Somewhere at sea, on Hydra's dingy ship...

Typically, Polt kept the peyote hidden.

It was easy to avoid suspicion. Polt demanded exactitude in all things except the state of his quarters, so visitors were unprepared for the sheer amount of junk that littered the room. Like a family of groundhogs, maps and boxes refused to conform to any notions of neatness. Sometimes they wandered into the corners to obsequiously huddle in silence; other times, they proved more brazen and tripped up passersby. The ensured wave of cognitive dissonance neatly diverted attention from the small tin box underneath the bed. If a curious trespasser had spotted it and investigated further, he might've noticed the thin crust of dry whiskey tinging the edges of the lid. But who would dare accuse the co-ruler of Oegugin of partaking in illegal substances? Technically, it was his job to confiscate all of them anyway.

In normal circumstances that box would have stayed put. But this was an emergency, and emergencies demanded hazy inspiration where pure brainpower was insufficient. Metzennala wasn't the immature frontier that Oegugin still was. It would take more than well-planned strikes to conquer it. Even his keenly intuitive mind couldn't derive the optimal way to start. The number of clans may have dwindled, but there were too many warring parties to consider proper calculation. Mescaline would have to suffice.

“Ahhh, you needed this to beat MMA?”

Hydra dutifully puffed away in the corner, leaning back in the rolling chair. Smoking it...what a goddamn waste. Hydra wasn't nearly the imbiber that his legend suggested. Poor man had to stick to the powdered version. One day, Polt sleepily promised, he'd show him how to do it right. Inhaling was nothing compared to straight injection. Maybe in time, Hydra would graduate to become a heavyweight. Sure would be nice to have a proper partner in crime.

Under the faint glow of the tablelamp, Hydra's face was all sunken angles and ridges. With the puffs of smoke trailing away he uncannily resembled one of those old dented steamboats, like the ones MarineKing used to show him. For the briefest of moments, the air took on a nostalgic tinge. Good ol' Lee Jung Hoon. He always believed in the past beyond the point of stubbornness. If it was up to him, marines would still be the only troops worth deploying to the battlefield.

“You say that like he was a nobody. He was a somebody back then. More than that. Don't you remember? The SlayerS clan laid claim to almost every territory back then. MMA terrorized us.”

“Remember what? Back then, I was raiding La Mancha and running circles around Stork.” Hydra paused, a new thought caressing its way across his face. “You want to talk about downfalls? That poor bastard is now running messages for Solar now. He's worse than nothing now. He's a shadow of nothing. Nothing grinds its heel in his face when he steps out of the door in the morning.”

Polt had neither the energy nor the patience to point out the uselessness of that tangent. Besides, he was starting to perceive Hydra's aura. A little lime green mixed with a lot of vomit brown. Figures. “Well, it was bad. Everyone underestimated Boxer. We thought the old dog had no teeth left in him. SlayerS was supposed to be irrelevant at best.” The soft yellow of the lamp was slowly shifting into neon red. “Maybe MMA was his true son. It runs in the blood, you know. That kind of power. Soldiers know when someone is born into authority. They can smell it.”

“Legitimate, illegitimate, does it really matter? You broke him and you beat him.”

“Took a while. I couldn't decipher his plans. His troops were executing maneuvers that our clan never saw before. Simulations didn't give us jack to work with either. Good old Choya,” he grinned. “I knew he was getting all those crazy ideas from somewhere. He was eager to share.”

“And what, exactly, did this wonderful substance tell you to do?”

“...'Go and kill him. That's what he's vulnerable to.'”.

“Vulnerable to what?”

“Dying.”

“Nice. Really nice.” Hydra leaned backwards in his chair and slightly tilted the pipe, letting the bottom half disappear into the darkness. “What grand revelations is it telling you right now?”

“Relax. Give it time.”

“So you're clutching at straws again”. Hydra's eyes glimmered mischievously.

“Time.”

“Straaaaaaaawws,” he drawled.

Paint was dripping down the walls. Pretty sure it was color though; Polt never ever papered the walls over. He ignored it and let his thoughts flow along the current. It was imperative that he follow anything that manifested during this time.

Obviously they didn't need to search for the scepter. Polt and Hydra had enough friends to track the movements of the home clans, and maybe the occasional payoff could give them a window to move. Creator could be open to negotiations on that front. Direct combat was also fruitless. Even combined, they didn't have the forces to fight a battle if two of the reigning Metzennalan clans joined together. Strikes would have to be surgical. Rivalries would have to be maintained and possibly exacerbated. SKT and KT remained ripe ground for conflict. Perhaps they could use the rumors about envy within their ranks as a catalyst. Greedy boys like Classic should be content with being in the hierarchy. Tacticus knew his type. Some of them had too much thirst and too little ability to succeed.

Classic was a protoss, the same as sOs. sOs shared that in common with Rain. Rain could been swapped with PartinG in that department. Metzennala had talent littering the streets. Oegugin was poverty-stricken in comparison. Shit, Lilbow.

He had to be addressed after this journey. Somehow this nobody was gaining ground and grassroots support, which should be impossible. His plans were fundamentally wrong by conventional and accumulated wisdom alike. He committed his stalker forces to battle without reconnaissance or exit strategies. He attacked when it was foolish, and retreated when it was unnecessary. It didn't matter. Somehow, Lilbow worked over Hydra.

“I don't need to know that. We know what we know, and we know what we don't know. And we know Life's got to meet granddaddy Fruitdealer in the great garden in the sky.” Polt paused, reconsidering his faulty metaphor. “Uhhhh...under the ground. Whatever.”

Hydra's bark shattered the gentle hum of the engines like a cracked whip. “He couldn't have died! He was too good to get surprised by a greenhorn.”

“Eh? Who?”

Hydra's eyes had taken on the color of onyx. His left leg was trembling of its own volition. “Life. That kid is a cockroach. If Armageddon came down on our heads tomorrow, he'd crawl out of the dirt. He wouldn't roll over and die to a stripling.”

“Why not? Unknown factors are always the most dangerous. He took the throne when competition got soft and exposed their hands. No one thought it could happen with Mvp and well...he's gone for good.”

Polt clenched his diaphragm to restrain his tears, though it was hard to tell whether they were stained with disdain or admiration. Or a mixture of both. He slalomed to the side of the bed and crumpled into a squat. Hydra began comparing the vision between both eyes, and Polt wondered how a man with one eye fixed in the haze of anesthesia could ever steer a ship towards land, much less lead an army.

“So...how is it?” he whispered. “I mean...” Polt was almost certain that both eyes would have been seeing the same thing by now.

Hydra shrugged. “Sore throat. Slightly nauseous. Not much else.”

“Hmmm, curious. Different physiology, I guess.”

Polt appeared displeased. That was a week's worth of the stuff and he blew it off like a hookah. Not a single tell until Hydra bent over to massage his leg. A bad eye and a bad foot? Just how does he do it, Polt pondered. "Well," Polt grumbled. "You've been wonderful company. Maybe I'll invite a magpie next time." The terran slowly tipped over, resting against the wall before collapsing into a heap. He still had quite a few calculations to make.

The dull buzz of the engines had finally ceded; the ship must have arrived somewhere, or maybe they had stopped to ask for directions. With a constipated groan, Hydra stood up and approached the bed. Polt was already half asleep, though it was possible that he was this whole time. The peyote had just burned all the way through.

Polt managed to squeeze in a few words in the middle of his last recreational breathe. “Ahhhh, I finally understand.”

“Understand what?” Hydra asked.

“It. The whole thing. How to take Metzennala. It's so simple...”