It's another mission where Dash, Aleena and "kitty" show up a bit late, but that's okay, cause they make the wait worth it yet again!

 
Light sexual situations

 
Ten minutes ago, chaos had erupted in Forest Village, with the sounds of accountant screams- high pitched, obnoxious and overbearing- ringing throughout the streets.

Things would never be the same in the little village again. Not on the day the Boss Bat came'eth!!

The Boss Bat was in a tizzy. Who dared exterminate the mosquitoes he fed upon? He was hungry dammit and somebody would pay. Like, maybe the ones who did the extermination! Yeah.. that would be a good start.

There were blood and screams and flapping wings everywhere. Thankfully, Wilton "Boring Dude 7/9" Madman had managed to hide away behind a desk in a janitor's closet earlier. Now he was attempting to sneak away in the confusion along with his very ordinary blue stapler, to which he had no unhealthy obsession ever so don't even start with us. He was cut off just outside town as a giant rat.. man.. thing.. stood in front of him.

"Where do ya think you're going?" The Muri- dan soldier said with a sharp toothed grin. "More importantly, how much longer do ya think ya got?"

"Um.. recalculating!" Wilton threw the stapler at him and tried to run off. Mistake. He immediately bounced off of the broad furred chest of a second guard!

"Hello," he chuckled, making a grab for the scrambling human.

"Goodbye," a smoke-gown clad elf replied pithily. She loosed an arrow from her bow and stuck the rat square in the torso with an arrow. She stepped into view, taking aim at one of the other attackers. That's when she noticed about half a dozen Muri-Dan standing in front of her and froze.

 
----

 
Flashback - not long after Aleena, Dash and Catrina escaped from the bugbear's forcefield shield

Sebastian Dash mostly ignored the warm, muggy night in Degrassi. Nothing new to Dash. The nights spent south of the border, just prior to Dash's return to the Kingdom at Prince Blahking's behalf, tended to be much harsher anyway.

Dash shook his head and tried to focus on a cluster of stars in the sky. Eyes still weren't focusing. Dash closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. What was it.. something an old mentor had told Dash when he was young? About using his senses, all of them and not just...

Use each sense like a finger, the old crone (as Dash thought of her at the time) had said. Use the whole hand, not just the same few fingers.

Shrugging and deciding to try to let himself drift back to sleep, Dash started towards the hut he'd been staying at, only to notice a brief sound of someone softly walking over cobblestone. Dash turned, wondering if his peripheral vision would have alerted Dash in the past. Before the Bugbear incident.

Aleena was standing there in a blanket, staring longingly into the sky. She looked ever so beautiful in the moonlight and yet, sad somehow as well. Like she was lost adrift at sea or something. Although, Dash recalled from their meeting even when she was literally lost at sea, she'd never looked lost before, at least not that Dash had seen.

She'd never looked.. vulnerable to Dash before. Not in the real world, anyway.

"Aleena?" Dash asked, tentatively.

"I can't do this," Aleena said. She closed her eyes.

"It's fine," Dash said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "You've been through a lot. We know you're going to need time to recover, so take as much..."

"No, I mean I can't let this control me."

"What?" That wasn't the answer Dash had expected.

"I am the Queen of an interstellar empire. What those... creatures did is unforgivable."

Dash smiled. "So what're ya gonna do about it?"

"No, Dash. 'What are we going to do about it?' And the first order of business will be . . . business as usual, cysuit or no."

"Good. If you ask me, that thing holds you back." The voice belonged to Catrina, who had been pacing- or prowling- the camp growling in the foul mood she'd been in of late.

"It is everything to me! To us - it is as much a part of us as your claws are to you," Aleena snapped.

Catrina stepped closer, confronting her at once rival and comrade.

"I can fight just fine without my claws. Can you without your suit? I've watched you. You have the body many would die for- few possess. Yet you fall back on the tricks that thing inside you- inside my brother..."

Dash smirked. "Nothing wrong with a few tricks every now and then."

Catrina glanced over at her once-love. "But what can she do if she can't use it? If the crap they were pulling affected it, she'd best not trust it."

"Your brother is better for the enhancements we've given him. Faster reflexes. Better situational awareness. Keener intellect. Invisibility if he desires. Weapons that can destroy an entire mountain, in his paw."

"My brother was strong, smart, virile." Catrina chuckled at that last. "After he grew up I sometimes cursed that we were of the same family, but that doesn't matter here. What does is the fact that that b- that Jen has done this to him! What will become of what he is with a crutch like that?"

"They love each other. They will be stronger together! Are your paws a crutch? Your teeth? These things make you better, so too does the cysuit!"

"My claws are tools, and I can fight well with or without them! Can you say the same?" Catrina was starting to circle the elf queen.

"We shall see then, won't we?" Aleena replied, dropping into a combative stance. Dash looked on and just sighed. Even as the lioness slipped out of her armor so as to not have any advantage on Aleena's smoke dress. Not that she was naked- but there wasn't much left!

She circled the elf, her paws up showing no claws. "I hope there's nothing to that that will tear…"

Aleena didn't even have to think as her smoke dress fuzzed and shifted, drawing up tight around her- very tight as it wrapped her breasts and hips in a manner similar to Catrina's. The lioness took a moment to admire the elf's body- strictly for strategic reasons, of course.

"Don't worry, I'll teach you proper first aid after I give you something to bandage!" She took a quick step in, closing her left hand and swinging at Aleena's face!

Aleena turned it to the side with a basic arm block. She played defensively, not throwing any hits of her own. Catrina kept up her attack, trying to use Aleena's blocks to find an opening through which to score a hit on the elf's body.

Catrina might overpower Aleena, but the elf had centuries of experience. That, and earning the right to wear a cysuit in her culture meant that she was very proficient in martial combat. She kept her cool, kept her focus. She watched the cat's arms, shoulders, and hips. Aleena waited for her moment, to try to trap the cat in a submission hold as she grew increasingly aggressive.

To be honest the thought of a submission hold surprised Catrina, who suddenly found herself facing Dash, her breasts bouncing at him as the elf did her best to twist her sword arm up behind her head! Most of her fights were out and out brawls, where the loser was usually left out on the ground- unless there was some sort of 'punishment' involved in losing.

Dash held his arms up. "Hey, don't look at me, kitty. You're the one who wanted to test her."

Catrina smirked at this, twisting with the flexibility of her kind to reverse the hold, purring into Aleena's ear. "He's right. I do want to test you- in so many ways!"

Aleena's eyes widened as Catrina ended her statement with a lick of the elf's ear, twisting away from the feline with a smirk. "Naughty kitty! Just like your brother. But you'll have to tap out to me first."

The lioness approached again, the mood in the air shifting. "I understand there was plenty of tapping going on that night." She glanced sidelong at Dash, and realized something. Every fight between herself and the elf queen- whether between her possessed self and the cy suited bitch or here today- had been for one reason. Was she good enough to take over?

Catrina realized that the elf- that Aleena- had passed every test the lioness threw at her, that there was only one test remaining- and Catrina was okay with that.

She smiled a bit. "I do not submit to you now. But perhaps, on a different field of battle, you can make me tap like my brother?"

Dash rolled his eyes, casting his blurred vision elsewhere. "So just out of curiosity, what're you teaching her now, kitty?"

"The oldest lesson in the book, Dash." The answer came from Aleena, not Catrina as both women shifted into a new kind of fight. "But who will be teaching who?"

 
-------

 
Screw stealth! Catrina roared a battle cry as she charged the nearest of their foes, her twin katana slicing him into another realm before he had any idea he was under attack, then turning to his comrade eager to do the same, meeting his swing with her own as battle was joined.

Dash walked into view, broadsword ready, and looked around, nodding towards the unfortunate Wilton. "You should be safe if you go this direction, but keep your eyes sharp."

"Th- thank.." Wilton looked from Dash and Aleena to Catrina, yelled in terror and took off.

Catrina found herself hard pressed as ancient enmities caused the Muri - dan to press their attack on her from many directions. Even as she cut one down, she found herself hit hard from behind, sending her to her knees with her katana skittering away. She growled up at the culprit - only to see an arrow appear in his throat.

Aleena gave Catrina a self-satisfied smirk. "Glad to be of service."

The proud lioness roared again and leapt at Aleena- and then past her, taking down a particularly sneaky rat who was about to do the elf in from behind. Having not recovered her swords, the fight was hand to hand on her part, so when she rose victorious the evidence was clearly stained into her fur as she spat a grisly piece of Muri- dan and returned the smirk to Aleena. "Likewise…"

"Oi!" the lead Muri- dan bellowed. "Get a room you two, we're tryin' to fight here!"

Dash dropped a Muri-dan with the backend of his broadsword, only to find himself fighting off two more attackers. In spite of his vision problems, Dash wasn't having much problem with just two of them. "So the mighty muri-dan are reduced to working for actual rats now, huh? Be honest; is this really where you saw your lives going?"

He didn't get the chance to respond, not even an insult, for Catrina grabbed him and slammed the Muri - dan hard into the wall of the cave, growling in his face.

"WHERE...IS...MY...SON!"

The Muri - dan found it strange as his eyes sought out help - and the only sane one in the room was a human!

Dash glared. "My partner her isn't known for her patience. Look, I know you're not privy to every detail but you want to live and she wants to get her son back. You've got to give us something here."

"I'd settle for his throat." Catrina growled.

"No.. no.. I can tell ya this.." the Mui dan said, choking on his words. "They're involved. Them."

"'Them' as a word involves everybody on this planet except me. You're going to have to do better to keep your face on!"

Another muri-dan rushed forward to help but Dash dropped him with a straight right cross, and then turned to Catrina's prisoner. "No one's going to help you."

"The six.." he finally answered. "The penguin six!"

"The penguins are thousands. Not good enough!" The lioness' claws were starting to sink into his neck.

Dash's eyes lit up. "What six?"

"Somber six.." the rat replied. "They're.. almost complete. They need the prince.."

"Please let him go, Cat," Dash said. "I want him to live long enough so I can hear this."

Catrina's grip had been getting dangerously tight and the rat was starting to have trouble breathing. Hearing Dash she glared at him, fire in her eyes that his words only barely cooled. She dropped him like a bad habit, walking away in that way only felines can master.

After much coughing and catching his breath, the Muri-Dan looked up, smiling at Dash.. only to realize Dash's broadsword was now pressed against the rat's throat. "Okay.. okay.. I don't know where to look.. but that paladin guy does.. the one that used to work for Kadlin. I don't know how you'd get it out of him.. but he knows... he's watching over the Somber Six. I know it. Every Muri-dan working for our side knows that by now."

"Where is he?!" Even Dash was starting to lose his legendary control of his own temper.

Muri- dan supposedly show no fear, but this one apparently missed that part of orientation. "The Knob! The Knob! That's where he is!"

"That's where we're headed," Aleena said. Catrina said nothing, gathering her swords and her friends and leaving.

First, this won won the single-point Best RP title which Ichiro and I agreed to award at the last minute. The voter called it "another style of humorous title (he) can be a sucker for."

Dash didn't have as much impact as I wanted him to have when we wrote this, and the voter made note of it, although he did like the "technology vs. ability" storyline of this co-write. He also said he dug the Boss Bat, so that's a plus. Of course, we're hoping to use Baron Von Ratsworth and the Boss Bat as the cornerstones for the Somber Six, and that's turning out pretty well so far!

Catrina's still pursuing her offspring, her baby who was kidnapped way back in Return to Hey Daze.

Personally, I'm just glad we moved the angle with Catrina's baby forward. After a Shelldor solo, SpaghettiGirl makes her season 3 debut with Becky Joy and then it's finally time for the Finale! Stay tuned!