This was simply ungodly.

The dense, portly Norn crossed his eyes sluggishly when the tip of his nose twinkled in his inner periphery. A bead of sweat that he felt the trembling weight of rolled over his blunt nose, and he blinked as it detached and dripped down. The Norn was painfully aware of every square inch of his skin, and how he was utterly drenched in his own fluid, all clothing soaked through. His slippery agony, the hissing insects, the asphyxiatingly muggy air - all served as remorseless reminders of his location: The Maguuma Jungle.
To the Norn, this was not natural. More than not natural - Unnatural. Instead of puffs of caked snow, his boots kicked up bugs and weeds. Instead of the cold biting at his exposed skin, the same bugs that were blessed with wings bit him more literally. How this place could be inhabited by anything but deranged swampspawn, he could not provide an answer for.

"We're almost halfway!", a familiar voice carried to his ears on a musical tune. He squinted and peered forward to see just how far his companion had gotten ahead of him, and his eyes set on that whimsical little Sylvari whom he always thought was four limbs away from being a daft carrot. He watched her hair as it bobbed with each step. It taunted him in its springing levity.

"No..." He mumbled, then sucking in a breath to belt out his statement. "No! We're stopping!" He lifted a weak, pudgy finger, "Right over there!"

The Sylvari halted, passively raising a hand in surprise. She turned, and curiously followed his finger to the base of a vine-laden tree. With a piteous rise of her brow, she began to chew on her lower lip and amble to their new destination.

Whilst neatly nesting herself in the grass, a groaning mass collides with the ground beside her. The Norn had landed.

"Just where are we?"

"Oh! I... Northwest of that Inquest lab we passed an hour ago?"

"That doesn't tell me anything."

"Welllll, where do you see an Inquest lab on the map?"

The Norn screwed up his face and let it fall against his arms that bridged between his legs, an exasperated sigh billowing out of his chest.

"There's hundreds of them."

"Sixteen," she interjected with a pleased poignance.

He lifted his head and threw his arms out in a desperate gesture. "You think I can keep track of sixteen murderholes that are all red and black and made of triangles? Here! Let me navigate all of Caledon Forest and memorize each tree along the way! Hoo hoo!" He hovered over her, dancing his fingers around mockingly while he unconsciously gasped for breath in the humidity. "I'm a Sylvari, I'll talk to every plant where ever I go to learn their hopes and dreams so I can come back to know where-in-the-Bear to go just by asking a fern frond's opinion on Necromancy!"

The Sylvari girl had shrunk under him. She gazed up with wide and worried eyes, fists clutched to her chest. The Norn paused, giving her a quick scan up and down before turning away, steeling his jaw to hide the sudden shame.

It was then, they were shot and killed.

Two slugs, electrically charged and magnetically propelled, each from a different rifle.

The beaming, youthful face of a dark Asura popped up from a bush. His forehead was broad and gleamed in the sunlight, with two silver diagonal eyes spaced far apart below it. His nose was wide yet chiseled, just as sharply shaped as his jaw which framed his dashing visage.

Another head protruded from the foliage. One of a female, tinted lightly of caramel. Her features were naturally sleek, though almost alien in their harsh slant inward and beset with red, buggy eyes.

"Hey!" the female called out, cupping her mouth. "You dead?"

The male snorted in prelude to an uproarous squeaky laugh. "I think our strike rendered them officially deceased!" he heard her say. "Yes!" He shouted. "Indeed and indubitably, Operative Luscious Ears!"

She giggled and stepped out gingerly from the bush as a faint blush crept across her cheeks. The male followed, and they both waddled up to the slumping carcasses of the bookah, glyphic rifles resting in the crooks of their arms. On the way they leaned towards eachother and pressed their cheeks together, humming happily and sighing in unison, their diminutive shoulders rising and falling.