The Feline Menace
Title: The Feline Menace
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,436
Summary: As the group waits for their rental iguanons, Kristen and Jaida fight against a terrible injustice, and Cyprian can't make up his fool mind. Co-inspired by these pictures.
Twenty-some minutes after we checked out of the Float, we were waiting for our rental iguanons to show up at the corral just outside town with a woman and her large basket, and all of us were bored out of our minds. I would have slept, but I'm awake at the first slight squeak of a scared mouse and Cliff's snoring was hardly that. He was also resting his head on my shoulder, which was like having a drooling, constantly-keening fog horn going off next to your ear, but I didn't shrug him off. Two reasons: one, I figured at least one of us was sleeping, and two, if I did try to move his head, chances were good it might end up in my lap, and really, even if he slept through my moving him, there's no graceful, good way to go on living after that. I was just about the nod off regardless.
"Oh, kitten babies!" Kristen squealed from in front of the basket woman, and I looked over the basket woman's shoulder to see. The woman had uncovered the basket, and about five fuzzy, tiny kittens, no two alike, were curled up around each other, sleeping. It was the cutest thing I'd ever seen, the visual equivalent to taking in a mouthful of honeyed chocolate chip pancakes topped with blueberry jam and washing it down with whipped cream, and this coming from one aware of the true evil nature of felines. One, a fluffy gray and black-patched thing smaller than the rest, woke up at Kristen's squeal - none of the others did, which was surprising in that it was likely hellhounds in the Sacred Isles could have heard her cry - and its blue eyes blinked, then opened tiredly. It looked at me, then sneezed. Twice.
"Aww, it likes you! Oh, you have to buy it!" Kristen said. I looked back at the kitten, which mewled plaintively, wondering why the hell it had to be the only one awake, and I wondered what the hell the creature had done to show its affection for me.
"No," I said, and I assumed that would be the end of it. Because I was stupid.
"You might as well buy her," the basket woman said. "She's the runt, and nobody wants her, least of all me. I'm drowning her when I reach Estruisse."
"Oh my god, why would you do that?!" Kristen said, like the woman had just declared that she would waterlog the kitten happily before doing it. Or like this was the first she'd heard of the practice. All cats have a god complex a kilometer wide, and they tend to demand worship and tribute often, sometimes at times when even Adanvari would consider it ballsy; it didn't mean forcing them to meet their maker was an idea I actually liked.
Jaida stopped making blind stabs at her fingers and looked up. "Why would who do what?"
"This woman is going to drown a runty kitten," I said, and my voice had a flat, accusatory tone I didn't intend to give it. Jaida got up, stretched, and walked over. She took one long look at the basket, and at the gray and black kitten's sluggish attempts to make it over the basket towards me, turned to the basket lady, and said, "So, which parent never hugged you as a child?"
I may have made a noise commonly associated with amusement. I'll never admit it, you'll never know.
The basket woman's eyebrows raised as she said, "It's a common practice going back ages, and I'll thank you not to judge."
"Common practice doesn't mean it's not a shit idea," I said. "You know what Hadrian officials did to kick off their State of the Union meetings when Hadriat was a country? No, you don't, because that was five thousand years ago and nobody ever tried it again after the sixty bajillionth revolt."
"So you're saying these little kittens will revolt?" The woman said. "Bring it on, I say."
"No, I'm saying what you're doing is the worst idea I've ever heard since I heard that the Amlainian duke's gardener used a chocolate powder and napalm cocktail as a pesticide," I said.
"Fucking buy the kitty already," Jaida said. "I want her. Do it or I'll kill all the seed sellers in Soonah."
I looked at Jaida and said, "Why don't you buy her? The money you gave me barely leaves me anything left for seeds after I pay for our iguanon fare."
"I want her. I never said anything about wanting to pay for her."
"I'm not paying," I said, just as the kitten mewed again, and climbed into my lap. I glared down at the thing, because it was beginning to undermine my hatred of cats and making it hard to resist buying her, but it just stared at me with unblinking, wide, hopelessly blue eyes.
And the woman was going to drown it.
"What's going on?" Cliff mumbled, voice heavy with sleep - the bastard - finally lifting his head off my shoulder.
"Cyprian's refusing to save a kitten," Jaida sniffed. Kristen added, "It likes him. He's betraying a little baby kitten. He's going to break its tiny little heart."
I looked at the kitten in question, who I realized was purring like a Diesel engine and rubbing against my hand like a ten-silver whore, and then noticed the reason she was purring was because I had been petting her without realizing it. I looked back at Jaida and Kristen, who were looking at me like I was the scourge of humanity. Which, yeah. I really felt it.
"Show of hands," I said. "Which of you will shut up about the damn cat if I buy it?"
Cliff raised his hand immediately, clearly unimpressed by the kitten, and Jaida followed soon after. Kristen gazed forlornly at the cat, and said, "Can I at least talk about names?"
"No," I said. "When you learn to swindle Jaida out of 3296 silver in a mutually crooked, repetitive card game for three hundred silver a pop, then maybe you can consider renaming it."
Kristen raised her hand with a sigh I wanted to hear nothing of.
"How much?" I asked.
"Two hundred and eighty three silver," the basket woman said, which would leave me with less than fifty silver after the iguanon fare. I briefly entertained the thought of drowning the woman before I realized I'd have four extra vain, tiny, useless shit machines to care for if I did it and the fantasy was ruined.
"She won't be a burden. You'll never even know she's there traveling with you," the basket lady said after the exchange was done.
"For that price, I better damn well know where she is at all times and get a good laugh out of it," I said. Kristen squealed her joy again, ostensibly because the kitten was clawing at my shirt. It wasn't her last shirt, of course, and even if it were, Cliff would probably give her his and never wash the thing again when she gave it back.
I named it Mena, after the sister I never got to meet, and it spent the ride to Soonah resting in Kristen's shirt's cleavage while Cliff used Mena as an excuse to ogle her bouncy bed.
She was almost worth the look Kris gave Cliff when she suffered through his tenth dissertation on just how much he loved cats.
"We get it, Cliff. You love the pussy," Jaida said the eleventh time, and the twelfth, Kristen told him to keep his eyes on his steed or she'd hire Jaida to cut them out. By the start of the fourteenth, Soonah was on the horizon, and by the end of it Cliff's eyes were drawn to the city, and something like a dawning terror entered them.
"This is..." he started, and couldn't seem to finish.
"The city of Soonah, yes," I said, assuming he was feeling the ill will pressing into his consciousness. "General harbinger of dark magicks, unsavory characters, and strange bedfellows you can't tell are male, female, or non-human upon first waking. The dark heart of every slum given the form of an entire city and the function of a magical lightning rod. Den of assorted abominations. Don't tell me you didn't know."
"I - I've never seen this place, but I dreamed about this place last night," Cliff said. "Other stuff happened," Cliff said, glancing at Kristen just as briefly as the longing stayed, then turned his head back to face me, and said: "But...Cyprian, you died."
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,436
Summary: As the group waits for their rental iguanons, Kristen and Jaida fight against a terrible injustice, and Cyprian can't make up his fool mind. Co-inspired by these pictures.
Twenty-some minutes after we checked out of the Float, we were waiting for our rental iguanons to show up at the corral just outside town with a woman and her large basket, and all of us were bored out of our minds. I would have slept, but I'm awake at the first slight squeak of a scared mouse and Cliff's snoring was hardly that. He was also resting his head on my shoulder, which was like having a drooling, constantly-keening fog horn going off next to your ear, but I didn't shrug him off. Two reasons: one, I figured at least one of us was sleeping, and two, if I did try to move his head, chances were good it might end up in my lap, and really, even if he slept through my moving him, there's no graceful, good way to go on living after that. I was just about the nod off regardless.
"Oh, kitten babies!" Kristen squealed from in front of the basket woman, and I looked over the basket woman's shoulder to see. The woman had uncovered the basket, and about five fuzzy, tiny kittens, no two alike, were curled up around each other, sleeping. It was the cutest thing I'd ever seen, the visual equivalent to taking in a mouthful of honeyed chocolate chip pancakes topped with blueberry jam and washing it down with whipped cream, and this coming from one aware of the true evil nature of felines. One, a fluffy gray and black-patched thing smaller than the rest, woke up at Kristen's squeal - none of the others did, which was surprising in that it was likely hellhounds in the Sacred Isles could have heard her cry - and its blue eyes blinked, then opened tiredly. It looked at me, then sneezed. Twice.
"Aww, it likes you! Oh, you have to buy it!" Kristen said. I looked back at the kitten, which mewled plaintively, wondering why the hell it had to be the only one awake, and I wondered what the hell the creature had done to show its affection for me.
"No," I said, and I assumed that would be the end of it. Because I was stupid.
"You might as well buy her," the basket woman said. "She's the runt, and nobody wants her, least of all me. I'm drowning her when I reach Estruisse."
"Oh my god, why would you do that?!" Kristen said, like the woman had just declared that she would waterlog the kitten happily before doing it. Or like this was the first she'd heard of the practice. All cats have a god complex a kilometer wide, and they tend to demand worship and tribute often, sometimes at times when even Adanvari would consider it ballsy; it didn't mean forcing them to meet their maker was an idea I actually liked.
Jaida stopped making blind stabs at her fingers and looked up. "Why would who do what?"
"This woman is going to drown a runty kitten," I said, and my voice had a flat, accusatory tone I didn't intend to give it. Jaida got up, stretched, and walked over. She took one long look at the basket, and at the gray and black kitten's sluggish attempts to make it over the basket towards me, turned to the basket lady, and said, "So, which parent never hugged you as a child?"
I may have made a noise commonly associated with amusement. I'll never admit it, you'll never know.
The basket woman's eyebrows raised as she said, "It's a common practice going back ages, and I'll thank you not to judge."
"Common practice doesn't mean it's not a shit idea," I said. "You know what Hadrian officials did to kick off their State of the Union meetings when Hadriat was a country? No, you don't, because that was five thousand years ago and nobody ever tried it again after the sixty bajillionth revolt."
"So you're saying these little kittens will revolt?" The woman said. "Bring it on, I say."
"No, I'm saying what you're doing is the worst idea I've ever heard since I heard that the Amlainian duke's gardener used a chocolate powder and napalm cocktail as a pesticide," I said.
"Fucking buy the kitty already," Jaida said. "I want her. Do it or I'll kill all the seed sellers in Soonah."
I looked at Jaida and said, "Why don't you buy her? The money you gave me barely leaves me anything left for seeds after I pay for our iguanon fare."
"I want her. I never said anything about wanting to pay for her."
"I'm not paying," I said, just as the kitten mewed again, and climbed into my lap. I glared down at the thing, because it was beginning to undermine my hatred of cats and making it hard to resist buying her, but it just stared at me with unblinking, wide, hopelessly blue eyes.
And the woman was going to drown it.
"What's going on?" Cliff mumbled, voice heavy with sleep - the bastard - finally lifting his head off my shoulder.
"Cyprian's refusing to save a kitten," Jaida sniffed. Kristen added, "It likes him. He's betraying a little baby kitten. He's going to break its tiny little heart."
I looked at the kitten in question, who I realized was purring like a Diesel engine and rubbing against my hand like a ten-silver whore, and then noticed the reason she was purring was because I had been petting her without realizing it. I looked back at Jaida and Kristen, who were looking at me like I was the scourge of humanity. Which, yeah. I really felt it.
"Show of hands," I said. "Which of you will shut up about the damn cat if I buy it?"
Cliff raised his hand immediately, clearly unimpressed by the kitten, and Jaida followed soon after. Kristen gazed forlornly at the cat, and said, "Can I at least talk about names?"
"No," I said. "When you learn to swindle Jaida out of 3296 silver in a mutually crooked, repetitive card game for three hundred silver a pop, then maybe you can consider renaming it."
Kristen raised her hand with a sigh I wanted to hear nothing of.
"How much?" I asked.
"Two hundred and eighty three silver," the basket woman said, which would leave me with less than fifty silver after the iguanon fare. I briefly entertained the thought of drowning the woman before I realized I'd have four extra vain, tiny, useless shit machines to care for if I did it and the fantasy was ruined.
"She won't be a burden. You'll never even know she's there traveling with you," the basket lady said after the exchange was done.
"For that price, I better damn well know where she is at all times and get a good laugh out of it," I said. Kristen squealed her joy again, ostensibly because the kitten was clawing at my shirt. It wasn't her last shirt, of course, and even if it were, Cliff would probably give her his and never wash the thing again when she gave it back.
I named it Mena, after the sister I never got to meet, and it spent the ride to Soonah resting in Kristen's shirt's cleavage while Cliff used Mena as an excuse to ogle her bouncy bed.
She was almost worth the look Kris gave Cliff when she suffered through his tenth dissertation on just how much he loved cats.
"We get it, Cliff. You love the pussy," Jaida said the eleventh time, and the twelfth, Kristen told him to keep his eyes on his steed or she'd hire Jaida to cut them out. By the start of the fourteenth, Soonah was on the horizon, and by the end of it Cliff's eyes were drawn to the city, and something like a dawning terror entered them.
"This is..." he started, and couldn't seem to finish.
"The city of Soonah, yes," I said, assuming he was feeling the ill will pressing into his consciousness. "General harbinger of dark magicks, unsavory characters, and strange bedfellows you can't tell are male, female, or non-human upon first waking. The dark heart of every slum given the form of an entire city and the function of a magical lightning rod. Den of assorted abominations. Don't tell me you didn't know."
"I - I've never seen this place, but I dreamed about this place last night," Cliff said. "Other stuff happened," Cliff said, glancing at Kristen just as briefly as the longing stayed, then turned his head back to face me, and said: "But...Cyprian, you died."