Theo Sequel: Otep's Last Case Ch. 05

"One me lap lassie, I want some elf chocolate!"

"Me too!" One bearded jock groped her white panties and pulled her over.

"Oi! Be good boys! Juse cause the monsters let you in-HEY! EEEP!"

The dark elf laughed madly as she was tripped and pulled over for a grope as they lifted the tankards amongst rowdy laughter, lifting tankards in a cheer. The dark elf waitress giggled and laughed, sharing the man's beer amongst laughter and uproarious mentions that she wore no panties. The man had his hands already inside her skirt, fondling her dark maple colored ass as she drank from his tankard as well. Her colleague rolled her eyes and just did that: deliver a brandy to an older gentleman with a smile, and even cuddled up to him once she was sure no one was staring.

Otep laughed. Sometimes stereotypes proved themselves right. The light elf was leading him by the hand upstairs with a blush, her white ears wiggling.

"This way sir..."

"Sibel!" Otep stopped watching the couples and ran to the table to hug her friends, finally laughing in delight for the first time in months, Saakali already hugging Sakri, who had, in her Dracolich body, at least gotten used to living. Her beauty was tarnished, skin crackled in places, but her beauty was just that: a statue defying time. Beautiful, yet with haunted eyes from coming back to life, her body was still drawing stares...

Otep sighed. She'd feel better soon with some partying and young men to meet.

The human wizard gave her a big hug, inviting her to sit with them, which the Anubis did just that: taking a tail-free seat with a hollow back so her fluffy wagging jackal tail could be free, her squishy toebeans on her fat cute paws wiggling in the mid-air, her hairy legs dangling with joy.

She whimpered and squealed when Sibel ruffled her fluffy big ears and head after hugging. Cuddling, the human wizard chuckled and told her in a joking voice:

"Whojagoodguuurl!?!"

Otep giggled, but held firm. "I-I'm the Pharaoh's blessed Mortician! Don't do that..." Her ears wiggled when Sibel's hands squeezed the cute flappy folds of her ears and pet her head like a puppy. The wavy-haired Eastern Archmage smiled and repeated the question.

"Whojagoodgurl?"

Otep could not help but coo and giggle as she was pet like a dog. Squealing, she joined the joke and licked Sibel's hand as they both laughed.

"Meeeeee!" She whimpered, rubbing her nose on Sibel's cheek.

Meanwhile, Ulfric and Alexa were talking over a glass of wine, Alexa herself sipping a glowing nectar chalice in her ghostly form.

"...So that's that happened, the giant Mandeha demon ripped me in two." Alexa finished her un-life story, smirking. "I am now a ghost arch-mage in Agrat's army."

"That is horrible."

"It is, Ulm's Greatest Warlord." Alexa sighed. "I am sad that no letter reached Sibel. Sadly the Inquisition didn't let letters pass to the military." The ghost sighed a cold mist.

The human empire of Lescatie kept the contact to the Reik tightly regulated, only letting mail through in case of captives, slaves (mostly to Fraterni Caritas to collect donations to ransom them) and rare Reik human free citizens if they held no risk of security.

When the music died down, the pole dancer dark elf picked up all the tips with a grin, and swayed her hips in a sexy walk to get dressed, her black naked body passing by the patrons, earning slaps on her ass and giggling in turn. Even a human woman couldn't help but brush her fingers on the dark elf's slutty body, gently rubbing a cheek. The cheeky monster girl blew a kiss to her and disappeared.

The music died down, as an elaborately dressed Hellhound girl in a long, red dress sauntered towards the audience, leaning on the piano played by a man wearing a tuxedo and brushed her fur.

A soft tune by the piano started to be played by the man's dextrous hands, and the Hellhound beauty fixed a rose to her dig, rich hair, and opened her mouth.

When she started singing, her fiery eyes blazing, all the eyes turned on her, her soft voice singing in Frankish.

"La vie en Rose?" A werewolf girl blinked, as Otep nodded.

"Agrat's favorite from the other world."

The clinking of glass and cutlery punctuated the music as the celebrants feasted on piglets, veal, fruits and vegetables heaped on each other.

The free-for-all luncheon was cut by a clank of a beer tankard.

*-*-*-*

The giant of a man, beard blood-red and hair flowing wildly, slammed the table and stood up with a huge tankard in his hand as others jumped, startled. His face was flushed with alcohol as he bellowed.

"A toast!"

Ulfric lifted a beer:

"Savior of Reikshold! To Otep!"

"TO OTEP!" They lifted the glasses.

"To the Killer of the Vampire King! SAAKALI!"

"TO SAAKALI!" They lifted their glasses again, drunken singing blaring across the table.

"TO THE REBORN DRAGON!" Sibel bellowed, her ethereal breath leaving her shimmering chest. "Sakri, who gave her first life to protect Otep!" Even Sakri smiled a little.

"TO SAKRI!" They bellowed, clinking beer, Otep downing her beer, her tail wagging. The beer went down like water, her hungry metabolism, her re-energized mind after her first death devouring and enjoying every morsel she ate or drank.

"Faaah! Human beer ish the besht!" She slurred cutely, laughing in a drunken haze with Saakali, and improvised a praise for her companions.

"To the saviors of the Castle! ULFRISH AND SHIBEL!" She lifted a refilled tankard, and downed it greedily.

"ULFRIC AND SIBEL! KILLERS OF THE DRAGON!"

"HEAR, HEAR!" They roared in joy, clanking bottles.

The music was slow, even as they drank and bellowed. The Hellhound lifted her legs in a seductive pose blew on a rose and tossed it at the celebrants, petals burning.

"Il me parle tout bas

Je vois la vie en roooose..."

Glasses clinked as they drank in joy.

*-*-*-*

Otep was no slouch. The booze had been sprinkled with indigo seeds, her vision dancing in clouds.

The little Anubis would not stop working even when celebrating. A side project of her to detect murderous intent. Everything was loving blue, the picture of perfect harmony. The fluffy Anubis detective would leave nothing to chance even relaxing. That was the reason she politely denied Sibel almost pulling her by the arm, who settled for Ulfric instead.

"Let's dance!"

As the music returned to a lively piano medley called "swing" by the humans, some of the celebrants stood up and pulled laughing monster girls for a dance. The pianist, the young man burst into funky tunes with the Hellhound singer jumping to her feet her eyes blazing. Wild dancing overtaking the tavern, Otep huddled close with Alexa and Sibel to talk in a corner anxious to catch up with lost time.

For Otep, lost time was ever more precious, especially after she looked death in the eye and experienced it. She smiled at the waitress, a young human woman with sunburnt skin who once wore a slave collar on her neck judging from the paler strip of flesh around it. Politely thanking the girl, she snatched a big, frothing tankard of beer from her tray as her tail wagged with joy.

"So what are you both up to after the Palace Fire?"

Alexa and Sibel shrugged, content with the wine in their hands. "We are helping the Wizarding Council of Lescatie with their pet project, Fenrir." Sibel squinted, holding her nose. "Or Fenris, forgot which."

"So I heard, bombing the incoming horde with rocks straight from the moon if things go south!" Otep nodded with a happy voice, greedily chugging the beer tankard and laughing with a loud exhalation. She was tipsy, ears wiggling, and quite thirsty.

Sibel smiled: Death apparently made the returned much more appreciative in life Otep was like a joyful puppy, finding joy at the smallest of things, as Saakali was now apparently the mature one, grizzled, yet still elegant. Even Sakri was sitting with a young, bookish looking visitor human from Lescatie wearing a wizard's robe in a corner.

It was a sweet irony that the dead were more appreciative of life than the living: once the greatest riddle of life was solved, there was nothing to hold the individual back.

Laughing and kissing, singing and drinking, they kept celebrating, downing beer after beer, wine after wine, as singers and music changed again. The noises of sex upstairs never quietened.

Ulfric waved over to an Arachne waitress with a drunken bellow. "Lass! Wine and Cheese! Sakri seems like she is tryin' to outlast the War to Come!"

The Arachne, a beautiful, spider-bodied monstergirl with white hair, eight, red eyes across her face shrugged and shook her head, adjusting her beautiful bob cut hair with her sharp, chitinous talons.

"We ran out of cheese." She spoke, her maid uniform cut for a huge arachnid body smeared with wine and beer splashes.

Jazz music stops, the dark-skinned double bass player immediately contorting his face in disgust...

Everybody turned her head at the Arachne whose expression was akin to admitting a mistake at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

"I knew this would happen." The Arachne sighed, rolling her eyes. "We are out of cheese, everyone." The responses were weak at first, rising in pitch and noise as the drunken patrons' minds registered the problem.

"What?"

"WHAT?"

"WHAAAT?"

Heads turned in unison. The music stopped, and customers started grumbling already, uneasy, and upset. The beautiful spider woman could only raise her arms, getting into a shouting match with the customers:

"Sorry gang, we are out of cheese!"

When heads turned to the mouse girl eating a gigantic cheese pizza topped with six different sorts of cheddar and gorgonzola, her face contorted in anger, almost hissing like a rat in a corner.

"Hey! I paid for this!" She squeaked angrily, her thin mouse tail rising up in alarm as the customers kept grumbling. "And that's racist profiling! Everyone loves Holstaurus cheese!"

"But we don't eat up every bit of cheese with the money we earn." A Lamia girl grumbled, eating a scone with tea.

"That's MY MONEY Snek!"

"Hey, hey, HEY!" Ulfric slammed his palm on the table. "Rachna, did your larder get raided? A lot of noise and chaos happened last month. I'm sure either it was stolen or raided. Otep." He turned to the fluffy jackal girl, teasing her. "Can you do some...detective work on that?"

Giving a cute hiccup, Otep stood up. She wore a long trenchcoat, with a small, cute pipe on her lips that gave out bubbles, as well as a squeaky bone toy on the table. Some people giggled seeing these, prompting the jackal girl to explain:

"I'm trying to quit smoking."

Amongst giggles and laughter, she slammed her paw on the table.

"I'll question the witnesses. Someone in this tavern is a..."

She turned her fluffy head dramatically, jackal ears wiggling.

"IS A CHEESE THIEF!"

Mocking gasps and laughter filled the room. Man, woman and monster female alike burst into laughter and added their own, annoying jokes.

"What kind of muenster would do this?"

"You cheddar solve this case quickly, Otep!"

"All these cheese thefts have me feeling bleu!"

Fox-ears, spidery Arachne and tentacled Scylla joined the humans in raucous laughter and making of dairy puns. Poor Otep and her sense of duty was being sorely tested as exotic humanoids around her cracked jokes and laughed at a problem that would be grave indeed, back in Otep's homeland. No self-respecting Anubis would EVER let her beloved Pharaoh run out of beer or cheese!

...maybe cheese; goat cheese was unpopular with Kemet monstergirls, and sheep were too difficult to raise in the deserts and mountains.

Even she could not help but roll her eyes at the last one, Otep blew on her bubble pipe, and paced around the tavern.

"I must quesstion witnessesh..." Giggles filled the room when she slurred in her Kemet accent. "Who is constantly up and around in this establishment?"

A burst of bleat-like laughter sounded from above, Zaane the Satyr girl leaning to the wooden railings above. "That would be me-e!"

Zaane the Goat-Girl. Zaane the Satyr. Zaane the Town Bicycle, because every male with a penis, even the rare Futanari, monstergirls with male genitals, perfectly female otherwise, having ridden her. Not one visitor didn't spend a night on top of Zaane, who fucked and sucked any boy to give them a warm hospitable welcome. The Reik openly wanted to employ her as a "Morale Officer" in the coming war.

The Goat-Girl was a beautiful, latte-complexioned monster woman, with cloven hooves, furry legs, but also the full body of a goddess, two large breasts as big as her head dripping milk, her body in sweat.

Otep nervously coughed. Zaane was a perfect slut but also knew pillow talk.

"Where were you when the tavern's cheese store was unlocked during the evening hours?" Otep carefully probed, controlling her drunken slurring.

"Oh?" Zaane grinned, wiping herself with a towel as two drunken men got out of her room, stumbling outside in a half-dressed slouch. "I was taking three fine young boys to bed for a foursome. Y'know, the guys who came with the Salvation Army of the humans!" She stretched, closing her eyes and grinning. "Such strong, sexy bucks! Two double-teamed me from behind, I opened my mouth and you know, these strapping farmer lads pack a good thick coc-"

Otep dramatically closed her big jackal ears with her paws and squealed in protest, making the patrons laugh. Her face was more annoyed than angry, cute human features and fangs flashing as she shouted upwards.

"TOO MUCH INFORMATION! GET TO THE POINT!"

Zaane grinned. "When we were done and all, I got out for a fresh retsina, having drunk all the wine in the room. Guess what!"

Otep's ears wiggled. "What?"

"Fresh paw prints were leading from the pantry!" Zaane finished her amused tirade about sex with a serious tone. "The prints were laced with tomato sauce, and in the shape of a Were-mouse girl's paws!"

Just when Otep was slowly weighing Zaane's testimony, an angry squeak and a mouse-eared monstergirl erupted from the kitchen wearing a cook's apron, cute face smeared with flour, her ears wiggling.

"Excuse me? I'M THE DAMN COOK AND THE BAKER!" She squeaked, her nose twitching. "I WORK HERE FOR AGRAT'S SAKE!" Her big cook's hat, a white big cloud for a cylinder, was comically oversized as she squealed angrily at the horny goat-bitch braying with laughter, which was also repeated by some of the laughs.

One thing the human patrons absolutely adored was the monstergirl taverns. Each was a part-bawdyhouse, part-sex hotel, part-inn mixture of sex, laughter, and overly emotional outburst, with human wenches, once slaves raised in the Reik orphanages, now doubling as prostitutes after abolishing of slavery to the rare human who was allergic(a rarity, but true) or hesitant to dip themselves into the monstergirl honeypot. Those used to living in the Reik, Monster or Human, not even batted an eye at the completely nude ginger human waitress for example, who swayed her hips and dangled her voluptuous, freckled breasts as she delivered a tray full of beer, or paid any attention of screams of pleasure and creaking beds from upstairs. The ginger waitress even laughed when one of the older human men visiting the tavern groped her ass and wiggled, but warned not to touch too much without paying extra with a wink. One of the older men with a graying beard laughed in return, and slammed a handful of silver in her palm, his other hand squeezing her soft, round ass.

"Then I'm game for ye, lassie!" Surprised, and giggling, the naked bar wench raised her brows, putting the coins to a small pouch tied to her thigh in the custom of former Reik human slaves who carried their peculium, slave wages.

"Then follow me, sir..."

And this little exchange, on-the-spot prostitution was pretty much ignored by our lovely monstergirl-human band of misfits, trying to figure out who stole the tavern's cheese.

The mouse girl angrily started a tirade of how she had to work hard from dawn till dusk and the cheese market being already expensive for her own food. Otep, the cute Anubis Detective, pretty much tuned out what she said.

For unbeknownst to others, she had already realized an important detail, even when drunk. The mouse girl was cute, smol, and sported paws for hands as she waved a ladle with tomato sauce and argued with the patrons about the accusation.

Otep blinked. Even from the haze of the wine, she saw the were-mouse cook had long paws similar to that of a human, unlike the toe beans of a mouse.

Long paws...of a human...

...or raccoon...

She kept watching as the Lamia stuck out her tongue and hissed, being accused of racism against mouse girls. The cook's hat wiggled as she shouted and waved her paws. She must have been an untidy cook.

Or that was a leaf under her hat.

"Excuse me..." Otep blinked, reaching forward to lift the cook's hat to clean her hair. "You got a leaf stuck to your head." That made the cook mouse tense up, freeze and wave her hands with excuses.

"Oh no, don't bother, I was outside collecting-EEP!"

Waving her paws defensively, she was too slow for well-trained Otep to poke her hat away and touch the leaf.

Suddenly, the mouse cook froze, her face stuck. A bright explosion, and a drumroll that sounded like "Pon-poko-pon!" exploded across the room, startling everyone.

A whimpering, little monstergirl, similar to a dog tried to dash out of the ball of transformation cloud, only to be snatched up by the ear by the long arm of the law, Otep's paws. It was a raccoon-featured monstergirl who were often migrants from Zipangu, and were expert merchants...or thieves.

"I KNEW IT!" Otep chuckled, the smol monstergirl trying to get free and squealing in annoyment.

"Let me go!"

"So you were a Danuki!"

"Where is Cham!" The angry Innkeeper, the Arachne with the long legs came forward in a dash and stared the thieving raccoon girl down until she whimpered into quietness. "Speak or I will pack you in my silk and bite you every day!"

"She took sick leave and told me to cover for her! I didn't steal anything I swear!"The terrified Danuki whimpered, pawing at her ears. "Let me down, it hurts!"

Otep smirked with a grin, snatching her wrists after letting her down by her strong paws. "So who stole the cheese?"

"I was offered to eat as much as I could! It wasn't theft, it was payment!"

"AND YOU ATE A WHOLE WHEEL OF GORGONZOLA?" The Arachne was besides herself with anger, already weaving a painful-looking silk bondage gear in seconds and starting to wrap the raccoon girl who looked pleadingly at Otep to make her stop. The poor, cute girl sniffled her raccoon-like face (down to the eyerings that made her look like a stereotypical thief) pleading for mercy.

Otep's heart twinged a little, tossing a small purse of silver the Arachne's multiple arms, who grinned at the Anubis. "That won't pay for the whole cheese, dear. Conscience costs extra."

Otep's ears wiggled with joy as her fangs gleamed as if revealing a joke. "Make her wash the dishes for the rest."

"Deal!"

"No! NOOOOO! I'll pay! Lemme go!" The little raccoon girl who looked like a teenager but was as old as Otep herself grumbled and protested all the way being carried by the Arachne.

"Get to washing before I change my mind and ship you off to a dark elf village where they still keep slaves! Or I could eat you!"

An obedient whimper was the only answer, with the slow clinking of dishes and soapy water.

"Meanie!"

*-*-*-*

"Oh well, this cheddar isn't too bad I suppose..."

The tavern kept eating cheese with wine after an auspiciously coinciding visit by a trader soon, so our adventurers could resume their feast and laugh about it.

But that was to be cut short.

*-*-*-*

"How did you know she was a Tanuki, Otep?"