Log:Explorer's Guild: Sneeve Nuts

Explorer's Guild: The Plant Police

OOC Date: October 21, 2020
Location: Sneeve
Participants: Explorer's Guild: Yoska Lash, Maireni Lash, King, Aryn Cole, Netep Muri, and Corr Waldin

"Been a long time since anyone's seen a hrikl nut," Corr is saying as he leads the group towards the Korpana Pod-Racing Stadium, thumbs hooked through the straps of his backpack. "Used to grow only in junifer peat on the planet Abregado-rae, but the strip-mining for electrum took care of that back before the war. The /clone/ war." The stadium ahead, low and squat, doesn't surround an enclosed track; it's merely the start and end point of the races, with tech distributed among the seats and mounted above them to display the race.

"I know what you're thinking: what's this place got to do with the hrikl nut?" he nods at the building, then gives the others a knowing wink over his shoulder. "You'll find out soon enough."

Thirty minutes later, after a long, heated conversation between Corr and a short, tubby litte Utai mediated by a translator droid, the explorers are chugging along in a dilapidated skiff barely worthy of the name. "Somebody seen it on the screen during a race a few days ago, as the pods were racing around a corner high at the top of the highest peak. Down below, way down. A flash of pink on the camera, just before that pod uh. Well, before it blew up." He gives the others a small, reassuring smile, gesturing towards the mountain peak their skiff is slowly but surely approaching, already climbing higher. "But uh, we'll be fine, we're not in a pod. We're just jumping off that."

Mujiji doesn't see anything wrong with this plan, a point she makes clear as she crawls over the seats of the skiff, and likely those sitting in it. "I don't see anything wrong with this plan - but, uh - he is gonna pay us, right?" Long ears and a twitching, pink nose peek over the side of the skiff, as if the hookah nut, or whatever it's called, would just be right there waiting to be plucked.

Yoska Lash, bird-rat-trashfire superstar, is bopping along behind Corr singing a song.

"They call it a little Hrikl... oh oh oh oh But finding them can be a little fickle... oh oh oh oh

When I go OUT I wanna get Sneeve Nuts I wanna shoot fools I wanna kick their butts

When I go OUT I wanna get Sneeve Nuts I wanna get paid Maireni's a dumb klutz

But be careful what you look for cause you just might find it! You might find some ugly Sneevils who insist that you unhand it! Be careful what you look for cause you just might find it, yah you just might find it! You might get hazard pay but you know you got to demand it!"

When I go OUT --"

Yoska peers over the edge of the skiff, distracted, "Wait, what are we doing? Blowing up?"

"So, we've all got gussied up on somebody's recollection of a pink blur on a viewscreen," King summarizes, brows lofting beneath the brim of that hat of his. "It ain't the worst lead I've ever tried to track down, but..." he's cut off by the Lash's deft def jams and his lips pull back into a grin. "Just happy to be here," King says, hands resting on the grips of his pistolis before one lifts to tip his hat back so he can get a better look at the mountain.

Dr. Cole is situated on the skiff looking out over the sights with a peaceful expression on her scarred face. Not one for a lot of small talk, the blonde seems focused on their purpose, finding the elusive hrikl nut, and hopefully becoming a success at it.

Aryn is dressed in a green and brown tunic, tall fashionable boots, and a cape that sags across her shoulders, hanging lower than one side like something a fancy pants duelists might favor. She pulls her gloves back on, testing the tension in one hand by making a fist, idly.

Maireni is already bedecked in her armor, which has been painted bright and terrible colors with the approximate skill of toddler, adorned additionally with glitter that falls off with sudden movements. The way it's already peeling and flaking off suggests that this attempt at painting is painfully temporary, which is for the best. It looks terrible. Her hair is pulled back into one distinct pony-puff at the back of her head, and she's got at least half a dozen rings on each hand, bracelets rattle at her wrists and on her tail, which swishes around to intentionally rattle said bracelets as she pretends to listen to everything Corr says.

"Eyy," she rummages around in her ratty bag to produce some handy, holding out a piece to Mujiji. "You want some? It's real goo--" She might not be listening to Corr, but she hears that part in Yoska's song about her, and so she wounds on her brother. "AY, I ain't a dumb clutz!" She swipes at her brother, but it's a half-hearted attempt to slap him that misses badly. She doesn't go for a second attack. "You're gonna blow up," she mumbles instead.

"Of course we're jumping off that," Muri mutters, putting up zero protest to the clamberings of Mujiji because there are worse, more immediate issues to worry about like

-Hangover

-Yoska and Mai

-Yoska and Mai's fleas

But mostly the pounding headache, which Yoyo's lyrical talent is not managing to soothe. She peels her hand off face long enough to cast a long look over the edge to see just what the 'that' is that she's already snarked about. There's no pluffy snow at the bottom of this potential fall to catch her, so that's going to hurt. Or not at all, really. Because death. "Might be best that journo never called."

"When have you ever been out with me and not got paid?" Corr asks Mujiji seriously, deeply wounded by the insinuation. "This is a legitimate operation, my people get paid well. We got anonymous sponsors among the local community back on Nar that see to that. Pillars of the community." Who's driving the skiff? Doesn't matter, it's not important.

"Don't worry, I rented a bunch of wingsuits back at the podrace stadium for a real low price. And because they're such good suits, the fella back there even promised if I died he'd refund me the rental." Now that's a guarantee! Corr looks pleased, which is a phrase for 'another very small smile', while he holds up one of the wingsuits, a bright red rayon thing that definitely no one has died in previously.

As the skiff skids to a halt on its invisible repulsors, he hops down from the back while it settles down on the ground with a thump. "Gonna have to travel light, so pick and choose carefully. You don't wanna be loaded down with the weight of the world when you're using these things." The pack on his back swings down to rest against the skiff.

Stepping into the legs, Corr waddles over to the edge of the rocky peak's cliff. Sheer rock falls away into thin air, a haze of mist concealing the descent and ground below through a thin white-ish veil. Far below, somewhere above the foot of the mountain, is a dot of coral. "Right there, if you squint, you can kinda see the pink," he points, squinting. "Who's jumping first?"

"Ya had one client back out on pay, ya had a hundred clients back out on pay." Mujiji answers cryptically, one hind leg idly rising to scratch, scratch, scratch at a spot on her neck. She settles, then, a disdainful eye going over the suits Corr flourishes - and she blanches a bit.

"These seem a bit... Big." The tiny logomorph complains as she takes the smallest one, trying to wiggle the thing into the best position - but there really isn't much to do beyond that. It seems like it'll be fine. It'll probably be fine. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, right? The opposite must be true.

It isn't.

An ungainly, long, drawn out "eeeeEEEEEEEEEE" raises in pitch as the kushiban falls, falls, falls.... Poof! One anime sparkle and a burst of distant dust later, Mujiji slowly picks herself back up, and spits to the side, trying to regain her faculties.

Ryn are scampery little things that are both stupid and not afraid of heights, so Yoska greets the wing suit plan with an enthused "Yah!" He doesn't think for a minute that maybe the return deal is not a good deal. He doesn't think, in general.

Tootling contentedly through the holes in his flutelike nose, Yoska picks the sparse belongings he wants to bring, which is a pistol, a shock glove, some extra rings, a dried up monkey-lizard paw dyed lime green, and a pair of huge goggles. The goggles are perched at the top of his head among his hair, which stands up almost straight because it's made of old gel, fleas, and stupidity powerful enough to defy gravity. The goggles themselves are gold but showing brass where it's wearing off.

"This is how you know you're alive, ya feel me?" Yoska cheerfully chirps at Netep, then jumps and leaps. The whistling air passes through his nose and makes the descent faintly sound like eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee all the way down.

Yoska lands with the practiced ease of someone who spends a lot of time getting kicked down flights of stairs.

"I love a retailer with a code," King says, nodding to Corr and stepping forward to look down over the edge and offer a whistle of appraisal as he's wont to do. Some time is taken to fasten himself into the wingsuit and, once that's all taken care of, he steps up to the maw and yeehaws himself into it. Look at him go, everybody!

He is beauty and he is grace as sails through the air, moustache whipping about freely in the wind. Things are going great! Until he realizes that his hat doesn't have any way of affixin' itself to his noggin. That's a problem, because it begins to inch itself up and...oh no; it flies off!

A quick reaction on King's part allows him to flip over in time and snap an arm forward to snatch the hat back into his hand. That particular crisis averted, he rolls himself back over and pulls up just a second too late, leading him to hit the ground in an ungraceful roll, leaving him to end up in a superhero landing where he spins the brim of his hat on his fingertip and slides it back onto his head. Very cool. Very cool cowboy things happening here tonight.

It's all ruined by the otherworldly dad groan that escapes his lips upon his standing back up.

A winged suit?! Like the D.D.C. Gliders! Aryn had seen many variants of these from school, especially among explorers who enjoyed 'flying' around ruins to get better views. Thankfully, Aryn knew how these worked, so when it came time to jump, she leaped off and fell freely into a dive. When she had the momentum needed to gain lift, her gliders went out and she took to the sky in a graceful spin, later arriving with a hard landing. She had to run before she could slow, the soles of her boots crunching along the ground when she took to sliding to a stop. The gliders were disengaged and she unhooked, freeing her cape a moment later.

If Maireni were more intelligent she might ask why the suits were red and just how many people had already died in them, but she's not. Just like her brother, she doesn't think, she just drops her bag on the ground with a heavy thud that might be mostly candy, takes out some candy for herself because she can't be without, and then accepts the suit that Corr offers.

"I never used one of these before," she says, not letting that fact slow her down. Oh no. On goes the suit, and then she diiiiiives. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" serenades anyone near enough to hear it on the way down, more excitement than fear, glitter shedding off of her and leaving a sparkly wake as she plummets to the ground. Somehow she's good enough at this to land wholly intact and uninjured.

Her hair has come loose from the band that was holding it back, it was old and stolen from Yoska, so the puff that was once sort of tidy is now a larger puff of pale hair that halos around her head. "That was great!"

"Waldin." Whether that's a question or an unfinished statement, Muri doesn't say. She just stares at the wingsuits - what she'd assumed was a lump of tarpaulin covering actually sensible gear. After what feels like an eternity of unblinking, judgemental staring at the very special flightsuits, the tiniest of smiles quirks up Muri's mouth to the left. It's joined gradually by the right.

"You cannot fathom how impressed I am with you right now." Even if her tone isn't exactly SCREAMING enthusiasm, there's at least a tiny hint of it. "This reeks of me-level....daring." Stupid, she was gonna say 'stupid'. A timid sniff inspects the crinkly fabric as she unfolds it in hand. "Genuinely." Sketchy flimsysuits to stand between one's self and death? Totally fine. Totally worth it. She gets to dumping the 'unecessary' items from belt which, after picking and choosing, includes her hefty stun net launcher but not the blaster. Snacks. Emergency hooch. Waaaaaat-nah, not the water flask. *Sip*

One by one, she watches the others take their leaps of faith, squinting until she can no longer see the outcome. A general sense is acquired though, of initial form, so...what more tutorial need she learn? It begins with a closing of her eyes, a whispered something under breath, then a dive off the edge that's as ungraceful as any she's ever attempted into water. It's off to a rough start, this freefall. The force of her own plummet is a force to reckon with when it comes to controlling her limbs and ba---farkfarkfarkfarkleFRINK!

She's doing the splits, arms and legs, soaring like a drunken bogwing, and struggling to steer the descent. She's probably screaming, but the air's stifling her best efforts. In the end, it could've been worse, but it ain't great. After much tumbling and rolling and bouncing, the spacer lies in a heap.

And laughs.

"I never used one before either," Corr remarks to Maireni, "but it can't be much harder than parachuting, right?" Right? Only one way to find out.

Secure in his moneyback guarantee, the explorer takes a running start and leaps out over the edge. A moment is spent in terrifying freefall before the wings FLOOF open under his armpits and the air bouys him upward. The destination is not far, so there's some brief panicked maneuvering in his attempts to stay closer to the mountain rather than drifting further away, but within a relatively short span of time, he too lands with some semblance of dignity by crash-landing into a cushy thicket, a feat in itself given that these suits aren't really meant to be used without parachutes, a fact Corr did not know and the salesman was even now congratulating himself on neglecting to mention.

Rising up with a splutter and a delayed grin, their fearless leader casts about, surveying the terrain and his crew. "Everyone alright? Or as alright as some of you ever get?" He's already unzipping the suit again, waddling out of the brush.

Their landing zone, such as it is, forms a small piece of a larger outcropping, a reasonably narrow platform jutting out from the rock face of the mountain, elevated from the forest floor below and insulated from the racetrack above by the drop. The air is stiller here, suffused with a mossy, smoky scent, tinged with notes of cinnamon and brandy.

There, along towards the opposite end of the outcropping, clinging to a crack in the stone, its gnarled roots sunk into the rock, stands a short, wiry shrub topped with a tuft of delicate pink spores, swaying despite the motionless air.

"I'll take that candy now." Mujiji grumbles, pushing herself onto her hind legs and holding out a paw towards Maireni. She didn't trust it before, but now she needs something to take the edge off... Speaking of things that she shouldn't trust...

"Oh look! Th'flower! This was so easy." The kushiban chatters, forgetting caution and beginning towards it. "I can't believe it was this easy, it's never this easy. Dibs."

"You can't just call DIBS!" This isn't really a competition, but when someone calls DIBS, it becomes a competition INSTANTLY. It may not have occurred to Yoska before that there should be a rush to the Flower, but as soon as Mujiji claims it, 22 years of last-sibling instincts kick in and Yoyo's got to FIGHT FOR HIS SHARE OF THINGS. This is not a well thought out plan but when is it ever, and he just launches over to tackle the Kushiban in a tangle of fur, tail, jewelry, ears, alien catfight. Bunny fight. Ratfight. "MAIRENI GET THE PINK," Yoska yells at his sister, counting on her to secure the prize!

"Think I sprained my dang ol' ankle," King mutters, slapping some dirt off of the knees of his 'chaps'. "But I'll live," he adds, standing up straighter and resting his hands on his hips as he takes a gander around. Sorta limping his way towards the tree and digging a fist into his back to try and work out a kink, King squints around. "Hellfire, there ain't no nuts here," he remarks loquaciously. "Either something's done come and et 'em all, or this ain't what we're looking for."

"I gotta do that again," Maireni enthuses to anyone who'll listen, big toothy grin and happy swish of her tail conveying just how thrilled she is to have just taken that jump. If possible she looks ever more stoked as someone wants her candy. She pulls the candy from the front of her suit and is just about to hand it over to Mujiji when she hears the shriek from her brother, and without thinking, or leaning into better instincts that she just doesn't seem to have, she flings the candy at Mujiji and makes a mad dash for the pink treasure that someone else wants.

She's surprisingly fast, though the agile movement comes at a cost as several more pieces of candy spill out of its hiding place and hits the ground along the way. She reaches the mysteriously swaying tuft of pink and doesn't quite seem to know where to go from there. "I GOT IT!" The holler is aimed back at her brawling brother, and then she ever so carefully tries to close her hands around the puff of pink that is definitely not going to kill her.

Aryn looks at a different plant of the same species, kneeling down briefly to skeptically and suspiciously eye the blossom. Taking note from what King has said, Aryn realizes the plant does not contain the nut they are looking for. A small frown forms on her face, but Aryn does not admit defeat yet. She unhooks her datapad to scan the plant, then reads up about it, comparing notes with her observations.

"Hmm, the roots are key." Don't nerd out, Aryn. "The root structure are actually rhizomes-- hmm, I mean, they dig deeper into the rock.. there is something /more/ deeper down. Maybe there is a cave entrance or something nearby that takes us underground.. or we may need to get creative and start digging.." Aryn rises back up, clipping the datapad back to her belt.

Muri's pained cackling fades into a sigh and whimper as she fusses with shedding this wrecked suit. One handedly. The other arm is held awkwardly out in a halfway crook, not really sure what to do with it sorta position.

Once sorted, Muri does NOT rush the alleged hrikl nut tree, seeing that pink POOF of spores clinging to flowery fuzz, just /waiting/ for a decent gust to carry them away. She's reason to be wary - at first - considering some other foliage mishaps in ExG history. Her approach is more cautious, leaving the scuffling fleaswap to the furrier fellows, till she's near enough to feel a comforting twang of vague recognition. THOSE spores will not get her high. Or induce sneezing fits from hell. Maireni encapsulates the plant's naughty bits in her grubby paws and Netep does not utter a single word of caution, no. It'll be fine.

This time.

Aryn does her research and Muri wanders, nearer to the edge to take a knee and peeeeer over the side. Y'know, in case it was that simple. "Makes sense, then, this portion bein' the dispersal unit of all them little gametophytes-to-be that Mae's got in her grip. Up here it can ride the breeze." But of course they didn't come here for haploid plant sex. They've come here for Sneeve NUTS.

"So yeah. Shame we had to leave all our heavier equipment behind........" cue one long look over shoulder now toward Waldin, through a manic veil of curls. "Here's hoping there's a hole small enough somewheres that least one of us can squiggle on in." And cue a second long look, this time to Mujiji, wherever she is in that flurry of fur and fails and screeching.

There it is! A hrikl bush! And instead of investigating, Corr is diving into the fray, trying desperately to get a hand on Yoska to drag him off of the murderous little Kushiban before the fangs come out. "I let it go when it's your /sister,/" the explorer grunts, catching at the slippery Ryn's elbow but losing hold almost immediately. "But this is /another thing,/ now GET OFF!" He's completely lost to the scholarly announcements of the women he relies on specifically to make those.

The deductions of Science and Reason are accurate, though; the shrub's spores seem fairly innocuous, no one is high off of them yet anyway, and the 'roots' ARE actually rhizomes, and they do lead into the cliff face, and it does imply one plant connected to a larger web. One that Maireni is currently strangling, sending a cloud of those fairly innocuous spores airborne.

So close! Mujiji is reaching out a paw for the pink flowers, but stops and turns as King announces his observation. "Aw, ball-" whatever she was going to say next is drowned out in a great 'WHOOF' of air as she is bodily tackled and rolled away from the plant. "FRAG MY ASS!" The kushiban growls, teeth snapping at hands, fingers, arms - and catching on nothing - as candy bounces off the back of her head, back feet kicking out. It's the violent belly rub aftermath that every lothcat owner is familiar with. The mission is forgotten entirely. It's likely difficult to locate her in that ball of fails and flailing limbs. Trying to hold Yoska's face away with a free hand, she turns to glare up at Aryn. "What's ride zones? Is that a road we coulda taken instead'a -" She grunts "-/jumpin'/?"

"It's not ride zones, STUPID, it's rhyme zones," Yoska corrects Mujiji. This is, once again, his natural habitat as the youngest Lash. He had to be good at dodging or else he wouldn't have survived Fennix and Maireni, so Corr gets shrugged free, and he avoids the retaliations of Mujiji. Then punches her one more time before rolling off to the side and perching on a nearby rock with a palpable aura of innocence. He has never done anything wrong, ever, in his life. "Who's got those nuts?" It better be Maireni or she's next.

"Well, that certainly is interestin', y'all, what with the...ride zones and such like like Mujiji said," King says to the two ladies getting all scholarly and intimate with the tree, offering them a thin-lipped smile of thinly-veiled bewilderment. His hat is removed and used to fan himself as he looks over to watch the infighting that's going on. Not his jungle, not his monkey...rat bird people. He did hear something or other about needing to get underground, and without any readily available excavation equipment, King sits down in the dirt, pulls some stuff from his belt and gets to work. Platique is formed and shaped into a small shape charge that probably won't kill all of them, it's set in place, and a tiny transmitter device is stabbed into it.

That done, King hefts himself off of the ground and says, "Y'all might wanna...get behind something or...well, it's up to y'all." A few moments allowed for the warning to set in and to find his own cover and he clicks a button on his handy little detonator.

BOOM! Hole!

When the smoke clears and the dust settles, the crack in the rock has been widened into a gaping maw, the hrikl bush blown off the side of the mountain and only the severed ends of the rhizomes it used to be connected to lying in a tangled rope amongst the chunks of rubble. But rather than darkness within, there is light! LIGHT! And a shout of protest.

"What the devils!"

Through the hole, lit up with dozens of hanging bars of fluorescents, can be seen row upon row of hrikl bushes, each nestled in their own growpod, rhizomes overflowing the peatbeds and stringing them all together in one daisy chain that connects to the one lying cut off in the fresh hole.

Aryn has a joint nerd moment with Muri, and she appreciates that someone else in the group knows plants! That's when others asked about the Rhizomes amid their fight, but the joy of finding a colleague and an audience to teach is short lived as the space cowboy begins preparing a bomb! A Bomb! The color on Aryn's face drains as she looks on in slight disbelief. "Is that a bomb?" But they're being told to take cover, and Aryn does what she's told instead of protesting! The bomb would ruin the plant!

Boom.

Being in proximity to a blast, even a shaped charge (if that's what it was), was enough to leave ears ringing /at a minimum./ So when Aryn emerged from cover holding her hands over her ears, she had done little (sadly) to truly shield them from the concussive sonic boom.

Cue further confusion when they see signs of what might be a plant lab below! "Oh no!" Aryn calls out, embarrassed. She yells oh no, not realizing the ringing in her ears made her subconsciously speak louder.

"I got the pink stuff!" Maireni calls over to her perching brother, still keeping her hands around it without having pulled it all off the bush. Yet. But then there's a ruckus, not just the fighting, but a warning about taking cover. AAAAA. Her tail lashes in alarm before she yanks up on the pink tuft to try and take it with her while she goes running for cover. This is fine, everything is fine. "Is someone attackin' us?" she shouts, peering out from behind the a nearby rock that she's taken shelter behind. She looks around for Yoska, and holds up both clasped hands with the pink tuft in it, as though holding onto it is a reason to celebrate.

Muri's likewise in nerd mode and ignorant of King's productivity there in the dirt until he yells.

"YUP" affirmation for the doctor while she herself scrambles like a lizard into some brushy scrub like that's going to really help, but what else is there? The woman curls into a tiny ball, sacrificing her already broken arm to be the outermost limb shielding her head. Just in case.

What began this journey as an annoying headpain born of her own self-destructive tendancies is now a fully fledged MIGRAINE when that BOOM punches her lights out. Or at least, that's what it felt like. It'll take a minute, but when she /does/ come crawling out to surveil the damage, there's that reliable sense of wonder to ease the pain and dull her better judgement. Muri inchworms nearer to the hole and peers inside. An admiring gasp is all that need be said, to see that beautiful, subterranean garden there. Diploid delicacies aside, witnessng the ingenuity of this horticulture operation is enough to make any misery suffered thus far worthwhile.

".....Hi." Maybe she'd best leave the 'splainin to their fearless leader. While she contemplates just slithering on in there.

Wrangle the Ryn, prevent a Kushiban catastrophe, these are the things on Corr's mind while vague echoes of 'rhyme zones' and 'spores' and BOOM drift through in the background. Wait, BOOM? That one pushes to the forefront, and the shockwave doesn't knock Corr flat but it certainly causes a fair measure of alarm and surprise. "The hell was that?" he demands in a shout, leaving the heap of angry fluff that represents two of his crew for the time being.

"'Oh no' is right! And well, I could ask you the same thing, sir!" The voice belongs to a small squint-eyed figure who comes trundling over to the hole, waving indignant hands indiscriminately. "This is a legitimate operation you've disrupted! A hotbed of scientific labor! A veritable cornucopia of ecological conservationism in action! How dare you, sir! How dare all of you! I have half a mind to report you to all the appropriate authorities! Immediately!"

The cosmopolitan among the group will recognize the speaker as a Blarina, dressed in functional clothing with little ornament or ostentation.

All of the kushiban's fur is black and sticking up at all angles when Yoska rolls away, getting one last hit in. Her hunt for Eriu Jynx suddenly seems unimportant, because she has a new target.

And then the world explodes.

"Hey that's /my/ thing!" The disheveled sentient drags herself away from her cover, blinking up at Muri and sharing a moment of befuddlement with the crew before peeking into the... Grow house? Whatever it is, looks li'it. "So we can just take it, right? Or blow you up with it an' hope it grows back?" She asks, deadpan, removing a grenade from her belt.

She didn't learn from the outcomes of King's explosives.

BOOM, oh no, somebody set up us the bomb! "Aiiyaaahhhh!" Yoska howls as the blast knocks him off his little perch, tumbling backwards and off the rock in an ungainly manner just as he was about to appreciate Maireni's unparalleled skills at capturing pink plant fluff that is definitely the reason they're here. The explosion is intense.

REEEEEEEEEEEEE Yoyo's many-earring'd ears are ringing, REEEEEEEEEEEEEE and it's only with a stumbling, dizzy confusion that he manages to get back to his feet. He's dusty and squinting and frowning, lifting the goggles off his eyes to look down at the operation below. The dust that's now stuck to him gives a raccoon eyes effect where the goggles were.

REEEEEEEEE Yoska can't really hear what's going on, only snatches of the grower's words. REEEEEEE

He just settles on waving and yells down at the Blarina, "I HAVE HALF A MIND, TOO."

Poking his head up from behind the rock he'd tucked behind, King smiles at a job well-done. He moseys over to the newly-dug entrance and slides one of his revolvers free of its holster, squinting down at the person lobbing threats at them. He squats down and tips his hat back a bit with the barrel of his revolver, saying, "Listen, chief. The law has spent a century trying to run me down. When and if I end up in the pokey, it ain't gonna be because of you and blowing up a...science...hole. Clear?"

"Is that the plants and stuff we want?" he asks, looking over to Aryn and Netep.

Aryn's hearing is slowly returning. It's enough that she realizes that she was yelling. Hearing the complaints below followed by the response of the explorers prompts Aryn to take a neutral stance. To King's question, Aryn answers. "Yes, these are what we traveled here for."

Her attention shifts to Haka Li'it then, and while he produced a compelling argument, Aryn dug a little deeper. A wave of her hand was enough of a gesture to marshall the power of the Force into Haka Li'it's mind. Her words followed, framed as an imperative.

"You want to tell us more about your operation here."

Maireni has no idea what's going on at this point, which is a pretty common state of mind for her on these sort of adventures. It's more surprising on the occasions that she's helpful. "What's the proper authorities?" she asks, sounding genuinely curious about who she's going to need to run from. "We got a plant police here?" She looks over to Corr to see if he has the answer, he's smart, he does all these mission things, surely he'll know the answer. The very idea of a plant police has her slowly shoving the pink puffed portion of the plant into the interior 'pocket' where she's also stowed her candy. No plant police are going to get her, or her prize!

"Hah, no you don--" Muri's dismissal of Yoska's proclaimed fraction of a mind is cut short by the sudden recognition of what Mujiji is holding MOST menacingly.

"HeyheyheyHEY!" She scrabbles around to try and ward off any gooey disasters here. "Don't you /dare/," she hisses. "This is /science/. You got any idea how much that equipment costs?? Not t'mention the manhours of data collection an-an-and the value of what we came a'seekin, eh?" It's like she's at grenade point, rather than the plants and their Blarina caretaker. Her good hand's patting the air between self and Mujiji. "Put it away. Put all your..." a hasty glance around to see who else might be getting trigger happy here.

KING

"It'll hurt the plants." Netep Muri, plant police.

"No more explosions!" Corr loudly declares as he makes his way to the hole, himself having not even seen the grow area yet. As he approaches, though, it's not too tough to make out what's going on here: somebody's growing hrikl nuts.

"I want to tell you more about my operation here," the Blarina announces amicably, eyes staring into the distance. "I am Haka Li'it, and I am growing hrikl nuts. I became aware of this effort when I was approached by a noted botanist, Doctor Aggnez Arbb, to fund her venture here in the mountains of Sneeve using a special cultivar of peat she developed. When I realized how valuable these nuts would be, I accepted immediately."

Hands covered in glitter, still trailing his wingsuit by one foot, a flea hopping off of him to invade the local ecosystem, Corr puts those hands on his hips. "And where is the doctor now?"

"Excuse me? And who are you? I was... I was speaking with this young lady," Haka rebuts the question, seeming legitimately confused as his squinty eyes screw up inside their eyestalks.

"HELP!" a voice cries from somewhere inside the grow lab.

"We don't need th'whole plants, just the nut - right?" Mujiji seems perplexed by all of the dissension to her obviously great plan. No explosions? She makes a shooshing motion with one hang to Muri and Corr, and holds the adhesive grenade higher. "YEAH - you heard 'er... All your - uh... Data an' equipment will be destroyed. So just chill an' give us yer nuts and this will all be fiiiiine." She holds the adhesive grenade a little higher over her head - and it slips, ever so slightly, from her fingers, causing a reflexive jerking motion that negates absolutely anything intimidating the 2 foot-tall creature was attempting.

She clears her throat, and quietly stows the grenade away again.

"Plants don't call for help, do they?" Mujiji finally asks, clearing her throat, shuffling her feet.

Someone's calling for help! Yoska, ears maybe not ringing so much, but... hard to tell cause he's rarely paying attention anyway, performs a sort of cartwheel maneuver that ends with his tail wrapped around the crags and roots (or rhyme zones) of the area near the Science Hole. From there, he dangles, upside down, peering around as though in effort to spot whoever is calling for help! But alas, he almost drops his lucky lime green monkey lizard paw, and scrambling to retain it might have cost him a chance to spot something. "Maybe plants could call for help," Yoyo yells back up at Mujiji, "I got some Marcan Herb that's pretty loud."

"Were you gonna dig with your hands?" King asks Corr, lifting his brows. "Or are you just pleased as peach that we're here talking to this scientist about Sneeze nuts? S'what we came for, ain't it?" he asks, standing up and dropping himself down into the nut farm. Blarina, in his infinite wisdom, gets out of the way.

HELP echoed in Aryn's mind and superceded anything pleasant he may have said. She could not be sure he was pleasant by his own volition or if it was a side effect of her mind work, so Aryn treated him as a threat. Control was needed, and rather give the Blarina a chance at escape if he were the culprit of something more nefarious, she blanketed him with the invisible control of the Force. Taking command of his frame, she locked him frozen in place, like a stasis, using only the gesture of a gloved hand.

To Mujiji's question, Aryn answered. "Heavens no; someone needs help inside!-- Haka, who calls for help and why? It is in your best interests to cooperate, my friend." By the way Aryn says my friend, it's a connotation that she could become his enemy, and her display of power might have been enough to coerce him into divulging the truth lest they exhume it for themselves.

Maireni tries to scramble after her brother in an attempt to see what he's trying to get a look at. Possibly so she can beat him to it and take it for herself, as is their custom. Unfortunately for her, what she thought was a sturdy hold proves not to be sturdy at all, and into the hole she goes.

"AAAAAAA---AAAAAH!" There's a break in the middle of the screaming because she didn't actually fall that far, but dramatics insisted that she go on a little longer before she settles down and looks around, for where she is, and what there might be of value that she can take with her. She's not hurt, luckily, except maybe for her pride if she had any of that to bruise. The real good news is that she beat her brother down here in a race that they weren't actually having, so she's going to count that as a win.

"Of course they do," Muri answers Mujiji smartly, never taking her eyes off that grenade. "More t'do with chemoreception and whatnot but yeah in their own way...plenty gets said what needs sayin'."

Maybe Muri's just really hung up on plants or maybe there's still some ringing in her ears running interference and causing delays.

"Oh. OH." Muri opts to hang back here on this ledge side of the hole and play look out for whatever disgruntled scientific authority might come swooping in on their produce-poaching operation. Best let the able-limbed folk handle this one. And that leaves her idle enough to ponder how in the hell they're getting /back/ to their skiff and whether or not their belongings will still be there. Maybe there's a tunnel in the hrikl lab? One can hope.

Her left hand fishes for the 1 flask left on her belt and works the cap free. 'Water' isn't really water, but it's still hydration! By her logic.

"No, I brought a folding shovel. It's in my pack. At... at the top of the mountain," Corr replies to King, first smugly, then faltering, but the cry for help cuts his embarassment short. The others take quick action, though, and before Haka has time to try another tact, he is restrained.

A quick search of the grow lab reveals what was already evident from above: these are indeed hrikl bushes, bearing hrikl nuts, that rare and delectable treat thought extinct by just about everyone. And in the corner, confined to a cage, a little Drall woman, her golden fur gleaming dingily in the flourescent light. "I'm Dr. Arbb, and these are /my/ hrikl bushes," she immediately cries, little hands clutching at the bars. "I have a license! I'm certified! I'm with the PLANT POLICE!"

It doesn't take long to set her free, and bully Haka into the cage to await the rest of the plant police's justice. Within a few hours, the explorers are on their way with not one but three hrikl nuts to fight over and an ample reward! And the dubious task of getting back to the top of the mountain. Another job, done!