Ask Black Dogs Barking

Mutual deals were one of Nakoa's favorite things and underworld types were almost always willing to oblige. Despite the reputation for ruthlessness most gangs and groups worked hard to cultivate, much like your average predator in nature, they preferred not to start trouble for no good reason. So long as everyone got something good out of it, everyone walked away that much richer. When it came to the Crimson Dawn, their specialty made things a little bit awkward.

They traded in Force-related artifacts but had few means of verifying integrity or defending themselves against Force-users who didn't feel like paying a fair price. That's why Nakoa and one of their men were here on Myrkr. Nakoa wanted Vosnkyr, the Crimson Dawn wanted Vornskyr. Simple enough in theory.

In practice, finding and capturing suitable examples wouldn't be that easy. But the risk was worth it, both for the immediate prize and potential contacts on both sides. Besides, a job was a job.

As usual, Nakoa had set up camp around his ship with tarps and everything, hidden in a river valley beneath rocky outcroppings. The Dawn representative would show up eventually and the Wrean wasn't in a rush.

Crix would find Nakoa hanging in a tree from his legs, simultaneously curling himself up and eating from a right-side-up bag of nerf jerky. Amber-gold eyes darted toward the bike as it approached, the Wrean's body idly swinging back and forth. As the other man spoke up, Nakoa chewed on his jerky with an unreadable expression. A moment passed before he swallowed.

"I would," he replied, closing the bag of jerky and falling abruptly from the branch, only to flip around and land on his feet. Nakoa chucked the bag onto his camp chair. "Crow?" Unless someone had willing come to this rough world all on their own, this must be the Crimson Dawn person. Nakoa, currently without shoes, strode across the underbrush and offered the man a short handshake.

"Call me Singh. Know about the quarry?"

From some belt pouch, Nakoa pulled out licorice root and stuck it between his teeth, fangs flashing as he idly chewed on it. "Nope," he replied around it with an indifferent little shrug. "Not a problem." The Wrean certainly seemed confident enough, for whatever reason that might be. With great breeziness his hand rose and he indicated himself with a thumb.

"I'm bait. And I'll keep it in line. You capture." The same hand gestured out toward the muggy jungle. "It's spring here. Mating season. Capture an adult, find the cubs. I take credits and part of the catch, Dawn the majority. Still agreed?" Really he was just going over the specifics of the deal. Several groups of cubs were expected for capture and taming since the adults were untamable as a wild species, and notoriously hard to handle.

Less difficult with a Force-sensitive at the reigns, however. "You good with those?" Nakoa asked, gesturing at Crow's capture weaponry. He'd be at least mildly offended if he got hit with a tranq dart.

"Yes," Nakoa replied to the question about Force-sensitivity. He did not elaborate and they spent the next long stretch of time without conversation unless Crow brought something up. Instead, he focused on trawling through the dense jungle foliage and keeping his senses open to danger. Prudent on Myrkr.

After some time the Wrean abruptly stopped stock still, nostrils flaring. To Crow there would be a faint, pungent sort of smell, which could be anything in the jungle. To Nakoa it was strong and obvious, and he started looking around, slowly moving brush and vines aside. Eventually, he found it.

A tree with a section of bark clearly worn down and scratched from which the smell was coming from. "Territory marking." He couldn't be sure it was actually from a Vornskyr, but it looked too small to be a larger predator, so he just sort of guessed. That it was a very sure-sounding guess was not communicated.

Nakoa turned to look at Crow. "It's fuzz," he said with a straight face. Hard to tell whether he was joking or not. When the growl sounded behind them he turned with all the urgency of a fuel station clerk discovering a new customer had walked in at 3 AM. The Wrean darted to the side as the beast abruptly charged in- and was kind of surprised it went for Crow, brows raising.

This unexpected develop caused a short delay after the Enforcer dove away, the scent of fresh blood in the air, whip-like tail snapping through the air. If he remembered right, those bushy bristles were full of venomous spines that delivered a mild but fast-acting paralytic. Or was it cytotoxic? He didn't remember the difference at the moment, he wasn't a chemist.

As the Vornskyr whipped around to leap again toward Crow, the air around it shimmered ominously like desert haze or an ocean horizon at sunset. The beast stopped in midair, lifting further from the ground. It snarled, biting, clawing, and tail-whipping at the air, trying to reach something it could sense like prey, could feel, but couldn't sink its teeth into.

Singh lifted his hand further up, trying to make sure it was reasonably away from Crow but not able to try and scramble up a tree or something. Hopefully there wasn't another one nearby, or something terribly inconvenient like that. That'd be awkward.

Less awkward than anticipated, Crow showed his promised skill with his gear in handling the second appearance. For the second time, Nakoa was surprised he wasn't the target of the Vornskyr's ambush. He maintained his hold on the floating one- which was very upset about the whole thing- and kept his eyes on Crow vs beastie #2 in case he needed to do something. Turns out, no, he did not.

Singh's free hand rose and he spoke quietly but strongly, the rumbling undertone of his voice coming to the forefront. "Al-salam Alaikum," he said, a shivering current running through the Force immediately drawing both Vornskyr's attention. Both began to calm slowly until even the one thrashing in a net was asleep on the ground. Nakoa gestured to the previously-floating specimen.

"Should restrain that one. Sure you're not Force-sensitive?" he suggested and asked all in one string of consciousness.

"Clearly not." While Crow got to patching himself up, Nakoa got to work on the Vornskyr. This, for some reason he didn't explain, apparently required pulling out his knife. Singh crouched over the two Vornskyr and sort of just prodded at their torsos a bit, trying to figure something out. He figured it out eventually.

"Yes," Nakoa informed the other man. Followed by cutting the throat of the female Vornskyr and more low, sonorous speech. His free hand reached out to smear up some of Crow's fallen blood from the underbrush and paint it over the dying Vornskyr's eyes. It struggled in its sleep, helpless.

"Mulzamat bialdumu. Shahad ealaa alduyuni. Alhayat min 'ajl almawti." With a flick of his vibroknife, he severed the head at the neck and lifted it by the mane. It still dripped blood but, strangely, it dripped not down but off into the undergrowth in defiance of all natural reason.

"That way." And 'that way' is where he walked.

Nakoa was so amused by Crow's disturbed reaction that he nearly asked him to hold the ensorcelled Vornskyr head just to see the face he'd pull. The corner of his mouth pulled up toward a smirk. "You kill people for a living and that's what weirds you out?" Nakoa wiggled the decapitated head so the jaws moved like the soundless laughter of an especially macabre puppet. Then there was the question of using some historical Jedi's name as an expletive but he didn't bring that one up.

By the time they found the hidden den, the head looked- albeit didn't smell- like it'd been dead longer than it had been. Singh assessed the pups in their den and Crow's question. Then he shrugged. "Not really. You hold the bags." No longer useful, the Vornskyr head was discarded and Nakoa cleaned his hands of blood with a pocket handkerchief. After putting on some leather gloves that looked like they were from some reptilian species, he started grabbing puppies.

It looked like there were twelve in all, rather young, but apparently, their tails were still useful defensively. There was some weak nipping that couldn't properly get through the gloves, but his bare forearms got scratched from tails as he transferred the pups into two puppy sacks.

Once they were all neatly packed away with a handful of beef jerky each, Nakoa sat on the ground and just... stayed there. "Gimme a minute," he said.

Singh had shrugged breezily. "Be cooler if you did," he'd said. Probably just messing with the man.

He glanced languidly up from his sitting place, laboriously lifting a scratched-up forearm with limp fingers, his eyebrows dryly raised. "I'd like the use of my arms if we run into anything else, thanks." Nakoa let the limb flop back into his lap. He sat there to handle the venom without moving around and making it worse. That's why he'd been the one grabbing the pups in the first place. His sect of Force users was skilled at destroying poison in their own bodies.

Not so much if it'd been Crow. Amber-gold eyes dropped to the wriggling bags, little puppy noises and goofy chewing sounds coming muffled through the thick cloth. "Truly a worse fate there never was," he quipped back dryly.

Eventually- really a few minutes- Nakoa rocked and stood up from the ground, flexing his fingers. "Good enough. Let's leave before more show up." Vornkr were pack animals, after all, most leaving the den to hunt at night. They'd only found two and some puppies.

Singh blinked. "Wasn't it obvious?" He already knew humans had a kinda ok sense of smell, but were their eyes bad too? Poor souls. "How would forest spirits help? They know different poison." That surely would clear up that confusion.

The venom was dealt with decently enough, but the deeper scratches were still bleeding. Smaller ones would visibly start closing during their ongoing journey, although that had nothing to do with the Force. "Dinner, tequila, and homework," was Nakoa's immediate answer to what he was doing afterward. It was already in his schedule book.

He looked over at Crow, amused. "Why, had enough adventure already?"