The next few days were easy and relaxing ones for Max, but Nico had set herself on a mission. She was determined to find more obscure relics in this world, and she had sent out dozens of messengers to scan rare items that were for sale and verify their authenticity and origin. Only a few had met her standards, but that was enough that Nico spent most of her time studying shiny objects, while Max spent his time either lounging by the pool or going on jogs through the artificial parks, looking for the elusive winged lizards that Nico wanted to see.
Once he found some, he would call her over, but they were excellent at hiding in the thick forests, and overhead orbital scans had very little luck tracking them.
Nobody seemed to really know how many of them there were on the planet, only that they still existed in what passed for the wild between the resorts, but Max was certain that he could track some of them down.
That was what he was doing on the last full day they were scheduled to stay on the planet. He had sighted the beasts a few times before, but they vanished before he could track them, and today he had a solid lead on where their nest should be.
Once he got close to the nest, he should have an excellent chance of locating the animals for long enough to get good footage or even call Nico over to see them for herself, and that would be a definite win for him.
As he jogged through the trees, a flash of colour caught his attention, and Max turned off to follow the creature, not directly behind it, but keeping it in sight. They had a good sense of danger, and being followed would make them disappear into the trees canopies, where he couldn't accurately track the cold-blooded creatures.
After a few minutes, he saw a second brightly coloured wing, then a third, the most that he had seen in a single day so far.
It wasn't quite enough, as he hadn't gotten a solid sighting of a whole creature to scan, so he didn't have anything to report back for Nico to study later. But then an azure blue scaled body darted down out of the trees at him, and Max paused, letting the scanners built into his sunglasses record every detail about the creature.
It seemed startled that Max stopped and didn't try to avoid its swooping attack, and pulled away only centimetres from his head to circle around and squawk at him from the branches nearby.
Max just waited to see what it would do, and messaged for Nico to come to him, but to be as silent as possible so that she didn't scare the creature away.
Again the flying lizard swooped at him, but this time it circled around him at about a metre's distance, observing him with a curious gaze that reminded Max of a house cat. It was certainly somewhat intelligent and curious as it darted around in the air near Max.
Then a second one, with scales that were more teal than azure, joined the first, and they seemed to argue in the trees for a bit before they both flew down to observe Max.
Nico was closing fast, using her full speed, but Max knew that she would stop when she was a few hundred metres away so that she wasn't noticed. She had access to his scans already, so she knew what was going on as Max watched the creatures argue about him.
The second one flew off before Nico got close, but the first remained, just sitting on a branch and watching Max from a distance.
[I think that I have an idea. I'm going to use a perfume that smells like a mix of Dryad and Treefolk, and that might convince them that I'm not a threat. I will approach as cautiously as possible.] Nico informed Max as the stalemate continued.
She began to make her way carefully through the trees to come stand by Max when the second lizard reappeared, and darted straight down out of the tree to land on her head and stare at Max.
Nico did her best to avoid laughing at the situation, as the perfume had made them assume she was absolutely zero threat, but the lizard began to complain when she got ten metres from Max, bumping her head with its muzzle until she stopped walking.
"I think they like me." She informed him, with amusement heavy in her voice.
"I can't argue with that. They've decided that you make a good perch, and that's basically unheard of for them. I'm told that it's nearly impossible to catch them without gassing an area to make them sleep while you look for them.
Their biology is incredible, they're built like most birds, hollow bones and incredibly dense bones, but they carry a layer of fat on them for energy storage. That's what gives their skin that wrinkly look. It doesn't shrink as they burn energy, but the fat burns off and decreases their size." She explained, while the lizard on her head continued to stare at Max.
Nico reached up to pet the creature's head, and the cautious noises turned to happy noises before it crawled down her to sit on her left arm, so she could pet it with her right.
The one in the tree looked jealous, but it wasn't willing to come down and get close to Max, so it was out of luck.
Eventually, the two creatures got bored and flew away, leaving Max and Nico to walk back to the Resort together, happily chatting about their find for the day, and the relics that Nico had managed to recover.
In the morning, they would be returning to Absolution to wait for the last of their tourists to make it home, but they had accomplished everything that they came here for. It would give them a lot of projects to sort through as they travelled between planets that were likely to be completely barren, only suited to entertaining the tourists.
They had gotten some solid details about likely sites though, worlds that either ancient battles had occurred at, or ones where rumours said there should be an extinct population. Either of those should give them some leads about the history of the far reaches of space.
