Black Velvet

"I am Araxie," she insisted.

"She's telling the truth," Jules interjected, the Borealan turning his yellow eyes on him.

"What do you know of it, little one?" Noza asked.

"I've traveled to the Araxie territory, that's how."

"You are no Ranger," the alien grumbled, "do you mean to tell me that a human braved jungles that an Elysian could not?"

"I might not be a Ranger, but I did have one with me. Perhaps the news hasn't reached you yet, but the Araxie are making a bid to join the Coalition. If all goes well, you'll probably be serving alongside them in a little while."

"Is that so?" Noza replied. Jules waited for some kind of rebuttal, but the large male seemed to accept it, relaxing back down into his seat with a creak. "So tell me, Araxie, why do your kind stay hidden within your jungles?"

"We prefer to be left alone," she replied. Jules noted that she didn't seem wary of the large male, but then again, she hadn't interacted with any Elysians besides Yuta.

"And how were you able to stay hidden all this time? Elysia sent expeditions to Araxie during the wars for the lakes, but few returned."

"None may trespass in Araxie territory," she announced. It sounded like something that she had been told, perhaps by her teachers or the Patriarch. "An Araxie must know how to strike without being seen or heard, to tread silently, to attack from cover and then vanish just as quickly."

"Guerrilla warfare, the humans call it," one of Noza's packmates added. "Hit and run tactics, traps, and sabotage."

"Not ghosts then," Noza mused, "just stealth and subterfuge." Jules expected a stereotypical response from the warrior, something along the lines of calling the Araxie fighting methods cowardly, but he seemed more impressed than anything. "Are you a soldier, little one?"

"I am a diplomat," she announced proudly.

"Are you bothering our other customers, Noza?" the waitress interjected. She was carrying a dinner plate the size of a dustbin lid that was laden with a mountain of food. It looked heavy, but she was clearly practiced, making her way to the table and placing it before Zuki. The Araxie looked up at her with wide eyes, as if unsure that this plentiful bounty was really for her, and the waitress gave her an affirmative nod.

"I'll be back with your meal in a moment, Sir," she said to Jules before turning back towards the kitchen. Noza let them eat, returning his attention to his pack.

"Go ahead," Jules said as Zuki examined her plate, "that's for you. I'd use the cutlery though, that pie looks pretty juicy, and you don't want it getting all over your fur."

"This?" she asked, holding up her fork. Jules left his seat and sidled around beside her, demonstrating how to use the cutlery. She had taken so quickly to the tablet and the computer in the apartment, but somehow, using the knife in conjunction with the fork required a level of coordination that seemed almost beyond her. To Jules' surprise, the pack of Elysians didn't snicker or make any comments, perhaps they remembered their own first forays into human dining etiquette. She eventually got the hang of it, Jules watching as she cut into the golden crust of the pie, chunks of pork in a sea of gravy spilling out along with a lazy plume of steam.

"Watch it's not too hot," he warned as she speared a piece of meat and brought it to her mouth, her eyes widening as she chewed.

"Good?" Jules asked.

She nodded enthusiastically, fishing out another piece. The portion was truly massive, taking your Borealan friends out to dinner could break the bank pretty quickly. Oh well, it was another charge that he could write off a business expense. Technically, he was entertaining a foreign dignitary...

The waitress returned with his meal, as well as their drinks, Jules sitting back down as she placed them on the table. The steak was just right, and the fries were great, large wedges of potato seasoned with salt and some vinegar. He picked up the glass of beer, taking a long draw, feeling the cool liquid pass down his throat and into his stomach.

"That's good," he mumbled, setting it back down on the table. "See what you think of the beer, Zuki."

Zuki eyed the tall pint glass, leaning forward and using her long tongue to lap at the foam on top. She smacked her lips for a moment, considering, and then lifted it to her mouth. She took a swig, licking her lips contentedly.

"I like it," she said, "it's so cold. It feels nice on my tongue." Jules saw that the pack of Elysians behind her had taken notice now, one of them nudging another with his elbow and nodding in Zuki's direction.

There wasn't much time to chat as they ate, Zuki was wolfing down what looked to Jules like an entire pie, and she seemed particularly fond of the fries to the point that he offered her some of his own when she began to run out. When he demonstrated how they could be dipped in the gravy, she had a look on her face that could only be described as bliss. She drank the ale quickly, too. He considered suggesting that she slow down, but there was no way that she could get drunk on one beer, surely?

By the time she was almost done with her meal, the glass was half empty, Zuki rocking back and forth in her chair happily as her tail waved to and fro behind her.

"I like this station," she said over a mouthful of a pie crust, "everyone here has been so nice to me. Some people avoid me back home, they think I'm clumsy, that I'm not good at anything. But they never give me a chance to prove otherwise!" She pointed her fork at Jules, droplets of gravy falling to the table. "You're giving me a chance to prove myself, Mister Jules. You think that I can become a great diplomat," she added as she drove the fork into a fry and then popped it into her mouth, continuing to talk as she chewed. "And then even the Patriarch will have to listen to me, everyone in the village will depend on me. They'll all look to me for advice, and I'll be able to...did I eat all of the fries?"

She was starting to slur her words, was she really getting drunk on the ale? It couldn't have been more than about four percent alcohol content.

"Zuki, uh...maybe you should go a little easier on the beer," he suggested.

"But I like this drink!" she blurted, lifting the glass and spilling a little on her furry hand as she took another draw. She set it down clumsily and then grumbled to herself, beginning to comb her fur with the cat-like barbs on her tongue where it was wet. "You know what we need? Fries, let's have more fries."

"I'll order you some more fries next time the waitress comes back, but you have to slow down a little. Try to make it last, alright?"

As they continued to eat, Noza and his pack seemed to grow more interested in them. Eventually, the imposing male leaned across the table again, blowing smoke from his feline nose like a dragon as he puffed on his e-cigar.

"You handle your drink well, even if you look like an oversized kitten, Araxie."

Jules gave Zuki a skeptical glance. Getting so tipsy on just half a glass of beer didn't seem too impressive to him.

"What are you drinking?" Jules asked, Noza raising a glass of pink-tinted liquid.

"It is an Elysian spirit, we call it raises the hair. Your friend here is drinking three or four times the volume of alcohol that we are."

"Why didn't anyone warn me?" Jules complained, "how was I supposed to know how much Borealans are supposed to drink?"

"We assumed that she knew how much she could handle," Noza replied with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "She's doing well, in any case. That amount would have floored most of the cats that I know."

"I think we might have found something else that you're good at, Zuki," Jules said as she lifted her glass to her lips and took another drink. "Will she be alright? Should I stop her?"

"It's not strong enough to do her any damage, just don't give her anything stronger. A shot of your Vodka will send an Elysian to the infirmary, and I doubt that the Araxie have much more of a tolerance. Or perhaps they do..."

Noza scratched his bearded chin for a moment with a curved claw, then began to whisper conspiratorially with his pack. After a few moments of deliberation, he addressed the pair again, his tone of voice suggesting that he was issuing a challenge.

"I propose a contest," he said, "to determine whether this Araxie can out-drink an Elysian. A game, if you will."

"A game?" Zuki asked, her ears pricking up at the prospect.

"What kind of game?" Jules asked warily. Noza snapped his fingers, then one of his packmates fished in her breast pocket, withdrawing a pack of playing cards. She tossed it to Noza, who opened the pack and fanned them, Zuki staring at the colorful cards.

"Martian Poker," he replied with a toothy grin.

"I'm not familiar with it," Jules said, "what are the rules?"

"A card is dealt to each player," Noza explained, "placed face-down on the table. The players pick up their cards without looking at them and hold them against their forehead. Everyone is able to see your card besides you, then, you must decide whether to participate in the round or to fold. The goal is to be the player with the highest value card. If you fold, you must drink a shot of beer. If you play and lose, you must drink two."

"A shot of beer?" Jules asked, raising an eyebrow.

"As I said, beer is strong by our standards. You can play if you wish, human, but your...natural advantage would make it rather pointless."

"Alright," Jules replied with a dismissive wave of his hand, "I guess that makes me the designated driver. How about it, Zuki, do you want to play with them?"

"I want to play," she said, "teach me!"

Zuki slid her chair over to join the pack, Jules watching from the adjacent table as they began to demonstrate the rules of the game. He should probably step in if things started to get out of hand, he sure as hell didn't have the strength to drag a blacked-out Borealan through two quarters.

Before long, the waitress returned to check on them, standing with her hands on her hips beside Jules as she watched the aliens deal cards.

"Is Noza roping more people into playing that stupid game of his?"

"Does he do this often?" Jules asked.

"Only with the other Borealans. He won't play with humans because he always loses, and as for the Krell...well, who knows if they even understand what he's saying to them. I can go box his ears if he's bothering you."

"That's quite alright, I think Zuki is having fun. She doesn't get out much."

"Bit of a homebody, then?"

"You could say that," Jules chuckled. "I'm Jules, by the way."

"I'm Ashleigh, but people call me Ash. We don't get many customers at this time of night, what brings you two all the way down to our end of the quarter?"

"My friend is actually nocturnal."

"I see," Ash laughed, "that's as good an answer as you could have given."

"So...what's the deal with you and Noza, if you don't mind my asking?" Jules continued. "I've only known one Elysian, but she would probably have taken my head off if I had talked to her the way you do."

"He's a big pussycat," she snickered. "Noza is older than a lot of the recruits that you see around the station, they tend to get more mellow as they age, more set in their ways. He'll still swipe at his friends if they're out of line, but they know their boundaries pretty well by this point."

"And what about you?" Jules asked.

"Well, he's been through I.T like every other cat they let loose on the station, so he knows to behave himself around the rest of us. If he lets me pull his tail and poke fun at him, it's only because we've...well, you know how Borealans get."

"What do you mean?" Jules asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, are you and your friend not..? Sorry, I assumed you were an item. That's usually the case around here when you see a human and a cat together."

"No, we're just...friends," he said as his cheeks began to warm. It wasn't exactly a revelation, he had witnessed the violent and passionate encounter between Velez and Yuta first hand, after all. But still the idea of Ash, who couldn't weigh more than a hundred pounds, getting intimate with this behemoth who must weigh near ten times that was shocking. He stopped just short of asking her how the mechanics of that even worked, that wasn't the kind of question one put to a stranger.

His thoughts were interrupted by an excited yell. Zuki had apparently won a round, and Noza was pouring a bottle of beer into shot glasses.

"She does seem to be having fun," Ash chuckled, "do you guys need anything else?"

"Oh, Zuki wanted more fries," Jules said.

"Sure thing," Ash replied. She paused before leaving the table, giving him a sly look. "They don't look down on that kind of thing here, y'know. Some of the Marines even see it as a rite of passage."

She set off towards the kitchen, leaving Jules to nurse his beer as he watched Zuki laugh, holding a playing card up against her furry forehead. She looked so cute in that ugly sweater...

What did Ash think she saw between the two of them? Why had he blushed when she had brought up her relationship with Noza? He downed another mouthful of the cool liquid, trying to clear his head. Zuki looked over at him, waving to him with a padded hand, and he realized that he had been staring at her. Maybe he was the one who needed to lay off the booze.

***

Zuki threw back her head, downing another shot of beer as Noza looked on in disbelief. Jules wasn't entirely sure what the end goal of the game was, perhaps to be the last one sober enough to leave the table when it was over, but the Elysians already looked smashed. One of them appeared to doze off, losing his balance and planting his face into his Alpha's shoulder. Noza spat like an angry tomcat and nudged him away, the drunken Elysian snapping out of his stupor and attempting to sit up straight again.

"Another!" Zuki exclaimed, swaying in her seat a little as she slammed the empty shot glass back down on the table. Another of the Elysians, this one an auburn-haired female, emptied her glass in turn and then grimaced as if it had contained something far stronger than beer. Apparently, they had both lost a round to another player. She then slumped in her chair and began to slide down beneath the table. Noza bared his sharp teeth, reaching down and grabbing her by the collar like a mother cat scruffing her kitten, his bicep bulging beneath his tight jacket as he repositioned her limp body.

"Would that I could have assembled a pack with stronger stomachs," he muttered, glaring around the table at them. "Would you so easily give up if this were a battle?"

"S-sorry my Alpha," one of them slurred as he reached for his glass and knocked it over, spilling the contents. As drunk as Zuki was, she showed no signs of slowing, washing down her beer with a handful of fries as she waited for the dealer to shuffle the deck.

"She's on a roll," Ash laughed, sitting at the table beside Jules as she watched the game. "I mean, she isn't winning, I'm not even sure she can read the cards. She's out-drinking everyone at the table, though."

"Yeah, I should probably intercede," Jules sighed. "Not to be a buzzkill or anything, but I'm not sure that I can handle a drunk Borealan on my own."

"Looks like Noza is about to call it anyway," she said, nudging Jules and gesturing to the Alpha. "That's the look he gets when he's about to give up."

"How do you know?"

"Because I've drunk him under the table on more than one occasion."

Noza looked surly, grumbling under his breath, then he slammed his massive hands on the table. Every glass on its surface jumped, and every one of his drunken packmates snapped to attention.

"I concede," he growled. "You win, Araxie."

She clapped her hands together happily as he scowled at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows, the two a complete contrast of one another both in appearance and temperament. She lifted her cup of fries and upended it into her mouth, chewing happily. Noticing Noza's grumpy demeanor, she offered him some, but he refused with a dismissive gesture. She was a remarkably functional drunk, he had to give that.

"It's been fun," Jules said, checking the time on his phone. "But we really should be going, it won't be long before the sunlamps turn on again."

"Come again soon," Ash said as Jules rose out of his seat, "I'm sure that Noza will want a rematch at some point. It was nice to meet you two."

"Likewise," Jules said.

Zuki slid her chair back and stumbled to her feet, her tail waving around clumsily, knocking against the chairs behind her. When she turned to face Jules, it swiped across the table, upending the rest of the shot glasses and splashing one of the Elysians with beer.

"S-sorry," she stammered, the alien glaring at her.

"Zuki, are you going to be alright?" Jules asked, "it's quite a walk back to the apartment."

"Whassat?" she mumbled, giggling at him. "I'm f-fine!" She took a few more steps towards him, leaning her weight on the table and threatening to upend it. "I handle my drink very well, my new friends said so!"

Drunk Zuki was a disaster waiting to happen, she was clumsy enough when she was in full control of her faculties. Jules feared that she might somehow trip and open an airlock, venting the inhabitants of the station into space in some kind of Rube Goldberg sequence of drunken accidents.

Jules slung her arm around his shoulders, his knees buckling as he tried to support her weight, but there was no hope. She was too tall, too heavy, the only way he was going to get her back to the apartment under his own power was if he somehow gained access to a flatbed truck.

Noza stood suddenly, barking orders in his native tongue, hissing and spitting like two cats squaring up for a fight. The two most sober Elysians jumped to their feet, making their way over to Zuki and taking her from Jules. They draped her arms around their shoulders, holding her upright as they walked her towards the door, the Araxie babbling to them drunkenly about how much she had enjoyed her fries.

"The drunken state of your companion is mostly our fault," Noza said, "we will walk her home."

"Oh," Jules replied, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "Alright. Thank you, Noza. We're staying at the far end of the residential quarter, in the Borealan section. Will that be okay?"

He nodded, shoving one of his sleepier packmates who struggled to stay awake, blinking her eyes groggily as she leaned on the table.

"Xoti, Reza, remain here and sleep it off. You two are in no state to go anywhere."

Ash sidled up beside him, hugging his muscular forearm and making his leather jacket creak. It was as thick around as a human thigh, and the top of her head barely reached his bicep. She peered up at him with a smirk on her face.

"You're a sweetie, Noza. Hurry back."

That seemed to embarrass the giant alien somewhat, and he nodded to her, his mane of red hair bobbing. With another growling order, his packmates guided Zuki out onto the torus, Jules following behind them.

CHAPTER 11: PACK ACTIVITIES

"Thanks, Noza. I appreciate the help," Jules said as he walked beside the giant male at the front of the pack. His strides were so long that Jules had to practically power walk to keep up with him. He was still somewhat wary of the giant creature, his sheer mass alone made him intimidating, even if he seemed friendly enough. Zuki was being guided along behind them, two of the pack members still supporting her weight as she stumbled and chatted incessantly.

"It is our duty," the Alpha replied.

"So," Jules began, trying to find a topic of conversation that might break the ice. "Based on what Ash tells me, you've been serving alongside the UNN for a long time?"