Chapter 587: Butter and Grit
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hazō dropped into his chair with a sigh and rubbed his face with both hands. He let his head tip back and his eyes fall closed.
"Another difficult day, sir?" Gaku asked, pushing the plate of cookies closer.
"Ugh," Hazō said. He took two of the cookies without bothering to pick up his head or open his eyes (there was a small amount of groping about involved) and shoved one of them into his face. Gaku waited patiently, a small smile on his lips.
After a few moments of enjoyment, Hazō sighed again and sat up, opening his eyes. "Fine," he said. "Let's do this."
Gaku dipped his brush and waited attentively.
Hazō took another cookie and munched it as he spoke. "I just got done speaking to the Rat ambassador and his wife. They were...welcoming, I guess."
"That sounds modestly better than your prior meetings, sir," Gaku noted.
Hazō snorted. The team's first day at the Conclave had consisted of meeting six different Pangolins and handing out fried and/or candied bits of driver ant corpses to each of them, a revolting thing that Kei had recommended. The pangolins had been, respectively: snooty, abrasive, aggressively displeased with the team's presence, religiously bigoted, demanding of why Hazō had cut off the supply of skytowers and sneering at his misalignment with the will of the creator, and one whisker from violence. The last one had been the most fun.
o-o-o-o
One whisker from violence...
Hazō, Kei, and Noburi had been taking a well-earned break from gladhanding in order to enjoy the buffet table at the Conclave's recreation facility. Most pangolin foods were not to Hazō's preference, being either melt-your-face spicy or plain disgusting, but there were enough different species at the Conclave with enough different tastes that there were some things he liked. In particular, the rolled-up teriyaki meat strips stuffed with watercress were amazing. He wasn't sure what type of meat it was, but it was amazing.
"Hey!"
Noburi's eyes flicked up at the shout, looking past Hazō and Kei's shoulders; his posture didn't change, so his siblings turned around calmly.
Panbanī was approaching, two other pangolins in his wake. Hazō wasn't good at judging pangolin age and only so-so at judging pangolin sex, but he suspected those two were also young males.
"Hey there!" Hazō called back, offering a smile and a wave. "You're...Pansomething...Panbubbly, right?"
"Panbanī!" the young pangolin snapped, coming to a halt in front of Hazō.
"Right," Hazō said. "Panbubbly."
"Panbanī!"
"Panboobi?" Hazō asked, frowning.
Kei gave Hazō a speaking eyebrow. Specifically, it said Do you really need to intentionally antagonize our hosts?
Hazō's eyes crinkled very slightly and the corner of his lips twitched. Yes. Yes, I do.
Eyeroll. Fine, but don't blame me when they murder us all.
"PANBANĪ!"
"Wait, wait, sorry. I think I've been mishearing it. Say it again?"
"Panbanī!"
"Pangoobi?"
"Panbanī!"
"Pandoodi?"
"Panbanī!!!!"
Hazō shrugged. "Well, whatever. What can I do for you, Panbubbly?" Hazō asked.
"It's Panbanī, you— Never mind! Your foul attack yesterday will not be forgotten!"
Hazō frowned. "Attack?" He looked at Noburi. "Who did I attack?"
Noburi shrugged. "Nobody while I was around. Maybe while I was in the loo?" He waggled a scolding finger. "Were you tippling again, Hazō? You know you can't hold your liquor. There you go, getting into fights, attacking helpless little toddlers—"
"I am not a toddler!" Panbanī said.
"Of course you're not," Hazō cooed. "You're a great big boy with great big muscles!"
Panbanī seethed at that but couldn't seem to figure out how to respond.
"You smackin' tail at my bro, bro?" one of Panbanī's backup band said, taking a half step forward and flexing.
Hazō studied the pangolin with a delighted expression and then turned to Kei. "You're right, they're just adorable! I wasn't sure when you introduced me to your team...the big ones are too impressive to be adorable and Pankurashun is waaay too badass to be adorable, but these guys are just right."
"Hey!" Panbanī said. "Shut your mouth, you filthy human! You're in the presence of the Pangolin Clan, show some respect!"
Noburi snorted and kept nibbling on his plate of canapés.
"Noburi!" Hazō scolded. "Don't snort at the Pangolin Clan. It's rude. Sure, Panbubbly is kinda puny and fights like a ten-year-old human civilian, but he's trying. You have to give points for effort, right?" From the corner of his eye he watched Paneihei coming towards them at something that was barely less than a run. The senior pangolin had been within Hazō's eyeline throughout the conversation or he wouldn't have felt so comfortable baiting this little twerp. Always important to have a senior person around to bear witness to who had thrown the first punch.
"I wasn't snorting at the Clan," Noburi said, locking eyes on Panbanī and chewing with his mouth open. "The Pangolin Clan is impressive."
"Good afternoon, Summoner," Paneihei said, arriving slightly out of breath. "Gentlemen. How goes your day?"
"Really well," Hazō said. "Panbanī was inquiring about our stay and whether or not we needed anything. I was saying that if he knew where to get more of those teriyaki and watercress things, that would be amazing. He was nice enough to volunteer to go get me some."
"No I didn't!" Panbanī snapped. "I'm not fetching your food like a servant! I was here to call you out for your dishonorable combat tactics yesterday!"
Hazō cracked up, laughing so hard he had to bend over and put his hands on his knees. Behind him, Noburi laughed. Kei, of course, merely sighed.
Paneihei also sighed. "Panbanī, return to barracks."
"You were there, Senior Lochagos! You saw him grab my face! You saw him—"
"Panbanī," said the Senior Lochagos. "If you attack someone, you should expect a real fight. A real fight has one rule: win. It isn't a teahouse slap fight and it doesn't care about the conventions of the Panmarata style. Now, return to barracks before I place you on administrative punishment." He stared the three younger pangolins down until they slouched grumblingly off, then turned back to Hazō. "I apologize for my trooper."
"S'all good," Hazō said, waving magnanimously. "Seriously though, those teriyaki and watercress things are amazing. Can you point me to a kitchen staffer so I can get some more?"
o-o-o-o
"Anyway," Hazō said. "Today was the Rat Clan meetings." He ate another cookie and sipped his tea. "They made a point of noting how much trouble I've been having with the Pangolin Clan, so clearly Panbanī has been useful for something. I let them think it was more widespread than it is—which wasn't hard, since the pangolins really are pissed at me for cutting off the supply of skytowers. As we hoped, they had already spoken to the Condor ambassadors. We talked about Uplift, both the team and the various initiatives we've had going here. They had some trouble wrapping their heads around the need for walls around your towns and elevated roads, but they listened. They had some interesting ideas on underground canals for moving water around without losing too much of it to evaporation. We're going to have another meeting tomorrow, get more into the details."
"I see," Gaku said, taking the last note as Hazō finished speaking. "Would you say it's going well?"
"I think so, yeah. People are having more or less the reactions that Mari coached me to produce, so I guess I'm doing it basically right. Seriously though, I'm running out of small talk to make with people and running out of patience faster. If Enma doesn't get there soon I think my head may burst."
o-o-o-o
The very next day...
"That's a fascinating idea, Ambassador," Hazō said. "I'd never considered the musical possibilities inherent in waggling thin sheets of metal back and forth. Very innovative." He sipped from his stemware in order to hide his face for just a moment. There was a limit to how much inanity even the Iron Nerve could allow you to endure without showing some trace of how much you wanted to choke the life out of a stupid old windbag.
"Of course, of course! Hoom, hoom, hoom!" the old pangolin said, slapping his claws against his belly. "The Pandemiku waggle style is by far the best! Pandemiku, of course, was the originator of the style, and he personally painted four of his students to be his disciples. The second student, Pandono, traveled to the northwest of Pangolin to found a monastery at the foot of the mountains—they're quite a bit more northwesterly than you might think, don't you know? Hoom, yes, very much so. Most people consider the mountains to start around ten miles from the Second Army's headquarters, but actually it's more like forty. That's modern miles, of course. Back in Pandono's time they measured in zu, which was based on tail-lengths and ended up being about seventeen hundredths shorter than a modern mile. We moved to the modern standard because..."
Hazō let the Ambassador's droning exposition fade into the background of the cocktail party that Team Uplift was mired in. They had arrived together but somehow the three of them had gotten separated. Noburi was standing by the wall chatting with two lithe young women from the Otter clan, one of whom had a gold ring in her left ear to indicate that she was husband-hunting. Hazō made a note to tease Noburi for at least two days about being scouted by non-humans.
Kei was thirty feet away and pinned down by a Condor ambassador who was repeatedly jabbing a wing at her as he spoke. Each wing jab came within inches of Kei's face and the young woman's hand was already white-knuckling the kunai at her hip.
"...my grandfather, who—" the old pangolin was saying as Hazō tuned back in.
"Excuse me, Ambassador," Hazō interjected. "I apologize, but I need to speak with my sister for just a moment. I ask your grace." He bowed and stepped quickly away, not waiting for the actual socially-expected grace to be offered.
"Hey, sis," Hazō said, stepping into Kei's conversation with a giant smile and a smooth pick-and-roll that allowed him to put himself between his haptophobic sister and the insensitive and overly-aggressive condor who was about to be introduced to an entire helping of activated stabby trauma.
"Hazō," Kei said, giving him an millisecond expression of gratitude. "I was just now speaking with—"
There was a booming sound as the double doors to the room slammed open hard enough to bounce off the walls. Enma strode through, the sunset behind him outlining him burnt umber light and casting his shadow forward across everyone.
"Somebody best have a bottle of the good stuff for me or there's gonna be trouble," Enma said into the silence. "And after I drink it, we're gonna talk about why you people aren't saving the world."
Hazō lacked the self-control to deny himself one little fist pump.
XP AWARD: 30 This update covered 10 days.
Brevity XP: 10
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