Snips did the sa with one claw, her limbs twitching, her hisses cutting through the night’s silence.
“She’s definitely gonna dig that up, isn’t she?”
Snips hissed in agreent. “For crafting, yes?”
“I’d bet my hat on it. The cheeky little rat thinks she’s so clever.” I extended a tendril back her way, willing my sense of hearing into it. I forwarded the noises found there—chittering giggles and energetic digging. “Your plan was more effective than I could have hoped, Snips. You should have seen her face when you got stuck in her forehead. I might have to commission a statue.”
Her carapace shook in amusent at the suggestion, and I filed it away for later.
“Should we go check up on Maria? Not to help, of course. Just to, ahhh, witness?”
Snips sobered in a flash, giving a warning glance.
“I was joking! Sheesh, Snips. I promise I won’t help.”
“Good. Strength must be earned.”
“I do have so things to offer, though. Two—”
“No helping!”
“Let finish before reprimanding ! They’re both thods of distraction should their attempt not go well. Here. Have a peek.”
I sent her both. One was a concept I’d been mulling over all day, having had to keep it carefully concealed. Snips perked up a little. The second was sothing I’d only thought of just now, but that didn’t make it any less enjoyable. She blew a stream of happy bubbles, nodded emphatically, and leaped into my open pocket.
I patted her through the thin material. “Get nice and comfy. We’ll leave as soon as they arrive…”
With that, I pressed two fingers between my lips and whistled, letting out a tone that was silent to most and unmissable to so.
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