It’s been four years since Avi rescued the psychic prodigy known as Tammy. She’s 11 years old, he’s 10, and their mission has brought them to the side of a creek.

Tammy pumps his fist in the air, “Avi!” He yells, “are you ready?!” He looks up at her with an expectant smile and bright eyes.

“Woooo…” She mutters, only raising her fist as high as her shoulder. The right side of her face is swollen and bruised from her brother ‘accidentally’ giving her a nasty elbow to the eye socket.

“Yeah, you’re ready,” he pats her shoulder. Despite her scowl, her boney tail starts wagging.

Tammy gently sets his backpack down on the white rocks, then removes a large quilt that was tied to the back. Red and white patches in a checkerboard pattern, with thick stitches woven between, it’s so large that, after flicking it out and laying it on the rocks, he and Avi need to pull the corners to its full size. Avi then places her backpack next to her husband’s, and the two take out all sorts of vials, jars, and pots. Each glass container has various chemicals inside, each properly labeled with a piece of yellow tape and black marker.

As Avi can’t read, Tammy made sure the lids are color coordinated.

“We’ll put these here,” he says as the blue-lidded jars are sent to the right of the quilt, “this’ll go there,” he hums as the red-lidded jars are placed on the left, “then here, here, over here, and here!”

Avi slumps onto the far side of the quilt, sitting on the rocks since she has no idea how to help. Her mind races with dreams of beating up her siblings. One particular fantasy is how she should have caught her brother’s elbow, flipped him upside down, then stomped his neck. Pure childish delusions without a chance of ever happening, and they don’t even make her feel better. She’s just stewing in her hatred and weakness.

Tammy looks over at her. She’s sitting cross-legged, with her elbows on her knees, propping up her head. Her tail rhythmically smacks the rocks in a sign Tammy recognizes as frustration and irritability. Her right eye is so swollen she can’t see, and her left is glazed over, unfocused.

Tammy scoots around the quilt, careful not to disrupt any of the ingredients, and sits next to his partner. Not only is she a year older, but her Bone-Tail genetics make her significantly bigger than Tammy, though she’s still the runt of her family.

“Hey,” he says delicately. “I know you’re upset, and I can’t really help, but I can cover it up!” As Avi sits like a statue, Tammy adjusts her shoulder-length black hair, swooping it in front of her undamaged left eye.

“…Tammy?”

“Yes, Avi?” His words are flawlessly innocent.

“That’s the wrong eye.”

“Oh, it is? Sorry, you’re just so cute that I could barely even tell you were injured.” Tammy’s favorite person in the galaxy is Avi, so he’s perfectly willing to lie through his teeth if it’ll make her feel better.

Avi’s body locks up. Her nose, cheeks, and ears turn a bright red, and her tails swishes back and forth, knocking aside clattering rocks. “You’re… just saying that.”

Tammy sweeps her hair to the other side, letting her see his face, “do you care?” Confident, adorable, and oozing charisma, Tammy learned during his days in a gurant orphanage that people won’t beat you as hard, or as frequently, if you’re cute. In appearance, mannerism, and word choice, Tammy had a natural talent for that sort of emotional manipulation, and it’s only seen refinement thanks to his psychic powers, and careful cultivation by members of the bone-tail tribe.

She presses her lips into two thin lines as she tries her best to suppress her smile. “I-I… I guess I don’t.” It doesn’t matter that she knows it’s fake, what’s important is that Tammy is faking for her benefit. Avi is the runt of her tribe. She isn’t cute, she isn’t smart, she doesn’t work hard, and everyone has been waiting years for her to finally be killed off. Tammy is the only one willing to lie to make her feel better, and the attempt in and of itself sends her spirit soaring.

“Then great! So, Avi, please,” he brings his hands around and grabs her shoulders. Her muscles are tight and firm, far more than what most adults could boast. “Could I ask you to get us some firewood, so we can boil these concoctions?”

She tries to respond, but the words are stuck in her throat. She leaps to her feet and runs across the rocks that flank the valley the creek runs through, then scampers up an angled, 40-foot embankment, disappearing into the forest beyond. When she’s out of earshot, she starts giggling.

With that settled, Tammy returns to his spot and gets to work on the collection of yellow jars. Measuring chemicals, mixing powders, using syringes to suck out the proper levels of acids and poisons before delicately squirting them into the right tubes and vials. No need for scales or instructions, he’s memorized the recipe in his training back at the bone-tail camp.

“Tammy!” She hurriedly runs back, arms curled and loaded with branches. Her fingernails are a little dirty from where she ripped chunks of bark and wood fibers out of tree trunks. She stops just before the quilt, “is this enough?”

“Yes, thank you,” he smiles warmly, making sure his beloved wife feels appreciated since the stars know she’s not receiving such kindness from her family. “Could you please start a fire?”

“Sure!” She says with a smile. Placing the twigs, wood chunks, and branches on the side, Avi starts stacking them on the quilt.

“Um, sorry, Avi, but could you build it on the rocks? That’ll set the quilt on fire.”

“Hm?” Her cheeks turn red, and she bites her bottom lip, “o-oh, right, of course… sorry.”

He stops what he’s doing and looks her in the eyes, “that’s fine, nothing worth worrying about.”

She keeps her head down as she focuses on building the fire, but she can’t hide her embarrassment. “S-so what are we doing out here?”

“Making bombs.”

“Well, yes, I got that part, but why?”

“Mr. Kashier didn’t tell you?”

Avi pouts. With both hands pressed together on opposite sides of a stick, she rubs her hands rapidly, causing the stick to twist against a piece of bark covered in fibers. “Daddy never tells me anything…” The friction creates a small ember in the wood fibers, and she bends over to gently blow on it, creating a flame that she quickly feeds.

“Oh, well, uh, I’m sure he expected me to tell you! There’s a new Gurant Lord in charge of this region, and he’s been busy with solidifying his rule. A lot of boring economic and political stuff, but basically his work brings him through here a lot, specifically over that bridge,” Tammy points upstream, towards a distant bridge about a quarter of a mile away. It’s a plain, straight, old, concrete bridge that runs over the small valley, with six large struts keeping the road secure no matter how many super-sized tanks roll their weight across it. The ankle-deep creek flows between the third and fourth strut, with the rest of the valley covered in small white rocks. “We’ll make explosives, wait until the target comes through, then we’ll blow it. He should be coming through in a convoy of trucks, but it’ll be a 40-foot drop, which should do a lot of damage. If the fall doesn’t kill him, we, or more specifically, you, will run in and kill him in the chaos.”

“How will we know when the target is there? Like, which car?” Avi fans the fire, adding more branches so the flames grow thick and strong.

Tammy puffs out his chest, “I’ll use my psychic powers! Gurant souls are distinct, with how malignant and black they are. Mr. Kashier said the convoy should be here before dusk, so we have plenty of time to set up.”

Avi sighs and looks down into the fire, “so I’m pretty much worthless until it comes time to execute the wounded.”

“What? Nooo, here, come over here.” He pats the quilt next to him, prompting Avi to sluggishly drag herself over and sit at his side, a respectful distance away. Tammy scoots closer, their legs touching. “This is super easy, don’t worry about it. Take that pot.” She swings her tail out and sticks her hardened needle through one of the loops, picking it up and setting it down in front of her. “Good, now take that jar with the blue top, the one on the left.” She does. “Okay, now open it.” She does. “Now, and listen carefully, slowly pour the powder into the pot so that not even a single grain touches your skin, and make sure it doesn’t puff up for you to inhale.”

Avi doesn’t start pouring yet, “what would happen if it does?”

“Well, this is gateerixoxitrocide, which is incredibly toxic, and you’ll die.”

Avi’s brow narrow, and her shoulders pull back, “die? I’d never die from a poison or a toxin, I’m a bone-tail!” Defiantly, she starts bringing the jar to her lips for a drink, but Tammy, eyes wide, lunges forward. One hand on her wrist to try and keep it away, and his other hand covering her mouth because he knows he isn’t strong enough to stop her hand.

“Wha! No! It’s not a normal kind of poison that a bone-tail can break down!”

Avi stops, her muffled voice reverberating through his palm, “it’s not?”

Tammy’s eyes stay locked on the jar. “No, it’s not. It’s completely inorganic. It’d be like if you ate cement, or something. Remember that time you tried eating rocks because you thought your stomach acid could break them down?”

“…N-no…”

“Well… imagine eating rocks because you think your stomach acid can break them down, only to find out that your stomach acid definitely can not break them down, so you spend several days in intense agony as you feel each pebble work its way through your stomach, intestines, and colon.”

“That… would be bad. Hypothetically.”

“Exactly. This powder, and most of these substances, would be like that. But instead of stomach pain, you just… you just die. You’ll feel awful for a few hours, and then you’ll die.”

“And we’re holding these with our hands? Don’t we have gloves?”

Tammy releases his wife and scoots over to the backpacks, “um… no. That would have been smart, but I forgot to bring them. I noticed we didn’t have them earlier, but it was too late to go back.

Avi shakes her head, which moves her air out from her busted eye, forcing her to brush it back. It’s impossible to tell if Tammy actually forgot the gloves, or if he just made an intentional mistake because he wants Avi to feel better, which Avi has caught him doing from time to time. “Alright, I’ll be careful.” With hands steadier than an expert surgeon, she pours the powder out of the jar and into the pan.

“Okay, now take the other blue-topped jars and put them in too. Don’t bother mixing, just empty them all. But make sure there’s no spark or ember or anything like that, it’ll explode and blow your face off.” Tammy continues his work on the yellow jars. With the various chemicals and acids properly mixed into vials, he adds them to a clean jar, then adds water from the creek. Using a spoon to mix, it quickly turns into a sticky gel, which he begins to spread on 36 pieces of paper using a brush. Each paper only needs a thin layer of gel in the center.

Meanwhile, Avi takes to her task with a concentrated enthusiasm, eager to follow the directions of her betrothed. They won’t officially be married until Avi can survive her 12th year, but neither could imagine marrying anyone else in the tribe. Avi takes each jar with a blue cap and empties in into the pot perfectly, not a single speck touches her flesh. “All jars empty! What now?” The tip of her tail is up, gently swaying left and right.

“There’s another brush in my backpack, take it and swirl it around the powder, mixing it all together. Be careful not to swipe too strongly, or you might get some on your skin.”

“Yes, sir!” Avi brings her tail over to the backpack, wraps the end segment around a strap, then drags it over. She roots inside, finds the brush, then gets to work mixing the powder together. “If the powder will explode if there’s a spark, does that mean this is what will blow up the bridge?”

“Nope!” Tammy says, eager to reward his partner’s curiosity. “That’s the ignition, what will ignite the explosives that will blow up the bridge. What I’m working on is the containers for that ignition; pieces of paper with sticky gel slathered on one side. When you’re done, we’ll pour the mixed powder onto the paper, and it’ll connect to the sticky gel. Then we’ll fold the paper up into a ball, with exposed wires sticking into the ball. The other end of those wires will connect to a detonator. The detonator will send a spark through the wire, which will activate the ignition powder, which will create a small explosion inside each paper ball, which will ignite the real explosives, which will blow up the bridge, which will make the gurant’s convoy fall some 40 feet into this valley, which will kill or otherwise incapacitate all the guards, which will let you then move in to make sure the target is dead.”

“Which will let us complete our mission, which will let us return back home?”

“Exactly!”

“So, for the actual explosive…” She narrows her brow, the gears in her head slowly turning. “That’s related to the fire you had me make?”

“Yup. I’ll have you start making it once you’re done mixing. I’ll handle pouring the ignition powder on the gel, since it requires some precise measurements that would be hard to explain.”

Avi continues gently brushing back and forth until Tammy finishes applying the gel to 36 pieces of sturdy construction paper. Once he’s finished, Avi passes the pot closer to him. Using a small spoon, he carefully scoops the exact amounts of the powder concoction, then pours it onto the sticky gel of each paper. When each ignition paper is complete, he lays a piece of wire with a frayed end onto it, folds the paper into a small ball, then ties the end with a white string, wrapped with a little bow.

“So, Avi,” he says, his brow tight in concentration, “please take that second pot and fill it about halfway with water from the creek. Then put the pot above the fire using the metal stand over in your backpack. As it’s heating, start pouring the red-lid jars into the water. Don’t just dump each jar in though, put only a little bit from one jar, then switch to the next, and rotate like that until everything is empty.”

“What’ll happen if I get any of it on my skin?”

“Nothing too bad, so long as you wash it off.”

“And if I don’t wash it off?”

“Your skin will begin to dissolve. It’ll enter your bloodstream, then it’ll melt through your veins and heart until you die from internal bleeding.”

“Ah. And why should I slowly put each jar in, rather than dumping them in one by one?”

Tammy smiles brightly, it’s rare for Avi to be so curious, and he’s really enjoying himself. If only she was as interested in their target and all the work he’s doing to solidify power, Tammy could go for hours about that. “Because they’ll solidify when in contact with water, and you won’t get all ingredients in by doing it that way. It needs to be a somewhat equal mixture, or the explosion won’t be refined enough to blow the bridge. All the ingredients were already measured, then stored in separate jars, so it’s an easy matter of just pouring them in.”

“Okay…” She starts taking the jars one by one and pouring small bits of each in at a time. “Hey, why not mix these jars together, and then add water?”

Tammy continues his work with the paper balls; he’s about halfway finished. He could go faster, but because he forgot the gloves, he needs to be careful with the powder. “Because the powders interacting will create a noxious gas that’ll make you pass out, and probably kill you. That’s why they’re stored separately.”

“Ah.”

“The heat and water neutralize that reactivity though, so don’t worry.”

Avi holds her breath when pouring, just in case.

As more ingredients are poured into the pot, the contents solidify. Like a thick soup, or mud, the pot steadily contains a dense grey slop. While the temperature is hot enough to boil water, the contents keep it from bubbling or spilling over.

Tammy finishes his work with the paper balls, so he walks over and stands behind her back, leaning over with his arms crossed on her head. “Looking good. Another thing the hot water did was cut down on the acidity of the ingredients. It’ll still make your skin blister, but it’s not life threatening anymore. You could even use your tail to mix it around, though I’d recommend a stick.”

Because Tammy is leaning on her, Avi’s body is solid, unmoving. “I would like the stick, please.”

Tammy heads off to her backpack, and Avi involuntarily purses her lips at his absence. He takes out a foot-long metal stick with sturdy, grated fan blades on the end. As he walks back to Avi, he stops and picks up three small jars with purple caps. “As you mix, add these jars into the explosive slop. It’s not that specific on how you mix it.”

“What does this stuff do?” Avi asks as she grabs the metal device and gets to work mixing. The grey slop is thick, like hardening concrete. When she tears a gash on the surface of the concoction, it slowly gloops back into the wound and settles. When she puts the metal device deep inside the pot, she needs to put her back into the twisting and turning. It’s something Tammy doesn’t have the muscle for.

“That jar further removes some of the acidity, so it doesn’t dissolve the paper, powder, or wire. That jar makes it a little stickier so we can put it on the struts of the bridge. This last jar is just to make it more flammable, ensuring that the initial explosion from the paper bombs will ignite it.”

“Huh..!” Her voice is a little strained from twisting. “If I upturned the pot right now and threw it into the fire, what would happen?”

Tammy grabs his chin to think, looking deep into the pot. “Probably nothing. It’s heated from the boiling water, so it’s not very reactive at the moment.”

“What if I take the pot away, let it cool, and then dump the contents onto the fire?”

“Well, it would ignite and explode.” He looks around the valley with the creek in the middle, “the concussive force would knock leaves and branches off the surrounding trees, there’d be a hole about… hmm, I dunno, ten feet deep, and we’d be vaporized. Your bones would stay intact and be recognizable as a skeleton, but I’d be gone without a trace.”

“Oh dear.”

“Yep. Haha, so let’s not let it cool for now, okay?” Tammy pats his wife on the back, then heads back to finish up the paper bombs. Each one has a length of wire sticking out of the top, and he takes several spools of wire from his backpack and starts unraveling them.

There are three components. A detonator, which is a small back box with a single switch, protected from accidental flips by a hinged glass dome. That detonator has an exposed wire on the top, which will connect to 500-foot-long wire, insulated with light grey rubber that matches the rocks in the valley. The length is necessary so they can hide amidst the trees outside the valley, safely outside the blast radius.

That wire will then connect to a splitter. It’s a simple gray box, a little bigger than a pencil case, with a pebble-like design painted on for camouflage. On the back of the splitter is an exposed wire that connects to the detonator. On the front side are 50 tiny holes where wires can be attached inside. Since Tammy made 36 paper bombs, each with a wire sticking out of the small opening, he inserts wires into 36 holes of the splitter and checks to make sure each is secure.

“What’s this stuff called, anyway? Smells kind of rubbery, but is it really that dangerous?”

“Yep, I got the recipe from Auntie Durika, so you know it’s high-quality.”

Avi scowls, staring into the slop that’s progressively getting harder to mix. “When you asked for help, did she stab you in the throat with a toxin and watch you flail around on the floor, desperately trying to figure out the antidote?”

Avi’s body would automatically neutralize any toxin the Lord Alchemist of the tribe injected into her, so her panic was entirely due to her poor grasp of bone-tail biology. But Tammy can’t exactly say that, “…no. She just asked the specifics of our mission, then helped me mix the base components into each jar, along with teaching me the steps to put it all together.”

“Huh, how about that?”

“Erh, well, the name of that thing is nightglow fleshripper. Apparently, it’s an old concoction that dates back to before the gurant took over your homeworld. The explosion would make the night sky glow bright, but since not even this stuff can destroy your bones, it would instead rip all the flesh off your skeletons.”

“Super interesting,” Avi says with a dry voice, barely covering a thick layer of contempt from the previous mention of her aunt.

“It is, isn’t it?” Tammy says with a bright smile and a delightful tone. “It’s a shame we don’t know which world used to belong to you guys, I’d love to visit one day. The empire couldn’t have destroyed all trace of you living there, right?”

She shrugs, “I guess it’d be cool to kill a gurant on the homeworld.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Avi looks down at the mixture. She’s out of additive powder, and it’s getting hard to slosh it around in the pot, even with her great strength. “I think I’m done. Should I just plant this under the bridge and you’ll set those paper balls on top of it?”

“Nope. The explosion will certainly be enough to take down one strut, but it’s a long bridge. We’ll need to chop it up and spread it out, ensuring each strut is taken down at the same time, and the whole bridge falls out from under them.” Tammy gets up from his spot and walks over to Avi’s pot.

He starts reaching his hand into the sticky substance, but Avi quickly grabs his wrist “ah! What are you doing? You’re gonna touch it?”

“Yes, you’re meant to. That’s why you added the chemical that reduces acidity.”

Avi darts her eyes between her husband’s face, his hand, and the pot in rapid succession, but soon relents and releases her grip.

He digs his fingers into the warm slop, then struggles to scrape his hand back like a shovel, scooping out a small handful. “You can do it too. It’s sticky, but also thick, kind of like a puddy.” He fiddles with it for a moment, and molds it into the shape of a butterfly.

Avi’s face lights up, she jams her hands into the pot to pull out a large chunk, then messily molds it into a lumpy heart. “Hehhehheh, for you, Tammy.”

He smiles, throws his butterfly back into the pot, then accepts her heart graciously. He poses with it over his chest for a moment, and Avi laughs. Then he throws it back into the pot. Their hands are left with a thin layer of residue, along with small lumps. “Alright, enough playing around. We don’t know how much time is left before the convoy arrives.”

Avi stares into the pot as her heart dissolves, but shrugs.

She grabs the heat-insulated handles of the pot and pulls it off the fire. Tammy collects the 36 paper balls in a small bag, then leads her in a small march upstream towards the bridge.

“Here’s how we’re doing this,” he says, standing next to one of the struts. “Take a handful of nightglow fleshripper,” he does so, and Avi follows his lead. “Ball it into a disk,” they do, “press it against the strut of the bridge!” It takes a little effort, but they press hard and the puddy-like substance sticks without issue. “Now, at the top of the nightglow, carve out a little hole, just big enough for the paper balls to be slotted in.” They do, and then they each grab a paper ball and slot it into place, making sure they’re secure and won’t blow away in the wind. “The proximity is important. When we press the detonator and send the electrical charge, the paper balls will explode, which will ignite the nightglow. Just one should be enough to blow each strut, but redundancy is important. If we put several on each, then we won’t need to worry about duds.”

“Then, when it collapses, I’ll run in and kill everyone who’s still alive.”

“Yep! Or, rather, you should focus on finding the gurant and making sure he’s dead. You might need to chase him down.”

“You think the gurant will be able to run away after falling so far?”

“Hmm,” Tammy puts the back of his wrists on his hips, careful not to wipe the nightglow residue on his clothes. He looks up at the bottom of the bridge 40 feet above him, looks down at the rocks, then purses his lips as he rocks his head left and right. “I guess it’ll depend on some factors like secondary explosions, and what kind of a vehicle he’s in. Mr. Kashier said he shouldn’t be wearing power armor, and gurant are super heavy, so a fall from this height should be a lot more devastating than if you or I fell.”

She raises her chin, “especially me, since my bones don’t break.”

“Yeah! A creature as heavy as a gurant would have their bones, like, shattered from the impact. But who knows? Maybe he’ll get lucky.”

Avi shrugs and looks up, “kind of hope he lives just long enough for me to be the one to kill him.”

“Haha,” Tammy elbows her arm, “want another kill under your belt?”

She sighs, then gets back to work tearing out nightglow and slapping it on the struts. “I gotta do something to keep pace with everyone.”

The duo gets to work slathering certain sections of each strut with nightglow, then fitting a paper bomb on each. There are six struts, and they have 36 paper bombs, so each strut gets six servings of nightglow fleshripper.

“We’ll try to blow the bridge when the gurant is over this one,” Tammy says as they start attaching bombs to the third strut, right next to the creek.

When they finish, Tammy cuts the required length of wire so each paper ball can reach the splitter. Then they set rocks on the splitter to camouflage it, and connects the bottom side to 500 feet of wire, pulling it out of the valley, up the embankment, and into the edge of the forest. He connects the end to the detonator, and finally it’s ready.

With everything set, the two head to the creek and wash the nightglow fleshripper residue off their hands. Since they marched several hundred miles from their tribe’s camp to reach here, they also take their shoes off and soak their feet in the water for a time. They chat for a bit, and when they feel refreshed, Tammy checks the connection half a dozen times before they climb out of the valley.

Tammy hands his partner the detonator.

Avi looks down at the small black box, “you… want me to flip the switch?”

“Of course. Well, not right now, obviously. I’ll be on the lookout for a gurant’s soul as the convoy approaches, so when I tell you to flip the switch, you’ll flip the switch and blow the bridge. Understood?” He looks deep in her red eyes, perfectly conveying a strong sense of confidence and trust.

She blushes, “y-yeah! I’ll do it! You can trust me, boss.”

“Partner, you mean.”

With her face twisted into a crumpled smile, Avi can’t stop her tail from wagging and violently slapping two nearby trees.

Two hours pass with light conversations between the two. Tammy is mostly focused on scanning for souls, and Avi runs through the scenario of her flipping the switch a thousand times, perfecting every detail in her brain so nothing can go awry.

“Ah! Avi!” Tammy yells, his eyes closed as he’s sitting against the trunk of a tree. “I see him! The gurant’s almost here.”

“G-got it!” With her eyes locked on the bridge, Avi flips the switch.

Or rather, she tries to, but her thumb slides over the protective glass case that’s designed to prevent misfiring.

Fear runs through Avi’s heart, and she misses Tammy softly saying “hold, wait for it.”

She sees the top of the first truck speed across the bridge.

Biting her bottom lip, she tries to flip the switch again, and again. Her eyes trail the tops of one truck after another, the panic rising with every failed flick.

After the fourth flick that fails to create a satisfying, bone-rattling kaboom, she punches the face of the detonator and crushes the small black device against her palm.

“…” She looks down at the broken pieces, eyes rounded and mouth agape.

She glances to Tammy, who hasn’t moved from his spot. “Almost, he’s right in the middle of the convoy…”

But on the edge of Tammy’s perception, he hears a grating noise. A repeated thought from a soul in despair, “[I’m a fucking idiot, I’m a fucking idiot, I’m a fucking idiot!]”

He opens his eyes and looks to his partner, who’s on her knees trying to fiddle with the broken detonator. “Ah! What happened?!”

“I’m an idiot, that’s what happened! I broke it!”

Tammy gets on his knees and starts fiddling with the wires and the broken pieces too, all the while, the convoy drives by, unaware. He grabs the wire and holds it in front of Avi’s face, “uh, there’s two wires coiled, split them in half!”

With pinpoint accuracy, Avi whips her tail around and jabs the needle straight through the connected wires, fraying it into two parts.

“Um-um, battery, battery, hold this,” he hands off the split wires and she holds each split with either hand. Tammy then scrambles to grab the cylindrical battery and hurriedly places the wires on the metal end pieces. It does nothing, he panics, and with shaky hands flips it over.

This finally creates a closed loop circuit, which sends the electrical signal down the 500-foot wire, to the splitter, through the 36 different wires, to the many paper balls, which ignites the powder, that creates the necessary sparks, which causes the nightglow fleshripper to release all its energy at once! 36 magnificent fireballs all coalesce into a single nightmarish explosion that vaporizes the concrete struts and even sends deep fissures through the bottom of the concrete bridge. The bulletproof glass of each truck in the convoy shatters, and the sheer concussive force is enough to rupture the eardrums of nearly everyone in the convoy.

The shockwave visibly rips through the air, and Avi is quick to tightly press her hands against Tammy’s ears to protect him from the blast. The force knocks both of the young assassins to the ground, and the full weight of the explosion is sent into Avi’s ears, causing a painfully loud ring.

With the road collapsing under them, each truck in the convoy falls 40 feet into the rocks below, though even if Avi and Tammy were looking at the display of carnage, they wouldn’t be able to see past the heavy layer of thick black smoke rising into a mushroom cloud. The metal hulls of each truck bends, crunches, and warps from the impact. Anyone who isn’t wearing a seatbelt dies instantly, and even those who are still suffer from whiplash.

As the blast is so sudden, several of the rear trucks don’t have time to slow down, and they drive straight off the cliff, adding to Avi’s now-inflated kill count.

When the rumbling settles, Avi sets Tammy on the ground besides her and jumps to her feet. She slides down the embankment, then charges towards the carnage.

Running into the cloud of smoke and ash, Avi can’t see more than a few feet in front of her, and comes upon a mangled wreck. It takes her a few moments to realize that it’s a supply truck that’s upside down, crushed because another truck landed on it. The drivers were flattened into paste, all their cargo destroyed, but there’s no gurant. Running to the next wreckage, the smoke is starting to clear, and she finds an open-backed troop transport laying on its side. The back of the truck didn’t have seatbelts, so all 12 passengers are a bloody mess of broken bones and ruined flesh, some were thrown out of the rear, their corpses strewn about the rocks or pinned under the hull. Moving further up, she finds a heavily armored personnel carrier. The outer hull is solid, with only a few dents despite landing on its front bumper and tipping forward on its top.

She catches a disgusting toadman’s arm reaching out of the windshield. He has two armored gauntlets and an exoskeleton, but the frame is making a high-pitched squeal with every inch of motion. His large fingers bury into the rock, and the exoskeleton tries desperately to pull him out of the wreck, but his fat, warty gut is stuck. His thick skin is covered in wounds so shallow that they’re barely bleeding, but Avi can tell at a glance that a lot of his bones are broken, some bones are sticking out of his flesh. His solid black, marble-like eyes glance up at Avi. His revoltingly large mouth moves, blood trailing down his fatty neck, but Avi can’t hear what he says.

There’s no need to speak anyway. She sticks her tail in the back of his neck and discharges so much acid that it not only severs his spine, but continues to eat through his flesh until his head is severed from his torso. Target dead. She exhales and relaxes her shoulders; thankful she didn’t ruin everything right at the end.

“[Uh, Avi?]” Tammy’s voice appears inside her head. “[There’re a lot more trucks in the convoy than I thought, and those in the front and rear cars are starting to get out.]”

“[Which means? I killed the gurant, by the way.]”

“[It means they have guns, and they’re going to shoot you if they see you, so forget about executing the wounded. Dozens of them are still alive, but, uh, let’s get out of here.]”

“[Understood!]”

With her well-developed, bone-tail leg muscles, she speeds off downstream. Some men on the far side see her and start shooting, but their training is poor, the distance is too large, and Avi is quick. She scampers up the embankment, throws Tammy into a piggyback ride, and doesn’t stop running until the sun sets.

For the next three days, the pair chart a haphazard path back to camp so no potential pursuers can follow. Her eardrums are busted and they can only speak telepathically, or with a special sign language they invented. While her eye heals by the time they return to camp, Avi will be functionally deaf for the next week.

Regardless of her injuries, they managed to complete their mission. Another gurant killed by their hands.

Tammy alters some of the details to give Avi more credit, and she leverages that altered report so her father has to praise her specifically, rather than praising Tammy, with her as a tag-along. Sadly, even though her father relents and does congratulate her, she’s still deaf at the time and can’t savor her reward.

Tammy makes sure to praise her plenty in her father’s stead.