Chet gingerly lowered the copper battery into the socket of the device while making sure not to graze the inner metal. Centimeter by centimeter he moved until the battery finally clicked into place. He extracted the tongs he used to clamp onto the battery and collapsed into his chair.

The burn marks that splotched his hand and wrist itched. While the injuries were annoying, Chet didn’t mind them too much. If what your building doesn’t take a nick out of you every once and a while, it won’t be able to take a bite out of someone else later.

Sweat sat slick on his salty skin as Chet tore off the ESD bracelet, grabbed the analog multimeter, and connected the black needle and the red needle to the proper electrical paths.

He bit his tongue as he eyed the multimeter, but his worry was for naught. Biting back the bubbling jubilation, he retracted the multimeter needles, slung the ESD bracelet back on, and picked up the final metallic piece. The final gritty metallic shell could be easily compared to the scute of a turtle. He dropped the metal scute onto the opening and applied force until it popped into place with a satisfying click.

Chet disengaged himself from the device and jumped out of his chair to let out a jaunty jig. He one-two-punched the air before following it up with a high jump-kick. He dropped to the ground and pumped out a few dozen pushups. Heart pounding, he scurried to his bathroom where he ripped off his shirt to flex a front double bicep pose in the mirror.

He squeezed his muscles hard; his beating heart and now-warm muscles provided a much-needed relief of endorphins to counteract the accumulation of cortisol in his body.

He returned to his seat and stared at the contraction.

About the size and shape of a pineapple, the device sported flat faces, or what Chet liked to call “scutes” that had a varying diameter of two inches. Each scute was made of rough, dented metal that many would say looked like they were salvaged from junkyards across the United Regions.

Which, of course, they were.

What lay behind nine of those scute’s however was worth sacrificing any hope of symmetry.

The final scute on top was flat like the others but instead sported a large circular ring connected to a string that fed into the tip of the device. Chet gazed at the hunk of metal with a scratchy smile before picking up his phone for the first time in what felt like hours.

That’s because it was.

After the meager hours of sleep, he got last night and the hours he spent today on the device, it was already close to four o’clock.

Walker had texted him.

“Hmph.”

You up for doing a task tonight?

Catching Wilting Frogs, already have some supplies

Hope you don’t mind someone’s gonna be joining us

Lmk - here’s the task info:

Chet squinted at the phone before shooting back a text. A few minutes later Walker replied and sent him more information on what to bring, where to meet up, and when to arrive. Chet rubbed his eyes before collecting the couple of items Walker requested. Eventually he found himself standing in front of his worktable.

With a wary crease of his lips, he removed the night-vision goggles before hoisting the pineapple-like device from the worktable and carefully placing it in his backpack.

ɸ

Walker was the second to arrive. Chet stood stiffly next to the closed Archipelagos hut with the same bag slung over his shoulder. Like Walker, he sported thick leather gloves and a stuffed backpack.

“He’s not here yet,” said Chet.

“She.”

Chet shrugged off his backpack and set it down very gently before cocking his head at Walker. “What?”

“She. A girl’s coming with us.” Walker replied.

Night had fallen but the glowing lamp posts that lined the city street could make a newly hatched sea turtle think otherwise.

“You know her?” Chet questioned. His foggy blue eyes stared unquestionably at Walker.

“Not really, I met her earlier today. She got the store owner-” Walker said and nodded at the hut, “to tell us a spot that people wouldn’t know about. Should be some Welting frogs there.”

“You think that’s a good idea? Having someone we don’t know, even if she’s a girl, to follow us into the night? People are shady man, especially in this business.”

“I mean… that’s what kinda happened to us. Give her a chance.”

Chet didn’t seem to have anything to say to that.

A few more minutes passed by before Walker spotted Sonya sauntering over.

Walker elbowed Chet whose eyelids had drooped and his posture had swayed.

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She greeted Walker before she introduced herself to Chet.

Chet, with his spine cocked, and his chin jutted forward, stuck out his hand and replied, “Chet Thundercock, learned to juggle when I was sixteen and was born just under ten pounds as a newborn.”

Sonya immediately grasped his hand and firmly shook it.

“Nice, I’m not too good at handling balls so juggling would be a nightmare.”

Walker smothered a grin before interjecting himself, “Who wants to hold the map?”

“I’m pretty good with maps,” Chet offered.

Sonya slid closer to Walker. She snatched the map out of Walker’s loose grip and raised it in the air.

“Nope, I got us the location, so I lead us.” She faced toward the forest and unrolled the smooth parchment.

“Bout a twenty-minute hike, easy peasy lemon squeezy,” she exclaimed as she turned on her heel to face them again. “Better get moving boys, we’re burning moonlight.”

Chet grabbed Walker’s lone bucket.

“Excellent idea, you can be the rudder to our ship.” Chet’s mirth filled mouth cut through the night like a hammer through a gelatinous cube.

They were off.

It was a little weird walking aimlessly forward through a dank forest while every so often following the command of someone behind him, but Walker didn’t let show through his gait. Come to think of it, wasn’t it also kind of odd that she just accepted his offer to go out hunting out of the blue like that?

One may have assumed that the forest was silent.

The forest was loud. Unbearable, stupidly loud.

Other than the cracking and popping of twigs and leaves underfoot that cut through the forest, the buzzing of animals asking for sex deafened him.

Mushrooms.

Curled, asylum white mushrooms dotted the path in front of them. With the amount of organic material that Archipelagos housed, it couldn’t have all come from TW just traipsing around the forest collecting. He had to be buying from sellers.

Maybe he could be one of those sellers.

With the emphasis on PIP in this city, there had to be some sort of transactional process through the Pavilion to increase in rank. He noted the time they’d been walking into his phone and made it a point to get the map back and estimate where they were.

As they walked, he made sure to keep his eyes out for any other mushroom hotspots.

While for the most part Walker was fine in their conversational silence, Chet decided to break their non-conversational behavior by providing a topic of his choice.

Whistling.

To be specific, whistling to a tune that seemed to change tempo and melody just after hitting a stride. However, based upon the ever-growing stomping behind him, not everyone in the group was catching what Chet was throwing down.

“What song are you even whistling?” Sonya grumbled.

Chet glanced back behind him. “No real song, just a little bit of everything. Everyone whistles actual songs; I like to mix it up a bit. Plus no one was talking so…”

Sonya’s stifled murmurs wet the paper that was Walker’s conversational skills.

“So, what’s the plan on spotting these hoppy sons of bitches,” Walker asked.

“You tell-”

A dull thump.

“Fucking log. Who’s got the flashlights?” Sonya responded tersely.

They stopped around the aforementioned log to allow Chet to pass around the flashlights.

“You put this thing together. You tell us,” finished Sonya.

She stepped over the log that Walker now realized he and Chet had stepped over without warning her it was there.

They threw around a few ideas while they walked but Walker was holding off on explaining until he could show what he meant. That is, if Egor’s location was as plentiful in frogs as he had promised.

“Alright stop, I think we’ve arrived.”

The forest had not opened up to an inviting clearing, a ravenous cake, nor a babbling brook, but to more trees.

“Are you looking at the map, right? This place doesn’t look very wet. Just… trees,” articulated Chet.

He stepped up to a crooked branch that hung from the ancient trees and slapped it.

“Not even ominous trees, just like… boring ones,” he continued.

Walker followed suit and inspected the foliage with the beam of his flashlight.

“He’s right. They’re only deciduous.”

Sonya pushed by them to tour the area while muttering something that didn’t sound very constructive.

“Look for stones and a rope, apparently, it’s a concave structure. So don’t go falling in like a moron.”

Eight minutes later and six muddier shoes later, Chet discovered at least one of the entrances to the area. If entrance could be used to describe the hole in the ground at all. Behind an unperturbed fern sat a pot-hole sized hovel surrounded by stones the size of pebbles to a boulder nuzzled between two trees.

“I am relieved that there is something here at all, but still…” Chet tossed a recently-picked up rock into the entrance. It ticked and crackled three times before the bloop of small object landing in water echoed below.

“Seems slim shady.”

Sonya pushed by them to peer into the void.

“My info has been spot on so far, no reason to doubt the trip now.”

Chet raised an eyebrow at her, “And who is this informant I’ve been hearing about exactly?”

Walker answered for her. “He’s this old guy that runs some kind of herb shop. He fixed my wrist.”

Chet squinted at him.

“When did you hurt your wrist?”

“I jumped out of a hotel balcony.”

Chet’s eyes bugged out of their sockets.

“I think we are getting a bit off topic, boys,” Sonya interjected.

Chet opened his mouth to reply but Walker raised his hand to speak.

“I think what Chet is trying to say is… This looks a little sketchy. With you having both guided us to a random place in the woods and now asked us to climb down a scary hole in the dark.”

Sonya scoffed, “If I wanted to kill you guys I would have used one of my two revolvers to put a bullet in the back of your skulls ten minutes ago.”

Walker couldn’t help but glance at her belt buckle to catch a glimpse of her revolvers.

But they were not there.

He figured it was probably inappropriate to walk around her to see if the hostlers were attached to the back of the belt buckle.

Chet fiddled the straps of his backpack before responding, “Maybe so. But you could still be luring us into the maw of a colossus lizard with hooks for hands.”

“That’s not how the story goes,” Sonya corrected.

“She’s right. The lizard had hooks for teeth, not hands.” Walker nodded at Sonya in support.

“Also, I’m pretty sure that story ended in the burgeoning love of two very unlucky individuals,” he continued.

“That’s not… what?” Sonya sighed.

Chet and Walker fist-bumped.

“Fine, I’ll go down first if you two are going to be such babies,” Sonya grumbled.

But before she could step forward Chet motioned for her to stop.

“Now hold on now. Me and Walker got this, right dog?” Chet asked him.

Sonya looked at Walker quizzically.

Due to Dr. Brussels’ words in the back of his mind, it took him a moment to decide.

“I think, even though you have the most manpower Sonya… you probably can’t hold a gun and climb very well so it’s probably best if you watch our backs.”

With Chet in the front and Sonya in the back they steadily lowered themselves into the hole. Walker’s now gloved hands uncomplicated the climb. At first, he was concerned as to whether Sonya would be able to handle the slippery, jagged rocks that covered the walls on the way down. However, since she didn’t collapse onto him after a few feet, he dropped his worries and focused on each step down.

After a few minutes of somewhat dangerous rock climbing, Chet spoke up.

“Okay, the hole has opened up. I think we’re gonna have to jump.”

Chet adjusted his footing to be able to lean back against the wall. Instead of jumping he merely spit into the cavern below.

“Okay, probably like five feet. Walker, can you shine your flashlight down to make sure I’m not jumping on any jagged rocks?”

Walker did so.

“Looks good, go for it.”

Chet inhaled deeply and let go of the rocks beside him.