The Worthy Enemy

"When you kiss my stomach is soft the first word that comes to mind?" Alenia shook her head no, panting heavily.

"Let's go upstairs."

When they were out of the car, Dawson spared a glance at the convoy of armored personnel carriers rolling by the apartment building on their way to the northern perimeter of the district surrounding The Orchard. There were eight in total--three more than yesterday.

Alenia caught her staring and took Dawson's right hand in one of her own, lacing the fingers together. "It must be getting bad out there," she whispered.

"Knight Errant doesn't deploy armed personnel without a good reason," Dawson confirmed.

The elf waited a moment before asking, "Are you going to go out again tonight?"

"Depends on what the dispatchers are saying," Dawson said. "And what kind of mood Vayger is in."

"I don't think captain V has moods," Alenia theorized, "Just frag it mode and asleep."

"More like passed out," Dawson said, turning towards the apartment building's side door. The cup holder was in her left hand and Alenia's fingers were in her right. The elf was well-trained enough to open the door without first needing to be bribed with lips or tongue, though she would certainly expect both when they reached their destination.

A series of kicks to the door got Nyana to open it from the inside and no sooner were they in than did a small crowd of pointed ears descend on Dawson. Everyone wanted a kiss before they wanted their treat, except Avalanche who was keener on kissing Alenia after catching the scent of something on her breath.

"Mmm..." the fomor mumbled, licking her lips. "What's that flavor?" She used her tongue to fish Alenia's own into her mouth and started sucking on it gently but insistently. "Sho good... makesh my belly tingle..."

The troll slowly lifted Alenia into the air while tasting her mouth, eyes slipping shut and legs spreading. "It'sh sho famil'ar... Mmn..? Pussy? Dawshon's pussy?!" Avalanche's lips released Alenia's tongue and let the elf finally catch her breath. A pair of bulges was taking shape in her jeans, one in each pant leg. "Breed!" Avalanche mumbled. "Wanna breed it!"

Dawson placed the small tub of black cherry frozen yogurt under Avalanche's nose, attracting its momentary attention.

"After you finish your yogurt," she insisted. "Don't let it melt."

The troll's cloudy gaze focused on the snack and she licked her lips while gently setting Alenia back down. "Mmuh... Promise?"

"I promise," Dawson said, passing the cup to the fomor's hands and incidentally freeing up her own to grab Avalanche's inner thighs, squeezing her erections and making her emit a loan groan. "Even though we just had sex this morning."

"That was a whole nine hours ago!" Avalanche said plaintively. "I'm practically a virgin again now." After taking off her coat, Dawson stepped up to the fomor and placed a hand on her chest, feeling for her cool and steady heartbeat through her sleeveless gray shirt.

"How's the implant?" she asked evenly. "Are you feeling light-headed at all?"

Avalanche shook her head no while lapping at the frozen yogurt with no apparent intent of using a spoon. "Feels alright. Better."

"It's made you better at begging after you get them up."

The troll smiled, showing rows of scrubbed-clean teeth behind her tusks. "Visor's been teaching me the right words to use."

Dawson smirked in response. "Straight out of the trideos, I'm sure." She rattled both hands against Avalanche's genitals and lifted gently, prying a guttural shudder from her. When the troll reached for her with one hand Dawson held it by the wrist. "Eat. Your. Yogurt. I made great sacrifices to get it here still cold."

"Yes ma'am." Avalanche used her tongue to lick the side of Dawson's neck before going to the couch and crashing onto the cushions.

For many years Dawson had done most of her substantive thinking while standing at the window and watching The Orchard, or traffic, or the sky, or nothing at all while she put together facts and details in either total silence or the unobtrusive presence of music spilling out of the stereo speakers. Many schemes and plots had been unraveled that way.

Now when she tried to do it she got barely a minute into her thoughts before someone attached to her at the hip or laid down on her feet in pursuit of her attention. If they weren't given enough they would start trying to pull down her pants or grope some part of her body.

This time was no different. Dawson stood at the window with her commpad in her left hand for around fifty seconds before Jastira pressed up to her right side and hugged around her waist.

"If you wanted to thank me, a few minutes to look at dispatch reports and think would have been a good way."

"If you get time to think," the elf said matter-of-factly, "You might notice how expensive we are and kick us out."

"You don't need to worry about that," Dawson said, setting one hand on Jastira's head and seeking out the small metal loop in her left eyebrow to serve as a focus for her affection. "Real heroes give without counting the cost."

Jastira nestled her face in Dawson's neck and licked at her jaw. She asked, "Do heroes ever get to retire?"

"I can't relax, not while people I care about and respect are struggling to contain things on the street. Besides, I still have a few years left in me yet."

Rierra leaned on Dawson's other shoulder, speaking sharply. "Don't talk about that," she hissed. "You're going to live forever." She stuck one hand under the back of Dawson's shirt and her next words were slower. "We're going to make you get leonization so you're around for the seventh world."

Dawson turned her head to look at her with half-lidded eyes. "If you think that's the kind of thing someone like me can afford, you've been reading the wrong credstick."

"Who said anything about affording it?" Rierra whispered, putting her other hand in Dawson's waistband. "We're gonna steal it. Captain V is already putting a plan together."

At that, Dawson couldn't keep from raising a brow. "I'd like to regard that as an obvious joke but sometime in the last decade Vayger seems to have lost her mind."

Jastira pressed a kiss directly to Dawson's throat, then spoke. "Captain V had a mind?"

That got Dawson to smile. A chime from the datapad drew her attention and she ran her eyes over a city-wide civil unrest advisory from Lone Star.

"I need to go," she said quickly, prying the elves off of her body gently but firmly.

Rierra pulled her fingers from under Dawson's waist and licked them. "Do you think anyone is on to you yet?"

Pulling her coat off the rack and fitting it on, Dawson replied "If they are, they're too scared to say anything. I aim to keep it that way."

= = =

"We told you to have the money in place, drekhead. We gave you a week. That was generous, you know. Most deals go down in a night, two at most." Rulian sipped from the glass in his left hand while lightly tapping the gun in his right against the edge of the barstool he was seated on. The owner of the place tried to speak, but of course his mouth was stuffed with a rag.

"Tch. Jackie, ungag this guy. Let's see what Andy has to say."

Jackie finished lighting his cigarette and, holding it in one corner of his lips, walked forward and ripped the rag out of the bar owner's mouth. "How aboot it, rakkie? I should be gettin' steamed on some wavy choo right now and instead I'm here fraggin' around with you. What you got to say for yourself, huh?"

"Someone took your money two nights ago!" the disheveled man sputtered. His thin hair glistened with perspiration in the low light of the closed bar. "Bloody Tusks! They came in and threatened to burn down the place if I didn't pay them off!"

"Orks?" Rulian said, scowling. "Well why the drek didn't you tell us that when it happened? Part of a protection racket is protecting people who pay us. We'd have taken care of it."

"You didn't tell me how to contact you!" Andy exclaimed. "What was I supposed to do, go crawling around on the street looking for the Cutters hideout? I'd get flatlined in under an hour!"

Jackie looked at Rulian and lifted his brows. "Ah drek Rulian, that's true. I've seen guys get shot for less than that, no joke."

Sipping his drink again, Rulian gestured with his gun. "Well then why didn't you say this when we came in?"

"Because you put a bag over my head and tied me to this chair!" Andy complained. It was true, they'd used three whole rolls of tape to do it and the bag had only just come off.

"That was just to send a message," Rulian said dismissively. "We don't want you to think we're not serious just because we're polite aboot it. Jackie, hit this guy in the stomach. Four out of ten, don't break his ribs."

Turning to Andy, Jackie shrugged and spoke around his lit cigarette. "I'm real sorry aboot this one, eh?" The bar owner barely had time to turn his head towards Jackie before the fist sank into his belly, knocking the air out of his lungs and making him go limp in the office chair.

"What do you want??" the man gasped. "I can't pay you and the Tusks!"

"Don't you worry about the Bloody Tusks," Rulian said. "We're going to give you a pass this time, pal. Jackie here is going to give you our contact numbers. You see any orks in face paint creeping around your bar anytime soon you tell us, immediately. I mean it now, we may not look it but the Cutters are businessmen. Have I made myself clear?"

Andy nodded weakly.

"Jackie, cut him loose."

"And since you ain't paying us this month," Jackie said while drawing out his hip blade and clumsily cutting the tape on one side of the chair, "I'm taking a bottle when we leave. Call it a hamdling fee."

"Jackie," Rulian said, "It's a handling fee."

"Right, that's what I said. Hamdling. Whatever, same thing."

When the two stepped out of Andy's dark bar, Rulian sipped his drink while looking down the street towards where two crowds were gathering. Smoking his cigarette to the butt, Jackie followed his gaze while working to open the bottle he'd taken from behind the bar.

"The frag's going on down there?" he wondered. "Should we go see what that's all aboot?"

"No," Rulian replied, "That over there is what we call bad business. Lets get out of here Jackie. We need to get the guys off the street tonight, let those idiots fight it out. We'll clean up when this is over."

"Sounds good to me," Jackie said. He lifted the bottle to his lips and, still with the cigarette in his mouth, tried to drink from it with limited success.

= = =

Julius sipped his drink, scrolling through the datapad on the small round table in front of him. Things were going to shit out there, but then that had been an adequate description of the California Free State for as long as he had been alive. Likely it would be for as long as there was a California Free State.

The news was reporting another urban catastrophe, the third this month. The cause was unclear but of course believed to be related to territorial disputes between rival gangs. Lone Star cited a lack of personnel and resources as a reason for the explosion in violent crime.

Damn, Julius thought, this is good scotch. The Chairman might be a vindictive idiot but he knew his alcohol.

It would have been his preference to watch footage of the destruction on his display screen but the electricity was out in Folsom State Prison. Megiddo had no idea if it had been cut by the guards or by the rioting prisoners but it made no difference either way. He'd made arrangements for eventual blackouts.

Sounds echoed down the cell block outside of his compartment. Shouts, screams, occasional gunshots. At least once someone setting off an improvised explosive device. Indistinct orders shouted over intercoms and bullhorns, ignored by their target audience.

Again he tasted the contents of the glass resting on the table. Damn. He would mourn this bottle when it was gone.

Heavy footfalls in the hallway caused Julius to lift his eyes to the bars and uncross his legs. A lanky figure breathing heavily sprinted by his cell without stopping. A moment later he came back, grasping the bars and peering inside the lavish cell.

As with most humans he saw the cage rather than the fantastic gilding. "Hey," he rasped, "Hey! Bloody Tusks are breakin' everyone out! We're makin' for the courtyard, y'wanna join us?"

Few times had Julius Megiddo ever been so offended by the manner of someone's addressing of him. Though he certainly did not long to see her again, at least the accursed detective who had put him in here had displayed a modicum of civility. The average Folsom inmate was barely fit to look in his cell, let alone talk to him.

Though the lights were out and only the moon through the windows offered illumination, elven eyes could see well in such circumstances. "Mister Anderson," Julius said smoothly, reading the tag on the disheveled man's jumpsuit, "Why would I want to leave the comfort and relative safety of my cell to participate in a filthy, ill-conceived and entirely uncivilized attempt to further flaunt the law?"

Anderson gaped at him for several seconds, then stammered. "But... don't you want to get outta here?"

Julius picked up the datapad and navigated to breaking coverage of an ork warband forming up in central San Francisco, captured by a news drone. "Unlike you and your unruly compatriots," the elf said, "I was not caught hiding in a barrel with suspenders on it. I agreed to serve a prison sentence as punishment for my perceived crimes and when I make an agreement I hold to it. It's a quality called integrity, perhaps you've heard of it? Maybe as part of the sentence 'You have no integrity`."

Apparently the human had trouble keeping up, but after several seconds of looking around at the luxurious furniture and numerous appliances with which Megiddo's cell was equipped, he summoned what he felt was the only plausible insult.

"Guess if I had a cell like this I wouldn't want to leave either!" He tried his hardest to make his envy sound like an insult.

"Please stand back from my bars," Julius requested, "Your appallingly greasy fingers are leaving stains."

For a few more moments the human stared at him, then took off running past the cell. Julius picked up his glass and breathed in the aroma rising from it.

Damn, he thought again. What a pleasure it was to enjoy a good drink over an entertaining display of how the lower classes solved their problems.

= = =

"What does the warboss want!?" Gore'gav bellowed. As one the mustered horde screamed back in answer.

"Streets!"

"And what'll we pay to get those streets!?"

"Blood!"

"Whose blood?!"

"All blood!"

"Then go!" Gore'gav roared. "Go, Bloody Tusks! Paint the concrete red!"

And they did. The horde moved as one at first, starting at their rally point in Mission Bay and steadily marching towards the sea. On the way they looted shops, burned down Free State government buildings and beat to death anyone they caught on the asphalt. Almost a thousand orks converged on a hastily erected Lone Star barricade at the intersection of 18th and Shotwell. Before backup could arrive they were flipping over police cruisers, tossing improvised explosives at riot officers and stealing everything not bolted to the ground. Anything bolted down was battered with clubs and hammers until it exploded.

From there the horde split up, war trucks and plated three-wheelers carrying packs of ten or twelve Bloody Tusks further afield in San Francisco to take turf and plunder from any too weak to defend themselves. Alchemy labs were knocked over for their chemicals, automotive factories were pillaged for their models and parts, and trauma centers were attacked for their drugs. The largest group was led by Gore'gav himself, right hand of the Warboss Ivan Ionfist. They made their way towards the Lone Star precinct building in Haight-Ashbury by way of a derelict canal that ran beside 21st street, wide enough to let the raucous and unruly mob move at a pace that Gore'gav found acceptable.

It was in the canal, near the overpass where the old Bay Area Rapid Transit trains used to cross the waterway back before Knight Errant and Mothers of Metahumans bombed the tracks in 2063 to limit Protectorate troop movements, that Gore'gav met real resistance. Not in the form of Lone Star's first responders or scattered patrols but in their biggest territorial rivals of the last two years: The Ancients.

They materialized out of the night like creatures of the concrete jungle, switching on the headlights of their motorcycles and souped-up muscle cars all at once in a show of coordination the Bloody Tusks would never be able to mimic. Ranks of jacket-clad elves with spiked bats and tire irons over their shoulders stood in front of marksmen armed with compound bows, throwing knives and the occasional firearm.

Gore'gav raised a fist to halt his mob, though they stopped only reluctantly. Standing at the forefront, the tall imposing ork spared a moment to slick back his greasy hair and step out from his cohorts and display proudly his bare, heavily scarred chest. He held his hand-forged halberd in one fist and beat it to his body, a motion quickly picked up by the rest of the orks under his command. It was a wordless message of challenge: come forth and be annihilated.

The Ancients were silent on their side for nearly a full minute, until one figure emerged from their ranks. A tight, battle-worn leather jacket was the upper part of her outfit, torn and threadbare denim jeans the bottom. Wrapped around her right fist was a length of steel chain measuring over a meter and clenched in her left was a knuckle duster stained with what could only be the blood of past opponents that had failed to avoid her blows..

The helmet she wore did nothing to conceal her identity, for in all of San Francisco and indeed on all of the western American coast there was only one like it. A digital readout in the visor displayed white words on a black background opaque from the outside. As she neared Gore'gav, unsupported by her subordinate gang members, the words became clear to him.

HELLO DARKNESS.

This was the elf known as Vayger, captain of the San Francisco Ancients.

Gore'gav worked his mouth, forming a grin in anticipation of the coming bloodshed. Vayger was no more than half his weight and less than two-thirds his stature. To cut her down in single combat would not only demoralize the Ancients, it would validate the supremacist beliefs at the core of the Bloody Tusks. It would demonstrate that in honest battle even the most infamous of elves was no match for an ork of even middling prestige and reputation.

She certainly hadn't come to parlay. With one motion of her arm Vayger extended the chain, its lower half hitting the concrete with a rattling scratch that continued as she dragged it behind her, opposite hand held at her side.

Lumbering forward, Gore'gav lifted his weapon in answer and the Bloody Tusks behind him roared. Cries rose up in Or'zet: grumoge, hez, drundeah, Battle, courage, execution.

For most of Gore'gav's street fighting career the first blow was often also the last, for one reason or another. He broke into a trot and telegraphed his attack for maximum gladiatorial appeal, reeling back and summoning forth the same monstrous bellow he had used earlier in the night to terrify Lone Star officers into abandoning defensive positions with nothing more than a few frantic shots his way.

A wide swing meant to cut Vayger in half sailed through the inadequate lights shining from 21st street, halberd's edge gleaming with malice aforethought and intent most murderous. Without any apparent effort, with casual grace and ease, Vayger ducked beneath the attack with a few inches to spare between the jagged edge and the top of her helmet.