THE VROL TRILOGY (57 page)

One thing was for sure - he would be going
through his dried meat rations more quickly than he had planned,
unless he could find where to purchase some protein - or hunt some
down at the very least.

As the three engaged in some light
conversation about varying types of jerky, they were interrupted by
some annoying noise out in the street, sounding like to two cats
fighting. The racket made the hair on Max's nape stand up, such was
his displeasure for felines. Sniffing the air he found it was
Cassandra fighting with another female (and he still hadn't seen
any male nekos up to that point).

The three bolted out of their seats and burst
out the front door in order to see the commotion outside. Cassandra
was in the street, fighting with another neko, as Max had
predetermined. They were clawing and scratching each other
furiously, then separating and raising their backs and
screaming.

"What's the deal with them?" asked Max, only
knowing that the neko was a new recruit in the Feral clan. Jessica
looked at Max, rather enjoying his touch of concern.

"She's defending territory - that other neko
has been squirting around the club and it drives Cassandra
crazy."

Max knew about the scent deposits. They
were fresh and they stunk to high-heaven - at least to
his
senses. Back in his castle home
the cats had been modified to not have scent glands, but there he
was, smelling it from someone who was roughly fifteen times the
size of an ordinary domesticated cat. That equaled fifteen times
the stink.

Everyone watched as Casandra and her
blonde-furred enemy viciously battled, which consisted mostly of
screeching and clawing. Max got a kick out of watching the two
cat-girls beat the crap out of each other, as it seemed innocent
enough at the time. Jessica watched with rapt interest and a slight
grin on her face, while Dons stood off to the side, his arms
folded, analyzing his new recruit so he could determine if she was
good for the clan or not.

Cassandra did a double back flip and then
pounced forward, claws extended. This time she managed to wrap her
legs around her opponent's torso, and immediately dug her nails
into the girl's eyeballs, ripping them out with a tremendous
backward arc of her arms. Blood spurted out of the girl's eye
sockets as she screamed and fell to the ground in agony.

Max ran forward, absolutely mortified that
someone would blind another on purpose, and only because of scent
marking on foreign territory.

"Oh my GOD! What the hell are you doing?"

He ran to the poor girl on the ground, and
backhanding Cassandra, knocked her back roughly 15 meters, where
she landed in a heap. Jessica moved to go to Max's spot on the
ground, but Dons quickly stopped her.

"Leave him, Jess - he doesn't know our ways,
and I want to see what he does. Plus, anyone who can casually slap
a normal-sized neko that far has some serious strength."

Max picked up the poor cat-girl on the ground
as blood dripped out of the sockets in her face where her eyes used
to be.

"Will she heal? Do people heal here? This is
insanity!"

No one said anything as he held the
unfortunate neko while she cried, emitting little mewling sounds in
between her sobs. He never liked cats - ever. But he would never
kill or maim someone for little or no reason. Turning to Dons he
demanded an answer.

"Do people heal here? Or is this
permanent?"

Dons shook his head, denoting the
obvious.

"Sorry mate. It's permanent, but it's our
way.

"You guys are disturbed. I'm bringing her to
her clan, if she even has one. I'll be back."

He glared at a recovered Cassandra, who had a
look of victory on her face that was also mixed with a bit of
confusion.

Max picked up the small, blinded neko and
carried her away, trying to comfort her as much as possible. She
softly pawed at his cheek while she remained curled up in his arms
and crying.

"Hey, hey. I'm here, little one. What's your
name?" He spoke with a soft voice, fully meaning to calm her down
and let her know she was safe.

"Me ish Mini. Me ish blinds now. No more
lifies. Shorry. Me loosh."

She continued to cry and whimper, as Max
leaped over the post-apocalyptic rubble and tracked her scent
trail, attempting to get her back to where she had come from.

"Mini, do you have a clan?" he asked, with
some bit of urgency.

"Yesh, we shmall, but good family. I shmell
home. I can shmell it."

Max stopped and set the girl down, not
knowing if what he wanted to do would work, but he felt it was only
right to try.

"Mini, do you heal? Will your eyesight come
back? Tell me."

"Nooo. Me ish no shee nows. Me ish gonna
die."

"Not on my watch, little one. Not this
time."

Max held her face in his hands, and
concentrated very hard on her eyes. Compound cantuses flowed
through his mind, down the back of his neck and through his arms.
Energy flowed from his hands into the girl's face as he directed
salubots towards her, causing flesh to reconstruct from the inside
out, a beautiful blue glow surrounding her head. Optic nerves
regenerated and pushed out as her eyeballs slowly reformed. What
had initially occurred over a probable nine-month gestation period
now happened in a fraction of the time.

After roughly five minutes, Mini sat up,
looking around while holding her face. She started to cry again,
but this time with tears of happiness.

"Shir! You make me shee! How you do thish?"
the little neko asked Max.

"It's just… what I do. But don't tell anyone,
ok? And do me a favor - don't ever go back to that club and pee all
over the place, got it? In fact, stay away from that street."

Mini bounded up, and looking at Max while on
all fours, tilted her head to the side. Then she suddenly pounced
up and put her paw-like hands on his chest while she purred.
Rubbing her face onto his chest she said, "Shank yoush. I be
goodiesh now."

The odd, miraculously cured neko then jumped
over some ruble and disappeared into the apocalyptic wonderland of
a near-completely destroyed city.

Looking at his meter in his peripheral
vision, it was apparent that his strength and health levels were
fine, but his magic and stamina levels were tanked. That meant it
would be a while before he could access any more cantuses, and that
he was even at an extreme disadvantage if it came to fighting.
Looking out over the wreck of the city, he went to make his way
back to Seven Sins Avenue, where he could hopefully make amends
with a clan that had perversely reveled in the wanton blinding of a
girl during a simple catfight.

He considered waiting for a while until his
levels all peaked again, but he needed to find a way to get back
home to his family, so seeing no Vrol fliers, he leaped up over the
semi-destroyed buildings to get back to the only potential allies
he had in that world.

Arriving back at the club he saw a group of
people hanging out front - mostly humans, but a couple of nekos and
a lycan. He looked the lycan over and noticed that the man was
fairly large, but wasn't huge - not like in the Rhönen Dominion. In
fact, he determined that all of the lycans he had seen the night
previous were not large in stature, and most seemed only slightly
larger than Max, who was not a big guy.

Putting that in the back of his head, he
burst past the crowd and entered into the club front door to find
Dons, Jessica and Cassandra sitting on skanky couches in front of
the bandstand.

"Hey guys, did Cassandra pass her initiation
with flying colors?" he asked, displaying a bit of disgust in his
voice.

Dons looked at him and nonchalantly replied,
"Hey mate. Yep - she passed. She's in."

"Yesh. Me ish Feral Kid now!"

Max looked at them, not knowing what was
going on in their minds. His new world was obviously different, and
he had to walk on broken glass with these people - especially until
his levels peaked again.

Dons looked at Max with a semi-concerned, yet
unaffected face, and although he was a normal he was able to detect
certain things about people. He could feel that Max was not to be
trifled with, and as he was smart for a normal he decided to put
the fact that Max had rescued Cassandra's kill off to the side -
for the time being.

"So mate, you got the kitty back to her
clan?"

"No idea. I got her close by and someone was
going to our location. I just left her there."

"Ah, I see. Well, that's not how we do things
around here, but ‘cause you're new and cook an awesome stew I'll
let it pass this time."

Max saw his cooking abilities as a chance to
segue out of the conversation of neko battles and sociopathic clan
competitions into something of a friendlier sort.

"Oh, you tried some of my cooking? I thought
I made enough for a couple of days. Is there any left?"

Dons shook his head and laughed.

"Nope - Jess finished it off last night. But
I wouldn't mind if you made some more, eh?"

Max glared at Cassandra, who was using a nail
file to sharpen her claws. He could understand killing enemies, but
killing your own kind just to be in a club? He found it worse than
barbaric - on the level of vampire depravity - but then again, he
thought that cats were weird in the first place.

"Hey, I can cook some more. Give me just a
bit to whip something up, ok?"

"Oh Max, that sounds great! Your cooking is
almost as good as mine!" chimed Jessica, which made Max cringe, the
rancid taste of her poorly-prepared breakfast still lingering on
the tip of his tongue.

He went to the kitchen, which was already
trashed thanks to Jessica's cleaning skills - or lack thereof -
just an hour before. As his levels were still tanked in the yellow
line and the blue was creeping up a bit faster, he opened the
refrigerator and started pulling out ingredients for the stew,
intent on waiting out his regeneration and getting some decent food
in his stomach at the same time. The meter was slowly creeping up,
having hit about 15%, so if he took his time he could wait a
bit.

He figured out long before that compound
cantuses would deplete his resources quickly, and the one he used
on Mini was high-level. For the most part, using magic didn't
affect his stamina levels at all, but complex healing such as
tissue regeneration could be taxing in that aspect. He would have
to be careful in the future when using salubots, lest he expose
himself to danger by leaving himself powerless.

After about 30 minutes his stew was simmering
and a delicious smell wafted through the club. His yellow line was
almost full and his stamina had peaked minutes before, so he
figured it would be ok to go back out into the bar area and see how
things were going. Walking in he found everyone where they had been
before - sitting on skanky couches where nekos and normals make out
every night.

"Stew will be ready in about fifteen. Till
then we can just wait… or whatever," Max stated plainly as he
looked around, noticing that a few locals had entered the bar and
were already consuming beer.

"Me likesh shtewsh," said Cassandra in her
odd, barely understandable way of speaking.

While this didn't make Max happy, as her
vicious mauling of Mini had turned his stomach, he acted like
everything was peachy-keen.

"Hey Dons, tell me - last night Jessica told
me that you guys have a magic man. Where is he? I'd really like to
meet him, if that's ok.

"Oh sure, mate - he's around and may show up
any minute now. His name is Adam."

"Nice - thanks. Well, until then, and until
the stew is ready, I think I'll spend a tooth on some beers."

Max grabbed a dark beer that had a creamy
foam to it. He always liked dark beers for their rich flavor and
lack of carbonation. As he sipped his beverage, he took notice of
the people filing in and out of the club - mostly humans and a
couple of lycans. There were no nekos around, Max figuring they
were probably scared to death of Cassandra, as she had ripped the
out little Mini's eyeballs, effectively marking her territory.

A lycan approached Max and stood next to him
at the bar, not saying anything for a moment. Max smelled a bit a
fear on the man, but gave it no notice until the male spoke to
him.

"So, what are you doing here? Is this your
clan now?"

Max looked over at the lycan - an ass-hat who
had puffed up his chest in an attempt to look more formidable than
he actually was. In comparison to the lycans of the Rhönen
Dominion, the guy was a weasel.

"Um, don't we usually start out with an
introduction, like,
Hi my name
is
…?" asked Max, a bit perturbed that the guy was
trying to intimidate him so early in the morning.

"I don't need to explain anything to you,
little scat pile. We're a lycan clan and we determine which wolves
can run around these parts. So if you're not in Feral, you have no
business here as far as I'm concerned."

Max really wanted the guy to go away. He had
already depleted his levels once that day, and needed to find out
some more information about where he was so he could find a way
home.

"Look, pal. I have no beef with you or your
clan, whatever they may be called. I'm just passing through and
while I'm here I'm performing some tasks for Feral."

Max was trying to stay as calm as he could,
given the present situation.

The lycan sneered, believing he had detected
a submissive attitude from the stranger sitting on the barstool. It
was his cue to push a bit more, and push he did.

"So what kinds of tasks are you performing
for this clan? Are you looking for teeth in the badlands? Or are
you a butt-boy for the human weaklings who populate this club like
an infestation of cockroaches? Or maybe you clean the couches like
the nekos - with your tongue?"