The crow cawed out a laugh as xe circled a downward spiral. “Tongues aren’t my favorite, but they’re better than crab!” Bleh, coconut crabs were disgusting! Vale enjoyed hunting the fuckers, but, really, xe was unusually charitable at giving them away because of their horrible taste. Chicken was superior! Despite the fact that chicken was the eigenvalue of protein! “Hahaha, what a treat to have fresh meat!”

Vale landed on Meteor’s rightmost ram horn. The pharaoh glanced askance at the inquisitor. The inquisitor glanced back with a happy little cackle.

Then Vale’s three red eyes drifted back to Kole. And then xe tilted xyr head at the fox-like creature caught in the net. “Never seen a four winged beastie before.” Vale fluffed out xyr wings, shook out xyr body. Xyr spine popped from every vertebrae. “I should try copying that when I shapeshift!”

Vale blinked, then looked back at the beastie. Head tilted left, then right, then left again. Something… funky… in his eyes? Not the prosocial response to adrenaline, huh? Vale glanced at Meteor—get a fellow psychopath to double-check xyr read—but the pharaoh was making heart eyes at the coyote and didn’t seem to have bothered diverting cognition to reading the netted up beastie’s body language.

“Aye, Beastie, how royally did ya fuck up to end up captured?”

Vale clicked xyr tongue in sympathy. Not sarcastic, either, but Vale had a habit of sounding sarcastic when xe wasn’t. After Meteor snapped, Vale rolled xyr three red eyes. And answered, “Let you out with your wings unclipped? Trouble!”

Given how Meteor and Kole were being gay on main, Vale fluffed out xyr feathers and jumped down from Meteor’s ram horn. Keep the gazes and smirks contained amongst themselves, please and thank you. Besides, seriously, Kole got a cannibal boyfriend before Vale? How rude!

The three eyed crow landed on the black sands. Xe blinked up at the caught beastie. It wasn’t lost on Vale that the fox-thing hadn’t answered Vale’s question, and only bothered to answer Kole’s unasked one when it seemed possibly advantageous.

Then a Vale thought: Xanti and Meteor were close, but not quite cannibal boyfriend material for Vale. Why not try this antisocial?! Wasn’t like there were an abundance of antisocials in the world, after all, having four in the same goddamn island was a statistical miracle. Except, of course, why wouldn’t the antisocials in an area congregate in a cannibalism cult? Where else would they hang out?

Vale shook out xyr body. Feathers cascaded down onto the black sands. Yet, the wings remained intact, unchained. The flesh beneath pulsed and writhed, shifting as Vale’s bones snapped, cracked, and popped. Rearranged.

In an instant, a white winged fox blinked two red eyes at the beastie. A toothy grin. And then the flesh melted off xyr face, revealing white skull.

Not that Vale reacted to this. A paw swiped the stubborn pieces off the jaw, the cheekbone.

Vale tilted xyr head as xe considered Meteor’s question. No shit Meteor asked the most unhinged of the Departed’s roster of cannibals this question. “Ha, I wouldn’t be reasonable under these circumstances! So the beastie probably won’t, not without a reason, eh, right, Beastie?”

Xyr tongue licked xyr exposed fangs. Thinking. And then xe added, “But, haha, I’m the paragon of collaboration, this is my goddamn puzzle to solve!”

“Didn’t ask you to do anything. Not yet.” Vale’s skullhead tilted slight to the right. Beastie hadn’t figured out what kinda creatures he was dealing with, huh?

Then a glance at Meteor. Not in a deferring way, like a subordinate might check a superior’s emotions. But in a shoulders relaxed, ears up, this is my problem I’ll handle it myself way. This was cannibal boyfriend material right here! Vale would handle this problem.

A slight quirk of the eyebrow from Meteor, and both seemed satisfied.

Vale turned back to the beastie. Red eyes unblinking—no eyelids, after all—as xe considered how to talk to a version of Meteor, assuming the lion had never interacted with another of his kind before. “Let’s slow down.”

With a paw, Vale gestured to Kole with a snort. “You got your ass beat. Whatever your abilities, you’re not going to be good to go for a while. Because what we need you to fix with your nature magic? Long-term project, friend.” Vale rolled xyr eyes, then pointed at the devistated forest beyond the beach. “You see? That is what you’re here to fix. See the long-term fuckery?”

Then Vale snorted. “No point in letting you out of that net now. What good would an up close inspection of the damage do for you? It’s a long-term project of suckiness. You can see that from the beach.”

Vale lifted xyr chin and cackled. If xe had a face, xe’d be grinning. “You don’t know our names. We don’t know yours. Absurd to ask you to get to work now, eh? So, relax. You chill out while we figure out where to keep ya for the duration of the long-term project, then you and I talk, right?” Vale poked at the puddle of gore with a paw. “And I do mean talk. No torture. Hell, I’ll bring you a boiled coconut crab to eat over our talk.”

“Reasonable, eh?” A snap of teeth. “You’re on the Big Island occupied by the Descendants of the Departed. My name’s Vale Malus-Harbinger. I’m the inquisitor. Not as important as Meteor over there—” Vale flicked xyr tail at the lion. “—but I’ve got sway, and I’ve self-assigned myself to ya, you see? A long-term project like fixing the forests on a post-eruption, post-earthquake volcanic island?” Vale cackled. “We’ve got time to slow down and figure out how to collaborate. You want out of that net. Well, you’ll get out of that net and into a cell. Then we talk, like I said.”