“You got the password?” The four-armed man says.

“Urgafee,” Avi says.

“It’s actually pronounced ur-gah-fey, but whatever.” One arm reaches over to open the door. Tammy walks in first, with Avi following behind. She’s prepared to kill the guard, slowly, if he tries anything. He watches Avi in particular as they pass. “Hey,” Avi perks up, with calculations in her head about where his jugular is. “The whorehouse is on the second floor, near the back right.”

Avi spins on her heel, mouth open, brow tight, and ready to yell, but Tammy swoops in and shuts her jaw. “We’re just here to buy a replacement part for our air conditioner.”

The guard raises an eyebrow, “the fuck’s an air conditioner?”

Through Tammy’s hand, Avi mumbles about how the name is self-explanatory: it’s a conditioner of air. She doesn’t know what it is either.

“Exactly,” Tammy says, “it’s not something you can find easily, so we’re trying our luck here.”

The guard shrugs his bottom two shoulders, “the market is on the ground floor, front right.”

“Thank you!” Tammy says, forcibly turning Avi around and pulling her wrists to drag her away.

The warehouse, rather than a single large, open space, is packed tightly with hallways and rooms. Trash on the floor, poorly made walls full of cracks and holes, a variety of strong smells that nevertheless has body odor as the dominant scent. Music reverberates through the walls, and there’s a steady traffic of patrons walking past each other. Gurant are eight feet tall, even when not in their power armor, so the hallways and doorways need to be at least that size. Some patrons of the black market are passed out, or possibly dead, and shoved to the sides of the hallway. There are a few doors here and there, placed around the halls without much attention to equal spacing, and a few of the doors are slightly ajar, or there are holes which let them peak into the rooms beyond. There’s gambling in some, drug use in many, and Tammy gets the sense that rooms connected to the central hallway are for recreation. They pass a vast, two-story room with a stage, full of dancing, drinking, and orgies. Another room has the door ripped off its hinges, and features a raised arena, the common citizens crowding around and trying to strike it rich through well-placed bets.

“I should go back and kill him,” Avi whispers as they snake their way through the crowd.

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“He thought I was gonna prostitute myself!” She jealously grabs hold of Tammy’s arm and pulls him close, suspiciously eyeing everyone they pass. “Never.” Avi is 6’2, while Tammy is just 6’, and Tammy is bent to the side, increasing the height difference.

“Well, I don’t know. Think of it as a compliment.”

She raises an eyebrow, “huh?”

“Look at how you’re dressed. No skin visible besides your face, flowy clothes, none of your curves showing, and he STILL thought you were hot. Or something.”

“…it’s not really a compliment for a stranger to say I should work at a whorehouse.”

Tammy rolls his eyes, “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want you to let me go back and kill him. Or for us to change the conversation so he doesn’t say that when we do this for real.”

“I’ll think about considering it.” They come to a junction in the hallway and Tammy turns right.

“Hey,” Avi’s brow is narrow as she looks down at her husband. “If you thought it would help us kill a gurant, would… would you send me to work undercover at a whorehouse?”

Tammy keeps his head on a swivel, looking for anything that could lead them to the arms deal. “If I thought it would help us kill a gurant, I would work undercover at a whorehouse.”

“Uh, well, don’t. That would be cheating.”

“Who cares about cheating when it comes to killing toadmen?”

“Wha-? I do! We’re married!”

Tammy looks up to her with an eyebrow raised, “what? Oh, that kind of cheating.” He waves off her concerns, “yeah, sure.”

“Good!” She smiles happily and rubs the side of her face against his.

They enter the market of the warehouse and scan the area for gurant, though of course there aren’t any present. The market is a single wide room with a few support beams, and stalls set up everywhere. There’s just enough organization to the layout of stalls that they form a messy grid of walkable paths. Every stall has at least one guard with a rifle or hatchet in their hands, and the merchants usually have a pistol displayed prominently.

The goods range from the things common citizens need, to goods necessary for criminals to apply their craft. Recently expired food that’s still edible for some species, premium food not on sale anywhere else, guns, ammunition, drugs, household appliances, tools, lockpicks, blades, clothes in various states of filth and tatter, fuel for generators or cars, coal, the only thing missing from the market is slaves since that’s in a different section of the warehouse.

Similarly, the variety of aliens on display is staggering. The Gurant Empire uses forcible resettlement as one of their methods of control, ensuring that no planet, region, or city has a single species over 30% of the population. All aliens are humanoid, and most are like Avi; resembling normal humans but with an added tail, or four arms, or horns. Were it not for Tammy’s psychic nature automatically translating for them, the couple would be hearing dozens of different languages all being shouted over each other. In fact, Tammy’s psychic nature being able to translate the bone-tail language was how the two originally met 16 years ago.

“You see anything?” Tammy asks.

“Nope. I doubt they’re gonna advertise a giant arms sale though. Should I go on a rampage and tear through the place? If we try it enough times, and I’m sure we’ll find it.”

“No, we only have so many dives left before we’ll miss our chance.”

“But if we do come here in real life, you should be able to sense the gurant’s presence, right?”

“Yeah, but it’ll also be our only shot. I want to make a plan before we come here for real. How many guards it has, if it’s in power armor, if the buyers would rush to its aid, how we would escape—there are a lot of variables.”

Avi shrugs, “I’ll kill them all the same.”

“And then you’d kill the guards that try to stop us from leaving? The police officers or army units that surround the warehouse? Even after breaking through them, you’d manage to kill everyone pursuing us, and then you’d kill the assassins and bounty hunters that would surely pick up our trail? Then everyone that would prevent us from leaving the city, all so we can escape after such a bullish method of assassination?”

“Yup,” Avi says calmly.

Tammy rolls his eyes, “shut up and just let me think.”

He grabs his wife’s hand and leads the blissful woman to one side of the market, next to a wall and a stand selling hidden blades. A blade hidden in a cane, a tin water bottle cap, razor blades hidden in the rim of a cap, he has it all. Tammy crosses his arms as he looks over the sea of people, gripping his chin. Avi mimics the gesture. The two are significantly taller than the malnourished masses of the Gurant Empire and have no problem looking over heads. There are only a handful of species that, even when underdeveloped due to lack of nutrition, grow taller than their 6’ and 6’2 statures.

Tammy taps his knuckle against the inner wall of the black market. It’s cheap material that he could easily punch through, and as he looks around the rim of the room, he sees all sorts of holes, scratches, and split planks. His eyes fall on one of the iron support beams dotted around the market, and the construction is similarly poor. There isn’t a uniform distance between the poles, one pole is slanted, part of the ceiling is sagging. The warehouse has probably been operating for a few months, but it’s already in this state of disrepair.

Tammy bites the tip of his thumb, and Avi looks down at him with an expectant smile.

“The gurant,” he says carefully, “is in this warehouse. Somewhere.”

“Yes,” Avi says. “That’s what we were told.”

“Also, gurant are heavy.”

“Big ol’ fatties.”

“Even more so if it’ll be wearing power armor. Which means that, wherever it is, it’s definitely not going to be on any of the upper floors. This place is too poorly built.”

“He’d prob-“

“It.”

“It’d probably fall straight through the stairs!”

“Yeah. And what else do we know?”

“Nothing.”

“…What else do I know?”

“Uhh, that it’s doing an arms deal with a bunch of rebels?”

“Yes. And because the gurant is a gurant, we know a bit about how it’s going to act. It wouldn’t involve itself personally unless the actual sale was happening. Greedy beyond redemption, obsessed with power and prestige, it wouldn’t show up unless it could display piles and piles of weapons and ammunition. It’s not a deal where both sides show up to hash out the specifics, and then the arms are delivered at a later date. The weapons are here too, somewhere. Given all this-”

“Oh!” Avi lights up. “So the gurant’s probably, like, in a basement?”

Tammy pulls his thumb from his mouth and turns to his wife, “wha-?! Don’t just cut me off and skip to the end like it was your idea, I was getting to that!”

“Ah, sorry!” She says with a smile. “Please, continue your train of thought.”

Tammy shakes his head and walks off, weaving through the dense crowd as Avi trails a pace behind. “The guns would be heavy too. The gurant is probably sitting on a pile of ammo boxes with the remaining stock stacked high around it, showing off its wealth. So, does the first floor of this warehouse have a sort of grand meeting hall that would be ideal for that sort of shock and awe tactic?”

“Maybe?”

“It’s irrelevant.” Tammy heads down a hallway and leaves the market section. The crowd turns sparse and easier to walk around, the lights overhead have exposed wires hanging slack from the ceiling, and there’s no switch in sight. “Keep in mind who the gurant is selling too. Rebels, insurrectionists. This black market is tolerated by the authorities, but only to a point. If they knew that a deal was going on with anti-authority factions, then the authorities wouldn’t stand idly by. They’d want to disrupt the deal. So even if there was a room which suited their needs, it would be too open if it were in the ‘main’ rooms of the warehouse.”

“So there’d be a sort of secret area to the not-so-secret black market?” She cups her cheek and puts on a tone of fake confusion. “But Tammy, where could such a room be?”

Tammy turns another corner to the back-right section of the warehouse. It’s a quieter area, though the muffled roar of music and conversation still reverberates into the hallways, with doors every few feet leading into small, private meeting rooms. Tammy sees down the hall as two citizens, a man and a pregnant woman, knock on a door. It opens, and in the doorway stands a healthy, clean-cut man in a suit who looks to be a government official. From the context, Tammy knows that the citizens are here to bribe the official for a child permit. Without the permit, newborn babies are taken from the hospital and sent to one of the many state-run orphanages across the empire. It costs a lot to buy one of those permits, and the two citizens look like they had to skip a lot of meals to save up. The official was waiting for them, which means this is an area where such benign acts of corruption are commonplace. Quiet, private rooms to make deals, cut through red tape, bribe officials, and engage in criminal activities. If the gurant’s rebel buyers came through here to meet the gurant, nobody would notice.

“Given what we’ve established already, with the gurant needing the flare and prestige that comes with an arms deal, and how heavy they are, and how the deal needs to be hidden from the authorities, I conclude that the only answer-“

Avi snaps her fingers, “got it, the deal must be happening underground.”

“You’re such an asshole,” he shakes his head. It was a 50/50 chance that she’d either cut him off again, or let him finish and then overly praise him for how smart he is.

Avi snorts hard out of her nose, and covers her mouth to suppress her hearty laugh. Despite knowing it was coming, Tammy is frowning so hard and looks so upset. It’s adorable!

“There should be a hidden entrance to the basement somewhere in this warehouse.” Tammy walks up to a door and gently grabs the doorknob. He slowly turns it, and it’s unlocked. He stands to the side, looks at Avi, and nods to the door. She’s the one to open it up. If there’s anyone inside, she’ll take them out.

There’s no need to speak. That she doesn’t spring into action tells Tammy that the room is clear, and he heads in. There are two couches facing each other on opposite sides of a low wooden table. A single light bulb hangs overhead with exposed wires, and there’s no lightswitch. The floor is the original concrete that was poured when the warehouse was built. A quick glance around the room reveals there are no seams or hidden passages. It’s not the correct room.

The pair leave, and head to the room next door.

Tammy gently twists the knob so it doesn’t make a noise, and it’s unlocked. Avi heads in, there’s nobody inside, and there aren’t any secret passages.

For the next room, Avi opens the door, then suddenly rushes inside.

“H-!” A man yells before being silenced.

Avi’s left hand grips his mouth shut, Avi’s right hand punches into his gut so hard that he hunches forward, about to vomit. She brings her right knee up and nails him hard in the face, cracking his nose and throwing him back onto the couch. He’s either unconscious, or she snapped his neck. Either way, she speaks calmly, “clear.”

Tammy walks in and looks for seams or hidden passages. The man is wearing a suit so he’s probably some official, but he isn’t relevant to their mission. Satisfied that there’s nothing there, the two slip out.

Tammy quietly jiggles the next handle, and it’s locked.

He steps to the side a little and turns around, blocking the view of the knob for anyone passing by. The two giants certainly draw eyes, but if there’s one thing the average citizen of the empire knows, it’s when to shut up, avert their gaze, and stay in their lane. Tammy keeps a sharp look in his icy blue eyes and successfully intimidates everyone into ignoring them. It’s not possible to pretend like they aren’t up to something, so instead Tammy lets them know that interrupting them isn’t going to be worth it.

Avi steps closer to the door and quietly pulls up the front of her long skirt. Her tail uncoils from her waist and moves reaches up to the doorknob. The needle on the end of her tail goes into the keyhole, and she releases a single drop of lime green acid that quickly dissolves the lock. A faint cloud of steam sizzles out of the hole, yet the outside of the knob remains untouched. At a glance, nothing seems wrong.

Once the steam stops, she quickly opens the door and slips inside, with Tammy reaching in to grab the warm doorknob and pull it close.

“What are you-!?” A man’s muffled voice cries out from inside before being replaced with a hard thump.

“S-stop!”

“Call the-!”

Thump after thump, then the resounding noise of wooden planks splintering. It goes quiet, and Avi opens the door a moment later. Tammy slips inside, and Avi closes it behind him.

Three people, none of whom appear to be government officials. All either unconscious or dead, and one of them laying over the broken pieces of the center table.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary, and so the pair quickly leave, closing the door behind them.

With expert precision from about 15 years of assassination and spy work, the two go from room to room. If the room is unlocked, it takes about 10 seconds to check. If it’s locked, it only takes about 30. Every room has the same dimensions and furniture, with the only variation being that the rooms on the right side of the hallway have a wall made of thin metal, as that’s the outer wall of the warehouse.

On their 27th room, Avi destroys the lock, slips inside, takes out a group of four officials, and lets Tammy in.

“This room is slightly smaller than the-“ Tammy looks to the side, “a bookcase? How painfully out of place.”

Avi closes the door behind him. “It’s only out of place to us because we’ve seen like 30 of these rooms.”

“True.” Tammy looks at the four officials. They all have guns, which isn’t unusual since most people carry illegal weapons, but they’re all well-dressed, with bulletproof vests beneath their jackets. Avi needed to quickly take them out they shot, and Tammy sees that one of them has a snapped neck from where Avi threw him down onto the concrete floor. “Do you have a sleep serum?”

“Nope,” Avi strips off her restrictive black dress and finally frees her tail with a relieved sigh. She starts throwing books off the shelves. “Why?”

“When we do this for real, don’t kill these men. Just knock them unconscious.”

“Why?” She kicks low and sends her foot through the backboard, snapping the bottom wooden shelf with her hard shin. She sends her fist through the backboard, then grabs the back of the top shelf and yanks it out along with the nails. With every blow, she’s revealing more of the passageway behind the bookcase.

“Because we’re here to kill the gurant.”

“Are they not working for the gurant?”

“They could be, or maybe they’re unrelated. Maybe they were just told to hang around this room all day.”

Avi frowns as she rips out the last chunk of backboard, exposing a steep concrete staircase heading down into pure blackness. The stairs are too small for the fat feet of a gurant to traverse safely. “Well, if you want me too, fine. Kinda messing with my kill count though…”

Tammy stands at his wife’s side, looking down. “Thanks.”

“So,” Avi crosses her arms, “a basement, huh? Looks like I was right!”

Tammy rolls his eyes and heads down, “that’s sooooo true, you’re sooooo smart, Avi. Truly the brains and brawn of this operation, and that’s why I love you.”

Avi’s face lights up as she follows him down, her boney tail smacking against the concrete walls of the staircase as dopamine floods her brain.

They travel down the staircase, the light from the meeting room above slowly fading until Tammy is left in pitch blackness.

“Oh dear!” Avi’s tone makes it clear she has a bright smile as she wraps her tail and arms around her husband. “It’s so dark, and you can’t see! Don’t worry, Tammy. I’ll guide you to the gurant. Just hold tight.”

“Fine. But if we do another run of this, I’m bringing a flashlight.”

Avi mumbles, “we’ll see about that…”

“What?”

“Nothing, teehee.”

After a bit, they reach the bottom of the staircase and come to a curved hallway. Avi licks Tammy’s face.

All he can do is sigh.

“What’s wrong, darling?”

“You’re so gross.”

“Oh my, whatever do you mean?”

“You know.”

All she does is giggle, then wait a few moments before she licks him again. “Whoa, wait, did you hear that? I think there’s a ghost!”

“Shut up.”

They continue through the darkness for a few minutes. It’s not a very long hallway, but Avi keeps stopping to lick him, fiddle with his clothes, or sometimes fall and land in compromising positions. Tammy stops responding to her provocations, which just makes her escalate until she receives the attention she thinks she deserves.

Avi stops walking. “Door.”

“What’s it made out of?”

Avi leans in and sniffs, “a fake metal. Tajasteel, I think.”

Tammy thinks for a moment and lowers his voice, “this is probably the door. The arms deal is happening on the other side. Considering the amount of security to get this far, this is most likely the big room where the gurant is showing off all its expensive toys to the buyer.”

Avi matches his volume, “well I can definitely kick through a door this brittle. Wanna just charge in and take a good look around before we get shot to death?”

“Hmm. What does the surrounding hallway look like? Any vents or features?”

Avi looks around. “Nope. Totally blank hallway.”

“Is there-?”

Avi shoves Tammy against the right wall and covers his mouth, with her other hand behind his head so he doesn’t hit the concrete wall, and she unwraps her tail from around his thigh. Normally he’d use his psychic power to communicate silently, but none of his powers, save automatic translations, work in a prophecy dream.

Tammy turns his head to look down the hallway, and hears a faint echo. A moment later, he sees a dim light reflecting off the curved wall.

Activated by her previous failure to protect her man, the tip of her tail involuntarily rattles out a warning. She quickly takes off, Tammy seeing her back silhouetted by the reflected glint in front of her. Despite being 500 pounds of unbreakable bones and dense muscle, each step of her sprint is silent.

“A-ah!” A man suddenly yells.

“Sh-oot-!” Flashes of gunfire rapidly burst in the distance, and the echo travels down the hallway. Screams of pain are intermixed in the shooting, and both fall silent a moment later.

Then, to Tammy’s right, the door slowly opens. He quickly slides to the triangular space between the base of the door and the wall, a ray of light pouring into the hallway. The doorknob hits the wall, and a group of men carefully pass into the corridor, each equipped with rifle-mounted flashlights that shine bright white down the curved lane. They’re all covered in the distinctive black armor of a gurant’s personal guard, with featureless facemasks. They’re silent as they go, and 10 of them set up at the entrance. The men in front kneel, the men in the back stand, rifles layered to maximize how many can shoot.

A booming voice thrashes in from beyond the room, and Tammy’s upper lip instinctively curls in disgust. It’s the impossibly deep voice of a toadman. He’s speaking the snarled, growling speech of the gurant, yet Tammy’s psychic powers translate it into the bone-tail language.

“What are you doing? Don’t just stand there, go in and find what that noise was! Either it’s the authorities and I’m killing you all for leading them here, or it’s your men, in which case I’m killing you for such a shoddy attempt at a double cross.”

“Yes sir!” One of the men yells. Those kneeling in front stand and march forward. 10 more follow them into the hall, 20 soldiers in total marching double file towards Avi.

Tammy carefully slides to the right, closer to the door, in an attempt to peek through the gap. The lights are a bright orange, the room beyond is seemingly large, with stacks of crates just beyond the door. Those crates are blocking line of sight to the gurant, so during their next dive, they’ll be able to sneak in without anyone noticing.

The guardsmen open fire down the hall, causing Tammy to jolt. Avi’s charging in, using two corpses as human shields. One is held by the neck with her left hand, and the second is held up by her tail, which has skewered the man through the chest. She had injected a serum in both to kill them. A fast-acting coagulant that ripped every blood vessel in their bodies, sending deep bruises across their flesh. That hardened blood mixed with their muscles to solidify the corpses further. While not fully bulletproof, their corpses slow the guards’ bullets enough that she isn’t ripped to pieces with their automatic fire. With Avi’s right hand, she pokes her revolver in a gap between them, firing into the crowd. Her bullets are powerful, and the guard’s armor is weak, so she rips through their numbers.

At the same time, Tammy pulls a pistol from under his shirt, opens the door slightly, and points it at the back of the nearest guard.

Click.

“Tch.” Tammy puts his gun back and waits silently. When Avi was messing with him in the darkness earlier, she stole his bullets. As such, he can’t shoot, the guards don’t know he’s there, and they can’t shoot him.

Once Avi gets close, she throws her revolver at a man’s head and dents his helmet. She then throws the hard, bullet-ridden corpses, which knocks a few over. Once she’s in range, she starts ripping through the guards. Each punch can break bones, her kicks can sever limbs, and even if she doesn’t apply a serum, her tail can either be used like a whip, or to pierce flesh and armor. Even in the chaos of blood and screams, she can accurately pierce her needle into their chests and tear their hearts, or slice their jugulars. Her jaw dislocates like a snake to open wider, and she uses that to bite chunks out of her victims. She can easily chomp through a helmet and destroy the skull and brain underneath, or bite through a bicep and leave the arm dangling with only a few strands of tendons left.

“Hahaha! Die! Die!” Her screams and laughter overpower the gunfire and her victims’ pleas for help. Tammy, standing behind the door, is spattered with their blood and tries to ignore it.

“Ah,” the gurant’s voice comes in clear regardless of her laughter. “Seems to be a bone-tail. Very well, I won’t kill you all once she’s dealt with.”

The last handful of guards run back into the storage room. Avi passes by in a blur, grabbing the door and ripping a chunk out as she uses the shard of metal to impale a fleeing soldier through the back.

“HA! Like I said, Tammy! Nothing to worry about! Worthless fodder!”

Tammy quickly enters behind her, stepping over the bodies. The two of them will soon die, so he might as well see what the room looks like.

The meeting ground is built like a simple rectangle. The door Tammy and Avi came through is on the long, bottom side of the rectangle, with another small door on the top side. On the right side of the room is a large, shuttering warehouse door which was used to bring in all the crates of guns and ammunition. That warehouse door leads to a hallway big enough for forklifts, and ends in another warehouse about 300 meters away. There are hundreds of crates stacked on the top and bottom sides of the room, some of which nearly reach the ceiling. Avi is perched on top of a few large crates in front of the door.

The left side of the large room features a raised section, with a throne fit for whatever gurant happens to be using the meeting ground. Tammy sees their target sitting on his throne. Humanoid in shape, legs spread wide with his giant arms resting on the sides. Two pure black eyes sit atop his slimy green head, a wide mouth curls around his face, and he doesn’t have a visible chin. His face and neck are so fatty and thick that it naturally rolls into his torso. He has two armored gauntlets that make his giant hands seem even bigger, and his body is covered in purple robes so expensive that a hundred citizens could toil all their lives and still never come close to affording it. To further show off his wealth, the gurant’s robes, interwoven with golden thread, are covered in blood and other stains such as grease and black ink. It’s a message that even this unobtainably luxurious cloth is nothing special to him. Similarly, despite his fat gut—another status symbol as most humans in the Gurant Empire are on the verge of starvation—the fabric is oversized and hangs loose on his body. Beneath the fat rolls, warts, and slimy green skin, gurant possess special, bulky muscle fibers that lets them move faster, and lift more than what anyone could reasonably expect, though they hall have exoskeletons attached to their bodies for enhanced movement. Even without his armored gauntlets, he can crush a human’s skull in one hand, or tear off limbs with no difficulty. Unlike Avi, he has no teeth, but that’s not an issue since he could snap bones between his fingers, and swallow prey whole.

Standing around the gurant is what’s left of his retinue, a few accountants and administrators. He has no real need for guards, given that he was the most dangerous thing in the room before Avi appeared, though he brought them as a status symbol regardless. Standing in front of him are his clients. The original inhabitants of the world prior to the gurant conquest, they’re dark-skinned men with black hair, grey eyes, and bone spurs growing out of their oversized arms and shoulders like pineapples. They have their rifles drawn.

Avi, standing atop a stack of crates, cuts an imposing visage. A wide smile with sharpened, bloody teeth on display, hunched over, boney spine elongated and ripping through her skin and clothes. Her skeleton is perfectly intact, yet there’s chunks of flesh ripped out of her sides. With how she held those human shields, there aren’t any deep wounds that hit center mass.

The gurant blinks one eye at a time, recognizing his assailant. “Reaper.” Gurant don’t have normal human emotions, but he recognizes the danger she poses. His marble black eyes shift to Tammy, “and Dreamwalker.” His mind races with how he can escape with his life. Before he can formulate a plan, Avi pounces, charging towards the gurant with a fierce smile.

“You know it!” She screams.

Her target rises to his trunk-like feet, springing two metal panels on the sides of his gauntlets, and a single hooked, serrated claw from each. His powerful exoskeleton makes his movements faster than they should be.

Avi punches, kicks, slashes her tail and tries to bite, yet the gurant can deflect most of it, paying special attention to her tail and teeth. What gets through doesn’t do much against his sturdy body. From behind, the gurant’s clients want to fire at the assassin, but are too hesitant to accidentally hit the toadman. Instead, then aim at Tammy. He raises his hands and they shoot him dead without hesitation. He now knows that the clients will defend the gurant when necessary, so there’s no need to try and spare them.

Avi’s laughing so much that she doesn’t even hear the gunshots.

A moment after he’s killed, Tammy’s lifeless eyes flash white.

****

“AH!” Tammy jolts up.

“Ahaha!” Avi leaps off the bed and starts pacing around the room, shaking and smiling.

“Uugh,” Tammy curls into a ball. “They didn’t aim for my head…” He forces himself to reach over to the alarm clock, “24:42.”

“WHOOOO!” Avi’s hands are clenched tight. She’s breathing so deeply that her ribs are expanding a little more than they’re supposed to, but she likes the pain.

“Hngh, come to bed…”

Avi whips her head to him like a predator eyeing a free meal, and sprints closer, but stops as her hands are on the foot of the bed. She stares at him for a moment, her breathing slow and deliberate as she tries to make sense of what she’s doing. Like a drunk woman who knows she’s wasted and has enough sense to rationally think through her actions. Slowly, carefully, Avi pulls up the covers and crawls over Tammy, laying next to him. Her heart is beating so hard that Tammy can feel the bed shake.

Tammy puts a hand on her forehead, she’s burning up.

“Tammy, I love you. Please don’t touch me.”

Tammy pulls his hand away.

From past experience, Avi is keenly aware that she’s so amped up that she’ll crack her husband’s ribs if she tries to cuddle. That adrenaline/dopamine rush that comes with killing just can’t be beat, and getting pulled out of that murderous state so suddenly isn’t natural. In the same way they feel phantom pain from injuries in a prophecy dream, she’s feeling a phantom rush. Normally, one of her kind would either keep killing until all threats are slaughtered, or until she’s dead.

“Everything was going well, until we were ambushed from behind.”

Avi, resting on a pillow, snaps her head to Tammy, long strands of black hair over her face. “I DIDN’T EVEN-“  Her pupils are constricted to pinpoints, and her lips are pressed into two thin lines.

Tammy turns to her, and his eyes flash a dim, pale white. They’re communicating telepathically, where her thoughts are more ordered.

“[Thank you,]” she thinks. Telepathic communication comes with a slight echo to the words, one which is a little higher pitched than usual, and one voice that’s a tad deeper. “[I didn’t even hear them until they were basically on top of us.]”

“[Clearly someone came into the meeting room after us, saw the bodies, then called the guards.]”

“[And we can’t lock the door behind us, since my acid melted it.]”

“[Do you have a serum in you that’s like glue? Spew it in the lock once we’re inside to make a pseudo-lock?]”

“[Hmmm… no, I don’t have one currently.]” As a bone tail, Avi’s body takes the various biological materials she eats, breaks them down into their component parts, then reformats them to make serums that she delivers through her tail.

“[Do you have the materials necessary to make it?]”

“[Almost.]”

“[What do you need?]”

“[Blood.]” She stares at Tammy’s neck and licks her lips.

“[You’re not biting me in that state, absolutely not.]” Tammy extends his pointer finger with one hand and grabs the last segment of Avi’s tail with his other. Clenching his teeth, he presses the thin needle of her tail into his skin until a trail of blood trickles down.

Avi stares at his finger, transfixed, drooling. When Tammy pulls her needle away, she grabs his wrist with both hands and leaps in, wrapping her mouth around his finger and sucking it like a straw. Were it anyone but Tammy, she would have bit through the bone and started chewing.

“[Ah!]” She thinks, “[your blood is so delicious! Best blood type, perfect compatibility, good pressure, no cholesterol, outstanding!]”

“[How much do you need?]”

Avi keeps sucking.

“[Hey, girl. How much do you need?]”

She’s wrapping her tongue around his finger, and her teeth are closed just enough to lock him in place without hurting him.

“[…What about my blood will actually help you seal the door?]”

“[Hm?]”

“[Why do you need my blood instead of any other substance?]”

“[Tammy, you’re so smart, that’s a brilliant question.]”

“[…so answer it.]”

“[Sure! Well, you see, my taste buds analyze all the food I consume for their base components and properties, and then it’s deposited into my stomach where I break down-]“

“[I know your biology better than you do. What base component of my blood do you actually need?]”

“[Uhh… Oh! The coh-ag-you-lent property! I’ll mix some of that into a foam, super charge it, then make it a little more sticky. When I spray the serum into the broken lock, it’ll stick to all the internal gears that I melted, then harden. That’ll keep the knob from being turned, like a lock. Yeah, that actually makes sense.]”

She clearly came up with that excuse after asking for blood, but Tammy doesn’t care so long as it brings them closer to a dead gurant.

“[How much more blood do you need?]”

“[Haha, oh Tammy, always asking the really good questions.]”

He pinches her nose hard and the two stare at each other for a second. If she’s inactive, she can hold her breath for well over 15 minutes, but she knows there’s a limit to how cheeky she can be. She knows they’re on a time limit, so she pretends to gasp for breath, opening her jaw to release her victim. Tammy then wipes his finger on her shoulder.

“Start making the serum now,” he says, “I’ll plan to grab a flashlight, everything should be fine up until the first door. We’ll dive in then.”

“[Sure, hahaha, that’s exactly how it’ll go.]”

Tammy raises an eyebrow at her mischievous laugh, but his eyes flash white regardless.

****

The pair find themselves in the hallway of the warehouse, in front of the correct meeting room. Because they didn’t need to waste time searching room after room, they arrived several minutes earlier than they did in the previous prophecy dream, and Avi hasn’t expended any acid.

Avi looks left, looks right, pulls her skirt up to her knees, and releases her tail. She slips her needle into the lock, then discharges the acid. A moment later, they slip inside and Avi beats the occupants into submission.

“Hmph…” Avi grumbles, but the annoyance of not killing is reduced due to knowing that murder is just a short hallway away. She flicks her boney tail, then extends it far out to the side. In her abdomen is an organ with several pockets, which is where her serums are stored when not in use. After pumping a serum down the length of her tail, it’s common for residue to be left in the tube. If Tammy wanted a sleep serum, but there was residue of acid left, that would kill him. To clean her tube, she sends a clear, neutralizing liquid down her tail to flush it out. Only a few milliliters are required, and the result is a small puddle of foam on the floor, no larger than if she spat.

From there, she sticks her needle into the lock and shoots her latest serum in. The red foam bubbles out of the keyhole slightly, but quickly hardens.

Tammy grabs the knob and tries to twist it. “It’s stiff. Good, if anyone tries to enter this room, they’ll think it’s occupied.”

Avi raises her chin, the inner section of her brow curled up. “Yeah, I’m pretty useful.”

“If you’d be so kind as to be of continued use, the bookcase needs moving.”

Avi salutes, “yes, sir!” She runs over and cleanly rips it off the hinges, rather than yanking out board by board. She steps to the side of the stairway and gives a deep, elegant bow, her arms sweeping towards the entrance. “After you, sir. You and your,” she snorts, “flashlight.”

Tammy narrows his brow. Her head is bowed to try and hide her smile, but she isn’t leaning forward enough. He roots through his dirty pockets as he walks to the stairwell. He pats under his arms, he runs his hand along his back pockets, he shakes his tunic yet finds no flashlight. All the while, Avi tries her best to not giggle.

“…You have my flashlight.”

“Nope!” She stands up straight and spreads her arms, “you’re free to pat me down if you don’t believe me.”

“Then you threw it out somewhere.”

“Whaaaat? Meeeee? Tammy, theft is a serious allegation.”

A problem with prophecy dreams, which Avi has mastered exploiting, is that they don’t know the specifics of anything that happens between falling asleep, and when they dive into the dream. It relies on intent. Tammy intended to bring a flashlight, and he did. Avi, however, intended to get rid of that flashlight, so she did.

Shortly before arriving outside the warehouse, Avi’s future projection ripped the flashlight from Tammy’s belt, then crushed it in her hand. She could be as blatant as she wanted, since Tammy wouldn’t remember her doing it.

“Hmph.” Tammy pieces this together, and rolls up his sleeve, revealing ink on his skin.

“Uh,” Avi rubs the back of her neck, “what’s that say?”

“After you stole my flashlight, I would have left myself a note to figure out what you did. Let’s read.” Tammy clears his throat, and Avi gulps. “Avi stole my flashlight, sold it, and then took a detour at the brothel to have sex with two male prostitutes.”

Avi’s eyes round, her mouth hangs open.

“Wow,” Tammy rolls down his sleeve, “I didn’t realize you were such a slut.”

“Th-that’s not what happened!” She cries.

“It’s not? How can you be sure? I have no memory of what happened before we dove into this spot. Who’s to say you didn’t use that amnesia as cover to cheat on me?” As they talk, someone outside jiggles the doorknob and assumes it’s locked.

Avi grabs her husband’s shoulders and shakes violently, “I would never! Never in a million- a billion years! You’re the only one for me, I swear!”

Tammy’s voice wobbles as he’s shaken forward and back, “so you say, but the truth of the matter is that I don’t have my flashlight, and this is the only evidence available.”

“N-no, no!” Her eyes start watering, and she’s hyperventilating. “Please, Tammy,” she sniffs, “I-I… I swear, I would never-“

Tammy pouts slightly. She’s playing it up. She’s not actually upset; those tears are fake. There’s no way that she doesn’t know he was kidding, and there’s no way this isn’t just another tactic… and yet, what if it’s not? Avi puts a lot of stock into her love of Tammy, so what if the tears are real? She knows that Tammy doesn’t actually think she went to a brothel or whatever, but what if she’s upset at the very thought her loyalty is being called into question? Did Tammy’s joke go too far?

He frowns, “shut up and let’s go, idiot. It was just a joke.”

He stomps into the staircase, with Avi sheepishly following behind. The moment the stairway gets too dark, however, Avi catches Tammy in a bear hug, lifting him up. Her head is over his shoulders, and she’s rubbing her wet cheek against his and leaving a thin smear of tears.

“I-I really would never cheat on-“

“I know!” He groans.

She smiles, “I, ah, teehee, I guess I just need to remind you how affectionate and loyal I am!” She kisses him from cheek to shoulder, wet and sloppy, and starts nibbling his neck.

Tammy gives a long, disgusted sigh. “You’re the one who was left crying, yet somehow I still lost.”

“Lost?”

Thankfully, Tammy’s had great practice in turning off his brain when faced with her antics, and she walks him to the tajasteel door before long.

“The door,” Avi declares as she hesitantly releases her husband. “What’s the plan?”

Tammy lowers his voice, “we don’t know what’s exactly on the other side of this door in the natural state. If there’re guards, for example.” He paws the air but can’t find the doorknob. “Open it slowly. Or, rather, see if it’s locked.”

Avi gently grips it, and gives a slow turn. “It’s not locked.”

Tammy nods, prompting her to pull it open, slowly.

The gurant’s inhumanly deep voice resounds in their ears, “…17,000 rounds should be enough to level your target before you rodents flood in and deal with the rest.”

“Watch yourself, beast.” The spikey-armed leader lowers his voice to try and match the gurant’s, but his voice is so high pitched in comparison that it resembles a small dog’s yapping. “This deal serves your purposes too.”

Avi pokes her head in and looks left, then right. Stacks of wooden ammunition boxes line the opposing walls, and the area behind the gurant’s throne. Because of the gurant’s compulsive need to show off, there is no line of sight to the door, and the two are hidden. Additionally, given all the security, the gurant didn’t bother stationing guards at the side entrances, which is probably because he wanted more guards visible around him. Avi pulls her head back in, then nods at Tammy. She opens the door further, and they huddle behind the nearest stack.

“I could train any group of half-brained monkeys to form a coherent militia. You’re here as a matter of expedience.”

Tammy rolls his eyes and groans out a whisper, “these fucking things are insufferable…”

“Oh? Insufferable?” The gurant rises from his throne.

Tammy and Avi’s eyes round, and they both shoot their hands over to cover Tammy’s mouth.

The spike-armed men raise their rifles in a panic, which prompt’s the gurant’s guards to raise theirs. The lumbering hulk of muscle and slimy skin stomps closer to his clients, towering over the insurrectionist leader. “Mind yourself, boy.” He raises a fat finger and jabs the man in the chest, forcing him to step back. “I’d sooner delay my ascension up the ranks for a decade as I train your replacements rather than suffer one further insult.”

The insurrectionist leader grits his teeth, then raises a hand to the side, gesturing his men to lower their guns.

“…” Avi thinks for a second. Could they get them to kill each other, then rush in during the chaos? She throws her voice perfectly to sound like a man, then whispers loud enough for the gurant to hear, “fucking toadmen…”

“…” The gurant looks over his clients one by one, each tense, having heard the voice too. “None of your mouths moved… There’s an intruder,” he turns back to his throne, “two of them, probably. Kill them both.” He sits hard, the sheer weight of his body causing a low rumble, then slides his long tongue over his disgusting toad lips.

“Shit,” Avi says in her normal voice.

The gurant’s 20 armed guards beat their fists against their chest plates, “sir!” Then they spread out, closing in on Tammy and Avi.

“Hmh,” Tammy mumbles through their layered hands, then quickly makes his eyes flash white.

****

Tammy’s eyes open, “gnngh… it was a good idea, at least.”

Avi’s eyes open. She yawns, “th-aaaaaah-nks.”

He reaches over and picks up the alarm clock, but his vision is blurry. “Read this.”

“Uh… so the first letter-“

“Number.”

“The first number is a kind of squiggly line… the second is… three lines, with a long line on the right side, and two more lines on the left side, one going-“

“Twenty-Four.”

“Yeah! The first number is a squiggly line, the second number is twenty-four, the third is two dots stacked atop-“

“Forget it.” Tammy turns the alarm clock back to him, and stares at it until his eyes focus. “24:55.”

“I would have gotten there!”

“We only have so many more attempts before we need to leave. I don’t have time for that. I’m dropping us back in behind the crates. Don’t speak and give away our-… wait, I did that. Sorry.”

Avi snorts, “yeah, dummy. How are you this old and haven’t fixed that mouth of yours?” She hugs him tight.

Tammy thinks of a response but quickly realizes there’s no arguing with her. His eyes flash right.

****

“-here as a matter of expedience,” the gurant’s voice resounds, prompting the insurrectionist leader to pipe down.

Avi looks to her husband, behind the box, and starts giving off hand signals. The two can’t communicate telepathically in prophecy dreams, and whispering might give away their location. Luckily, Tammy and Avi have spent a long time together, so they invented several languages to communicate silently. One is about tapping their fingers against their skin like morse code, another is a set of hieroglyphs, and the last is a complex system of hand motions and expressions.

“[Think I should just pull out my revolver, shoot him in the face, then we run away?]”

As the two communicate, the gurant continually berates his clients. He occasionally stops the insults to explain the terms of their arms sale, almost like the point of this meeting is to mock them, with the arms sale being the side comments.

“[Surely the entire black market would be put on alert and they’d prevent anyone from leaving.]”

“[We could fight our way out.]”

“[We talked about the scale of that earlier and why I think it’s a poor idea. I’d rather escape quietly and have them realize we were here only after we’re gone.]”

“[Alright, sooo… I blow the gurant’s head off, everyone freaks out, I kill everyone else, and then there’s nobody left to sound the alarm. We stab our wanted poster into his -its-]“ she corrects herself before Tammy can, “[chest, and we walk out of here all casual like.]”

Tammy rubs his chin. “[It’s possible that the sounds of gunfire won’t reach far enough… gurant, kill the 30 or so remaining humans before anyone can escape or raise an alarm. Alright, we’ll try it, but I’m helping.]” He pulls his suppressed pistol from the back of his waistband, then holds out his hand.

Avi pouts, then hands Tammy his magazine back. “[I’d rather you not steal my kills.]”

“[Do you want me to wait upstairs? If you’re going to kill everyone yourself, then there’s no need for me to even be here.]”

“[Aww, but Tammy, I’m scared of the dark! I need you by my side! Imagine I said that in a really cutesy tone that makes your heart melt, and more willing to do what I say.]”

“[Imagine me rolling my eyes.]”

“[You did roll your eyes.]”

“[Did I? Must have been a reflex. Now get to it.]”

Avi sighs, yet follows her husband’s order. She pulls her revolver out from the holster above her tail, then makes sure it’s loaded. Five rounds in the spinning chamber, she can accurately unload all five at a target the size of a gurant’s head from a distance of 50 feet in just two seconds. A gurant’s tough skin and dense muscles might offer them protection from smaller calibers, but Avi’s revolver was a special design made to rip open their skulls.

Tammy quietly slots the magazine into his pistol but waits until after Avi gets started to cock it, lest the noise alert their target.

Avi pops around the stack of crates, her revolver already aimed towards the gurant, sitting on his throne. She requires just a fraction of a second to adjust her aim at his head. No matter how strong her revolver is, five incendiary bullets isn’t enough to reliably kill a gurant with hits to the torso. She needs to destroy the brain.

In that fraction of a second, the gurant’s pure black eyes, sat atop his head to give him a wide field of view, notices the sudden movement around the stack of crates, recognizes the threat posed by her gun, then snaps his forearm up in a quick twitch, aided by his exoskeleton. Gurant are skittish creatures, forged through tens of thousands of years of betrayal and treachery, so such a reaction time isn’t unusual for their kind. The tightening of his fist activates his metal gauntlet, prompting iron plates to extend out just as Avi pulls the trigger for the first time. As she does, Tammy cocks the pistol back and circles around the other side of the crate. He takes aim at one of the guards and starts emptying his magazine. Each gunshot is a muted blip, and once he sees a few impacts against his target’s chest, he takes aim at the next.

Avi can’t see through the fireball her revolver creates, but flexes through the intense recoil and keeps shooting until all five chambers are empty. The insurrectionist leader and his men jolt in surprise and are slow in drawing their weapons. The gurant’s advisors cower and cover their ears, while his guards feel an intense rush of panic because they’re under fire from Tammy. About half rush to their master’s side, but none make it before Avi finishes shooting. A third crouch down from either being shot, or because they’re close to the ones getting shot, and the remainder get over their surprise and look for the shooter, but so fast is this sequence of events that their limited human brains can’t register it quickly enough.

When Avi stops firing, she looks just long enough to see a few deep, scorched dents in his shield, and a faint bit of blood from when bullet fragments ricocheted centimeters into his body. No gurant would ever die from such shallow injuries.

“Ahh,” Avi swings back behind the crates before anyone can start shooting at her. Their bullets rip through chunks of wood in the crate behind her, and Tammy moves back before they start firing at him.

“Bring that woman to me,” the gurant says with a low tremble, his voice far louder than the gunshots. “Alive.”

There’s no point continuing this attempt if all it will result in is them experiencing phantom pain when they wake up. His eyes flash white.