Dex was in a good mood. He’d trailed after the hunters, grinning and bothering them continuously until they gave up little odds and ends in exchange for equally useless bits and pieces. Napkins and glass shards, pebbles and bottlecaps, they went around and around and around and sooner or later they landed in his loving care, carefully sorted in various pouches. He liked bottlecaps the best- they had such a round, pleasant shape, and made a nice chink sound when he stacked them in neat piles. As for the colors- they were so bright! So pretty! By now he’d studied them so much that he could rattle off a stream of brand names at the drop of a pin- Coca Cola, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Pepsi- even though he had no idea what they meant.<br/><br/>A sudden growl nearby interrupted this happy stream of thought. Frowning slightly in sudden annoyance, he opened his mouth to reprimand his canine companion-<br/><br/>And had to close it again, rather quickly, because now the pungent, metallic scent of blood was so strong that he could<span style="font-style: italic"> taste </span>it.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic"> Oh, no. </span><br/><br/>He stumbled at the assault of raw color- Red! So much red! He felt a wall of murky green swirl up behind his eyes as if to combat the aggressive shade, but the crimson leaked in through his nostrils, caked on his tongue, clung at his feet, and screamed in his ear like a battering ram. It was terrible, it was loud, it was nauseating, and it was definitely not going to be hindered by something so puny as an eyelid.<br/><br/>He gave up and opened his eyes again, somewhat reluctantly. He knew what was going to be there, he didn’t have to look at it... Except he had to look at it, he knew, because if he didn’t look then everything would have been a horrific waste of red paint. He stood there, somewhat dazed -<span style="font-style: italic"> oh no, not the tortoise, not the <span style="font-weight: bold"> tortoise, </span> </span>- and now there were already a handful of people wading through the sticky slush, presumably gathering any relics the dead had so thoughtfully left behind. He knew he should be picking through the carnage along with the others- some merchant he’ll be, if he turned down such a generous offer!- but something made him hesitate.<br/><br/>Perhaps it was because of Minion, who was obviously tense; he was pacing around and around and around, growling like a blender all the while. Or perhaps it was because of the poor tortoise, who was looking increasingly less dignified with the removal of its beautiful shell. Or maybe it was because of the gratuitous amount of blood, so bright and fresh-looking on the lifeless snow. He<span style="font-style: italic"> knew </span>that it was going to stain his clothes horrifically, and he didn’t even have any soap left!<br/><br/>He swayed for a moment, torn between sensibility and irrationality; then he let out an unhappy sigh and began to thoroughly shake down the nearest corpse. Bloodstains aside, he couldn’t possibly ignore all those lovely freebies, and anyhow-ooh look, a nice little lighter.<br/><br/>Soon enough, he'd started the ol' routine: Find corpse, check pulse(you never knew, these days), take item, find corpse, suspiciously ogle corpse, take item. It was a simple task, and after a while Dex’s spirits had lifted considerably. Today was a good day. Sure, a lot of people were dead, but he was alive and now he had a lot of things! And if the dead guys wanted to argue, he could ignore them, because they were dead and dead people can’t formulate proper arguments. He smiled apologetically at what was left of the poor sod at his feet. “Come on, now,don’t be so glum!  At least we found you, eh? Suppose you’d died all alone in the middle of nowhere- everything you had would have gone to waste! But you died here, where I can take your stuff and be thankful for it. So no hard feelings, eh? I’d have done the same thing in your place…” The corpse didn’t respond, but Dex continued to talk animatedly- there was such a thing as manners, after all. Besides, he was used to people ignoring him.<br/><br/>After about five-and-a-half bodies(all of whom had pointedly given him the cold shoulder/stump despite his apologetic speeches), he stopped looking for fresh corpses, because he’d filled his quota. Instead, he sauntered over to the gargantuan tortoise shell- but not too close, because he didn’t really like the man-mountain that much.<br/><br/>He didn’t notice Lazarus at first, since he was too busy admiring the sheer size of the carapace; but when he finally did, he spent a good forty seconds laughing hysterically at the ridiculous sight.<br/><br/>“You’re in the biggest soup bowl in the world, Lazarus!”