"I got it!" Grace stumbled in the door, panting. She and Carol looked absolutely shredded - bloodied, clothing torn, sweaty, exhausted - and for some reason Carol's hair was drastically uneven. The figure standing in the old, half burned out mill stared at them blankly, an androgynous figure wrapped in bear pelts.



"Okay... how?!"



"We spent two hours... kiting it back and forth... and pelting it with whatever we could find!" Grace thrust two victorious fists in the air, then crumpled over, clutching her sides. "ALL THE OW'S."



"This had better be worth it, weirdo." Carol glowered.



"It is! I promise it is!" The purplette raised their hands, setting them on either side of an alchemic crafting station. "So let's see the viscera." Carol looked away, a hand in front of her mouth, as Grace opened her bag and dumped an improbable amount of dragon organs atop the table - by volume, at least three times the size of the backpack. The purplette did not seem disturbed. "Perfect. I mean, there's a lot more than we need here. Like a whole, whole lot more, but I can use the rest of this for something or another."



"You didn't really tell me which parts we need. Is it the heart? I saw a movie about that once." She leaned over the crafting station, peering in intently, as the purplette shook her head.



"Nope. The organ doesn't have a mammalian equivalent. We're looking for the draconis fundamentum."



"Dragoney important bit, got it."



"It's this weird squishy sac thing in the base of the throat - there, see that?" They tapped a bit near the gizzard. Grace beamed.



"That's it? Cool! So how does that give me dragoney powers?"



"So first we cut it out." They retrieved a butcher knife and hacked the organ out, leading to Carol (off in the corner) looking particularly green. "Then we're gonna apply some tanning acid." A distinct splashing noise and a faint sizzle. "Then we're gonna streeeeetch it into this frame I made out of a toaster..." They did just that, to a grotesque GRIIIINKing sound. "...and theeeen... do you have any more scrap? I'll need like ten pieces."



"You are really lucky that I'm a packrat." Grace rummaged in her bag and retrieved five nondescript yet identical piles of barrel pieces, wires, and metal. The purplette took them, nodding briefly, and fiddled with them until they were a completely different shape, with none of the defining characteristics of the original piles of whatnot visible.



"Hook this dealybobber up to this... and plug in a handle here... and... voila! You now have dragon-breath in an easy to carry weapon!" With a dramatic musical sting that was probably supposed to only be in Grace's head, she hoisted the Toaster-Gun-Of-Dragony-Doom high.



"AWESOME. So can I try it?"



"Well yeah, but not insi-"



=FRAG-RO-BLAM!=



-o-



"I thought you were out of the hills already."



"Turns out the end of quest area doesn't have an autosave."