His alarm at being held captive by violent pirates dissolves into befuddlement. The dog is a tan boxer who drools up at the courier with a goofy smile, wagging his stub of a tail with an intensity which makes his whole bum wiggle.

“Hullo . . . ?”

The dog wiggles his bum even harder.

“Are ye supposed to be intimidatin’, lad?” the courier asks the dog.

The dog drools back.

“They chose the wrong breed.”

The dog tilts his head, tongue lolling from the side of his mouth, then transforms into a sharp-muzzled doberman. 

The courier yelps, launching backward so abruptly the naga nearly drops him, earning himself a hard shove in return.

Another blink and the dog is a Rottweiler. Then he’s some kind of huge mastiff, then a dark, pointy shepherd, then finally a muscle-bound tank of a pit-fighter bully.

Every breed wears the same playful, tongue-out expression.

The floating pink elf, distracted from her task, bursts into laughter as she watches the dog flick through a carousel of shapes.

“Yo, Boi.” Her voice is a rough, scratchy thing, full of mirth. “You’re doin’ it wrong. Everyone knows if ya wanna be scary, ya gotta be a chihuahua.”

The impossible dog lets out a colossal bark which transforms into a yap as he obediently shrinks into the daftest looking chihuahua the courier has ever clapped eyes on. Now ankle-level, the critter immediately begins attacking his shoes.

“Hey! No, no, bad dog!” The courier nudges him gingerly away with a foot. “These are vintage leather!”

The newly-minted chihuahua tries an experimental growl. It makes him sound like an angry pincushion.

“Tides preserve me . . .” The blue-haired elven woman rolls her eyes. “Boi, stop that. Glitch, focus.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The grinning pink girl waves a carelesss hand as she turns her attention back to hacking the shipping container. “Almost there.”

Within a few minutes, the console on the shipping container chimes and Glitch throws up her arms in triumph.

“Got it!” She swoops over to grab the front panel, sliding it gently open. “Okaaaaay, hello—huh?” Flinging the panel the rest of the way with a slam, she bobs in front of the crate, her small figure framed by shelf upon shelf of gleaming gold bars.

There ye go, thinks the courier, masking a smile by glowering at her instead. Riches beyond your wildest dreams.

“Hey Merry, this isn’t it,” says Glitch, swirling back toward the elven woman. “It’s just gold.”

“What . . . ?” says the courier, incredulous. “Just gold? Ye’ve got to be kiddin’ me—ouch!” The naga, still holding his arms in a firm lock, wrenches them back painfully.

“You have some nerve,” the serpent-man hisses.

“Aye, I’ve got a lot of ‘em,” snaps the courier, twisting his shoulders in an attempt to glare at his captor. “And you’re gettin’ on a few. There’s loads ‘o gold, just take it and scram—” 

“Enough!”

The command is not shouted, yet it rings from every corner of the room, hanging in the air as all other voices fall silent. The elven woman—Merry, Glitch had called her—walks toward him, her demeanour calm, chilly and profoundly authoritative.

“Where is your other cargo?”

The courier’s heart plummets somewhere into his gut.

“What other cargo?”

“Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be. Duke?”

“On it!” says the brawny elf with the rifle. The courier eyes him nervously, but he just tilts his head over to where the dog, back in the shape of a drool-faced boxer, is lifting his leg on the container of gold.

“Hey, Boi!” The dog looks up, leg still in the air, cheerful face earnest and alert. “Scent!”

The dog responds with a joyful bark, transforming into a droopy bloodhound. Nose to the floor, he sniffs around the cargo hold, tracking wet paw prints with every step. The courier wrinkles his nose. Now there’s dog pee everywhere. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

After covering half the cargo hold in pee-pee paw prints, the dog meanders to a blank expanse of wall opposite the cargo bay door. He barks, transforming back into his boxer-shape, bouncing on his front paws and looking very pleased with himself.

Merry turns to the courier. “Open it.”

“That’s a wall.” 

“I don’t think so.” Merry’s voice rich takes on an ice-sharp edge. “Open it.”

“Do it.” The courier flinches as the cold barrel of a rile lifts his chin until he is eye to eye with the brawny elf—Duke, Merry had called him—whose expression is significantly less pleasant than it was a few moments ago. “Or we’ll stop asking nicely.”

The courier’s breath freezes in his lungs, a hundred questions frozen with it. He doesn’t know exactly what’s inside his ‘real cargo’ beyond the vague description of SCIENTIFIC REQUISITIONS on the shipping manifesto, but he knows he’s been paid a lot to ensure it arrives. What is it? What do these people want with it? Pirates don’t attack random ships for crates full of lab supplies. And how did they find out he’s carrying it—or, for that matter, track the 5UN-FL0R?

“. . . You’re not run-o-the-mill pirates, are ye?”

No answer is forthcoming.

The courier sighs. He’s not in a position to argue and there are grander things to die for than a box of . . . well, whatever is in there.

“Fine . . .” he says, defeated. “Would ye tell Sparky back there to let go o’ me?” He tilts his head back toward the naga. “I need my arms.”

“Sparky—?!” The naga’s outrage is dismissed with a wave of Merry’s hand.

“Very well,” she says. “Try anything stupid and you will regret it. Blues Scale, release him.”

Blues Scale unhooks his arms—with one last shove for good measure—and the courier stumbles forward.

“Ach, finally,” he says, rubbing his shoulders and rolling them with a crack. He limps gingerly over to the wall the dog indicated—a wall which seems perfectly and completely solid, with no hint of a hidden door, nor any indication that anything could possibly be behind it—and prepares to make it disappear.