I glanced back at my guard, but he had taken up a position at the door, rifle shouldered. My time here seemed to be mandatory. When I turned back, Sheena the translator bird had her hand still stuck forward to me. I gingerly took it, noticing the sharp fingernails, and stubbled feathering rising across her wrist. Once we had gently shaken hands, she motioned to the chair across from the raven. Apparently, his name was Darclau, and this appeared to have all been arranged at his behest.

Sheena stood and pulled her stool closer, extending her wings for balance as she sat again. She fixed me and then Darclau with a look, and then nodded. The raven on the desk across from me hopped toward her and cawed. He fluttered his wings and burbled to her in a chattering series of rattles and clicks. Then he turned to me and extended his wings. He lowered his head and opened his beak. “CAW!”

Sheena suddenly leaned across the table and shouted at me, “Why did you take their things?”

I blinked and recoiled as they both waved their wings at me, filling the small room with the rustle of feathers. “Their things?”

“CAW! CAW! CAW!”

“Their things! Their things! Their things!”

Both Darclau the actual raven, and Sheena the alien bird creature screamed at me in unison. My eyes went wide, and I raised my hands defensively. “I didn’t take anything, and I don’t know what things he means!”

Darclau huffed. He gronked and rattled at Sheena again. As he conversed to her, he turned and spread his wings at me again. She turned and faced me when he finished.

“Darclau and his friends are used to collecting things here in the campground. Things they like. Now you have stopped them from being able to sell those things to BuyMort with the use of a MortBlock. This is their home. You had no right.”

When she finished, she lunged forward and spread her own wings. It was significantly more intimidating than when Darclau did it. Like a Deinonychus in the room with me. What an untrained dinosaur enthusiast might mistake for a velociraptor, in a pencil skirt and silk scarf.

I raised my hands again and shook my head. “You got the wrong guy. I’m not Mr. Sada, he did that. I just run things for him.”

Darclau dipped his head and looked at me with one eye. Then he clattered forward on the table. “CAW!” The raven turned and chattered to Sheena again.

Once he finished, she slapped the table and made me jump. “Their things!” She sat back on her stool and carefully pressed a line out of the pleat on her skirt. “Unacceptable. You are the stone thrower, that is known. You also give food. Good food.”

My captor cawed loudly again, taking an aggressive hop forward. Sheena mimicked his movement and shouted, “Confusing!” in my face.

I flinched away and stared at the bird on the table. He cocked his head to the side and stared back, using just one eye. “You liked the home-made suet? I worked really hard on it.”

Sheena blinked at me and held up a hand. “I apologize for interrupting. What is suet?” She cocked her head to the side as well, and the resemblance between the two was striking. Separated by a few years of evolution, but still.

“In this case, it was pumpkin seeds in solidified bacon grease.” I pointed at Darclau and flinched again when he clacked his beak at me. “Took me a while to perfect the recipe, but this guy and his friends never failed to eat em up when I made a batch.”

She blinked at me, before turning to Darclau. She chattered and gronked at him in their bird language. He nodded and wiped his beak on the table. I thought it looked like he was sharpening it. He opened his beak and spread his wings and chuffed twice.

“Good!” Sheena mimicked the movement. “Tasty!”

I was starting to get the hang of this. Talking to Darclau appeared to be a task of what I referred to as ‘managing emotional management.’ In my various jobs, I have had the joyous task of managing my own management’s emotions. Just like so many of my former bosses, Darclau was in charge. But boy was he letting his emotions run him. Good thing one of my survival skills was brown nosing.

“I can make more suet. We have pumpkins.” I raised my eyebrows at the raven across from me but remained hunched in my chair. He was big on body language, so I figured a defensive position might help me.

Darclau stared at me and trilled softly in the back of his throat. Then he curled the fingers of one toe and pecked the table hard, before chattering and cawing at Sheena. She looked at him intently and nodded.

“No trust!” She also pecked the table, leaving a small dent on its surface. “No trust stone thrower! This our home! You take. We take!”

I shook my head rapidly as she spoke, looking at Darclau. “One time. I am so sorry, I should never have done that.” Sheena began trilling and looking between Darclau and I. I ignored her and continued.

“I made the suet to apologize. To try and be your friends. When you still hated me, I left you alone. Kept leaving suet, and let you go through the campsites after the guests left. Don’t blame me for taking your home away, that was Mr. Sada, who technically owns it.”

I stopped to take a breath, but Darclau merely looked between me and Sheena with his beak open.

My hands still in my lap, I sat up straighter. “If you kill all of us, there will be nobody to leave things for you. We lived here in harmony before, I tried to make sure of that. Can we share this place? Maybe be friends someday?”

Sheena burbled and trilled at him, before clicking her beak closed. The raven swung his head between her and me, and then clicked his beak the same way she had done. He whistled and began pumping his neck while making small “g’wah” sounds and chattering.

I looked expectantly at Sheena, and she also began thrusting her beak up and down in the room. “Share is good. Things are good. People stay. Become friends, eat suet.”

“Yes, more suet is top of my list. I just . . .” I narrowed my eyes. “Sheena, how much does Darclau understand?”

She glanced between him and me before blinking with a sigh. “More than you think. Less than I would hope for.” The tall bird woman reached a hand out and offered a clawed finger to Darclau. He happily rubbed his face and beak against it while ruffling out his feathers.

“They are so very smart, but not wise. As I understand this contract, the military conflict here is likely to create enemies for Darclau and his clan.” She glanced at me. “He has been attempting to speak with you for days. Now he has ensured that, but I fear the cost.”

I raised my hands and shook my head. “I just want to ensure the safety of my people. He has a point, this was their home, and it was taken away from them. The same thing happened to me, I just want to find a way for everyone to live in peace. Nobody looks hurt, so long as it stays that way, I can make this work.”

I sat back in the chair and looked at Darclau again. This was the one I had thrown that pebble at, years ago. He had never forgotten it. That act of casual malice had come to form an important part of his world, and something made me want to fix it. It was just a raven, but that didn’t matter. It changed how I saw myself to be thought of as the stone thrower. I preferred to be the suet cake guy.

“Darclau. I want to offer you and your people a home here, as part of our affiliate. We’ll figure out a job for you, I was thinking maybe scouting for BlueCleave. Scavenging even?”

Sheena rapidly translated for him, and Darclau hopped in a small circle with his mouth open wide. When he began burbling and cawing, Sheena translated. “Yes! Home! We scout, easy. What about trash? What about trash?” When she asked it the second time, her neck extended toward me the way his had at the end of his little speech.

I leaned back to avoid the tip of her long beak and shrugged at the small raven on the table in front of me. “What about trash?”

His feathers all ruffled. “Caw!”

“Ours!” Sheena lightly shook down her entire body, feathers fluffing out with the movement.

I nodded. “No stealing from campers, and yes. You can have the trash. If you guys want to, we can set up a salvage operation from here. There’s tons of places nearby you could probably find things to sell to BuyMort, and if you had a home base here, we would only take a small cut. Say five percent? That way, you can be independent, even if you don’t scout or pick up trash.”

Sheena translated the important parts, and we began talking in earnest about what cohabitating in the campground would look like. The more complicated the concepts became, the more Sheena stepped in to help. I got the distinct impression that this was outside of her job description, but I sensed a connection between the two. She clearly felt responsible for what she saw as a reckless young creature that was worth protecting.

I found that position ironic since he held the contract on the mercenaries with guns to our heads. In spite of that fact, the negotiation felt strangely sincere as it proceeded.

I got Darclau to agree not to perform an armed takeover of the camp again pretty easily. That had been a misunderstanding, from his perspective. He had done his best to express their problem, gotten frustrated and paranoid, and in a fit of panic had purchased a premium mercenary operation to reclaim his home.

After hearing about it, I honestly felt lucky the bird had managed to tell them to use non-lethal force only, once they had arrived and begun their assault. The raven, being a raven, had gotten in over his head and didn’t seem like he really meant to hurt anyone. Or really understand what he had done, and why it was bad. He was really happy to be our friend and not do it again though, and that mattered a lot.

What I ended up getting out of the negotiation was five percent of a scavenging operation. Whatever the ravens sold to BuyMort would automatically go through our affiliate, which gave them a higher sale price and us a small slice.

They also agreed to act as scouts for the BlueCleave tribe, assuming the mercenaries decided to stay on after this debacle. There was also some vague speech about picking up trash around the camp, but my primary focus there was making sure they weren’t stealing from the people. That was a good way to get some dead ravens, especially after this current mess.

My concessions on behalf of the campground affiliate were few but significant. We carved out a section of territory that became immediately and officially the raven’s property, once Mr. Sada signed off on it. Darclau set up the MortBlock as we hashed it out. The triangular Joshua tree grove that cornered the primary and secondary campground roads was to be treated as sovereign raven territory. The ravens also got a promise that we would not retaliate for the military take-over, in exchange for calling it off and not doing it again. Sheena worked that last part up for us.

At the end of the negotiation, Sheena offered him a business card. The raven happily scuffed the card back and forth on the desk with his claws, beak open as he guffawed. Sheena slipped me one too, and I pocketed it with thanks. It would be good to call on her if anything went wrong with the deal. She assured me that he understood the majority of what we had discussed, but something in the way she told me that without being asked made me question it immediately.

After a brief conversation with the mercenary bird in the room with us, Darclau left. His hired muscle just held open the door for him, and he flew away, directly from the metal table between us. He flew over his friends, and they followed after him immediately, disappearing from view.

Sheena and the mercenary conversed briefly, before she produced a device from her jacket pocket and pressed a small button on it. It looked like a phone to me but designed to be held by talons instead of fingers. A dimensional pod rippled violently into being behind her in the room, a stink of burning ozone briefly passing over us. It indicated a portion of the room in the corner with its highlighting lasers and then opened a rainbow beam. Sheena waved and bobbed her head at me, before walking into it and disappearing. The pod popped out of existence, giving us another fart of burnt ozone in the process.

My Afflqwst app popped up with my reward.

Quest - Your affiliate has been taken over by a hostile mercenary force. No one has been harmed, but all are being restrained. Military force is not a viable option, any victory would be pyrrhic. A lack of lethal force indicates possible peaceful intent. Attempt to come to a peaceful outcome.

REQUIREMENTS:

Re-acquire affiliate assets. Broker a peaceful outcome with the occupying force. (Optional) Ensure employees are not harmed.

POSSIBLE OUTCOME - Alliance with new affiliate (65%).

REWARD - Special Afflqwst reward.

The ‘reward’ section was highlighted and as soon as I focused on it, a gift card sprang up in my vision, immediately depositing itself into my personal morties account. It gave me less than a single mortie, unfortunately. .99 morties chimed cheerfully from my account. Then a note sprang into my vision, filled with a random assortment of words.

Upgrade. App. Marketing. User data. Automate. Weaponized. Subroutine communications. Then, at the end of the list, in all caps, KILL BUYMORT.

The last one made me think back to my initial purchase, and then the ad that brought me to the Afflqwst app. I grabbed the words and swiped them over to BuyMort’s search function. BuyMort happily took the words and shot out a single response. I was dazed momentarily, this was the first time it had done that. Usually, I was given a ton of choices, to the point that it was dizzying.

My quest reward started to feel almost intentional as I read the title of the purchase. “Afflqwst automation upgrade.” It was an add-on for my app, which explained the .99 mortie gift card too. That was exactly what the app add-on cost. I clicked the purchase button, and my Afflqwst app closed itself to restart. When it popped back open, there were several new unfilled quest areas, and Specter himself had a correspondence zone added. I could now ask him questions about the app and my quests anytime I needed to.