"Oh damn it fine, I'll try, but you're giving me mixed signals here!!"

Maximum power and maximum laser slicing, then, aiming to carve this thing into itty bitty pieces instead of just ripping a hole out.

That works. Zazi doesn't seem to mind, though, and just giggles at it before flying out of the hole with a myriad other worms.

And now they need to go because a collapsing gargantuan worm is not a good place to be.

Yeah, yeah, but if it's all the same to Zash she'll let him do the heavy lifting of getting them out of the gargantuan collapsing worm, thanks. So inconsistent.

Fine. He can do that, if she insists. Bridal carry her and her gun like they weigh nothing and jump out.

And they can watch from a very nice vantage point as the enormous thing—a kaiju much more than a dinosaur or a whale—loses hold of itself and ponderously collapses, gushing blood soaking the sands.

"Well. There's dinner sorted, I guess."

He starts laughing, mostly in relief, and he drops back on his ass on the sand to watch the spectacle of the weight of the creature resettling in itself.

She flops back to a seat next to him.

"Still super weird to be fine with killing worms, but not humans, though. Where does that leave weirdos like us, huh? Do you have a flow chart or something for me."

"If it's a person it's bad to kill," he explains. "...though I confess that after today I might be needing to revise what I think a person is."

"Ahuh. And what if that person is going to go and kill other people. What then."

"I haven't yet needed to kill someone to prevent that." The times he failed to prevent people-killing were not ones where killing someone would've actually fixed it, or was actually possible.

"Well good for you, then."

She lights another cigarette, because she didn't really get to finish her first one.

"Your girlfriend's going to come pick us up, right, we don't have to walk back?"

"She's not my girlfriend. ...and probably."

"Whatever you say, man."

She does, in fact, drive out to come pick them up.

"So the diner has a built-in water purifier, a shower, and beds!" she says brightly, popping out of the car, looking perfectly clean and her clothes practically sparkling white again.

Both Zash and Morgan are covered in sand, goo, and blood, so the contrast is very drastic.

"And we have dinner," he says, gesturing at the monster.

"And, technically speaking, a source of water, too! Well done. No kid, though?"

"Kid was a worm in disguise."

"I have additional questions."

"Can I have that shower first."

"They're mostly directed at the state of the world, my understanding of it, and worm physiology, but since I do in fact have some for you and your healing factor, yes of course."

Back they can all go! She has put towels down on their seats, and they can lash a large hunk of worm meat to the top of the car.

"I'm really not sure what to make of Zazi. I did not think worms could get that intelligent."

"Zazi being the kid-who-was-a-worm? I mean, I know that they're a sort of... networked intelligence thing, smarter in larger groups, dumb as rocks in smaller groups, so. It does stand to reason that there could be enough of them to make a proper intelligence. I've just never heard of it before. Or one that large. Or there being a worm that looks human! And talks! Because he, they, it? definitely talked, right, I'm not making that up?"

"Oh, yes, they talked. And somehow I don't think they came with English pre-installed, so."