Venom's Story: Fire At Will

Venom lay in a moment of brief, lazy contentment, with his muzzle buried in the black and white hair at the nape of a ringtail anthro. She made an equally contented chrrring noise, shifting under him to free up an arm, and reached for the news bulliten. He obligingly shifted back enough for her to prop herself up on her other elbow and look over the headlines on the first "page"-- the news she preferred came in plastic, computerized format, with only one thin sheet that jumped to new "pages" or continuations of articles at a touch. That was usual: she recovered quickly, and wasn't particularly cuddly, though she didn't mind when he didn't want to move for a while. As she started reading, he buried his muzzle back into her hair again, shutting his eyes again.

"Big news planet-side," she commented idly. "One of those really grisly murders, looks like, a couple days ago. Took them all this time to actually find it! Ugh, the pictures are disgusting-- but you know everyone's eating them up, anyway."

Venom grunted in reply, not really paying attention to what she said, more interested in what her body felt like nestled under his, and her long tail curled up between his legs and back over his back. This one had, so far, lasted three weeks. It was one of his longer flings, and he was tempted to actually keep her around for a while. Her name was Teisha, a grungy young woman living in Driolo but who didn't mind being treated to a few days on the station now and again. She was small, far smaller than he was, at only 5'4", but had surprising endurance, flexibility, and creativity. And besides, she had such an attractive little body....

"Whoever did it made a real mess, looks like. Blood everywhere, all over everything, like some morbid mural painter. Wow, I can't believe they actually included pictures of it! Gross. Don't look, okay?"

Best of all, though, she had yet to try manipulating him, not even once she found out about his little "quirk". Every woman found out about it eventually, if they were adventurous enough to consider any S&M, and when he vehemently protested, they invariably wanted to know why. If they didn't immediately leave him in disgust, it was usually only a matter of time until they deliberately hurt themselves or him. The worst of them did it in an attempt to manipulate him, to get something for themselves; the best of them did it in the hopes of keeping him. It always backfired, because he always left them afterwards. Teisha was one of those rare ones who actually seemed to respect his wishes.

"They're saying it was some psychopath. Does look kind of psycho, to me, but you know, whatever. You don't have to be psycho to do crazy things. You're pretty nuts with blood, yourself, after all, aren't you? But I sure wouldn't call you psycho. Just a little weird, right?"

But she sure did talk a lot....

"Hey... this was in Tonaru. ... Weren't you just in Tonaru, on business or something?"

... and maybe she was a bit too clever for her own good.

"Tuskan, actually," he rumbled at her, and pushed himself up a little, so he could slip an arm underneath her to cup a breast. Now would be a good time to distract her from thinking for a while, he thought.

"Mmmm," she said, shutting her eyes, but apparently she wasn't quite distracted enough. "What do you do, anyway? You've never said."

"Nothing interesting enough to talk about," he grumbled in answer, and promptly flipped her over and stopped her mouth firmly. He'd have to make this time really memorable, because it would have to be the last one.

Venom left Teisha with the warning that he wasn't likely to see her for a while. His latest job had, after all, provided more than enough for a new trip, and he'd intended to take one, so it wasn't really a lie-- except that "for a while" meant "never again". To add credence to it, and to put the whole business behind him, he found his way to one of the various surfing-cafes where they had computers available for public use, and settled down at a terminal to investigate possible destinations. He hadn't tried the tropics on Atu yet, and they were supposed to be so dangerous humanoid life simply couldn't exist there....

An hour later found him decided, with tickets purchased and supplies en route to his apartment, and whiling away some time in his favorite bar in Driolo. The tender, a tycharis who was missing large chunks of the skin of his shoulders, liked him because he would drink anything, no matter how dangerous or illegal, and he liked the tender because the tycharis would give him anything, no matter how dangerous or illegal. Whether or not he liked it would be another story, but he was willing to try anything once and tell the creature what it did and just how lethal it was. It wasn't as if it could kill him, after all. Today it was something from some planet Venom had never heard of-- and, given this little taste of it, he guessed he would never hear of it again. The stuff was disgusting. But he still swallowed it down, one bitter, toxic mouthful at a time. Maybe it would do something interesting to him.

"Venom!" an enthusiastic voice broke his pondering thoughts, and he turned to see a familiar acquaintance pushing his way through the crowd towards him. Venom rolled his eyes lightly before the fellow was close enough to see. He was some sort of priest, though not of any deity Venom had ever heard of, and looked something like a drow only with thick, leathery skin and green eyes rather than something more sinister. For some reason, he found Venom fascinating-- something about his aura, or saying he was gods-touched, or whatever his current explanation was. Venom just found him mildly annoying. He was a good kid, but altogether too nosy, friendly, and excitable, and quite possibly delusional, if he thought there was a god out there who wanted anything to do with Venom, of all people.

"Hello, Nuranys," he sighed as the whelp sat himself down next to him.

"How are you, Venom?"

"Fucking tired," he replied shortly. "Getting ready for a nice, long vacation."

"Sounds great! Where you going?"

"None of your business, kid."

"Sorry, sorry!" He was, of course, still undaunted. Nothing seemed to daunt Nuranys.

Venom let his eyes rove the bar, as was his habit. Though he usually didn't find anything suspicious, something today didn't seem right. He glared from behind his sunglasses-- he didn't really need them, not inside in a bar, but it was too much of a bother to take them off and put them away somewhere-- at the room in general, while Nuranys chattered cheerfully at him. Hadn't he seen that human, the one at the bar with her back to him and her hair braided up so tightly to her skull, before?

"You know, I found out something you might like," Nuranys was saying. "Called the Bipedra. It's a communal clutch of dragon eggs from a bunch of parents-- some right nasty parents, too, a lot of them."

"Mmmhmm." He had seen her. She'd been in the 'net cafe he'd been in previously, and he'd caught sight of her before he met up with Teisha. She'd followed him all the way back down to Driolo with her.

"Well, I had this feeling, you know? That you ought to go. I don't know why."

Without warning-- or paying attention to Nuranys's startled, "Venom? What is it?"-- he stood up. The bartender knew him and would leave the poison he'd been drinking on his tab, if he even bothered to charge him for the stuff. He wanted to get out of the bar before that woman got a good look at who he was with, though it was probably too late. At the very least, he wanted out without a confrontation.

The woman rose, too. She had a thick body, shoulders like a brawler, and dark brown skin, and she carried herself like a hunting cat. Venom started making his very conspicuous way to the door, cursing his questionable parentage for leaving him with such an impressive height, and she oh-so-casually slid out from among her fellow bar-drinkers to follow. She wasn't as tall as him, but she was certainly taller than Nuranys.

Who was following him, too.

Well, maybe the kid would at least be good for something. Most of the halfway-decent bounty hunters put on his tail didn't shoot innocents if they could help it; women were even more likely to avoid extra casualties. The way he felt her attention shift between himself and his little piece of baggage meant she was either gauging how much trouble they'd be together, or trying to guess whether he would pull the kid in front of him if she fired that small, concealed gun he expected was in her boot. The way she kept looking, not discounting Nuranys's presence as ultimately useless in a fight, suggested the latter.

Venom smiled. He slung an arm around his shadow's shoulders. "Why don't I buy you a drink somewhere with a little more class, eh, kid?"

Nuranys brightened like an eager puppy, and Venom shot a meaningful smirk over his shoulder at the woman, who paused for barely a breath-- enough to let him know she'd seen it-- then started the other way. He doubted she'd give up that easily-- but hopefully by the time she found him again, he'd be lost in the Atuan Amazon and untouchable. She'd give up when she discovered where he'd gone. No one came back from those jungles, after all.

Until then, well, he'd just have to put up with Nuranys. He'd just saved him a scuffle, after all.