Kahli looked to Froufrou with a grin as she hopped back into her purse, and then looked over to the valley below where she could see the hord of tamavens adjusting their binding ropes across the mighty water dragon G'athoong.

"Okay, Froufrou. We've got to take out as many of these birds as we can, without them knowing what we're doing. Ideally, we've got to at least get rid of enough of them to set G'athoong free before they spot us. In fact, Froufrou, that ought to be our goal - not to pick each and every one of them off one by one, but instead to kill just enough of them that we can set G'athoong free. I'm sure she can take care of the rest - after all, she's a powerful water dragon!"

Kahli decided to look around and see if she could identify a couple of spots where the ropes were fastened to hold the dragon in place. She saw rows of three large stakes on either side of G'athoong, as well as a seventh stake by G'athoong's snout. This struck Kahli as one of the most important stakes - ideally, if she could at least get the ropes cut from this, then G'athoong would be able to blast water at the birds with her powered breath. Then again, Kahli glanced to each stake at the side. She didn't want to assume that she and Froufrou would be able to take out all the tamavens without arising any suspicion - it was best to have a bit of a back up plan, and to identify the ideal order to set G'athoong free.

The real question was, what was the minimum amount of bindings they needed to destroy in order to give G'athoong an opportunity to fight the birds? Obviously freeing up G'athoong's mouth would go a long way, however, there was a issue in that there seemed to be an abnormally large cluster of tamavens standing guard over it. It looked like they were all smoking and drinking, too - which was a little surprising to Kahli, as she wasn't previously aware that the little birds preferred to imbibe in such a way.

Kahli looked again to the stakes at the side of G'athoong, noting that the frontmost stake held G'athoong's front talon, the middle stake held ropes that constrained her wing, and the furthest back stake held back her hind talon. With that, Kahli looked down at Froufrou.

"Well, what do you think, Froufrou? How are we going to handle this?"

Now, here's the really tricky thing about all this. See, Froufrou had an extremely analytical mind, and she'd already devised exactly what needed to happen in order to set Ga'thoong free. Firstly, Froufrou noted that the stake on G'athoong's back right leg was planted weaker into the ground than all the other stakes. This was not an argument for tackling it first, in fact, it was an argument for ignoring it altogether. Along with that, Froufrou could also tell that as the tamavens continued to drink in front of G'athoong's fastened snout, they were becoming more and more inebriated - which meant they'd be paying less attention. Their smoking only helped with this - the clouds of tobacco smoke were making it harder and harder for Froufrou to see the ropes binding G'athoong's snout, so surely it must've been similar for the tamavens themselves. Now, the bad news was that G'athoong's wings and front talons both looked fastened dreadfully tight. So tight that they might've been a problem even with G'athoong's snout free to blast water at the foul avian enemy. At the same time, Froufrou recognized that the weakness of the fastening for G'athoong's back right leg meant that, if they could just let loose one front talon, and then tackle G'athoong's head, they could certainly free the dragon. Froufrou estimated that it would be easier to free G'athoong's front left talon, as there were only two tamavens watching it. Then, they could tackle the distracted tamavens in front of G'athoong's face, and if things went sour, all they had to do was make sure G'athoong got cut free, and all would be well.

Of course, Froufrou knew all this intuitively, but she couldn't easily communicate it to Kahli, who seemed more than content to continually talk to her about the situation and offering ideas that were educated, but just off the mark - it was clear to Froufrou that while Kahli was very intelligent and driven, she had never been a sea creature scrounging for her life in the shadows of the Pit of Despair, hiding and lurking and sneaking around in order to survive. She also hadn't ever won a game of charades, Froufrou figured, as she'd been trying to act out what they out to do with her tendrils for about three minutes - but it felt like a century. Realizing this, Froufrou tried to squelch out her thoughts, but that didn't really pan out - eventually, Kahli just started complaining, and asking if Froufrou was either mad at her or if she possibly had indigestion. With that, Froufrou gave up trying to be subtle and hopped right onto Kahli's face!

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"Froufrou! What are you doing?" Kahli asked with shock. "We're not fighting right now!"

Froufrou quickly grabbed Kahli's head by the temples and jerked it around so that her vision was immediately on the front left talon. Then, for emphasis, Froufrou gesticulated with her tendrils a few times and squelched with passion.

"Froufrou, by the smell of it, I think you're trying to say that you want us to go to G'athoong's front left talon? Is that right?"

Froufrou squelched in affirmative.

"Great," said Kahli as she yanked Froufrou off her face. "Let's get sneaky, then."

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Kahli crouched in a convenient bale of hay. She was grateful, in this moment, that part of the tamaven's scammy shtick was, apparently, running a bit of a faux import and export business revolving around bales of hay - so there was an absolute smattering of them all over the place. Perfect for sneaking.

Now, the tricky thing about this was ensuring she'd have a chance to kill a tamaven off one by one. See, here by the front left talon of G'athoong, the two tamavens that were watching guard were perched there on the stake, talking to one another in tamavish. And they seemed perfectly content to go on chirping in this chipper manner into infinity, as far as Kahli was considered. This was, of course, not ideal from her or Froufrou's perspective - how were they supposed to pick them off one by one?

Kahli mused over this, then she summoned up her big rock. And, she had a thought. If the action she was about to take would put her life at risk, a [checkpoint] in time would pop up to allow her to choose timelines. Right?

But, before Kahli could rightly stew over this issue, she was struck with an idea that she had to somewhat credit to a particularly stinky squelch that Froufrou had let loose. See, the tamavens were indeed so enjoying their conversation in tamavish that they weren't even looking at the ropes they were guarding. Which meant, if Kahli and Froufrou were sneaky enough, they could probably sever the ropes without them noticing. Kahli figured that, if she kicked her big rock at just the right angle away from the ropes, it would arc back around, catch on fire, sever the ropes, and swing on back to her before the birds even noticed!

As she enacted this plan, the birds chirped on, none the wiser. If Kahli had understood tamavish, she would've heard to birds talking at length about the details of their hay baling scam.

"You see, if you chirp me, the import distribution of bales of hay is actually a quite lucrative business on its own, and a great explanation for large sums of cash, as well as large bales of hay - both of which we have in spades. But, see, the real key is in the exports. Do you know the cost to export all this hay? To properly package it? To insure it? Yea, that's right, at the heart of hay bale imports and exports lies one thing, and that thing, buddy, is that you gotta be insured. See, it's actually the law that any participating wholesale hay baling business owner has to insure their hay bales, and what we tamavens do in the import/export business is that we insure their insurance. Which is also law, by the way, my good chirpman. And see, well, we can't insure their insurance if they don't have it - of course, they also have to insure it in order to comply with the law. All that said, basically what it all comes down to is that the wholesale entities that we're important to and exporting from and so on and so forth have to report to us their insurance policy premiums, and that allows us to calculate our insurance insurance premium premiums for that insurance's premium, the cost of which is only a large fraction of the regular premium. This of course allows them to report their first insurance as a business expense, and then their insurance insurance as an insurance expense, and of course we have to eat both costs, which are net losses in profit for an import exporter. Do you chirp it? Do you understand me?"

"Uh... no," chirped the other tamaven glumly.

"OH my GODS, Frankie! Ugh. Fine. I'll start at the beginning. So, we import and export the bales of hay in order to-"

Throughout this exchange, which continued on in a similarly distracted vein, Kahli had successfully severed the ropes that bound G'athoong's left talon by use of her big rock.

Thank you, Kahli, thought spoke G'athoong. I think your little tentacled companion wants you to release my jaws next.

Kahli looked down into her bag at Froufrou. "Are you sure, Froufrou? Is G'athoong right?"

Froufrou squelched in the affirmative.

Kahli looked up nervously at the large, roudy crowd of smoking and drinking tamavens. Some of them had started playing electric guitars very rapidly, and it looked like they had also started a bit of a mosh pit. Kahli swallowed air with anticipation. This was going to get messy.