Twenty-two

Carnil slunked in, looking alone and loveworn. He absently scratched Baskerville behind the ears and tickled the kitten on the head on the way to the bar.

He slumped on the seat, but not before he reached for the friendly looking bottle of rum behind the bar. "No one loves me," he said to the bottle. He gave it a long pull. "My writer's been ignoring me for months, the bink. I ain't getting any, either."

He drank deeply again.

Jelly looked up at Baskerville, blinking sleepily. He stared at the bristling doggy for a minute, a range of annoyed expressions trying to force thier way onto a kitten's face, with little success. Eventually he settled for staring sleepily.

"Oh, Come ON. I'm a kitten, hell-doggy. What is there to be scared of? Sure, I could Cute you to death, but that can take a while sometimes." He rolled over onto his back as Carnil passed by, but collapsed back onto his other side, facing away from Baskerville, when the new newcomer walked past. His ears flicked forward as Carnil talked, and then he promptly started to ignore him himself.

Rolling back over to Baskerville, he grinned and started to wash his paw, speaking between licks.
"C'mon, helldoggy, *lick* even a half-blind *lick* old fogey *lick* like yourself *lick* has to admit *lick* I'm cute. Looking at me *lick* you'd never know I was *lick* Eight-Thousand years old... *lick* give or take a century." He grinned again, as much as was possible for a kitten, and seemingly fell asleep right in front of the bristling doggy's nose.

"Aggy's cute," Baskerville said. "Jaina's cute. You're just sickening. And I don't care how much your growth's retarded, give me one excuse and you'll find yourself so hot you're smoking."

The furball was right between his forelegs. The black dog stood quivering as self-control battled with the ages-old righteous fury. Cat! Cat, dammit!

Suitov wandered over to join Carnil on the bench outside the builder-infested inn. "So whatever happened to your cowherd friend?" he asked.

"Jarone?" Carnil waved a desultory hand and shrugged. "The writer got bored," he sulked. "She's now interested in this gunmage chick from some role play session. She wants to write a book on her. On this Alec." Carnil lolled morosely. "There was a time when she wanted to write a book on me. Those were the days."

Dammit! Now he was to depressed to get drunk!

"Oh, come ON, hell-doggy. I'm just a kitten, what could I possibly do to a big strong meanie like you?"
Jelly rolled over onto his back and waved his feet in the air playfully in the general direction of Baskerville's nose, missing by quite some distance. His mouth opened wide in a catty grin, showing his tiny sharp teeth, but the grin never reached his eyes, focused cold, hard and humorless on Baskerville's face, and his tail lashed tensely on the grass beneath.

For the moment, Jaina snored (cutely?) into her doughnut. She had grown up with dawn meaning sleepy-time, and once again her past kicked in. Thus, zzz.

Sunev amused himself by fanning his wings at the slumbering redhead. He gusted her hair over her face, she snored it back, and so the cycle went.

"Ah, I've lost a sister that way. It's no good at all." Suitov looked thoughtful, though more in an armchair deicidal way than angsty.

Cute-acting but calculating: as far as Baskerville was concerned, this was exactly how all cats were. You expected a mouthful of fluff and it was all squawks and needles.

And this one was arguing. Logic wasn't meant to come into blood feuds; it wasn't fair. And it wasn't behaving right. I loom, you run, I chase and get overexcited and bark a lot, that's how it was meant to go. All in all, his brain hurt. Baskerville whined like an overstretched Slinky Dog and shifted his front feet.

Jelly waved a back leg, rolled over, sat up, fell over, and sat up again. He started to wash as if forgetting where he was, and it took Baskerville's forlorn whine to bring him back to his senses.
"Where was I? Oh, yes." He stared up into Baskerville's face as he talked. "Hmmm. Would it help if I told you I wan't really a cat, hell-doggy? And please don't take that as an invitation to roast me; invulnerable I may be, but fire tickles."

"No," Baskerville said, "that really wouldn't help." Saliva threatened to drip from his upper lips, which were drooping because of the downward angle of his stare.

Okay. All right. Okay. I can totally handle this. "Wi-- hang on, just tell me your name is not Jason, right?"

Agueda was leaning back, quietly munching on her third pastry and watching Basky and Jelly. She wondered what Baskerville's reaction would be if she picked the kitty up, but decided she probably didn't want to know. Besides his red eyes, there must be something else to the name hellhound, and she didn't want to tempt that something else to the surface at such close range.

She was still musing, when Bowman, high on sugar and craving attention (or perhaps the other way around) began weaving frantically between Basky's feet, emitting a high-pitched whining "PuuuuuuuuuuuuuUH!" sound. He leapt over the Jelly belly, his processes blurring with the motion, ran around to his head and depositted a health dose of a special enzyme (magical itchase^feline) between Jelly's ears.

Carnil nodded sagely, though it could've been the alcohol. "Yeah, writers are absolute bastards like that."

He stared at his bottle of rum and shrugged. "Cheers, buddy!" The elf upended the bottle into his waiting mouth.

A red shadow disanged itself from the building and coalesced into a tall man in red garb. He had red hair, red eyes and in his grasp was a pint of Evil(tm) black stout. "You think you have problems," he rumbled. "At least you're not scheldueled to make a come back in a cravat."

Vileshadows scowled at nothing in particular. He didn't offer Suitov a drink as that would have been polite.

Jaina mumbled something and rolled over, mashing her face into her doughnut. She blinked repeatedly, as much to clear the filling from her eyes as to mask her considerable confusion.

Sunev trilled something suspiciously akin to musical snickering before returning to his fritter.

"Whassa..." Jaina started to ask. "Nah. Nuh-uh. Doan wanna." That said, she peeled most of the squished pastry off her face. "Did the picnic population double while I was out, or did someone spike my Djew?" As soon as she'd said it, she wasn't sure she really wanted to know *that* either.

Suitov didn't offer Vileshadows a drink as Carnil was chugging the last of it.

"What's wrong with a cravat?" he said. "It could be worse. A swimming costume edition might be on the cards. And you should see what they try to make us wear in costume ball season." He nibbled at his apple fritter, irritatingly unperturbed as always by manifestations of pure Ebil.

Vileshadows shifted his expression in the way that suggested that he would rather the swimming costume than the cravat.

Carnil caught the meaning but thought that the Darkpawn looked more like he had a wedgie. He swung his head to Suitov looking like he had something to say then instantly forgot it as he noticed the lack of rum in his bottle.

He whined the inevitable punchline. "Why is the rum gone?" before collapsing into a stupor.

Julia wondered how Vileshadows would look in a spotty dress.

Jelly twisted around and watched the 'Bowman' thing bumble around madly. One paw reached up to pat the spot on his head and a quizzical look stole over his face. His line of thought was interupted by a large glob of spittle falling next to his tail. Jumping upright, he twisted around madly for a couple seconds, ending up tripping up and falling flat and spreadeagled on his belly. He sighed at the indignity and twisted his head back up to stare at Baskerville. "Jason, right? Who the sweet hells is Jason? My name is Jelly. Well, it is unless I can remember what I used to be, but you won't have to worry about THAT, I haven't been able to work that out since the fall of... crap! Forgot that as well. And they made nice berry pies there too."

He groaned, rolled over on his back and started playing with a tall stem of grass that towered over his head. "Well, it was a while ago anyway."

"Jason - er, never you mind who he was," Baskerville amended. Ya, smooth, really smooth. He could have at a nice berry pie right now. His belly rumbled, since he hadn't stolen breakfast yet.

Suitov ignored Carnil, as if to say People fall at my feet allll the time. And occasionally stop breathing. Catching Vileshadows' expression, he added, "Hmph. I should have guessed Dark Lords Illustrated would be your sort of thing."

Well, they were never taking him alive, you hear? Never. Villain rights now! We shall overcome! And so forth.

Sylvie was glad she was watching the chaos from some distance. The pastry filling had been so sweet it was almost sickening, so she had eaten only half, and nibbling on the rest, not quite knowing how to get rid of it without seeming ungrateful. Ayu-Asra seemed to think giving it to him would solve that, but she was not having with that - the dragon was unbearable after eating sweet stuff.

Finally the dragon gave up, and giving a jay's screech. He circled, looking for something to attack. Something small and furry. He dove for the kitten, trying to grab it with his foreclaws.

Jelly looked up just as the dragon slammed into him. He yowled madly as the stupid thing tryed to lift him up into the air, scratching and biting as he went. "Get. Off Meeee! You stupid bird. OFF!" The dragon's wings flapped madly as he lifted Jelly up into the air. Jelly yowled louder and scrabbled crazily at the thing's shoulders. His claws scritched on its scales, unable to get purchase. He looked down as his hind legs slipped out of the dragon's grip, already at almsot the hight of the roof. "AH! Gerrofme! PUT ME DOWN!" His scrabbling grew faster and he yelped as one claw got stuck under a scale. His long fur shook madly as he twisted his paw, trying to get the claw out.

The scale twisted and a corner snapped, letting a tiny drop of blood well up. Jelly's paw slipped in the droplet and left a skid mark along the dragon's scales, and he suddenly stopped and shook his head. "Craps. Now I've got a headache, whatcha do that forrrrrrr...." He looked up into the dragon's faces and grinned, his mouth stretching far across his face, much farther than nature should allow. "Oooooh. Blud. Yummsies." He hissed, his tounge flickering long and slim like a snake's. His two forepaws balled up together and punched the dragon in the chest and he fell out of the sky with a screetch, landing right in the small of Basky's back.

He rolled off and back under Basky to lie under the dog's face, giggling uncontrollably. "Heeheeheeheehee.... Blud. Heeheehee." He looked up at Basky and the giggling stopped suddenly as he seemed to become very interested in cleaning his paw. "Hwat? Whatcha lookin at, doggy?"

"A bloody cat," Baskerville said. Growling, he moved away. His head didn't feel too peachy either, and he stuck his nose into the abandoned breakfast basket for something to clear it. Sugar normally worked when strong drink didn't.

The raspberry pastries were very sweet. On Shade you tended to get fructose, fruit sugars, or insect honey and that was about it. Baskerville preferred his sweeteners artificial and piled high. His tail started wagging a bit.

Suitov and Vileshadows appeared to be bickering about dark lording techniques.