~General Crook - What Time It Is~
Nepleslia Core, Funky City, Seaport District, Shattered Shell
A PHOENIX MAN ELITE XL awaited the intrepid crew of the Opportunity's Knock, steaming gloriously in several pounds of deep fried, multi-wrapped meaty goodness. It was the sandwich that most writers would be forced to compose legends about.
It was a hero sub. With every kind of meat and cheese and sauce. Wrapped in a tortilla. Fried. Wrapped in another sandwhich loaded with secret sauce. Dipped in cheese batter. Fried again. And then topped with toppings, then folded over, filled with what amounted to bolognese sauce, and re-fried again into a calzone. The kind of thing that would feed an entire rogue's galley, or one walking legend.
A monster of a sandwich, and it was just waiting to be eaten.
Taela tenatively took a slice, large enough to require both hands, and looked to her cohorts nervously before attempting the first bite of the meal. Both of them leaned in with the same sense of tenative paranoia, almost as if the meal were potentially poisoned or worse: disgusting. Narrow eyes watched carefully as her fangs dug in for the first juicy bite.
And she nearly injured her jaw on the thing, too.
"Holy shit," she finally managed to say after forcing herself to chew through the first bite. "Now that's a religious experience."
"Oho?" Mark laughed at her, beaming with a false air of skepticism as he retrieved a slice of his own, "Well, I guess I'll sign up for a membership in the Cult of Culinar right alongside ya, Kitty!"
Ilsa merely continued to examine the very thin slice she'd taken already. The careful eye of a critic considered all the ingredients equally, weighed them in the mind's eye. Dismissed them, then considered them again. Almost none of the sandwich's original configuration remained, its components scattered across a plate by a wrathful fork to be observed and collated like laboratory specimens under the microscope. "It certainly doesn't appear to be wholly inedible." Remarked the Raltean with a studious frown, "Though the sauce-to-filling ratio is a little on the low side. Is the sauce very strong?"
"It's like being trapped on a space casino by a ridiculous debt," Taela responded, shoveling another bite into her piece. "And besides, you're looking at it wrong. The bread. . . dough. . . whatever it is has soaked up a lotta the sauce. You're not supposed to tear it apart, you gotta eat it all in one bite!"
"Like a predator tearing into the flesh of her prey, no da?" Mused Ilsa with a sudden look of interest.
"Yeah. You can't just uh. . . flay the flesh? This analogy's going weird places,"
"Yeah, Blondie, you might wanna just keep thinkin' of it as a samwich before you go and... Ah, y'know?" Mark had started to try and ward off this fearful feeling in his gut, but decided instead to end his scentence with a good, hearty bite of his own slice of giga-sandwich. Chewing the rotational, slow, forceful mastications of a cow or alpaca, he made a very satisfied face as the flavor sunk in and the complexities of each ingredient sang out loud and proud, members of a culinary choir singing from the hymnal of fried golden brown goodness.
Ilsa, on the other hand, took up a large, thigh-thick slice of the sandwich and dove into it face first with three mighty chomps all within the same strike. Her lips didn't wander an inch from the unfortunate victim until her mouth was completely full and she drew away from it tearing a string of pastrami and cheese out of the hollowed gulch of deep fried breading between her already-stuffed teeth with a dirty growl in her throat.
"Didn't know Iai-do could be applied to eating," Taela commented with an astounded look on her face.
"Dib'n'o y' could do erry kata at once." Managed Mark around his own more thoughtful approach. Pulling at the collar of the pastel-colored blazer he'd worn to the diner, the former journalist eyed Ilsa nervously as she continued to devour the monstrosity without a moment's attention to the other two. Then, Mark swallowed his food, shot Taela a broad grin, and leaned back in his chair with crossed arms.
"Yeah we're definitely going to need a doggie-bag for the rest of this. I might be a walking warhead, but this thing's like a nuclear meltdown," Taela responded after she finished her piece. The monster meal wasn't even 2/3 finished.
"I'll go grab a waiter and handle the payment." Said Mark with a nod. Standing he started to pace away and then stopped himself quick to turn around with a somewhat violet hue on his cheeks. "Except..." Nervously, he shuffled and tried to look endearing. Not that he'd ever had trouble looking endearing before. But now money was involved. "I cleaned out my bank account back on Geshrintal. Could I?"
Taela shrugged and tossed Mark her datapad. "Yeah, and grab some of those. . . uh. . . what're those things," she mumbled looking over at another table, "Whatever those steak things are!"
Taela was, of course, referring to The Gentleman, a dish which featured steak-stuffed mushroom caps. Mark took a brief glance at the designated plate and smiled again. "O'course. I'll get one for everybody."
Once he'd departed with the datapad and a mission at hand, Ilsa made a point of noisily clearing her throat as she wiped away sandwich debris from her mouth with the sleeve of a sweater. ("Y'know they have napkins, right?") Once she'd done this and taken a hearty eight-ounces of her incredibly fruity-looking drink, she declared to Taela with victory heavy in her tone: "And you say he is not your kept man. Yet keep him, you do."
"Hey, I woulda gotten up and paid but he already beat me to it." Taela shrugged, thoughtfully stirring her Slutty Hanako, then picked at the little fry bits that had fallen off the massive sandwich.
"And besides, he sort of left his job, and just went with me. We didn't even really discuss it, either. We just happened."
"Kaila-san." Ilsa mirrored the act of a playful, understanding titter with one hand covering her mouth and her ears rocking around, "I have sampled your forceful perversions. I can tell you've been held before. I, too, have tasted the bonds of slavery. It's no shame to desire a chance to be the master for once."
"It's not like that!" Taela replied, perhaps a bit more loudly than she'd like. Her ears folded down and she hunched over sheepishly. She said in a low mumble, "He chose me, I didn't just force him along."
"His people have a saying," Ilsa kept up the offensive looking entirely too pleased with herself, "The heart allows what the heart wants? Is it not true?"
"Well, yeah, but I don't want to OWN a guy!" Taela folded her arms over and furrowed her brow.
"Now, now," Mark's reappearance couldn't have been better if it were scripted. He set a few thick styrofoam containers in front of each place setting and lowered a bag full of similar containers onto the chair he'd been sitting in while he tried to figuratively smooth down Taela's rising hackles. "Just because Blondie's tryin' to sell you a Lorath mail-order husbando don't mean you gotta buy it from her." He joked, trying to brush as close to Taela as possible as he moved around her to set a firm hand on Ilsa's shoulder. "And I'm sure Ilsa knows that you would take very good care of your mail-order husbando and he would take very good care of you-- it would be more like the two of you owned each other. And besides--" Mark leaned down very low and put his mouth right next to Ilsa's ear as he whispered to her dismay, "Some people would pay a lot for the kind of attention a smoooooth gentleman could offer."
-----
~Caravan Palace - Lone Digger~
Much Later
The sound of whining engines sliced through the air in the massive underground arena where yet another one of Nepleslia's famously dangerous and exciting airbike races was just dying down. The interior of the arena was impossibly cavernous, angular support beams stretching seeming into a vast, endless darkness where bright white lights burst down upon the people milling about in the stands below. The smell of processed cheese and beer almost overpowered the stench of motor oil and hydraulic fluid as trucks full of repulsor collant trundled around in the pit area near the center of the great winding track that worked its way all around the expanse. The volumetric fields that had been used to corral the racers onto the planned race path were now lowered and a few fans had descended from the stands to shake hands and beg for autographs. Although the race wasn't part of the official season, the fans were still very excited because the open brackets allowed strangers, newcomers, and old veterans living in semi-retirement to participate. For hardcore race fans, this was where the magic really happened. Unpredictable results with wildly varied racers from all walks of life.
One such racer was meeting her first fans, a mob of teenage girls who all looked like they could've likely beaten her in a fight were it not that she was a superpowered catgirl from another planet. Briefly, they ebbed away as one of the other racers parted the crowd with a helmet under one arm and a gauntleted hand extended to shake from the other.
"Number thirty-three, Taela Kay-luh?" Mispronounced the handsome hotshot whose perfect waves of short brown hair had been undisturbed by the sweat-harvesting hour of heart-pounding speed just before hand. "I'm sixty-seven. Norman Ratheweight. You, eh, you beat me."
"Well when you spend most your life throwing massive hunks of metal at things with normal specs, you learn how to dodge when things throw massive hunks of metal back," Taela said. "The name's Taela Kai-luh."
The neko's bike had suffered some dents in the run, but neither it or its pilot were worse for the wear.
"Pleasure's all mine." Replied Norm with a very winning smile. "It's good to see a new face out here. And I'm pretty sure third place easily qualifies you for the closed races coming up soon. Will I see you at the Prime City Thunder?"
Taela gave a casual shrug. "Maybe I will, maybe I won't. Depends on uh. . . what's that thing he said the other day. . . oh right, where the wind takes me."
"So you're not a racer by trade?" This seemed to really light a fire in Norman's belly. His emerald eyes twinkled as he considered that Taela might not just be a foreigner from some unheard of Yamataian circuit. "Well, that's a different story then, isn't it? In that case, what say you and I work out a deal-- if you end up getting blown over to the PCT, that is."
"Nope. I'm just taking my sweet time figuring out what to do next," Taela said to the first question. At the mention of a deal, her tail went rigid. Her head turned, giving him an eye. "What sort of deal are we talking, here?"
"Well, you saw who came in first, didn't you? He's a newcomer like you an--"
The creature that came in first appeared as if summoned by the very mention of him. A squat, orange and purple striped Delsaurian in a pair of tailored jeans and a thick leather jacket emerged. This time, the gaggle of teenagers were dispelled completely and the lizard man that sent them on their way let out a hissing cackle as he watched them go-- for they knew all-too-well the feeling of his scaly claw on their rump.
"Hope you're not letting Scrapeweight here fill your ear with any poissssson, Mittens." He hissed, then tossed back his head to cackle noisily and show both rows of pointy teeth.
"Well first of all, jackass, you don't win any brownie points for calling names. Second of all, you got about five seconds before I kick your ass into next week," Taela spat, the fur on her tail spiking, not bristling.
"What's the matter, little girl?" The Delsaurian feigned concern, holding a thin claw over his face. "Can't handle a little good-natured needling?"
"Six years of shell shock and a tail full of spite," Taela snarled. "Makes me a bad conversationalist."
"Maybe a little ettiquette lesson in the form of high-dollar alcohol will calm that nasty temper." Suggested the Delsaurian. He presented a crumpled business card from one pocket of his jacket and stuck it out to Taela with a mischevious smirk. "Head down to The Slimy Kitten, tell 'em Slag sent ya. I think they know what to do when a piece like you shows up with my name on her lips."
"You're fucking slime." Muttered the handsome Nepleslian who'd been brushed aside.
"Thanks for the input prettyboy but I can handle it. Last asshole that sleazed up on me ended up being put through a slot machine," Taela snapped, reaching behind and grabbing her tail - but not yet taking it off. "The only time you're going to see my tail up close is when I beat you senseless with it, gecko!"
A thin forked tongue darted in and out of a pensive-looking snout. Slag sized up his opponent for a moment, then raised his claw again and made his most confident look yet. "Save it for the races, Ssssssocks. I'd hate to see a pretty catgirl spend the night in a dirty Nepleslian jail for assaulting an innocent skink whose only problem was a snout too big for his chaps."
"You're right, you AREN'T worth beating senseless. Just a little salamander trying to slime his way through," Taela said, turning her attention back to the jock who had started the conversation to begin with. "So, you were saying?"
"I was suggesting we give this creep a run for his money next race." Shot back the hotshot youngster with a new fire in his eyes. He jutted a thumb to the self-satisfied Slag who was cheerily intertwining his claws.
"I wasn't even that interested before but you can count me in, now. Here's my comm number."
Taela tossed a scrap of paper she had scrawled on (It looked like it was the back of one of the race flyers) to Norman, before turning her back to try and get out of the racing pit and find her friends/lovers/crew/general miscreants.
As she left, she heard the hissing tones of Slag calling out behind her, a parting gift from the articulate and scaly racer. "Hope you've got what it takessss to race with professionals, Fluffy. I'd hate to beat you again."
"Every. Fucking. Time." Taela hissed before disengaging her tail into a stun-lance and launching herself at the lizard.
-----
"Kaila-san, were you to engage a wanted criminal in the future, it would be wise to notify me first. You know of my hobby."
Ilsa was speaking to Taela from the other side of a desk at the police station where she and Norm had ended up with ice-bags on their heads and a swarm of unhappy policemen who'd never had to subdue a Neko before. The blue uniforms swam past the desks and long benches under the soft glow of flourescent lights in the inner-city precint as Ilsa finished settling the fine between narrowing heavy glances at Taela from across the desk.
"You are entirely too lucky that I was pursuing leads in the area or I never would have found out you were here." Warned the taller Raltean Neko with a motherly tone. "Your kept man must be worried sick over you right now."
"I told you a million times, Mark ain't a kept man," Taela sighed. "And that asshole started it - and if I'd known he was a criminal, I would've paged you. But as it stands, totally worth the price of admission to seeing his stun-face. He looked like a cooked gator."
"She's always like this." Ilsa assured the processing officer, fielding a rolling-eye tilt of the head as she explained with certainty the behavior of a person she'd met only days before. Then, there was a noisy thump of a stamp and the briefest biometric scan before Ilsa turned back to Taela and looked her over with a grim expression. "You are very lucky that Yamatai just pulled out of its extradition treaty, or you would have lost me a bounty. Try to take a little more care when we go to Nepleslia Prime, sister?"
"Yeah, I'll be more careful. Slippery bastard has a mean haymaker, gotta say." Taela said, holding the ice-pack tight to her side.
"Uh, what about me?" Norm removed the icebag from his head and raised a nervous hand towards Ilsa.
"Oh, were that kindness overflowed, Nepleslian." Explained Ilsa cooly, "But there are only three steaks back on the ship, and we haven't time to stop for more."
"What she means to say is I can pay your bail, but you're still on your own for everything else," Taela said with a glare to Ilsa. "Gonna see what the rules say about wearing power-armor in the meantime."
Nepleslia Core, Funky City, Seaport District, Shattered Shell
A PHOENIX MAN ELITE XL awaited the intrepid crew of the Opportunity's Knock, steaming gloriously in several pounds of deep fried, multi-wrapped meaty goodness. It was the sandwich that most writers would be forced to compose legends about.
It was a hero sub. With every kind of meat and cheese and sauce. Wrapped in a tortilla. Fried. Wrapped in another sandwhich loaded with secret sauce. Dipped in cheese batter. Fried again. And then topped with toppings, then folded over, filled with what amounted to bolognese sauce, and re-fried again into a calzone. The kind of thing that would feed an entire rogue's galley, or one walking legend.
A monster of a sandwich, and it was just waiting to be eaten.
Taela tenatively took a slice, large enough to require both hands, and looked to her cohorts nervously before attempting the first bite of the meal. Both of them leaned in with the same sense of tenative paranoia, almost as if the meal were potentially poisoned or worse: disgusting. Narrow eyes watched carefully as her fangs dug in for the first juicy bite.
And she nearly injured her jaw on the thing, too.
"Holy shit," she finally managed to say after forcing herself to chew through the first bite. "Now that's a religious experience."
"Oho?" Mark laughed at her, beaming with a false air of skepticism as he retrieved a slice of his own, "Well, I guess I'll sign up for a membership in the Cult of Culinar right alongside ya, Kitty!"
Ilsa merely continued to examine the very thin slice she'd taken already. The careful eye of a critic considered all the ingredients equally, weighed them in the mind's eye. Dismissed them, then considered them again. Almost none of the sandwich's original configuration remained, its components scattered across a plate by a wrathful fork to be observed and collated like laboratory specimens under the microscope. "It certainly doesn't appear to be wholly inedible." Remarked the Raltean with a studious frown, "Though the sauce-to-filling ratio is a little on the low side. Is the sauce very strong?"
"It's like being trapped on a space casino by a ridiculous debt," Taela responded, shoveling another bite into her piece. "And besides, you're looking at it wrong. The bread. . . dough. . . whatever it is has soaked up a lotta the sauce. You're not supposed to tear it apart, you gotta eat it all in one bite!"
"Like a predator tearing into the flesh of her prey, no da?" Mused Ilsa with a sudden look of interest.
"Yeah. You can't just uh. . . flay the flesh? This analogy's going weird places,"
"Yeah, Blondie, you might wanna just keep thinkin' of it as a samwich before you go and... Ah, y'know?" Mark had started to try and ward off this fearful feeling in his gut, but decided instead to end his scentence with a good, hearty bite of his own slice of giga-sandwich. Chewing the rotational, slow, forceful mastications of a cow or alpaca, he made a very satisfied face as the flavor sunk in and the complexities of each ingredient sang out loud and proud, members of a culinary choir singing from the hymnal of fried golden brown goodness.
Ilsa, on the other hand, took up a large, thigh-thick slice of the sandwich and dove into it face first with three mighty chomps all within the same strike. Her lips didn't wander an inch from the unfortunate victim until her mouth was completely full and she drew away from it tearing a string of pastrami and cheese out of the hollowed gulch of deep fried breading between her already-stuffed teeth with a dirty growl in her throat.
"Didn't know Iai-do could be applied to eating," Taela commented with an astounded look on her face.
"Dib'n'o y' could do erry kata at once." Managed Mark around his own more thoughtful approach. Pulling at the collar of the pastel-colored blazer he'd worn to the diner, the former journalist eyed Ilsa nervously as she continued to devour the monstrosity without a moment's attention to the other two. Then, Mark swallowed his food, shot Taela a broad grin, and leaned back in his chair with crossed arms.
"Yeah we're definitely going to need a doggie-bag for the rest of this. I might be a walking warhead, but this thing's like a nuclear meltdown," Taela responded after she finished her piece. The monster meal wasn't even 2/3 finished.
"I'll go grab a waiter and handle the payment." Said Mark with a nod. Standing he started to pace away and then stopped himself quick to turn around with a somewhat violet hue on his cheeks. "Except..." Nervously, he shuffled and tried to look endearing. Not that he'd ever had trouble looking endearing before. But now money was involved. "I cleaned out my bank account back on Geshrintal. Could I?"
Taela shrugged and tossed Mark her datapad. "Yeah, and grab some of those. . . uh. . . what're those things," she mumbled looking over at another table, "Whatever those steak things are!"
Taela was, of course, referring to The Gentleman, a dish which featured steak-stuffed mushroom caps. Mark took a brief glance at the designated plate and smiled again. "O'course. I'll get one for everybody."
Once he'd departed with the datapad and a mission at hand, Ilsa made a point of noisily clearing her throat as she wiped away sandwich debris from her mouth with the sleeve of a sweater. ("Y'know they have napkins, right?") Once she'd done this and taken a hearty eight-ounces of her incredibly fruity-looking drink, she declared to Taela with victory heavy in her tone: "And you say he is not your kept man. Yet keep him, you do."
"Hey, I woulda gotten up and paid but he already beat me to it." Taela shrugged, thoughtfully stirring her Slutty Hanako, then picked at the little fry bits that had fallen off the massive sandwich.
"And besides, he sort of left his job, and just went with me. We didn't even really discuss it, either. We just happened."
"Kaila-san." Ilsa mirrored the act of a playful, understanding titter with one hand covering her mouth and her ears rocking around, "I have sampled your forceful perversions. I can tell you've been held before. I, too, have tasted the bonds of slavery. It's no shame to desire a chance to be the master for once."
"It's not like that!" Taela replied, perhaps a bit more loudly than she'd like. Her ears folded down and she hunched over sheepishly. She said in a low mumble, "He chose me, I didn't just force him along."
"His people have a saying," Ilsa kept up the offensive looking entirely too pleased with herself, "The heart allows what the heart wants? Is it not true?"
"Well, yeah, but I don't want to OWN a guy!" Taela folded her arms over and furrowed her brow.
"Now, now," Mark's reappearance couldn't have been better if it were scripted. He set a few thick styrofoam containers in front of each place setting and lowered a bag full of similar containers onto the chair he'd been sitting in while he tried to figuratively smooth down Taela's rising hackles. "Just because Blondie's tryin' to sell you a Lorath mail-order husbando don't mean you gotta buy it from her." He joked, trying to brush as close to Taela as possible as he moved around her to set a firm hand on Ilsa's shoulder. "And I'm sure Ilsa knows that you would take very good care of your mail-order husbando and he would take very good care of you-- it would be more like the two of you owned each other. And besides--" Mark leaned down very low and put his mouth right next to Ilsa's ear as he whispered to her dismay, "Some people would pay a lot for the kind of attention a smoooooth gentleman could offer."
-----
~Caravan Palace - Lone Digger~
Much Later
The sound of whining engines sliced through the air in the massive underground arena where yet another one of Nepleslia's famously dangerous and exciting airbike races was just dying down. The interior of the arena was impossibly cavernous, angular support beams stretching seeming into a vast, endless darkness where bright white lights burst down upon the people milling about in the stands below. The smell of processed cheese and beer almost overpowered the stench of motor oil and hydraulic fluid as trucks full of repulsor collant trundled around in the pit area near the center of the great winding track that worked its way all around the expanse. The volumetric fields that had been used to corral the racers onto the planned race path were now lowered and a few fans had descended from the stands to shake hands and beg for autographs. Although the race wasn't part of the official season, the fans were still very excited because the open brackets allowed strangers, newcomers, and old veterans living in semi-retirement to participate. For hardcore race fans, this was where the magic really happened. Unpredictable results with wildly varied racers from all walks of life.
One such racer was meeting her first fans, a mob of teenage girls who all looked like they could've likely beaten her in a fight were it not that she was a superpowered catgirl from another planet. Briefly, they ebbed away as one of the other racers parted the crowd with a helmet under one arm and a gauntleted hand extended to shake from the other.
"Number thirty-three, Taela Kay-luh?" Mispronounced the handsome hotshot whose perfect waves of short brown hair had been undisturbed by the sweat-harvesting hour of heart-pounding speed just before hand. "I'm sixty-seven. Norman Ratheweight. You, eh, you beat me."
"Well when you spend most your life throwing massive hunks of metal at things with normal specs, you learn how to dodge when things throw massive hunks of metal back," Taela said. "The name's Taela Kai-luh."
The neko's bike had suffered some dents in the run, but neither it or its pilot were worse for the wear.
"Pleasure's all mine." Replied Norm with a very winning smile. "It's good to see a new face out here. And I'm pretty sure third place easily qualifies you for the closed races coming up soon. Will I see you at the Prime City Thunder?"
Taela gave a casual shrug. "Maybe I will, maybe I won't. Depends on uh. . . what's that thing he said the other day. . . oh right, where the wind takes me."
"So you're not a racer by trade?" This seemed to really light a fire in Norman's belly. His emerald eyes twinkled as he considered that Taela might not just be a foreigner from some unheard of Yamataian circuit. "Well, that's a different story then, isn't it? In that case, what say you and I work out a deal-- if you end up getting blown over to the PCT, that is."
"Nope. I'm just taking my sweet time figuring out what to do next," Taela said to the first question. At the mention of a deal, her tail went rigid. Her head turned, giving him an eye. "What sort of deal are we talking, here?"
"Well, you saw who came in first, didn't you? He's a newcomer like you an--"
The creature that came in first appeared as if summoned by the very mention of him. A squat, orange and purple striped Delsaurian in a pair of tailored jeans and a thick leather jacket emerged. This time, the gaggle of teenagers were dispelled completely and the lizard man that sent them on their way let out a hissing cackle as he watched them go-- for they knew all-too-well the feeling of his scaly claw on their rump.
"Hope you're not letting Scrapeweight here fill your ear with any poissssson, Mittens." He hissed, then tossed back his head to cackle noisily and show both rows of pointy teeth.
"Well first of all, jackass, you don't win any brownie points for calling names. Second of all, you got about five seconds before I kick your ass into next week," Taela spat, the fur on her tail spiking, not bristling.
"What's the matter, little girl?" The Delsaurian feigned concern, holding a thin claw over his face. "Can't handle a little good-natured needling?"
"Six years of shell shock and a tail full of spite," Taela snarled. "Makes me a bad conversationalist."
"Maybe a little ettiquette lesson in the form of high-dollar alcohol will calm that nasty temper." Suggested the Delsaurian. He presented a crumpled business card from one pocket of his jacket and stuck it out to Taela with a mischevious smirk. "Head down to The Slimy Kitten, tell 'em Slag sent ya. I think they know what to do when a piece like you shows up with my name on her lips."
"You're fucking slime." Muttered the handsome Nepleslian who'd been brushed aside.
"Thanks for the input prettyboy but I can handle it. Last asshole that sleazed up on me ended up being put through a slot machine," Taela snapped, reaching behind and grabbing her tail - but not yet taking it off. "The only time you're going to see my tail up close is when I beat you senseless with it, gecko!"
A thin forked tongue darted in and out of a pensive-looking snout. Slag sized up his opponent for a moment, then raised his claw again and made his most confident look yet. "Save it for the races, Ssssssocks. I'd hate to see a pretty catgirl spend the night in a dirty Nepleslian jail for assaulting an innocent skink whose only problem was a snout too big for his chaps."
"You're right, you AREN'T worth beating senseless. Just a little salamander trying to slime his way through," Taela said, turning her attention back to the jock who had started the conversation to begin with. "So, you were saying?"
"I was suggesting we give this creep a run for his money next race." Shot back the hotshot youngster with a new fire in his eyes. He jutted a thumb to the self-satisfied Slag who was cheerily intertwining his claws.
"I wasn't even that interested before but you can count me in, now. Here's my comm number."
Taela tossed a scrap of paper she had scrawled on (It looked like it was the back of one of the race flyers) to Norman, before turning her back to try and get out of the racing pit and find her friends/lovers/crew/general miscreants.
As she left, she heard the hissing tones of Slag calling out behind her, a parting gift from the articulate and scaly racer. "Hope you've got what it takessss to race with professionals, Fluffy. I'd hate to beat you again."
"Every. Fucking. Time." Taela hissed before disengaging her tail into a stun-lance and launching herself at the lizard.
-----
"Kaila-san, were you to engage a wanted criminal in the future, it would be wise to notify me first. You know of my hobby."
Ilsa was speaking to Taela from the other side of a desk at the police station where she and Norm had ended up with ice-bags on their heads and a swarm of unhappy policemen who'd never had to subdue a Neko before. The blue uniforms swam past the desks and long benches under the soft glow of flourescent lights in the inner-city precint as Ilsa finished settling the fine between narrowing heavy glances at Taela from across the desk.
"You are entirely too lucky that I was pursuing leads in the area or I never would have found out you were here." Warned the taller Raltean Neko with a motherly tone. "Your kept man must be worried sick over you right now."
"I told you a million times, Mark ain't a kept man," Taela sighed. "And that asshole started it - and if I'd known he was a criminal, I would've paged you. But as it stands, totally worth the price of admission to seeing his stun-face. He looked like a cooked gator."
"She's always like this." Ilsa assured the processing officer, fielding a rolling-eye tilt of the head as she explained with certainty the behavior of a person she'd met only days before. Then, there was a noisy thump of a stamp and the briefest biometric scan before Ilsa turned back to Taela and looked her over with a grim expression. "You are very lucky that Yamatai just pulled out of its extradition treaty, or you would have lost me a bounty. Try to take a little more care when we go to Nepleslia Prime, sister?"
"Yeah, I'll be more careful. Slippery bastard has a mean haymaker, gotta say." Taela said, holding the ice-pack tight to her side.
"Uh, what about me?" Norm removed the icebag from his head and raised a nervous hand towards Ilsa.
"Oh, were that kindness overflowed, Nepleslian." Explained Ilsa cooly, "But there are only three steaks back on the ship, and we haven't time to stop for more."
"What she means to say is I can pay your bail, but you're still on your own for everything else," Taela said with a glare to Ilsa. "Gonna see what the rules say about wearing power-armor in the meantime."
