The Tales of Twisted Felix Katt (Book 1)

Need a Little Revolution (NaNoWriMo)

I aim to misbehave – Malcolm Reynolds

Van looked at me and must have seen it on my face. “No. Don’t say it. Don’t even go there. The last time you had a bad feeling…” Van started to wail.

“…You got shot in the ass.” Rorick and I said in unison. I shot him a grin, seeing the humor sparkle in his eyes but he kept his face serious. Right, I had to act like I had a huge stick up my ass on this planet.

“That’s right. I’m not going through this again!” Van whined.

“Can it.” I hissed, that bad feeling stalking me like a scorned prom date. Van seemed to realize that I had no patience for her usual shit right now. We were leaving the populated and slightly more cosmopolitan docks and starting to venture into the more carefully controlled areas. Auralis is a lovely city formatted off the once hugely popular Tokyo Japan on Old Earth. The buildings were hugely tall, impossible to see the ground from the higher floors. They loomed over the streets below, blocking out most of the ambient light, but the innumerable amount of neon signs everywhere outside the residential area made sure that there was always eye searingly bright light to go by. It’s awfully fun to try and pull off a stealthy ninja assault on one of their downtown strongholds while being on Technicolor display.

It wasn’t so bad where we were now; residential areas have the signs on time restrictions so that rest periods are actually restful. That gave us nearly two hours to get into the middle of the living district, meet up with the Family representative, then sneak over to the heavily patrolled side of the city and make our way in before the lights came back on and Plan A failed epically. Piece of cake. The really hard part was going to be sneaking back out again. Though by that time we should be Frankenstein free so the worse they can find on us is weapons, and that’ll just make them ask us to leave. Though they’ll use less polite language than normal just to help express their displeasure, I wasn’t too worried about that end.

It would probably be best to explain that Auralis was laid out in a Venn diagram like series of interconnecting circles. Just looking at the areas we needed to infiltrate, I had to land in the circle belonging to the Docks, then sneak into the residential circle because it was easier than sneaking into the business circle from the docks. Where all three circles overlapped was the ‘no-go zone’, where the richest women and their Families lived, and there were neigh constant patrols. So we were right now in the residential area, leaving behind the last traces of the Docks.

“This is a bad idea.” Van whispered under her breath. I didn’t mind, in fact I’m so used to it I often don’t realize she’s complaining. Van’s superstitious and because she’s not died yet, she’ll start every run off with the exact same sequence. Whining, then complaining, then muttering and when she finally goes quiet: WORRY. Van and quiet are not in a sentence together unless it involves: Van has her mouth full so she is for once quiet, Van is asleep so enjoy the quiet  or something is about to go apocalyptically wrong, I can tell, because Van has gone quiet. Those are the only times she’s ever silent, I know because I have heard her remain her noisy self while killing, blowing things up or having a bedroom romp. Actually she’s even noisier during any of those three.

I was about to step out when I felt Rorick’s fingers curl over my shoulder and root me in place. He’s noticed that any time he touches me I tend to freeze, so now I know whenever he touches me, it’s so that I freeze. A half second later, the patrol I would have walked us right into stepped around the corner. As it was, I pressed back against Rorick and had Van squashed against my own chest in return. The three of us plus our bulky bags (including Frank) made for one tight squeeze into a space that would normally only accommodate one of us. Thankfully the patrol’s complacency added into the lack of regular lighting ensured that they didn’t look to see us hidden there. I just had to endure the exquisite torture that was being pressed up against Rorick’s chest. You may mock, but it’s harder to withstand than any kind of water boarding I’ve endured. I’m tall, he’s taller. I’m a big girl, he’s bigger. I’m ‘hell hath no fury’, he’s Goddess’ wrath. Now imagine being pressed up against a chest that has no excess body fat, that radiates heat about two degrees higher than your own and just sinks into the muscles of your back. I could feel Rorick’s heart just hammer in his chest, the beat increasing as I leaned against him, telling me in his own way that he was getting into gear, ready to handle whatever came our way. His leash looped over my shoulder, crushed into my chest by Van’s body, and truth be told, I’d forgotten about it until then. The moment we’d stepped from public view, I’d left it in Rorick’s hands, letting him take care of it himself. It was only because his arms ended up wrapped around my shoulders that it’d even fallen over my chest.