The Hidden Mall Part XI: The Narnia Thing

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
🏬🛍️

Well, what were they going to do? She took Rick by the arm and steered him with them, leading him towards their escape. “If this is a trick…” she muttered. She didn’t finish the sentence, because she wasn’t quite sure what she’d do if it was a trick. She had one hand on Liv, one on plastic-Rick, and they were in a mall full of plastic people.

They walked as stiffly as they could towards a back door, Rick getting stiffer and stiffer the closer they got. By the time Liv pulled the door open, Liv being the one with a free hand, Abigail practically had to drag Rick into the behind-hallway.

Here it was bright and shiny, no grey, no bare wiring, nothing. It was as if the mall continued into the behind-space, which made Abigail more than a little concerned. “Sit down,” she told Rick. He sat, stiffly, the way her dolls had sat, their legs sticking out. She looked at the back of his neck.

There it was, just inside his hairline, a tiny little thing that looked plastic. Abigail dug in her purse until she found her tweezers.
She didn’t need to tell Rick to hold still; he wasn’t moving at all. Still, she was careful as she pulled out the little thing.
Rick twitched, shuddered, and fell over, his whole body shaking with spasms.
He was making such a scene Abigail almost missed Liv trying to sneak off. She grabbed her friend by the arm. “So. Do we try to rescue other people here?”

Liv twitched. “I want to see the beavers!”

“Liv, first things first, okay? First. There are people here who are stuck with these things in their necks. Do we try to take them out, do we find the source of the problem, or do we go for a doorway and not worry about them?”

“This place ins’t real anyway!” Liv tried to pull away. “I want to go back to the nice place, with the bookstore!”

“I want to go back, too, Liv.” Abigail tried to sound patient. She wasn’t feeling very patient. “But, first. This place. Plastic people. Do we help them?”

That seemed, finally, to get through. Liv looked at Rick, who had stopped twitching and was trying to sit up. “What if he was, uh, special? Too stubborn or something?’
“Thanks,” Rick snarled, and then paused, staring at them. “Wait. I saw you. You were like the rest of us. And then you went off…”
“I don’t want to know,” Abigail put in quickly. “I really don’t. That wasn’t us, or, at least, it was a different us. There’s passageways, uh, behind the mall, and we’re just trying to get back home. It’s a long story. Anyway, CAN we help people? Do you think?”
“I think I have to try,” he mumbled. “It was my girlfriend who got us into this. Well, I thought she was my girlfriend. I guess she was as plastic as all the rest of them.” He made a face. “So I can help, yeah. Come on, I know where the controller station is. And you have those tweezers.”
“What about going home?” Liv complained. “What about the Beavers?”
“We’ll get there, Liv. But – this is the Narnia thing to do, right?”
Rick laughed. “Nerds,” he laughed, and then, more gently, and a little surprised. “Hunh. That’s why you helped me. Nerds.” This time he said it with affection.

“Nerds,” Abigail agreed, not so much tired as resigned. “That’s us, Rick. Come on, let’s find the White Witch and destroy her.”

Live considered that, looked over at Rick, made a face, and nodded. “It’s the nerd thing to do. Rick, if you shove me into a fountain again, I’m feeding you to the evil clowns.”

“Evil clowns?” He actually looked worried. “I thought the plastic people was bad enough. There’s evil clowns, too?”

“Different mall,” Abigail explained. “Come on. We still have to get back home before Liv’s mother picks us up, and that’s a long way away by any measure.”

“You nerds are weird,” Rick complained. “Come on, this way. I’ll get you in.”
🎒🏦


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Catboys in Cages

Jul30

Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Written because I just wanted to write something fun.

Carlie hadn’t meant to end up at a slave market.

She’d been aiming for – well, to be honest, she wasn’t aiming for anywhere, more away from. She wasn’t exactly in a hurry but she was trying to keep moving. She might not have anyone on her tail, but it wasn’t the sort of thing one really wanted to find out.

But her horse was getting tired, she as getting tired, and there was a roof, which seemed like a really good idea. Portable-shade was a decent Working, but it was still a Working, and that meant it took energy. Energy took fuel. She’d had to leave half of her supplies behind in the last place, and the next Group safe-house she knew about was at least two days away, if she wanted to lean on the Group. Again.

So here she was, under a roof, thinking it was a market and she could trade something in her remaining stores for some fuel. And the first thing she came upon was a cage.

No, a row of cages. They came to hip-high, they were about as long as they were tall, and they were made of a mesh like a dog kennel only thicker. Every single one of them was padlocked shut. very single one had a man or woman in it, more than half of them in thick wooden collars and the other half in equally-thick steel collars.

She needed to get out of here before she ended up on the other side of those padlocks. She needed to get far gone before her horse ended up either in a stable for sale or in a pot for meat. She needed to leave, leave, leave as casually as possibly.

She locked eyes with a man in a cage and started mentally inventorying her stocks. If she was here to buy, she thought, well, they didn’t enslve their customers. That would be bad business.

He had green eyes, notched black cat ears, and a scowl that showed off a lot of teeth. He’d been beaten, he’d been in a couple bad fights, and all four of his limbs were shackled to the edges of the cage.

He was naked, too, and there was something in the set of his back and the way his snarl twisted that suggested maybe it wasn’t so much the chains as the person who’d put them on him who was the problem.

She knelt in front of the cage and looked at him. “Can you ride?”

He started to answer and stopped, nodded, gritted his teeth.

“Do you bite?”

He grinned, showing her all his teeth – except two that had been broken.

“Well then. Think you’re worth your purchase price?”

He looked startled by the question. After a moment, much more uncertainly, he nodded.

“I guess I’m buying you today, then.” A pity she couldn’t buy the whole market. “Try not to let me regret it, okay?”


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Kidnapped

Jul29

Content warning: kidnapping and all that it implies

He was going to fight when he woke up, in all likelihood. They almost always fought.

He hadn’t fought them getting in the car because they’d drugged him. A guy like him, rich father, stupidly influential mother, ought to have known better, but it’d been a closed thing, fraternity gig, and he’d probably thought he was safe among his brothers.

Fraternity parties invited girls.

The sister sorority hadn’t even been hard to join. Cass and Jenn, as they were calling themselves this week, hadn’t had any problem with the initiation rites, and sorority hazing was nothing compared to their actual organization.

He was coming home with them, drugged and happy, and none of his brothers even thought it was strange.

They might find it strange when he didn’t show up tomorrow. They might actually worry the next day.

By then, any reputation he had would be in the process of being destroyed, and the nude pictures Cass and Jenn were going to send the Senator and her husband would leave no question as to what was going on with their darling son.

They had the cabin in the woods already picked out for it. The parents might find him. If they wanted to. If they were inclined to. If they had the resources still after Cass and Jenn and their organization were done with him.

He stirred. Cass twisted to look at him. He was cute, soft lips, an adorable smile. She sort of hoped that his parents didn’t come after him.

The last one, that had been interesting. Congressman Hartford and her doctor husband, their handsome son. The Hartford-Maynards had looked for their son, but Cass was pretty sure they hadn’t looked too hard or too long.

‘They’d been sent the pictures of the corpse. That, of course, had been faked. Their organization was damn good at faking corpses, and if the Hartford-Maynards ever did find the place their son had been kept, they would find enough to convince them they’d found his body.
The son himself, on the other hand, had entered into personal service with Jenn, and was – probably – happily enough in Jenn’s dorm waiting for her right now. Her real dorm, at their real college. He was getting top grades, too.

Jenn pulled off the main road and down a side road that was only very nominally paved. Cass squirmed into the back seat. He was starting to come to, and they were out of the sight of police and random passers-by now.

In a week, there’d be some very compromising pictures sent to the Senator. Jenn and Cass had seven days, then, to have as much fun as they could with the Senator’s son. The pictures could be faked. But it was so much better if they could just get him to agree to play along.


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Chimera-Con

Jul28

It was Dan’s idea to call it Chimera-Con, a fact which he would never after be allowed to live down.

Their little city wasn’t really big enough for real conventions, so the comic convention, the anime convention, and the furry convention had joined together into one, as Dan put it, three-headed fire-breathing monster of a convention.

Cute. Clever. And it drew enough attention that they actually got some decent guests of honor.

Hadley Storm was a well-known urban fantasy author, the sort of thing that everyone read for a couple years early in college. Nobody had expected her to show up.

Them, maybe. It turned out there was a reason Hadley didn’t do too many cons, and the main reason was that Hadley had a chimera-split personality: that is, there were three people in Hadley, and they didn’t always get along.

On the other hand, one of them liked Dan a lot.

So that was interesting enough, but add onto it the stack of chimera fursuits (both the sort with three heads and, in two creepy cases, the fish) and Chimera cosplays (including the Yu-Gi-Oh! chimera, the My Little Pony Chimera, and a were-hyena, for some reason), and it was beginning to look like they’d been a little too Chimera-leaning in their advertising.

By that point Dan had a headache and Adele was laughing at him, Sean, who was running the thing, was trying to figure out if they needed new panels, and Hadley Storm’s angriest personality had taken over their panel and was happily discussing chimer-ism.

Which is when things got even more interesting.

It turned out they’d missed the first few, because in humans it was almost never visible, but there was a small but growing minority – large enough that they’d scribbled three new panels into the program, saving Sean the work while giving him a headache – of people with chimerism.

At this point Dan curled up in a corner with a plastic bottle of vodka and refused to come out.
Which meant that he missed the group of botanists – one of whom was in a very nice Chimera (Clash of the Titans) cosplay – who set up their own panels down in the unused basement.

Unfortunately, it didn’t mean that he missed perhaps the most interesting guest to the con, because the spirit of the Dreaming that had decided this was a joyful place of chaos and imagination had found the same table to hide under after attempting to prank the Yu-Gi-Oh! cosplayer. This powerful chimerical spirit joined Dan in drinking magically-infused vodka, both of them pretending they couldn’t see the other.

By the time the lion-goat-snake creature breathing fire actually came through the door, nobody even pretended to be surprised.


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Dragons next Patreon

Jul28

⛳
“Fore!… Damnit! I don’t know what’s up with me today, Jim, I just can’t swing a damn stick!”

Open to all Patreons!

Originally posted Aug. 10, 2011

🛒

I think it’s fair that I thought Farnah was male.

Read On!

This week on What an Old House, we’re doing some exploratory demolition in our 1860’s farmhouse’s bathroom.

🏠

Now this bathroom has some interesting features right from the get-go. You can see from the photos that the entire bathroom was covered in these 50’s-era Masonite panels.

Take a Peek!

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Protected: Swing a Stick – a story of Dragons Next Door for Patreon

Jul27

A New World: Touring

Jul24

First: A New World

Kael did not sit for long. It was not in her nature to just sit – or she probably would have had far less trouble with heroes and the like. Instead she stood again and brewed several potions in quick succession.
Her ingredient stores were a bit low. She was going to have to venture out into – into that – and see what she could do about it. But first, first she needed a few things.
A potion of Cloak of the Road coated her in clothing appropriate to her station in this place. She looked down at the sleek, snug clothing and approved. This world, whatever it was, had nice clothes. Better than robes, she thought, or the things that people had worn when she’d first reached adulthood.

Her stairs were covered with dust, too. The whole tower looked as if nobody had touched it in – no. No, there in the dust were footprints. They were covered with their own layer of dust – not new, but not all that old, either.

Interesting. Perhaps the spell had been weakening. Perhaps someone had wanted a potion.

She stepped out into the main foyer of her tower and was surprised to find velvet ropes and, even more surprising, a man in clothing not all that dissimilar from her own. He was wearing a placard over his heart that called his allegiance the Kaelingrade Torrent-Step Black Tower and his name Friedrich Vibius.

Well, Kaelingrade Torrent-Step was her, or close enough for the strange shapes of the letters. And this was her Black Tower. “Friedrich?”

“Mr. Vibius,” he corrected. “Are you the new Kael?”

“That would be me,” she agreed. “What, ah.” No, she didn’t want to ask what is this place. “And you are…?”

“I told you.” He frowned impatiently at her. “I’m Mr. Vibius. I run the museum here.”

Museum. That was interesting. A seat of the muses, here in her Tower? Well, she supposed it had slid itself out of time. “How long has the museum been here?”

“What, are you new to the city?”

“That’s a very good way of putting that, yes.” She lifted her chin and gave him her best You Lousy Person Stop Giving Me Trouble look.

He was completely unfazed. “Don’t try that Kael stuff on me. It might be great for the tourists, but it’s not going to do anything on me. I’ve seen seventeen of you girls come and go, and none of them had the ice to chill me. Nothing chills me, girl.”

Tourist. It couldn’t mean one who turned on a lathe, that was silly. Maybe one who – hrng, she was going to need a potion of languages, she supposed. Everything was close enough to be both comprehend-able and baffling. “I’m new to the city, Mr. Vibius. How long has the Museum been here?”

“A hundred years, give or take a week. It is dedicated to Kaelingrade Torrent-Step, I’m sure you knew that much, and our grant insists on certain things, one of those being that the room below the top of the Tower always have a Kael – that’s why we’ve hired you, not because we like the look – and that the very top of the tower always be off-limits. We don’t even clean it, and don’t even think of going in there. You catch kids trying it, you give them your best Why Are You Bothering Me Pesky Mortals act. Yeah, that look. Room, board, and appropriate robes, all back there back stage. Now get robed up and get up to the Kael-room; we’re about to open.”


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The Hidden Mall part X: Plastic Bullies

Jul24

🏬🛍️

It turned out that plastic versions of their high school crushes did not run all that fast. That was quite a relief, because the real Greg was on the track team and the real Kevin was on swim team.

The problem, however, was that there were other people in the mall – other plastic people, smiling and fake and too-well-dressed – and they didn’t seem to like the idea of a disturbance.

Say, the sort of disturbance caused by two mussed-up, not-plastic girls running through the mall.

Soon they were being chased by fifteen of the things – Abigail refused to think of them as people – their feet moving almost-silently and none of them making a sound. Nobody grunted or panted or, well, anything.
“Did we land in the Stepford Mall?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“Less talking more running – here!” Liv dragged Abigail towards the escalators.

“This is no time for being lazy, Liv!”

“No, I have an idea. Remember that time when the mall was almost empty? Here, run. Faster.”
Liv aimed them at the down escalator, and up they ran, skipping steps. Behind them, the plastic people lined up to take the up escalator, like good plastic citizens of the mall.

“Brilliant, Liv.” There would be more people up above, probably, but maybe they could act sufficiently plastic to pass muster.

They stiffened up at the top of the escalator and put on blank, plastic smiles. Abigail thought of her most critical great-uncle and the smile she gave him when he wouldn’t shut up. Together, they made it past three groups of plastic people.

Then, suddenly, someone was grabbing at Abigail’s wrist and at her shirt. She stiffened. It was – oh, no, it was Rick Fancy, the biggest, most obnoxious jock in school.

His stiff smile moved, just a little. “Help…” The word was a wheeze, like he could barely talk. “..me.”

Abigail stared at him. Next to her, Liv was tugging on her arm.

“How?” Abigail asked softly. There was another set of plastics coming down the hallway.

He fumbled at his neck, but couldn’t seem to reach whatever it was he was going for. Some sort of controller? Then the other plastics were up to them.

Abigail managed the biggest, fakest laugh she had ever pulled up and patted Rick on the arm. “That’s funny. Funny Rick.”

None of the other plastics had talked, but it was so … well, Barbie-like that it seemed to be close enough. The plastics turned and walked away stiffly.
🎒🏦


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Beauty-Beast 22: New Information

Jul23

First – Previous – Landing Page – Next

🔒

Fuck. Did everyone know Ctirad was the boss’s idiot leashed pet?

“Easy, easy. Come on, man.” Shel ran a hand in front of his face; when he dropped his hand, his skin was nut-brown and his ears were pointed. He looked a bit spindly around the joints and he was about half a foot shorter. “Easy. We’re all fae here. That means we all know what a collar means, okay?”

Ctirad touched the collar with both hands and tried to ignore the feeling in the pit of his stomach. “It means I’m his bitch.” That’s what Ermenrich had told him. “But that was… That was Ermenrich.”

“No, Ermenrich is just an asshole.” Shel sat down a few feet away from Ctirad. “Look. Belonging isn’t something Ermenrich made up for you, okay? It’s not something that he did because he’s clever or because he knows how to use people. You didn’t know?”

Ctirad shook his head, not trusting himself to words.

“Damnit, and I bet you act so… Well, self-confident isn’t the word, but you act like you know everything that’s going on. So the boss wouldn’t know, just think you were, uh. Abused. Which you were – sorry, but it’s true.” Shel leaned back. “Damn. Okay. You had a Mentor, you were trained?”

Ctirad swallowed. “I was working for one of Ermenrich‘s associates. I almost died. I Changed. Ermenrich found me a teacher and taught me the basics.”

“Okay, so he found someone that would leave out the things he didn’t want you to know. What an asshole. And then- uh, what came next, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He minded. But he wanted information. “I stayed working for his associate for another couple years. I had a name, I was making a name for myself. And then Ermenrich decided I should come work as his man. Be his. And that was fine… I guess. That was what it was. But then…”

“But then you were his, and you were under his thumb, because he’d tricked you into a Belonging. What an asshole,” Shel repeated. “What a ridiculous fucking asshole.”

Ctirad ducked his head and tried to get control of himself. “So… Uh.” He didn’t even know where to start.

“So he tricked you into something because he knew you didn’t know. It’s not your fault. And it’s not… uh.” Shel looked over at him. “So. The collar means – what the collar means is that you agreed to Belong to someone – the boss in this case – and what THAT means is that you agreed to be under their Name, to do as their will dictates, and to be protected by them. Pretty much, he hired all of you instead of just some daytime work. Now, you and I know – or I’m getting, at least – that you didn’t actually agree to shit, and I’m pretty sure the boss knows that, too. But just seeing the collar, nah. That just tells people you’re all in, that the boss and you are like this,” he crossed his fingers tightly. “So, none of this ‘you’re his bitch’ stuff, okay? It only means that when your Keeper is an asshole.”

Ctirad swallows. “So. I am wearing a collar.” He touched it. He was still definitely wearing a collar. “And I have no idea what it means. That is – that is not more reassuring than wearing a collar and knowing what it means, even knowing it meant I was someone’s bitch.”

Shel snorted. “No. Well, let’s see. You know that it means that you do what he says, that you want to please him, and that displeasing him makes you unhappy – don’t look at me like that, I’ve spent some time in a collar, too. Actually, the boss bought me in a situation… not too different from yours, although I was more of an adult when I went into it, at least. I knew what I was getting into, or thought I did. Not saying my situation is yours, but I know what it’s like to be Kept, to Belong – those are the words they use, although there’s fancier words, there’s longer words, and there’s formal words. Anyway. What it means, under fae law, is that he’s responsible for you. What it means, practically, is that we know not to mess with you, because you belong to the boss. Practically, though, we all do what he says.” Shel shrugged. “If your education was that slim, I’ll talk to the boss about taking some time out to teach you the things your Mentor missed.”

“I’m not a kid,” Ctirad offered weakly. “I was a full-grown adult and everything-”

“There’s adult and there’s adult, I’m afraid.” Shel’s smile was apologetic. “And you were an adult, sure, but you were mis-educated. At least in fae things. I’m not saying anything about your human-life stuff. So…?”

Ctirad looked up at him. “So everything Ermenrich told me was a lie?”

“Well, I don’t know about everything. But it’s a good bet. I mean… It’s a good starting point? And if you want to ask me about things, I won’t tell anyone anything you ask. Cross my heart.” Shel made the gesture across his rather attractive chest. “Now. Are you okay to go shopping, or should I tell the boss something came up and we ended up sitting around eating ice cream all day and bitching about our employers?”

Ctirad stared at him. “You’re joking, right? I mean, he said I should go shopping.”

“Ah, but did he make it an order?”

“…No? No, but he. He told me to go shopping.”

“Then I guess we’ll go shopping, and then I’ll buy you some ice cream, and yes, you can punch me if I get too irritating, but try to avoid the face, please, I make money with this face.” Shel held out a hand to Ctirad. “Let’s do that, before I change my mind and we really do sit around all day eating ice cream, all right?”

“Tempting,” Ctirad admitted. He took the hand. “But I don’t think I could manage to do that.”

“Hey, that’s the thing about Belonging to someone. Even a good owner like the boss, it messes with your head. And from your accounts, your previous owner was anything but a good one. So that’s fine. It’s like, uh, PTSD. You’ve been in a traumatic situation. It’ll take you a while to get your brain back on straight. Let’s see.” He looked Ctirad up and down. “Jeans, shirt. Shoes downstairs.”

“Boots.”

“That’ll do. All right. Watch out shopping world, here we come.”

🔒

First – Previous – Landing Page – Next

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Funeral: Mutual Interest

Jul23

First: Funeral
Previous: Funeral: Shower Negotiations

There was an ancient fae assassin in Senga’s bathroom, and she had her hands in his pants.

“I’m capable of taking care of myself,” he pointed out.

“Yes. But you’re my responsibility now.” She peeled his pants slowly off. He went commando; she was going to get the full show all in one go.

“You have other responsibilities. Besides, you gave me something to do.” He stretched back a little bit, consciously or unconsciously showing off. Flat stomach, muscular chest and arms: he didn’t work out so much as he kept his body in perfect fighting condition. Senga didn’t try to stop herself from licking her lips. He was kind of scrumptious, in a way that wasn’t normally her style.

“You liked it?” She looked up to his face, to find his eyes half-lidded like he wasn’t sure he wanted to see her reaction. “Being given something to do?”

“Yeah. I.” He shifted into something she thought was close to a parade rest and studied her. “Yeah.” He swallowed and considered that. “I didn’t think I would,” he admitted. “I don’t like orders.”

“That is going to make things difficult,” she admitted, a little amused despite herself. “Suggestions are easy enough for most things, though. And, ah, nudges. As long as you don’t actually attack Chitter.”

He snorted. “Nah. She’s … I get her. She makes sense. So. Shower?” He took a step back and reached for the tap but stopped short of turning the water on.

“A shower is why we’re in here, after all,” she agreed, or at least suggested agreement, in part to see what he did with something that sideways.

“It is. Unless it’s to show off your really expensive pumps.” He turned on the water. “And my – well, whatever I’m showing off.”

“Most men would say their abs.” He had very nice abs.

“I’m not most men.” He sounded almost prickly.

“No, that’s obvious.” She tested the water and stepped in. “Better-looking, for one.”

She’d had her back to him for a moment and turned around just in time to catch an uncomfortable expression on his face. “Not many people say that.”

“I’m not most people.” It was too easy a line to ignore. “Besides, you really are quite attractive.”
“… Thanks.” He rolled his shoulders. “So uh.”

“So this is where you wash my back.” She turned so her back was facing him. “And then, if we’re sticking with the old adage, then I wash yours.”

She waited and tried not to be nervous. She didn’t spend a lot of time pointing her back at someone, especially not a stranger.

He can’t attack you, she reminded herself, but the logical part of her brain pointed out that someone named Silent Death who her Great-Aunt had threatened her to take into her home on pain of certain murder if she didn’t could probably work around something as simple as just a Bound Servant bond.

The washcloth brushed across her shoulders so lightly she barely felt it. Then a little more firmly, as he gained confidence in himself, and then a little bit more firmly, just enough to actually wash her back while still being rather gentle. “There’s blood back here,” he pointed out. “The bullets went through you.”

“You saw the holes in the dress,” she countered uncomfortably. She didn’t like to think about the sensation, being pierced through, how close one of the bullets had come to her heart.

He was lingering on that blood spot, too. “It’s one thing to see the dress and another to see the blood. No scar – she does good healing work.”

“She gets enough practice.” It was so the wrong thing to say, but she’d already said it.
“Mmm.” Much to her surprise, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. He was quite a bit taller than her, enough so that his chin rested easily on top of her head. “I find,” he murmured, so quietly that she could barely hear him over the water, “that I do not like that. I suppose I will help you find jobs that cause you to have fewer holes in your dresses, mmm? And perhaps come along to protect you.”

She didn’t really want to discourage this, she really didn’t, but, “it’s going to be hard to do a honeypot sort of thing with you standing protectively behind me,” she sighed.

“Oh, I can be very, very un-noticable. Even by cameras.” Something in his voice was wild and amused. “But that…” He stepped back and tugged on her shoulder. She took the implied cue and turned to look at him.

He looked serious, a look somewhat ruined by the water pouring over his shoulders. Hopefully Monmartin Manor had a taller shower somewhere. This one was really too short for him. “I am not sure I could stand by quietly while someone attacked you.” He cleared his throat. “You invite intimacy. My previous — That hasn’t happened before.”

“You could probably stand by quietly if you had an order holding your there.” She ran her hands over his chest, following the trails the water was leaving. “I suppose we could test it on an unimportant mission. Then if I’m being set up, I’ll be protected. More protected,” she corrected. “I’m not a helpless flower, you know.”

“I’m getting that impression. You four, you wade right into trouble, don’t you?” He was watching her hands, as much as he could, instead of her face. “It’s interesting. I’d like to see more of it.”

“How about you work on seeing more of me right now and worry about my job later?” Senga suggested. “I’d like to focus on you for a bit.” She picked up a washcloth and lathered up his chest, watching the way his heart pounded as she moved her hands down towards his hip bones.

“You—” He coughed and tried again. “You want to focus on me? I am — that is — I am not very interesting.”

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