With the alliance between Yojo Mojo and the Jojos made official and Tanya handling her last tasks for the turn, Tanya was brought to the meeting tent where the leaders of the tribe met to discuss matters.
There was Mojo the Jojo, of course. As part of their custom, all four members of the meeting stacked together as they sat, with only those within that stack permitted to speak.
[Mojo the Jojo, level 6 Jojo]
Combat: 29
Defense: 28
Hits: 12
Move: 18
Specials: Climber, Stand-In
With her current full bonus totaling 21, the stack bonus of two, the armor bonus of one that fancy turban of his granted… Base stats at level one would be four and two. Upkeep was twenty-five, a mid-range advanced infantry. She expected higher, given the potency of that offensive special… “I’m glad that we were able to come to an accord.” She said pleasantly as she sipped at the odd milk-like drink they had served her. It reminded her of… that muscle-building drink she got out of a vending machine by accident once when she was at the gym in her first life. Tanya looked subtly at the rippling musculature of the Jojos. Okay, makes sense.
“I, Mojo the Jojo, heard your terms of alliance and found them adequate. They were acceptable for our purposes. Fair and reasonable.” Mojo the Jojo said, sipping at his own protein drink.
“It hasn’t been long since the fall of Leftovers, but it will be good to not have to worry about upkeep.” Yogi the Mighty added, grinning widely.
[Yogi the Mighty, level 8 Heavy Jojo Knight]
Combat: 35
Defense: 35
Hits: 36
Move: 28
Special: Heavy, Jump, Smash
While Yogi was literally the only remaining Heavy Knight among the Jojos, the few that survived the fall of Leftovers croaking over time, they were still a terrifying force. After running the numbers, she had realized that they were actually slightly weaker than a ‘standard’ heavy knight, who would have a single additional point of combat and defense, plus three more hits, at that level, but this was more than made up for by their high move, which was normally the weakness of heavy knights. At no additional cost, either.
She liked them already. “Your tribe brings strengths to our side that synergizes with our unit composition, both sides benefit from this alliance, the finest basis for cooperation that there can be.”
“As long as we can make Rightshoring pay dearly.” Said the last leader of the tribe.
[Tang Churro, level 5 Jojo Knight]
Combat: 33
Defense: 30
Hits: 13
Move: 12
Special: Knight, Climbing, Breathing Weapon (Water)
The Jojo Knights were interesting. Instead of doubling their number of attacks with their Stand-in, they doubled their damage by breathing an elemental effect on their weapon, a shockamancy trick Tanya could do with her own weapon, as a spell. It made them excel at a knight’s usual combat role, carving up heavies, but even worse against a knight’s usual weakness, swarms of infantry. The knights trended towards being a different kind of ape in comparison to the Heavy Knights, but Tanya wasn’t a taxonomist so she couldn’t say which one for sure. She wanted to say… gibbon? That’s a type of ape that isn’t a gorilla or chimp.
Tang in particular looked more like an orangutan, and when he demonstrated his special, the water generated was orange for some reason. He also carried around a wooden box on his back, an accessory that Analysis said was for transporting prisoners, although one could theoretically carry a smaller allied unit instead.
“Come now, “ said a high pitched voice from the box. “It’s not like Leftovers was such a great side, Tang.” Tang kneeled, removing the box from his back and opening it. A tiny panda exited the box. Analysis conned it as a commander. What? “Hello!” Said the tiny unit. “Am I a tamed beast? A golem? What matters is, I am me! Nozoo!” The small panda was chewing on something that she had thought was bamboo, but Analysis said was sugarcane. They ate it by the side, like it was a cob of corn.
“Interesting…” Tanya said, not sure what else to say.
“She’s a tamed feral… technically.” Tang explained calmly. “At least, originally.”
“Yes, I was an experiment of Leftover’s Chief Thinkamancer, along with their changemancer.” Nozoo explained, still chewing on the sugarcane. “Theo Suess and Gang Greenham made me, a humble Trash Panda, into a free-willed commander. I was appointed as, essentially, the court’s fool. The Rat in the Hat, they called me.” Nozoo sniffed dramatically. “I’m glad I burned that accursed thing.”
“Well, welcome to the side, I suppose.” Tanya said, “Given your lackluster combat points and lack of Leadership bonuses, I’m not sure how to assign you, but I’ll think of something.” She was basically a courtier. Well, her upkeep was only forty shmuckers, which was… sort of cheap for a courtier, sort of expensive? Courtiers have collective upkeep when within their city, only one hundred shmuckers to have them per city. Economically, it was identical to popping a level 1 warlord and dedicating them purely towards managing the city. If you task a courtier outside their city by promoting them from garrison, like you would for a diplomatic envoy, their upkeep becomes twenty. Courtiers could theoretically lead units, but they were bad at it. This was usually just used to allow them a stack of bodyguards without running afoul of auto-engage.
“I am excellent at calculating battle odds.” Nozoo boasted.
“She is.” Tang agreed. Yogi nodded in agreement, but Mojo the Jojo scoffed.
“Level seven standard Knight versus a stack of four level one stabbers.” Tanya immediately proposed before trying to solve the problem in her own head.
“Ten versus two plus two stack bonus, eighteen vs. six hits… 26.25% chance four times, five hits on average almost croaks, verses 73.75% to hit, 50-80% chance to croak per hit…” Nozoo muttered as she calculated the probabilities. “Coin flip, slightly favoring the knight.”
Yeah, that was as close to correct as Tanya could be sure of without spending juice. Tanya would guess that this talent was trained, manually learning the math involved to find some way of being useful for more than entertainment. “I’ll be handling the mathamancy for this war, but your talents have been noted.” Perhaps Ace could make her an abacus or something to help her calculate things.
“The turn’s almost over, but be ready for a fight tomorrow morning.” Tanya warned. “We’re expecting Archons.”
---------------------------
At dawn, Tanya assessed the Jojos before her. “So, these are the ones you deem ready?” She asked conversationally.
“Indeed!” Shouted Yogi the Mighty. “These are my best students: Zuzu, Scrappy Boom, Captain Sugarman, Fred Riot, Quick Run McGrunn, Lifter Rubble, and Tryhard Muttley.” Each heavily muscled ape nodded seriously at their name, despite how ridiculous they all are. None of them were below level four.
“Good enough for me.” Tanya declared. “You are all hereby promoted to Heavy Knight.” Normally, Tanya wouldn’t be able to do this without the Chief of the natural ally tribe enabling it. The normal way was to give the tribe money, and he decided how it was spent. Most of the time, Chiefs were smart enough to just do whatever their ally asks, but sometimes you had unreasonable requests that threatened the tribe, or just chiefs who were willing to push the envelope for whatever reason. However, she did have his permission, and a working knowledge of moneymancy.
She spent some juice sharpening her senses, attuning herself to the Numbers axis, focusing on the ethereal truth of the world. It was a form of self-foolamancy, as she understood it. Everyone’s brain had to make sense of the world around them, and casters could theoretically cast from all disciplines, so all possible caster senses were enabled with the caster special. Details that were not understood intuitively just slipped from one’s perception, like a sound that was too quiet to register.
Everything had a value, a worth. To her moneymancy-attuned senses, this number was a unit’s size and importance. But… there was more. Certain things had structures that permitted shmuckers to be spent, infused into them. Cities had this, except if they were level five. The Gowbin Knob Shock Exchange had one.
Most importantly, units that could be promoted had one. It cost two hundred and fifty shmuckers to pop a natural ally. As an adept moneymancer, she could not only spend the treasury directly on this, she also shaved off two percent of it, five shmuckers. It cost five hundred to promote one to a Knight, and two thousand to Heavy Knight.
Tanya called on the massive weight of Yojo Mojo’s treasury, pouring value into the units in front of her. As she did so, she channeled juice into the process, which filled the reservoirs in place of some of the shmuckers she would ordinarily have spent, turning into fresh and new shmuckers. You have to spend money to make money, after all. In this case it was utterly literal.
Looks like she managed… a twenty-three percent additional discount this time. 320 discount passively turned into 4000 for about four caster levels of juice, a little less. She’s probably not going to meet other casters this turn, she has juice to spare.
“Um.. Princess?” Lord von White asked nervously. Newsman and Kurig were right behind him; this was clearly a concern they wished to express as a group.
As Scrappy Boom and Fred Riot lightly boxed, with wide toothy grins as they enjoyed their new strength, Tanya figured she was done here for now. “One moment: Yogi, your stack will be my protection detail when Charlecomm attacks. Stack up the instant enemies arrive if they do.”
“Standing back is not how we do things.” Yogi said scoldingly.
Tanya grinned savagely. “Who said I was going to stand back? You know how high my bonus is.” Besides, she has a special surprise for archons who are foolish enough to target her with shockamancy.
His attitude immediately flipped completely. “Understood, Princess!”
That finished, Tanya turned to her subordinate warlords. “Now, what is your concern?”
Lord von White glanced back at the others. “Well, we’ve been trying to figure out how you could be so sure Charlescomm’s going to attack. What did Lady Matcher send you?”
Oh? Well, let it never be said that Tanya passed up an opportunity to educate her subordinates on potentially useful things. “It’s simple: Charlescomm is the most untrustworthy mercenary in the business.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
This seemed to confuse them more. “And?” Asked Lord von Newsman.
“The reason that he still gets business despite his untrustworthiness is because he’s not untrustworthy because of any agenda. Charlie just likes money. This consistency, combined with his virtual monopoly on Archons,“ Charlescomm was not the only side that had them, but Tanya was pretty sure he popped more of them than every other side on Erf combined. “-means that he is a very predictable enemy. Particularly when you hire a Signamancer to take a look at the contract your enemies have signed with him.” It was a niche service, but Maggie’s note indicated that Sizemore insisted on it as a cheaper alternative to paying Charlie to reveal that information, which was her original idea. One of the rare occasions that he exerted his authority as Chief Caster. Tanya approved of the initiative. She had no idea that was possible.
Lord von White seemed to grasp the situation faster than the others. “So the contract says he’s going to attack?”
“If you read between the lines.” Tanya replied, nodding. “The archons were hired to counter-attack the Royal Crown Coalition’s raiding force. They are not paying Charlie to find us, they are paying a Lookamancer. This is why we were able to avoid their notice by veiling, they did not expect us to be using foolamancy and so failed to focus enough to make their spot checks.” Tanya smiled wider. “They’re also paying for a limited set of services.” No scouting, coordination, on demand dollamancy… nothing. Just combat power. “With a very expensive penalty for losing Charlescomm units.”
“Enemies!” Shouted one of the Jojos, interrupting the lesson. She got to the most important points, fortunately. The exercising apes all stacked up, shouting. Tanya looked up at the sky, seeing nothing.
“Archons?” Tanya asked, confused.
“No.” Yogi the Mighty said, staring at the hex border. “Juggle Elves.”
Well, they were enemies, so Tanya took to the sky after stacking up with Yogi and his other Heavy Knights.
The Juggle Elves were, as noted, elves, but there was an odd detail that she noticed: while they all shared black and white clown makeup, they lacked the uniformity that other elf tribes that Tanya had seen had physically. She saw a few that she recognized, altruist elves, an eager elf, even a flying lofty elf. Most of them carried odd polearms that had magnets at the end.
Still, the Jojos benefitted from her in-hex bonus of eight, so the elves were swiftly routed. Oddly, the shockamancy bolts from her knights seemed utterly ineffective. The ones that didn’t just charge to their deaths waited at the hex border, and Tanya landed in front of them fearlessly, her stack of heavies behind her. “Who are you? Who’s in charge of you?” She said to start the discussion. It was best to open with aggression in this kind of situation, to show no weakness.
“We’re Juggles, man.” said the fat Hungry Elf. If she recalled her limited lessons about elves correctly, they had a changemancy special they could use to transform unpalatable food like leaves and corpses into edible food. She just wishes those lessons covered Juggle Elves. “Juggles and Jojos have been fighting each other for longer than any one of us have been around. Name’s Vanilla.”
“I am Princess Tanya von Degurechaff, Chief Warlord of Yojo Mojo.” Tanya announced formally. “The Jojos have aligned with Yojo Mojo, and I will not tolerate any further aggression.”
“Never heard of it.” Vanilla said, not hiding his displeasure.
“Down with the Crown!” Shouted one of the apparently anarchist elves behind him. Woodsy elves were very distinctive, tall and with massive ears.
“We are a new side, ruled by King Ansom of Jetstone.” Tanya said, ignoring their calculated rudeness. “On the far side of them.”
Vanilla’s dour expression softened a bit. “So you’re packing them up and taking them over there? Fine by us.” He pointed to the bodies behind them. “You gonna eat that?”
Ew. Tanya waved her wand and transformed the bodies into shmuckers. There were only four stacks of them, and elves weren’t any more edible than Men units, so it didn’t take much juice at all. “In the interests of you remaining a thorn in Haggar’s side, I will permit you to live. Leave us, and do not initiate any more hostilities, or my mercy will end.” Also in the interests of not spending a bunch of move tracking the rest of them down. The failure of her knights to damage them was worrying… She would want the Jojos to participate in any battles with them, and their move was a lot more limited than her own.
“Well, fine then.” Groused Vanilla, before turning to the rest of his posse of crazy clown elves. “We out! Ouphe Ouphe!”
“Ouphe Ouphe!” Shouted the other elves in acknowledgement of the… orders? Tanya got the impression that she may have just seen something outright democratic. Was that a vote? With Recon, Tanya’s vision was completely unclouded by the hex border, so she could see that several Juggle elves had to be dragged by their fellows, about a quarter to a third of them didn't sound off, and they all looked displeased to leave.
“Turn’s changed.” Lord von Kurig said a few minutes after the elves left the adjacent hex. She has tasked him to pay attention to it.
“Stack back up!” Tanya shouted at the Jojos, who had relaxed at the Juggle’s retreat. “It’s Rightshoring’s turn!” The hex they had camped in, all two hundred and sixty two units, was a lightly forested hill. Nicely defensible, but without the kind of protection that would come from a mountain or heavy forest hex. If Tanya saw an important enemy here, she'd immediately assume it was a trap.
But if it was a heavily forested hill… “Bodyguard, Bertram, Revolving Door.” She intoned, spending juice while focusing firmly on the view she wanted to convey.
Foolamancy was Eyemancy, and that was not just words: the first thing a foolamancer must do is Look. What is real, what is seen, and what needs to be done to make the second not match up to the first without realizing.
Jojos clung to tree branches and were concealed behind more, the fake branches making the forest canopy thicker than it should be.
Each tree became three, the same trunks and branches making a series of simple triangles that stretched the landscape with gnarled roots.
With these simple changes, the terrain type became a slightly different one, and her knights were plainly visible as they floated above the trees.
Tanya stayed stacked in what she had made to appear like a clearing at the hill's peak, sitting on the back of Yogi, who was veiled as a rock along with the rest of her stack of heavies, creating a pile of boulders that Tanya was sitting on to conduct normal business.
She was in the middle of writing a letter to Ansom when she felt it. Concentrating on maintaining her foolamancy veil meant that she was hyper-sensitive to her foolamancy senses in comparison to normal. A natural-born foolamancer could see through other people’s eyes as easily as their own, but her trained perception was less capable without spending juice. Someone was looking at her illusion from above.
In the mosaic of perspectives that her magic was revealing to her, there was one more than there was a second ago. Focusing on that single perspective, she could see the tell-tale grainy footage of a low-effort Lookamancy spell. After the sensor focused on her knights, the fidelity of the image sharpened, although it still was only as sharp as television. There was no chance of her veil failing to Fool it with only that level of effort to Look.
Idly, Tanya calmly signed the bottom of the letter, as if it was finished, and folded it up before the sensor could attempt to read it. After a few seconds of sensing the barbarian Lookamancer’s focus shift to counting her troops, completely ignoring the ones hidden, the spell faded.
She stood up, and scanned the skies. As expected, the attack came within seconds thanks to inter-hex time nonsense. From the looks of things, Charlie decided to go with two eight stacks for this assault instead of his usual triad formation. Several units got special stack bonuses in certain conditions, almost always giving a +3 bonus for an exact number that is either a lot larger or smaller than 8, Spidews got that bonus for having a 22 stack, and Archons got it for 3-stacks. “Get ready to jump! On my mark!” Tanya shouted, already casting Mathamancy to optimize their trajectories.
When the archons entered the hex, they more or less immediately cast foolamancy to waste a few attacks. Unfortunately for them, being able to cast foolamancy made one very good at seeing through it. Tanya spent some juice to impart the precise trajectory calculations to her stack, and they burst out of the illusion, Tanya taking off along with them, directly at one of the two stacks of archons.
Now, to be clear: Archons are incredibly deadly units. They fly out of reach, they use foolamancy to make ranged attacks very difficult to land, and their shockamancy firepower is sufficient to wipe out inferior forces without giving them a chance. Analysis put these Archons at a total level of fifty-one, an average of slightly higher than three and the equivalent of just a little less than thirteen caster levels of magical oomph. Further, one of the stacks had a magical bonus, an interesting little buff called ‘Remote Command’ that gave that entire stack a +6 bonus, which given the name was definitely something Charlie was doing with the Arkendish. Combined with the nearby Chief Warlord bonus from Gerri Mander, the +2 and +3 leadership bonuses the leads of their stack had, and their own Dollamancy bonuses to attack and defense, she was looking at numbers that ranged from 20 to 30.
Unfortunately for them, Archons were bad in stack combat for their price if you force them into melee, and that was exactly what Tanya did against them. With her massive combat bonus and guidance against the foolamancy, the Jojo Heavy Knights tore apart the first stack of archons in the first action.
“Flying heavies!?” Shouted one of the archons in the other stack, panicking.
“We do not fly!” Shouted Zuzu, the green-haired Jojo.
“But we do jump good!” Shouted Yogi the Mighty, laughing. “Smash!” He shouted as they all impacted the hex border, which held firm.
A very familiar Archon’s eyes glowed with the power that Charlie’s buff provided. “NO! You witch!” Mary Sue shouted as she launched a powerful shockamancy attack. “Termination!” The other archons in her stack launched a smaller but collectively larger volley of shockamancy towards her as well, taking advantage of her total lack of screeners.
“Prism Crystal Shield!” Tanya shouted back in Japanese, brandishing her wand. The enemy's shockamancy all gathered around the tip of her wand, and with a flick of her wrist, the combined attack all went down and impacted the clearing she was previously waiting in, grounding itself out. Hm, that ate a pretty large chunk of juice…
Unfortunately, her warlords also had bonuses against spot checks against foolamancy, an additional accessory that Tanya had given them over the normal knights. It was mostly because of Jack, Faq’s foolamancer, but the fact that the same precaution helped against both of Yojo Mojo’s biggest threats was just a happy coincidence. So the fact that each archon got six shots from her knights meant that they were toast.
Well… almost. For some reason, Mary managed to survive long enough to scream in rage. “Capture her!” Tanya immediately ordered her Heavy Knights.
Within the minute, Tanya was speaking with Charlie, who had ordered Mary to stand down and present his words to her, and Tanya released her from imprisonment to allow it. She still had her barrier, in the worst case.
Oddly, Charlie’s first face was of something that Tanya instantly hated, a balding man with glasses wearing a military uniform that had a recognizably Soviet symbol on a medal. Sensing her distaste, he instead changed to something completely different, a yellow mouse-cat thing with wings. “You win!” Charlie said cheerfully. “I must say, those were some interesting tricks you used in this battle. A terrain concealing foolamancy spell, and a protective shockamancy spell too. Your forces saw right through my archon’s foolamancy, too. Very impressive. Seeing it was almost worth seeing fifteen of my lovely ladies fall to the ground in pieces.” His tone became much less jovial. “Almost.”
“And you managed to get yourself 184,000 schmuckers of death penalty out of Rightshoring’s treasury.” Tanya deadpanned. “Schmuckers that will no longer be going into my treasury.” A bit of an exaggeration, but she was going to wring out a rather large share of the spoils for this one.
“And you’re clever, too! Not everyone knows about that particular service of the Hippiemancers.” Charlie said, continuing to compliment her. “Now, my current ransom price for a captured Archon, which I will gladly pay, is nine thousand, two hundred three shmuckers.” Huh, was there some reason he’s using a prime number? “How about it? Let her go, I’ll order her right back home, call the contract with Rightshoring finished, you’ll get to keep all of those accessories, and we all come out richer.”
Tanya had to admit, he was a good salesman. He made it sound like he was magnanimously offering a lot, even if half of that were things that were happening even if she told him to shove it. “Mary Sue is level seven, and her unbalanced spread of specials makes her an undoubtedly valuable specialist unit. I believe that calls for a substantially higher price than a standard ransom.” Tanya argued. Charlie’s face was as stoic as a stuffed animal, his projected face making him difficult to read.
“Each of my Archons are valuable beyond measure.” Charlie retorted, a touch of condescension coloring his voice. Was he taking the moral high ground? “I couldn't possibly favor one over the others like that.”
“Then I suppose I'll have to value the experience from executing her higher than your meager ransom.” Tanya replied, reinforcing her threat with a toothy smile. “On top of whatever intelligence I can extract, of course.”
The cute yellow winged rat frowned, attempting a disappointed expression. “I thought we had a good thing going here. We leave each other alone, and we both make money. Do you really want to risk that?”
“Yes, we have a business relationship.” Tanya said in agreement. “That means I have an incentive to maximize my profits. Nine thousand and change would be generous for a level one or two archon, but Mary Sue here? Dollamancy work alone puts the break even point within twenty turns.”
“Dollamancy isn't as easy to turn into profit as that, but point taken.” Charlie replied, his expression once again as lifeless as a stuffed animal. “Give me a counteroffer.”
It was a little interesting to see the sheer magnitude of Mary Sue's love for Charlie. Her heartstring for her ruler was as the most solid and sturdy one she's ever had the chance to examine. It was an obsessive level of love that made her own unit’s loyalty look like they just liked her cute outfits. It wasn't even entirely one-sided, Charlie did not lie when he claimed to love each of his archons. Or, at least, he held some small candle of affection for this particular archon.
“Triple it.” Tanya said, to start. “Also, buy back all of your Archon's accessories at full value, and cash out the current store credit you owe me.” it was only twelve thousand right now, but it was thrown in as something for him to argue down. “Or I see if I can level again.” To punctuate her statement, she turned on her wand’s energy blade.
“Those are some tough terms, Tanya. Can I call you Tanya?” Charlie asked. Tanya hummed in wordless assent. “I'm a very busy Overlord, and have no interest in haggling for long.” Mary’s lips moved but she did not say anything, but Tanya noted that it included ‘rule number’ by reading her lips, although she couldn’t catch more than that. “So I'm going to give you my final offer: triple, because Mary’s worth it,” The archon beamed at the compliment. “-the accessories for seventy percent, and nix the third thing.”
Tanya considered the offer. Mathematically, she gets 60% out of using moneymancy to turn it into schmuckers, if one accounts for opportunity cost. He didn’t come down on the direct payment, which sounded like it was for morale reasons… “Deal.” She said, turning off the energy blade and taking out some paper. After writing a very simple contract, she presented it to Charlie’s icon, the glittery pink ink showing her clean calligraphy. At first she was a little rough with her English writing, but then she discovered that the pen lets her make crisp and clean writing by just writing loop-de-loops while focusing on what she wanted to write, as if she was casting foolamancy to make fake letters.
“I had a contract ready, you know.” Charlie groused.
“I know enough about signamancy to know that it operates on mutual intent, Charlie.” Tanya said, unamused. “The only reason anyone would need to go into as much detail as you do is to scam people.” Which she already knew he did.
Still, in the interests of getting this over with, Charlie duplicated the contract with whatever he used to enforce the signamancy, and after checking that it matched word-for-word with the one she wrote, Tanya Signed it, and Yojo Mojo’s treasury upticked by about sixty thousand schmuckers. “A pleasure doing business with you.” Tanya said with a smile.
“That makes one of us.” Charlie said, his voice surly.“At least I’ll get to make well over twice that selling the information I have on you.”
Tanya laughed dryly. “Go ahead. Yojo Mojo’s biggest threats already know everything important. Helping Faq is likely the last thing you’d want to do, regardless.”
Charlie didn’t respond, Mary’s thinkagram projection winking out without a word. “You’re free to go.” Tanya said, as the Jojos piled the accessories looted from the archons at the living one’s feet.
“You’ll pay for this.” Mary promised as she brought out a portable net, one of the items that Charlescomm had in their catalog that was useful for both capturing units and carrying cargo. Come to think of it, she could stand to buy some with that store credit… Tanya idly charged the healomancy wand as Mary flew away, one of the actions she can do off turn with her juice without an issue. Finally, she used Moneymancy to cash in the archon’s corpses for a few thousand shmuckers, and spent the last dregs of her juice discounting a few more promotions with their new money.
The instant Mary left the adjacent hex, flying towards Charlescomm, their turn began again. The Jojo’s hooted and hollered as their new members popped into existence, and Tanya giggled as her juice surged back to fullness.
What are they going to croak this turn?