Later, when Jaela had landed them on the only patch of land even remotely hard enough to hold a ship, Enzo was immensely glad he’d foregone the suit in favor of a black tank top. It was not only hot, but humid, the kind of thick, moist air that made him feel like he was trying to breathe through a wet washcloth. He shuddered when he saw something scamper up a tree to his right, a massive orange thing he was sure could snap him in half with eight spindly legs.

A glance at Jaela made him smirk, because she’d very obviously not thought about the weather. She was wearing leather pants, and a long-sleeved leather top - her usual garb, but she was already sweating bullets, her cheeks flush with heat.

“How’s it going, Jael? Little toasty in there?”

Enzo cackled as she stormed off into the trees, taking out the orange creature with her blaster, one shot without glancing at it once. It shrieked and exploded into green guts, its legs flying off in every direction.

---

“This planet sucks,” Enzo whined two hours into their trek through the marshes, after he pulled his leg out of yet another smelly, oozy puddle with a wet squelch. “Why is it always a godsdamn shithole of a planet we get sent to? Why not a pleasure planet? Why not a nice, tropical place with beaches and a nude beach? It’s fucking hot, and Zarek I swear if I see one more of those creepy ass eight-legged freaks I’m going to lose it.”

Enzo didn’t even have the energy to imagine how great it would be to see Zarek on a nude beach. His shirt was sticking to his chest, his boots might never recover from the amount of sweat pooled in them, and he felt so sapped of energy it was unreal. Jaela was no better, lagging behind them and panting, kicking anything she could find. Enzo turned to watch as she groaned in frustration before ripping her leather jacket over her head and shoving it into her bag with a warning look Enzo clearly interpreted as: Say a damn word and you’ll lose a testicle, asshole. The pink undershirt she was wearing underneath was so soaked with sweat it looked like a layer of skin.

“Stop bitching, Zo, or I swear I’ll shove you into one of those pits,” Zarek snapped, tying his long black hair into a bun at the top of his head as he walked. He used the hem of his soaked shirt to wipe down his face and Enzo’s mouth went dry at the exposure of miles and miles of muscles, scars, and tattoos. When Enzo turned his head away he found that Jaela, too, was busy looking at anything other than their captain at that moment.

Enzo was so busy not looking at the captain, trying to remind himself why attempting to sleep with him was a horrible plan, that he didn’t notice when the man stopped walking. He grunted as his chest connected with Zarek’s back with a truly obscene, wet smack. There was nothing sexy at all, alright, about his face pressing accidentally into the back of the other man’s neck. Zarek didn’t budge when they collided, but he did jab Enzo in his stomach with his elbow and nod at the patch of trees looming directly in front of them.

He had to stand on his toes to see over Zarek’s back, pressing his hands down into those broad shoulders to give himself some leverage. They had reached their destination, finally. He whistled, low and appreciative, as he looked up, up, and up to the tops of the massive trees with purple leaves. The lowest branches were still high enough that they wouldn’t reach them even if they stood on each other’s shoulders.

“Oh, hey, I’ve got something to get me up there,” he said, right into Zarek’s ear, the silver hoops glinting in the sun next to his mouth. They’d decided before landing that using their Gifts could be a very bad idea. Some wild creatures could feel the energy, some could feed off of it, and some of them were allergic to it. They didn’t know what this thing was, what it was capable of, and it was just too big of a risk. That’s where Enzo and his handy inventions came in.

“Well, quit feeling the boss up and get your skinny little Terran ass up there,” Jaela snapped, and Enzo dropped his hands and took a hasty step back. “We didn’t bring you along to look pretty.”

Enzo was not, by any stretch of the definition, skinny. Living with Zarek’s unhinged crew had made beefing up a very urgent necessity, and over the past few months he’d filled out with more muscle than he knew what to do with. Jaela called him skinny all the time because his body was lithe compared to the captain’s, compact musculature rather than bulky. It was a frequent topic of contestation between them, their bickering so regular that it was really more habit that anything.

“Can it, shorty, the big kids are talking,” Enzo snapped, pulling a pair of gloves out of his pocket and slipping them on. He pressed his thumbs and index fingers together and the fingers and palms of the gloves turned pink. The gloves were something he’d invented when they’d had to scale a building a few weeks ago, meant to stick to glass and smooth stone, and he sincerely hoped they’d hold up on the rough bark of the trees or he was going to fall on his ass and look like a real idiot.

The pink sticky pads did their job, and before long he was pulling himself up onto a sturdy branch as close to the top of the tree as he was willing to get. The branches further up looked flimsy, and he’d already stepped on one too many weak ones. He pressed his thumbs and index fingers together again and the pink disappeared so he could click on the tiny comm behind his ear. “I’m up, boss. It’s safe. Don’t see any of our buggy friends, though.”

“Drop the pulley for Jaela, kid, I’m right behind you.”

Sure enough, when Enzo looked down he could see Zarek pulling himself up along the trunk, muscles bunching and straining with the effort. It was a slow, jerky climb. A closer look revealed spikes sticking out of straps on his palms and the toes of his boots. Impressive.

Enzo grabbed the pulley out of his biggest pocket and tied it to the sturdiest branch he could find before dropping the end down for Jaela. He smirked when he heard it collide with her face, followed by a loud curse. When she’d secured it around her waist she gave it a tug and Enzo pressed the button that started its slow ascent.

While he waited for the others to catch up he began scanning the treetops for any sign of movement, and rustle of leaves or flash of pink, keeping as still as he could. It wasn’t until Jaela was pulling herself up onto the branch next to him, huffing, that he finally spotted one. There, out of the corner of his eye and slightly up. He whipped his head around and reached into his pocket for the cuff.

“Gotcha,” he mumbled, at the same time Jaela whooped in triumph. She had clearly spotted the thing, too, as she had her cuff out and was scrambling over to it. The problem, it turned out, was that the creature could hear. At Jaela’s exclamation its tiny fluffy pink head turned in their direction, and those bulbous eyes narrowed to slits.

“Fuck,” Enzo groaned, a very bad feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. He stilled. “Jael, wait,” he hissed through clenched teeth. Jeala wasn’t listening to him, though, and soon enough she was up a branch closer the the creature which was still as a statue. Zarek arrived, perching in a crouch on the branch next to Enzo. He spotted the bug, too, and pulled his own cuff out of his pocket.

Enzo stopped him with a hand around his bicep and a quick shake of his head. “Hold it, Cap, something’s not right. I tried to stop her, but…”

For what it was worth, the captain took what he said at face value and settled in to watch. They were tense as Jaela got close to the bug, panting but grinning in triumph. She just wanted to get out of the trees and off the planet, Enzo could tell, but her unease had made her hasty. The shackle hissed as it opened and, sure enough, shit hit the fan. The creature opened its impossibly large mouth to reveal a row of razor sharp teeth and let out a wail, high-pitched and grating. Enzo resisted the urge to clap his hands over his ears, instead readying his blaster for fire.

There was no time, though, because a split second later the creature exploded into a mass of fur and teeth, growing and growing until it was easily twice Jaela’s size. Zarek groaned beside him, his arm muscles tensing up under Enzo’s sweaty palm. “Aw, hell.”

Enzo thanked their lucky stars and whatever deity lived on this side of the quadrant that Jaela hadn’t unclipped from the pulley. The slug slammed its massive tail into her chest and she shrieked as she was sent careening through the branches, falling, falling until she collided with the tree trunk with a nasty crack. There was no time to check on her because the creature had set its eyes on them next. With a quick nod to each other, Enzo hopped to the next branch and fired a shot at the slug’s branch, and Zarek pulled himself around the back of the tree and out of sight. The slug reared back and out of its mouth sailed a giant green glob. Enzo barely managed to dodge it, but some of it splattered from where it hit the tree trunk behind him. He hissed as a searing pain flared up along his back.

“Fucking shit!” he hissed. “Be careful, Zarek, the fucker’s got acid spit!”

“Of course it does,” Zarek groaned, his voice crackling through the comm at Enzo’s ear. “Dammit!”

Enzo dodged another phlegmy ball, but Jaela wasn’t so lucky. It hit her rope and burned through it in seconds. Enzo barely had time to to jump out of the tree, pressing his thumbs and forefingers together as he careened down. He grabbed the end of the rope just before it was out of his reach and slapped his other hand onto the tree trunk. He screamed as the leftover acid on the rope ate through his glove to the sensitive skin on his hand, but held tight so he could drop down to the bottom branch and lower her gingerly to the ground. Zarek was yelling at him through the comm, angry in a way Enzo had never heard directed at him.

“Are you out of your godsdamn mind, Zo?” He snapped as Enzo began the laborious task of pulling himself back up through the branches. “Fuck, jumping out of a tree this high. You could have broken your fool neck!”

Enzo grit his teeth against the pain of using his burned hand, scrambling up as fast as he could. “Didn’t know you cared so much, Cap.”

“Shut that stupid Terran mouth, Zo, I swear - “

Zarek was cut off by a roar from the beast, and when Enzo looked up he was appalled to see his captain hanging onto the thing’s back, crying out like a fucking Zarthurian warrior as it thrashed and wailed at him. Enzo hastened his pace, ignoring the snapping branches under his boots. He moved so quickly it didn’t matter, never on a perch long enough for it to fall out from under him.

He didn't make it all the way up before the tackiness on his remaining glove wore off. While the captain scuffled with the creature Enzo pulled himself up high enough that he could look down at them and try to find an opening. As he watched, the gold cuff Zarek had been trying in vain to attach to one of the creature’s antennae flew out of his hand and out of sight, the black flash of Echo’s body sailing after it. Enzo groaned when he hear Echo’s squeak of pain, and assumed by his lack of reappearance that he’d been knocked out like Jaela. He took out his own cuff and tried to steel himself for what was bound to be a very idiotic move.

Before he could fully work up the courage to make his jump, Zarek was tossed from the bug’s back. Enzo, who had worked out exactly how Zarek’s Gift worked, knew that without Echo he had no hope of portalling out of danger. Out of time, Enzo leapt out of the tree, clasped the cuff to the creature’s feeler, and pushed off that giant fuzzy body for more momentum. He just barely grabbed Zarek’s flailing wrist in time, latching onto a branch so close to the bottom it made him want to puke. He screamed as one of his shoulders tore out of place with a sickening pop, using what was left of his energy to swing Zarek over so that he could grab onto the tree trunk. He hoped fervently that the man would be able to catch him as his arm gave out and he began to fall.