jeriendhal | RVA: Shadow of Doubt, Love and Kaiju

Needed to do a lighthearted scene to break up the angst.

Ali set some comfort viewing on her room’s wall display, as she ran her weapons through their weekly diagnosis routine. Methodically, she plugged each of her guns into her palm comp, double-checking the battery charge it showed against what the gun’s targeting HUD claimed, checking the integrity of the energy waveguides, that the security palm scanner was functioning properly, and that all the onboard software was up to date. Then she drew each of her knives out, cleaning each blade with a cloth for that purpose, and making sure the edges were even and sharp.

She held up the largest of them, a classic human Bowie style knife. The blade was hardened steel, the metal blackened so as not to gleam and give her away with its sheen, the handle custom molded to the shape of her paw. It had been a gift from Lady Melanie, back when Ali had only known her as the Red Vixen, her mistress and commander. She’d received it in gratitude for the hasty improvised rescue of the Red Vixen from Brutal Compton, Bloody Margo’s second in command, during the Scarlet Claw’s vendetta against House Highglider’s shipping business. Ali remembered kneeling in thanks for the gift, as the Red Vixen had petted her head and reassured her that she had done well, so very well.

Ali frowned, slipping the knife back into its sheath and setting it down. Some days she missed it so much; the belonging. Well, she belonged/worked for/was under judicial supervision of Lady Salli, but that wasn't the same thing. When Salli gave an order, it was not backed up by a threat of punishment, however lightly and rarely the Red Vixen had applied it. And she was always “Ali” or “Alinadar”, never “Pet”.

She scratched at her neck, underneath the collar that wasn't there anymore, had not been for over a year now. She had lost count of the times she had woken up during the night, confused by the lack of its weight around her neck. That had ended shortly after she and Lady Salli had become lovers. Would it begin again if they had to step further apart? The weight of the chains had been comforting in the days after her capture by the Red Vixen. She hadn't felt anything like a civilized being then, with so much blood on her paws. Being treated like a chained animal had been all she'd deserved, or so she'd believed at the time. It had taken her almost two years to even start to hope that she might be a civilized person someday.

A knock on her door brought Ali out of her musings. “Come in,” she called, pausing the vid on the screen.

Salli poked her head in. “Are you busy, Ali?”

“Just finishing up,” Ali said, putting all of her weapons save her palm stunner and one of her smaller knives back into her footlocker and locking it shut. “Is everything all right?”

Salli sat on the little room’s love seat, her posture slightly more relaxed that it had been since the discovery of the menacing graffiti. “I just vented my frustrations at Rolas a moment ago, poor fellow. I wonder if he does the same to Melanie when things become too much for him.”

“Lady Melanie was always willing to listen when I was upset about something,” Ali replied, settling in next to her. Salli drew her arm around her, and Ali snuggled in closer, letting out a pleased purr.

“Yes, she does want the people around her to be happy, give her that much,” Salli replied. “It’s her methodology that’s the problem.” She nuzzled Ali’s ears briefly, then glanced up at the screen.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s Hydragon vs. Baratu,” Ali asked, grabbing the remote and starting the vid again. Hydragon roared and spat out an atomic steam blast at Baratu, who dodged and flared its wings to create a hurricane, sending Hydragon falling into a miniature reconstruction of the Gerwart Parlamentsgebäude, which simultaneously exploded and collapsed. Baratu flapped its wings and flew off again, leaving Hydragon screaming in fury before turning around to march back into the sea to recover.

“Those were foxen in rubber suits,” Salli noted in bemusement, as little Timony argued with his scientist mother about Hydragon’s inherent goodness in protecting Foxen Prime from the alien invader.

“Oh, yeah,” Ali agreed cheerfully.

“And how are they not dying of heat exhaustion?”

Ali waved her paw excitedly, pausing the vid again as Hydragon appeared on the screen, healing in his lair. “Oh, the suits are built like spacesuits, with integral cooling systems. Much more comfy than the ones the original Kaiju suiters wore back on Earth where the genre was created.”

“But if they’re so finely constructed, why can I see the seams?”

“Well that’s so you know it’s real, not just something cooked up in a computer. It’s all handcrafted, the suits, the miniatures, everything!” Ali exclaimed.

Salli opened her mouth to comment on this, apparently thought better of it, and closed it. Finally she said, “So are there many of these vids?”

“Oh, there about twenty in this series. Hydragon vs. Baratu is the latest one. I contributed to the funding campaigns for the last three.”

“I see.” Salli quieted down and watched with her, as the first plan for stopping Baratu with mazer cannons and orbital strikes failed. “Shouldn’t those have hurt it?”

“Nope. Kaiju are immune to conventional weapons, and you never want to big nukes on an inhabited planet anyway,” Ali told her.

“If you say so,” Salli replied, snuggling closer. As the vid progressed, she asked, “Who are those humans in the silver jumpsuits with the prosthetic foreheads?”

“Oh, those are the Gomelians. They’re the race that controls Baratu and a lot of the other bad guy monsters,” Ali explained eagerly. “They aren’t human, the forehead things mean their actually aliens. Walter Syverud has been playing the Ultimate Leader of the Gomelian Empire since forever. I think his character has been killed and re-cloned about five times now.”

“Zygote to adulthood cloning?” Salli asked, incredulously. “Now that’s just ridiculous.” She rubbed her forehead. “What am I saying? Those monsters shouldn’t be able to move either, much less survive orbital weaponry.”

“Gomelian Science laughs at the Square-Cube Law,” Ali declared in mock pomposity. “Anyway, for the vids filmed on Earth, they usually get foxen to play the evil aliens, their fur dyed in weird colors, huge fake fangs and forced perspective techniques to make ‘em look as big as wazagans.”

Salli ordered dinner delivered, and they ate finger food as the fourth act came to a close with Timony coming up with the brilliant idea of miniaturizing his mother’s Singularity Cannon, so it could just take out Baratu, not the entire continent.

“Does that child have Level Seven clearance?” Salli muttered. “What is he doing in a secured weapons facility anyway?”

“It was Bring Your Cub to Work Day when Baratu first attacked,” Ali informed. At Salli’s unbelieving look she added, “It was!”

Then Salli let out a loud laugh, hugging Ali tightly and rocking back and forth in her seat as she continued to chortle. “Thank you, Ali. I needed that laugh,” she finally choked out.

“Thank you, Salli,” Ali said, resting her head on Salli's shoulder.

“For what?”

“Just for holding me.” Ali rubbed her nose into the crook of Salli's neck. The noblevixen's scent was warm, comforting, and very much Salli.

“I'm not letting you go.”

“Good.”

Their clothes were on the floor before Hydragon's final attack.