The heat was sweltering, fully drying the mouths of the xiunari moments after they took a sip of water. The sunlight super heated their pelts until they felt like they were wearing heated blankets, and pierced their vision with the harsh light. Crumbling ruins in the distance, their sandstone roofs long fallen in, offered no respite, either. Only the occasional wind barely brought cool air, but brought with each a disproportionate flurry of micro-sand. Skritch, Shenzi, and Akira were a team of hunters–were now turned sufferers, too novice and unprepared for the Issiq deserts that they found themselves exploring.

"There one goes!" Called someone–a female, so it had to have been Shenzi. A long-eared jaebo burst from a burrow and darted across the warm sand. "Foul beast, know your place as sustenance!" Skritch called, his pure white pelt darting across the dunes. But the light glimmered off the tiny minerals in the sand and shot up into his eyes, blinding him–he ran into a prickly cactus, giving an undignified, "Youch!" Akira, a massive draconic tark'ee, sprung out his tail to try to cut off the prey from escape, but it shot up a wall of sand. Only when the hot, blue sky cleared again, did they see that the jaebo was long gone, a patch of dust continuing into the east towards the ruins.

"Drat it all," Skritch complained, furiously dragging his claws through the sand as though he wished that he could rake them through flesh instead. "The princess isn't willing to eat anything other than jaebo, and we've been trying all day!" Shenzi gave a mild nod, agreeing with their Captain for once. Feeding these hungry tark'ee was becoming annoying–but his crush on Queen Mel'kha was stronger than his sense. "Perhaps we aren't evoking the right strategy," Akira pointed out. While the colony tended to use him as a 'giant, imposing snake,' the truth was that he was a scholar and a philosopher. "We might think to come back at night, or even try to use some sort of… Let's say, trap, to do the heavy lifting."

"And where would we get something like that?" Skritch's voice was louder than angrier than he meant, but his raised eyebrow was true. "Doesn't that kind of defeat the point?" Shenzi frowned–being a hunter and using a trap, well, that made things much easier, but wasn't that about the same as using a cheat in a video game? Where was the good sportsmanship in that! Still, desperate to prove his use as knowledge, rather than just strength, Akira gulped and focused. "We could use… These thin branches," he referred openly to a dried shrub sticking out of the sand, "And uh… Thread, rope, like from ah…" He stared off at the ruins, praying that there might be some there.

Skritch stared from the nervous-looking Akira back to the pissed-off looking Shenzi, and then sighed. "Alright," the Captain declared, dusting off his front paws, "You each get to try it your way–and we'll see who catches the jaebo."