Story I wrote back in October, was planning on reworking it, but didn't come to pass, *but* there will be changes to the next Telaroth story...if I remember!

In this story, Telaroth has a biscuit, Tano makes a fart joke and there is violence

Part II [NSFW]: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/59864244

As usual, story is pasted below

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Two weeks of holiday really isn’t much if you’ve spent several months pretending to be someone else, but I suppose it’s something. I could’ve said no and Telricktus would’ve assigned the job to someone else, but well, I accepted. Moping around the city, going to bars and joining parties gets old after a while, especially since the parties I threw while masquerading as a drug dealer were far better.

Either way, I was once again sitting in Telricktus’ office, with my legs crossed and shaking one foot in the air as I waited. As always, everything was nice and neat, with his computer sitting off to one side on the desk, a few pieces of paper stacked neatly on the other end and an empty glass sitting next to the keyboard. If anything, it probably made my little apartment look like a bomb had gone off inside, but well, I’m rarely there anyway.

The Lieutenant was running late as he was busy making arrangements for the mission. Partly my fault, since I only checked my messages the day before and accepted the mission.

Eventually I got bored and picked the lock on Telricktus’ snack cupboard that sat in the corner of his office and began helping myself to biscuits. He’s even got a minifridge in there with some soft drinks, so I took one too.

No wonder he’s going to the gym everyday.

Of course, as I began munching on a third cream biscuit, Telricktus burst through the door with his tablet and immediately gave me a glare as I polished it off, so I had a fourth one. He snatched the box out of my grip before I could have another and rolled his eyes when he noticed the can of orange soft drink that I had been sipping from. “Been busy, I see.”

“Not my fault you’re late,” I replied with a snort as I lounged in my chair, “you’re always complaining that I’m late, so I was early for once and you weren’t here.”

“You’re incorrigible, you know that?” Telricktus huffed, thumping his tail on the ground in displeasure as he sat heavily in his chair and fired his computer up, “You’re hanging around that loose cannon Fleet officer too much.”

I shrugged as I sipped from the can, “He’s more interesting than you are, so go figure, Telricktus. What’s this job anyway?”

More eye rolling. “Ah, this one is something a bit different. The Alliance has found someone playing god on a little backwater on our side of the neutral zone. They’ve handed us the intelligence and asked us to handle it.”

“Playing god as in mad geneticist or technology is not discernible from magic to savages?” I replied as I raised an eyeridge, sitting up a little as Telricktus handed me a tablet with the details.

Telricktus flicked through a few files on his computer before snorting, “The latter, which makes things complicated since the Fleet can’t just go in and shoot him as a result.”

“Ah yeah, it’ll just make the contamination worse, I get it,“ I replied with a nod as I flicked through the brief and got a good look at the photos, “Why is it always the lizard people that go off the rails?”

“No idea,” Telricktus replied with a shrug and tail flick, “You seem to like pretending to be one anyway, but we need to arrest him, so you can’t go all gooey and suity with him, got it?”

“Eh? Isn’t the penalty for doing this death or exile in the Alliance? What difference would doing what I do make?” I replied with a snort as I eyed the red-scaled male in the photos.

Telricktus snorted, “I know you’re only saying that because he’s handsome, but no, they want him back for trial. Something about making an example of him, so you have to bring him back fully original and clean, none of the usual tricks.”

I flicked through the brief a little more and found that the planet was mostly fairly primitive, with a tribal culture built around idol worship. Nothing too special, though I could see why my target chose to go there – they’re similarly shaped, though he’d be standing a bit taller and built heavier, perfect for this kind of thing. “Right, what about the natives?”

“They’re fair game, any evidence will be long gone once they modernise,” Telricktus remarked with a flick of a wing, “Just don’t leave a mess behind. As a bonus to make things a bit more challenging, you’re going to have to do it in a way that exposes him as a false god without showing any technology. How you do that is up to you, but he needs to be reduced to a footnote.”

I nodded along as I downloaded the documents from the tablet and handed it back, “Got it, I’ll figure something out. Has transport been arranged?”

“Yeah, with your best friend, he’ll be passing by and you’ll be dropped off. Your target, Gyan is also known to have taken a small shuttle with him. Find it and use it to get home,” Telricktus replied, snorting, “Whatever cover you choose must be maintained till he is off-planet. After that, you will simply say that you are a retrieval specialist. Got it?”

“Got it,” I replied with a snort as Telricktus’ pack of biscuits melted into a puddle of my blue goo, making him practically jump out of his scales while I took the real pack out of one of my pockets and had another, “Thanks for the snack, by the way, these are quite good!”

“Just…go.” Telricktus replied, holding his snout in his hands in frustration as I retrieved my goo, “you people are going to drive me mad one day, I swear.”

I snorted as I gave him a wave, “You volunteered for the transfer after I was converted, it was your own fault.”

Telricktus gave me the finger as I strolled out, so I blew him a kiss while a few of the others walking around outside giggled.

There wasn’t much time to pack, of course, the ship was due to leave in a few hours, but well, there also wasn’t much to pack in the first place. Even clothes can give the game away, so I just turned up in uniform and that was that. As usual, Tano’rath was busy dealing with all the clearances to get his ship out of spacedock, so I only caught a few glances of him. He’d wave now and then, but I didn’t interrupt.

We usually find a bit of time to catch up and trade stories and we did for a bit, with him sharing the latest gossip and a battle story or two, while I told him about the latest in the Alliance and other things that I had heard from my fellow agents. We eventually started talking about more mundane things, like how the younger graduates now spoke with a very different slang and whatnot. Apparently Tano’rath is an actual engineer – that I didn’t know, though it was probably in his file that I never bothered to look through all the way. Too many pages.

I told him that I had been doing a short correspondence course in fine arts in my free time and he giggled for a minute straight, calling it a degree in farts.

That being done, I spent most of the time reviewing the briefing and familiarising myself with what we knew about the culture so that I’d fit in. I was also given all the Fleet’s files on the planet, though there wasn’t much information since all they’d done is mapped the planet, sent a probe down for a short while and then left. All I could glean was they mostly lived in small towns and cities, had some sort of idol worship with totem poles and witch doctors going. Not much else.

The maps showed several small settlements scattered around, but there was a big and growing one at the base of a mountain with several larger structures and a big central place of worship. My target is probably there.

Either way, the trip ended relatively quickly and I was dropped off some distance from the largest city via cloaked shuttle. Having sent a few cloaked drones ahead, I was also given photos of the locals – mostly reptilian, lithe and coming in various shades of green, grey and brown. I rolled a virtual die, landed on green, went into the toilet to change my shape before exiting the shuttle and bidding everyone goodbye.

Right, it’s the middle of the night, I’d better head into town before something eats me. It wouldn’t do me any harm, but, well, it’s also not particularly pleasant. Regardless, in order to avoid suspicion and the like, I slinked my way through the forest, avoiding the main dirt path towards the city and instead sneaking through a break in the wooden fence and slinking into town.

The town itself was mostly wooden fare, with the occasional stone house. Most places had gardens while there were farms sitting outside the fence. Flame torches lit the streets, showing several closed shops and the like. A far cry from the modern fare that I’m used to, especially since the whole place stank. No sanitation, all you get is a bucket.

There were plenty of people sleeping rough on the streets, some clustered together on mats, others alone in corners while the town guards patrolled the area. It was a small matter to pick a corner and pretend to sleep there. Yes, I can sleep, but I can also fake it, since I’m too used to having this thing called a bed.

Instead, I watched the comings and goings as dawn began to break and people woke. Thankfully, most of them went to the city baths, so they actually have some measure of hygiene here. I played along, following the routine of the locals, though aside from the baths that were free, I found myself needing money for everything else.

Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to pick out the wealthier bunch, most of them were adorned with gold or had skulls as hats for whatever reason, so a few bumps and apologies later, I had enough to get by. Of course, people started noticing and the guards started giving me the sideeye, so I waited till the foot traffic died down, went down a quiet alley and changed my appearance once I was out of sight.

Eventually, as I got used to the routine of having a morning bath, petty theft and purchasing food with the proceeds of such theft, I found myself gravitating towards the central temple where my target, Gyan would make daily appearances and make a show of feeding elixirs and the like to the sick and making them better. Of course, knowing what I know, it was clear that they were just modern medications dissolved in coloured water or in some cases, probably fruit juice.

It also soon became clear that Gyan’s lieutenants consisted of a group of “master” witch doctors that constituted his inner circle. There were plenty of rumours about what they knew, but nothing concrete. Hell, they haven’t even discovered concrete. It really takes a special type of scum to take advantage of people at this stage of development.

I ended up following a green-scaled specimen who would walk around healing the sick with diluted medication. He seemed to actually be well-intentioned, as were most of his peers, but from a bit of snooping around, including hiding under the floorboards several times, I found him to be a favourite with Gyan.

This is when it gets actually difficult – I don’t enjoy going after people who are actually decent individuals, but I need to get close and he will get me there.

I ended up tailing the witch doctor back to his hut, with his bells and trinkets making him more than easy to follow and the skull he wore as headgear making him more than recognisable.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of those situations where it was too easy and as I got knocked hard on the head by a club and dragged into the tent pseudo-comatose, I had a moment to chastise myself for being over-confident.

Not planned, but I suppose I’ll have to make it work.