RP:The Poop Scooper And The King Of The Uyeer

Part of the The End's Not Near Arc

Summary: Kreekitaka requests specific "advantages" for his fighters in the next round of Chartsend defenses. Muzo is (pleasantly?!) surprised with the Uyeer's accommodations for his request and begins work immediately.

The Green Plains

Kreekitaka was... actually feeling a little better, surprisingly. He could still sort of feel the curse gnawing at him, but with the aid of these herbs it was easier to bear. He'd noticed his people were less jitttery, as well. It would help, but he worried that it wouldn't be enough. That meant, as he'd discovered it usually did, that it was time to summon the new house alchemist. (Or at least, Kree considered him the house alchemist. Muzo was very useful to have around for things like this. And other things, too, but those were somewhat less pressing concerns. The uyeer king was watching the forge heat up in his dinosaur camp--as his people had been affected so thoroughly, it had been allowed to grow cold. Now that they were at least on the road to wellness, it was time to get things started again.

Muzo busies himself with the latest stool sample. Since his arrival at camp, he's had a peculiar obsession with the dinosaur's diets, particularly the ankylosaurus, and the general tone of his psychobabble has been something like this: "I can make that thing pretty cool if you let me look at a lot of its poop." Or so the dino handlers have summarized for Kree. Now the turd burglar himself comes slithering up, still drying his hands on a scrap washrag and looking perturbed. "Wildly distractable conditions." His gemlike prosthetic eye gleams with a harsh scarlet glare in the direct sunlight. "What delusions of productivity are you entertaining today, Kreekitaka?" Some gratitude! You would think Muzo might be a little more mindful of the Uyeer's generous asylum.

Kreekitaka had insisted to the various dinosaur handlers that if Muzo required a sample of something, he was to be allowed it. Poop, surface tissue samples, so long as it wasn't violently invasive and cost them a dinosaur. After all, if his creatures could be improved, he'd very much want to know. He'd have to have a long discussion with him about the mechanics of flight, as well, preferably over a book or several from the avian library, but that would have to wait for a bit. Now, it was time for focusing on a different problem. "HarDAH!yee DAH!eyusions," he answered, turning around and tilting his head. "I've a consiDAH!erabo amounTAH! of work TAH!oo accompyish. CharTAH!senDAH! is apparenTAH!yee expecTAH!ing aTAH!ack, an' I am in charge of organizing DAH!efenses." Well, no, you're not, not really, Kree, but you put yourself in charge. "An' I have aomosTAH! every piece puTAH! TAH!ogeHHHTHer excepTAH! one."

Muzo hangs the damp rag over his shoulder. He adjusts his bandoleer of alchemical whatnot and belt of alchemical hootenanny. Formulae hovers up behind him, floating upright and ominously monolithic. Was the book always so large, or is it a trick of the outdoors? Either way, the alchemical tome isn't bothering to put on the butterfly act today. "Very well," Muzo twirls his index finger for Kree to go on, only very gradually remembering his manners. "Presume you have interrupted my studies to provide this missing piece. Am here to," he bows low, Formulae hovers rigidly, "humbly oblige." If he was a little more glib, Kreekitaka might suspect Muzo's gesture of obedience was a mockery, but indeed, the exiled alchemist is stiff with earnest, if somewhat disgruntled, formality.

Kreekitaka nodded. On another day, he might lean on the man a little, remind him that the uyeer had supplied a good deal of the inquiries he might be studying, and that he might possibly be in prison if not for his interruptions, but today he didn't have time nor the desire to potentially generate resentment. "Sureyee you have noTAH!iceDAH!i in HHHTHe manner of my peopo a... cerTAH!ain change, recenTAH!yee, yes? HHHTHey scurry, HHHTHey fear HHHTHeir own shaDAH!ows. I am TAH!aking sTAH!eps TAH!oo TAH!ake care of iTAH!, however I require a few HHHTHings. In HHHTHe shorTAH! TAH!erm, I am going TAH!oo require a potion which reDAH!uces or eyiminaTAH!s fear, for my peopoh TAH!oo consume." Cowardly soldiers do not good soldiers make, after all. "In HHHTHe yong TAH!erm, I neeDAH! a way TAH!oo make air behave yike waTAH!er for HHHTHe purposes of transmiTAH!ing sounDAH!." ...Kree, that's a very tall order. "An' iTAH! mus' be very yong-rangeDAH!. HHHTHis curse affecTAH!ing our peopo is onyee parTAH! of a very yarge curse which affecTAH!s everywhere, an' apparenTAH!yee HHHTHe cure is a song, which musTAH! cover HHHTHe yanDAH!."

Muzo straightens out of his bow, nodding with each item, one by one, as Kreekitaka lists them. The request for a courage booster doesn't seem to strike him too oddly, but when the great crustacean begins talking about changing the acoustic properties of air, his eyes (well... eye, now) widen. Gears spin, and Kreekitaka can almost smell the smoke as Muzo's mind races to fathom the dizzying complications of such a request. "Will," Muzo's lower lid twitches, "address the courage supplement with due haste." The matter of waterlike air, he doesn't bother touching. "Doubt you can spare a few of your people for live testing? Convicts, or some other ostracized class would do just fine. Access to," Muzo clears his throat, "appropriate glandular structures would be most expedient."

Perhaps shockingly, Kreekitaka didn't bat an eye at the idea of live testing among his own people. He rippled his paddles as he watched Muzo start thinking of the possibilities--good, perfect even. He knew the scientist was the right man for the job. "Oh, of course. Jus' ask any woman for a spare kiDAH! or two." what "Make sure noTAH! TAH!oo TAH!ake any wiHHHTH a name, of course. Check firsTAH!." Well, that might not have been the answer he was expecting, but hopefully it would be welcome.

Muzo blinks (winks!?) in pleasant surprise. Well well well! And to think he'd already been spinning ethical justifications and readying alternatives based on, well, a bigoted assumption of what an uyeer would find morally palatable! "Very good. Will begin this afternoon." It dawns on him, and Muzo takes cautious note, there will almost certainly come a day when, instead of an unexpected liberty, he will violate an unforseen taboo. "Admit," Muzo slithers a little closer to Kreekitaka. He glances to one side, then to the other, "am yet ignorant of much uyeer custom. Could perhaps bother you for a... protocol... assistant?"

The idea of a protocol assistant hadn't crossed Kreekitaka's mind before this. Someone to help show Muzo around would definitely be useful. "Io have my transyaTAH!or from when I was sTAH!uck in my heaying TAH!ank come an' aDAH!vise you." The translator uyeer didn't have quite the vocabulary Kree did, but on the upside he also had less of a problem with the words he did know than Kree did. He would serve a good purpose so long as he didn't wig out, and Kree would make sure he had a large amount of flowers to keep him relaxed.

Muzo seems perfectly content with this, or well, as content as he could seem given his present grumpiness. "Very good of you, much obliged." Thoughtfully, the naga drums his fingers along his thin, ophidian jawline, staring off into the clouds as he muses, but the gesture is short-lived, and he forcibly snaps himself back to the present. "Will waste no time. Expect a prototype formula very soon." With that, Formulae is already turning to float with unwavering course and unvarying speed back toward Muzo's portable laboratory tent where stool samples will have to wait until another day. Muzo, sensing he shouldn't let the book get too far on its own, hastily bows. "Please excuse me, my duties," is all he mutters before slithering off.