The Hunt 11

“I hope you’re ready to get nice and comfortable,” Trebby announced when he came back a few hours later. Shortly thereafter, he guided the trio through numerous tunnels in the underground. The bodyguards were always looking at Apexus, crawling along, despite having a redheaded tiger girl with pretty open weaponry around. “Because getting three people out of the city at once is going to be a bit more difficult.”

“What, I thought you were good at what you do?” Reysha teased and earned herself a scoffing mumble. “How much harder can it be than just put us under some sacks and cart us out of here, huh? Come on, I can see that you want to boast about your business strategies, you absolute unit of a smuggler.”

Apexus just had to interject. “What unit?”

Several people looked confused, Aclysia was the one who reacted first. “Reysha is using it metaphorically in this case. She isn’t talking about any units of measurement.”

“Oh. Sorry for the interruption. Feel free to boast now,” the slime innocently continued to listen.

“…You’re actually endearing, despite of how odd you look,” Trebby admitted after a moment of silence.

“You’re actually friendly, despite of how awful your music was,” Apexus responded in kind. “My gratitude for getting us off this leaf.”

The smuggler was unable to deal with such honest and nice words from a creature whose initial appearance he had felt repulsed by. A mixture of embarrassment and validation stirred in the man’s soul. Not a particularly common way to feel in this line of work.

Trebby cleared his throat, “Yes… well, I am in it for the money.” Quickly turning towards things he was more used to, he stepped up to a door and unlocked it with a very complicated looking key. “See, when you’re going for illegal activities, there are three ways to remain on the loose. First is to just not be known, but when you’re active for any measurable length of time that’s pretty much impossible. Sooner or later people will just know about you. Especially if you remain local. So that’s out for me.

“The second is to be unofficially in charge of things. Sadly, the hotpot of guild leaders that make up the local government aren’t exactly corruptible. Especially since we have a gods damned Cardinal sitting on this leaf, who only ever partakes on meetings via letters,” Trebby groaned and kicked open the door. “Even if it was possible, I don’t have that kind of money.”

They entered a room were a bunch of modified equipment stood around. Wooden logs that seemed perfect as firewood, but were hollowed out, seamlessly fitting lids sitting nearby. Mountains of differently sized barrels. Wax paper to wrap packages as smell-neutral as possible. A bunch double-bottomed crate. In the middle of the room stood a large horse cart. A surprisingly small assortment of adventurer’s bags hung from a distant wall.

Apexus had to wonder about that. “Why not use those more often?” he asked. “Small bags stuffed with stuff should be easier to hide than most other things, no?”

“In theory,” Trebby seemed happy to answer that question, even though it interrupted his other explanation. “Three problems though. Adventurer’s bags enchants cause them to bind to their current carrier in some odd way that prevents more than a few bags to work for one person at any given time. They turn into simple bags until somebody else comes along to pick them up.”

“That would still only limit operations on the leaf,” Reysha continued, wandering around the cart while Trebby’s henchmen prepared everything for their departure. “So that’s why he has a few of them, the sly dog.”

“Yes, yes,” Trebby waved off. “The other two reasons are that they radiate magic. Scribe’s can detect them quite easily, just like they can make an Inventory Analyzation. They can’t just magically write out a list of illegal items hidden inside hollow logs. Third reason, specifically for cross-leaf travel, is that I don’t feel like dealing with Parasytes.”

Something about the way he said that word made it clear that he wasn’t talking about tics or mosquitoes. Before Apexus could ask about it, the conversations moved back to the original topic.

“Anyway, like most of my colleagues around here, I take the third and easiest way to not remain in the business,” the smuggler gifted all of them with a broad smile. “I keep up the façade of a honest businessman that nobody got the solid evidence to disprove off.”

“Well, bully for you, that’s how I would do things as well,” Reysha suddenly stepped across the room, did several twirls, stopped behind Aclysia and gave her a big hug. “But somebody said morality is more important than thoroughness.”

The metal fairy pouted. “You assured me this topic had reached its conclusion.”

“Conclusion? Sure. Fun-making material? No,” Reysha giggled, then almost burst out laughing. “Hey, remember that time when you flew across the entire continent buck-naked because your daddy got issues?”

Aclysia went from pouting to flushing deeply, something that only got worse when the tiger girl planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “This is a disgrace!”

“You liked the last time,” the redhead couldn’t help but tease.

After a few frustrated noises, Aclysia managed to say, “This is not the time nor place for foolery like this!”

“Right,” Reysha suddenly stood straight as a pole and awaited further developments. Although her face didn’t mirror that stern pose in the slightest. “What’s the plan, Trebby?”

The smuggler just looked like he was having fun with all of this. “Alright, come up here,” he told them and climbed on the cart. It was solid wood and pretty large, which also meant it was pretty tall. Reysha athletically pulled herself up, while maid-dressed Aclysia just spread her wings and hovered.

Apexus didn’t have enough room to fly, not without creating an absolute chaos, so he had to slime his way up the wheels. Getting up steep surfaces had been much easier when he hadn’t had all this extra weight on his back. Well, when he had been lighter in general. Nevertheless, he got up there.

The main surface of the cart had pretty flat, broad chest built into the middle of it. “You will get in there and then we’ll throw normal wares on top,” Trebby explained, knocking on the chest. “My buddies at the Stem will ‘randomly’ select us for a control. Don’t worry, they’ll just peek around enough that they can write a report about nothing going on.”

Apexus had to admit that that was kind of ingenious. Fooling a security system by playing along with it sounded pretty smart. Like letting a rat dive face first into his own mass. Except he had somehow told the rat that was exactly the strategy to follow.

“Normally we only smuggle one person off at a time… You will have to really cramp down in there,” Trebby looked doubtfully at the slime and then at the box. “Thing is your liquid body… sorry, Apexus, right?”

“Yes,” the slime answered.

“You’re way too thick,” the smuggler stated right out of the gate. “That’s a problem I didn’t think about…” he made a sour face and looked around. “Maybe we could load you into a barrel? That’s going to be a problem if there’s a single strait-laced guard on shift with my buddy. Much easier to get them to ignore the stuff in the middle of the cart than a giant barrel…”

“I make myself thinner, give me a few minutes,” Apexus answered and Trebby raised an eyebrow. With that massive carapace and equally big wings, he didn’t see how the slime could bridge the difference between him and a lying person. To his surprise, both of those began to shrink visibly.

Aclysia used this time to ask another important question. “What are the precautions in case we get caught?”

“Then you’re going to make a run for it,” Trebby stated quite clearly. “And you’re never coming back. I can weasel my way out of prison by bribing a few people here and tell everyone you forced me to do it or some bullshit like that. Unless they get your ass and you confess to something different. If they do catch you, you had a fourth accomplice who had my wife at knifepoint and his name is Derek, understood?”

“Sure thing, Derek, knife-point, we force you,” Reysha yawned and looked over to Apexus, who had shrunk all Growths, aside from eyes and ears, down as far as he could. “How ya doing, slime boy?”

“Well, somewhat hungry,” Apexus answered with the tiny remains of the Speaking Plates. His voice was as deep as usual, if a fair bit quieter in its maximum output.

Reysha made a surprised sound. “Expected you to sound all squeaky now. Honestly, I am disappointed… anyway, guess we’ll have to fit in like this. Otherwise, we’ll cut you down.”

That was indeed another possibility and one that slime much wanted to avoid. Being sliced into tinier parts was a very unpleasant experience. With wings smaller than his fox ears, Apexus flowed his way into the open chest. Reysha and Aclysia soon followed.

It turned out to be a surprisingly comfortable experience for those two. What normally was nothing but a wooden box with nothing in the way of padding now turned into a slime cushioned bed. Cramping all of his Growths into one corner of the chest, off Aclysia’s left shoulder, the only way all of them fit in there was for Apexus to spread himself all over the square floor and partly spill around their bodies.

Not only was this uncomfortable, holding things outside of his natural elliptic shapes for prolonged times was akin to keeping a muscle wilfully tense for prolonged periods, but it was also pretty hard not to get turned on by this complete feeling up of their curves.

To put it shortly, the girls were having it surprisingly nice, while Apexus was hoping this whole thing was over quickly. “Sure hope none of you are claustrophobic,” Trebby joked when he closed the lid above them, leaving only a miniscule breathing hole and small gaps in the wood for light to enter.

Then a constant drumming of sacks being thrown on top of them began.