Colorful Language

The yellow robe stood, peering down the hole as far as it went into the blackness that was the earth.  Instead of imagining that it was real as most sane minds would calmly agree, the silliness of the hole brought out a tiny chuckle from beneath the yellow robe's cowl.  "You know this is insane, yes?"  With a small motion she kicked a pebble down into it, watching it disappear in moments, swallowed by darkness.

"Mmm, yeah, not at the top of the list though."  The red robe reclining next to the hole didn't even bother looking over as he answered.

"He's right, it's not as if this one has to do with ~time~ shenanigans again."  Blue was sitting a ways off, stretching in preparation.

Another chuckle from yellow, followed by a shiver despite the heat on the dry, flat mesa of not quite cream stone.  Red shrugged, careful not to overbalance into the hole.  Even if there were sandworms (this had in fact been a discovery of some import a year back in the desert) a rockworm was an entirely different entity.  "Who even wanders around out here and falls into one of these who wouldn't be dead on impact?" said Yellow as she turned her head to face blue.

"Well, the answer appears to be one Mr. Finneous Lampert.  I think he's some sort of insurance salesman, the door to door type.  You know how pesky they are."  Red groaned from over next to the hole.  Yellow kicked another pebble in.  "He also could have been eaten and not digested yet," blue pointed out.

"And I suppose that's why this is a tri-color operation then, the business with possible carnivorous beasties that aren't listed as existing?"  Red, from yellow's perspective, seemed like somebody who would complain about anything.  In fact, it was a general trait of people from the animal handling division she'd found.

"No, it's tri-color because they wanted to make it quint-color and I outright refuse to go out into the wilderness with more than two people outside my division and they didn't have anyone else to assign."  This time yellow spat into the hole.  She had a water bottle, so it wasn't that much of a risk of dehydration.  This was only the scouting mission before tomorrow anyway.

"What were the other two colors?"  Red was either paranoid or bored, she couldn't tell.

"Green and Black."  It wasn't like it was classified.

"I can get why a anti-personel specialist wasn't high on the list, and to some extent why an ecologist isn't super useful, but. . ."  Blue left the question hanging.

"Why not bring them just in case anyway?" finished Red.  "I mean, if it's authorized. . ."

"Because," yellow intoned slowly, "there is a reason that an internal affairs officer is leading this mission."  That part of the project ~was~ classified.  Blue would likely figure it out at some point during, but it would be unprofessional to reveal it before she had to pull out the badge and swear them to secrecy in front of the debriefer.  Intelligence was an annoying division to deal with.  The other two were silent.  If not for the fact that they would have had to move to disappear, she would have thought they left.  Nice to see that authority had some power, some gravitas as it were.  She really liked that word, because it usually meant that she was done dealing with pesky, vague situations that tended to hover around color interaction.

Red broke the silence.  "I just have to stop some worms, right?"  You could never be quite sure if reds were crazy or just had some strange priority mishap.  Yellow was not quite sure that facing down possibly magical creatures was actually worse than paperwork in their minds, but it wouldn't surprise her.

The interruption of silence continued as blue took this as a sign that he could start scribbling in his notebook.  Most likely conspiracy theories, as was usually the case.  Once it was love poetry, but that time she hadn't remembered to keep her hood up.  Blues didn't tend to get out much, this one being the exception.

She let him finish a page, and then when she heard the paper flipping spoke.  "Okay, enough rest, on to the next hole, just three more before we make camp somewhere off of this thing, I don't fancy sleeping up here."  Yellow turned, striding off in what she thought was the right direction, the other two following behind her a few paces back.  "And no, I am not here to hunt down one of the fabled renegade oranges.  Those are still a myth, just so you know."