It was hard not to love mud, considering Beck had grown up in filth and below-poverty. Was it possible to be poorer than poor, to only have mud and trees and brick walls and an open sky as scenery in your living room, to scrounge around in the streets for food? Quite an achievement; out here, distanced from society and roughing it with a bunch of critters in the woods, social class or wealth didn't matter. Eventually the beginnings of their society would evolve and corrupt themselves with riches, an era the boy would unfortunately exist to witness, yet for now, nothing mattered. Nothing but the fact that he was wading chest-deep in a slimy mud. No wonder Beck was so disheveled and grimy all the time -- a quirk shared with the snuffling figure not to far up from the steep ditch the poltergeist found themselves in. Now Beck's mind may have been fractured beyond convenient repair, yet Valo-kas was deranged on whole other level. Not necessarily in a bad way, that would be hypocritical, but just... weird. He wasn't a fancy word poet, and never would be so why convolute his observations? Valo was weird as hell.

    Flicking sludge from his paws as he high-stepped through the mud, Beck trudged towards the blurred figure of the mutant. Before he could heave himself from the mud-filled ditch he was in, his footing slipped and stumbled, chin splatting against the mud and causing a pitiful splash. "Goddamn-fff --" came the whistling hiss through clenched teeth as he sloppily recovered, drenched in mud. Luckily mud could cover the cold flush rising to his features from Valo's three-eyed watch, if the mutant cared to look up from their worm-hunting. Spitting out a mouthful of silt and ruffling out his dappled pelt, Beck forgot entirely about Valo's presence, busy wringing mud from his apparition.

    The entity wished he could forget Valo longer than the world allowed, the oozing drawl from the mutant prompting Beck to poke a strikingly blue tongue out in his direction and childishly hum a few mocking notes. An easy solution to cleaning off the mud would was simply disappearing for a moment or two, leaving no physical apparition for the filth to cling to, but he preferred not to acknowledge his nonexistence. Choosing to shake and smear the mud away, he remained silent at the suggestive offer, casting Valo a dirty look with a dull glaze settled over amber eyes. Yet internal commentary spat out a flustered 'Gross,' and his dead-eyed glare lingered on the pink slime hanging from the other's jowls for a second more than usual.

    Despite having managed to clear his dark-furred pelt of a majority of mud, choppy fur bristled at awkward angles still. Beck resigned from the impossible task of cleaning up what was essentially an untouched body from a murder scene, slouching and finally acknowledging Valo's attempts at socializing. "Yeah, guess m'ugly -- but 'least I look way better than ya," the poltergeist taunted back, echoing giggles hissed through clenched teeth. He rose from his defeated slump in the mud, somehow shorter than Valo even while standing at full-height, albeit not by a lot. "Have ya seen yourself in a mirror lately? Ya kinda got a bunch'a weird pink drool, uh, all over." A frigid paw motion to the siamese's pink-stained chin and chest, lacking any sort of hesitation -- what if it was a sensitive subject? No, wait, Valo wasn't sensitive. Beck couldn't even be certain if their foul mind was capable of processing guilt and other regular feelings. Truly an enigma he hoped he never would decipher.