Romancing the moonshine
Once again on a bed. Blinds shielding bright, too bright, sunlight from his eyes. Various gadgets popped, whirred, buzzed, swished and bleeped next to him. A constant supply of drugsâ€"morphine probablyâ€"kept him aware of only a distant pain.
Numbly detached from it as if it belonged to someone else. During his short lapses from unconsciousness, Lou could make out hazy details of his surroundings. Lots of little floaty things that shouldn't be, by any stretch of the imagination, floating. Blurry objects danced before his vision and sang melodies he couldn't hear, but read in little word bubbles that emerged as comics above their heads. The catheter in his arm turned colors from red to purple to pink to red again. And it pulsed in time to his own heartbeat.
Days, perhaps a week had passed this way, until he awoke to the new and surprising sensation of no pain. No drugs either, just a lethargy and weakness he could easily associate with any lengthy convalescence. His head and eyelids felt heavy, all he wanted to do was sleep. But he forced his eyes to stay open, forced his neck muscles to cooperate and swivel his head around. He forced his eyes to stay open and take in the surroundings. He flexed his arms as well as he could, gritting his teeth as needles prickled though his veins as the half-atrophied muscles moved for the first time in Goddess knows how long.
"Ahh, damn that hurts."
He frowned at the gods-awful taste in his mouth and snarled silently. His muzzle felt dry enough to have been a sand cave, and tasted like bats had taken up residence above his tongue.
Something bleeped next to him, as his head swiveled around to stare at a vital sign readout someone knocked at the door and opened it.
"Well, well, well; look who's decided to stop playing Snow White." A feline dressed in the oddly colored, soft green smock of an on-call surgeon poked her head through the doorway. Lou thought her emerald colored eyes matched her clothing well; something nagged at the back of his mind, he knew who she was, but couldn't put a name to her. . . . everything was so hard to concentrate on.
"For a while no one thought you'd wake up at all. Welcome back to the land of the living." She said.
Another time he'd have growled. Now Lou just managed a weak chuckle, followed by a raspy cough. "You call this living? Odd, you doctors." Lou let his head fall back as the doctor towered over him, stethoscope in her paw as she stared more through him than at him.
"Well," she finally said, "you're healing well. Another few days and you'll be back to your old self. I was more than a little concerned when I saw that one of the bullets ricocheted off a rib and punctured your liver. Thankfully you respond well to the healing Gift."
Click, now he knew who she was. "Your healing Gift, you mean."
"Err, yes."
Lou nodded, and smiled softly. "I don't mind, Sparks. I don't think I'd have trusted anyone else."
The feline smiled faintly. "Your breath stinks, Lou."
"Well, yeah, I haven't brushed my teeth in. . . ?"
"Three weeks."
Lou closed his eyes and tried not to tremble too much. "It was that close?"
"Too close. We'd have lost you if anyone else had tried to Heal you."
Lou gulped and opened his eyes to look into the doctor's. "Thank you."
She nodded softly and ruffled the bobcat's head fur before turning and padding out of the room.
Lou closed his eyes again and tried to forget how close he'd came to being dead permanently. He didn't have much luck. He decided to just go back to sleep.
Valentine and Darryl walked in time through the soft lit hallways of Foy's Villa. Sliding open a partition door, they emerged in a small courtyard, dominated by a pond garden.
They skirted the linked pools of Koi and other small fish and entered the other side of the low building.
This area of the Villa held the living quarters, housing some two dozen permanent residents, including a small medical staff headed byâ€"
"Sparks! What's the matter, don't recognize an old friend?"
Sparkling blinked emerald colored eyes and shook the lethargy from her mind long enough to look up at a skunk and wolf approaching her. The one who called her name had continued toward her while his wolfish companion stopped in his tracks.
It took her a moment to put the face of the skunk ambling towards her with a name.
Only as he took a running leap at her and had her pinned to the ground did she fully recognize him. "Valentine! By the Goddess it's good to see you! What on earth are you doing here?!"
Valentine's grin faltered for a moment. "Visiting Lou, I've been taking care of some stuff for him and Darryl in Germany while he's been healing."
Sparkling smiled softly, most of her joy in seeing her old friend was subdued by the image of Lou laying up injured behind her. "What a small world, how'd you come to know Lou?"
Valentine chuckled softly. "Long, embarrassing story; maybe I could tell you it later if we can talk, ok? Darryl and I don't have long."
Sparkling nodded softly. "Where'd my star-struck dreamer skunk go? You're so serious now. I was just about to go off duty, but I can show you to Lou's room before I head off, I just came from there." Her smile faltered. "He's. . . . not good."
Valentine nodded, it's what he had been told by Darryl. "Is he going to make it?"
Sparkling sighed softly. "I don't know. Lou lost a lot of blood, one of the bullets passed clean though his liver, and another grazed his spine. Usually the wounds can be healed if a Healer gets to them in time, but Lou had to wait a long time for that healing."
Sparkling squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, shaking off her fatigue. "I've managed to Heal most of his wounds, but his spine is still fractured, and he's still dangerously low on blood, his body isn't producing it as fast as it should. The only reason I was able to help him at all was because Lou and I have been friends most of our lives, and had shared our energies when we worked magic together."
Valentine nodded softly and noticed he still had Sparks pinned, with a stammered apology he got up and helped her rise. She rubbed one of his ears affectionately and turned, leading him and Darryl to Lou's room.
"I thought you said he was awake when you looked in on him. He fell asleep again, lazy bobcat." Darryl hovered over the edge of Lou's bed, flanked by Valentine while Sparkling gripped the side rails of the quasi-hospital bed and stared intently at Lou.
"He's not asleep, he's unconscious." Sparkling said with an edge to her voice. "What's wrong?" Valentine blinked at Sparkling.
"I'm not sure, bide a moment." She took Lou's paw in her hand and gripped it; her eyes losing focus as she concentrated.
Her Healing sight let her look beneath Lou's skin, to the mass web-work of his vital systems: blood veins, organs, muscle and tissues. Concentrating on liver in her mind let her see Lou's liver, for instance.
"Goddess, his wounds have opened up again. He's bleeding internally." She looked up from Lou and shook her head once, hard. "Where's his mate?"
Valentine and Darryl looked at each other with dumbfounded expressions on their muzzles. "Whyfor?" Darryl finally asked.
Sparkling growled softly. "Because fools, she's his blood type, and, aside from me, her energies are more closely keyed to Lou's. He's going to die unless he gets another Healing."
A leopard slinked down a soft-lit hallway, a slim stiletto in her paw. The blade was painted dull black and honed sharper than a razor. With hope, I wont need this, she thought, there had better not be anyone around.
She found the doorway she was looking for at the end of the hall. A nondescript door, with a deadbolt lock and antique wooden hinges. Her practiced eye analyzed the door and opened it with the swiftness of a professional Thief of the highest caliber. The tumblers in the lock didn't even click as the door was worked, the oil on the hinges kept the door from making a sound as it was slipped open enough for her lithe frame to slide past.
A little farther, my dear, and I'll have what I need. Rascha's eyes glittered as she approached her prize.
Her gaze had flicked over expensive paintings, ancient heirlooms and jewels. Her mind added up the values of these objects as she slinked past them. Millions in valuables, but her eyes were finally focused upon an object. A desk. Upon that desk sat a little laptop, still booted up and running.
"Well, well, well. Looks like someone trusts their security a bit too much hmm?" Rascha put a paw upon her hip and spared a moment to chuckle. No one could keep her from what she wanted.
A moment later and she was sitting at the desk, her fingertips flying across the keyboard.
A simple optical disk was slid into its slot in the laptop, and in seconds the entire hard drive was imaged to the disk. Some three hundred gigabytes of data concerning tachyon physics, quantum theory and time-space warp calculations. Formulas, plans, chemicals and procedures. And a date.
Stuff that just plain shouldn't exist. And it was copied in moments to a disk for study.
Probably some porn, too, she thought to herself, silly people, really. Rascha put the computer exactly the same way it was, wiped her keystrokes from the system memory, and erased any trace that she was there. Even a thermal mask hid her paw prints from the desk, floor, chair and laptop.
It was as if she didn't exist, either.
"Time to get back to Lou, before he gets better and goes off and gets himself killed, again." Rascha chuckled and spared a moment of worry for her mate before she escaped the house and it's surrounding land.
The EKG connected to Lou's heart bleeped erratically. Straining to pump what little blood circulated in his body. Fighting a losing battle, it continuously spurted blood through a liver that wasn't whole. The half-healed gash ripped through the soft meat of his liver had opened again, and blood was oozing into his body cavity instead of through his veins.
Lou was blissfully unaware of this fact. He was indeed, quite unconscious; having a rather lewd dream about a dragoness and a few ice cubes.
"Damn you bobcat, I haven't stitched you back so many times before to have you die on me now coward, fight!" Sparkling screwed her eyes tightly shut and placed her paws over his abdomen. Blue-green healing energy coursed over her paws and into his body, pulling the torn wound together with the sheer willpower possessed in the doctors small frame. Fatigue pulled at her, threatening reaction headache and burnout; these she ignored ruthlessly as she spent every last thread of energy in her to keep Lou alive.
She knew it wasn't enough, she Felt his heart dying, the lack of oxygen tightening the massive muscle until it began to tear. No! She said to herself; if I have to die to save him, I will! Tears seeped from beneath her eyelids, and her body trembled from the energy drain as she pushed herself harder and harder.
Another moment and she wanted to scream in anguish and frustration, his heart had stopped, the monotonous bleee of the EKG telling the story to Darryl and Valentine.
Just as she was about to give up, she felt a surge of energy flow through her body, a burst of pure power seemingly from the Gods themselves. She bore down upon Lou's body with the last of her personal energies, guiding the Healing where it needed to go.
The liver knitted up the rest of the way, the heart was restarted, torn muscles were healed and invigorated. His spine fracture was fixed, the bones as strong as they ever were. Energy drove the marrow to produce more blood cells, which coursed through his body, carrying needed oxygen throughout.
Lou started breathing again on his own, oblivious to everything that had happened.
Sparkling collapsed against the bed, sobbing softly from strain. She heard two equally exhausted sighs behind her, and a heavy thud as one collapsed against a chair. A softer thump of a shoulder hitting the wall.
No one said anything for a long time, long enough that Sparkling had fallen into a light doze. She felt a paw absently stroking her head fur and shook herself awake.
"I didn't know I was such a good pillow. Taking a break Sparks?"
She managed to turn her head enough to look up at Lou, who wore one of his patented grins plastered to his muzzle. Suddenly she was furious, all her energy restored.
"You, you asshole! If you ever, ever worry me and go off and do something stupid like that again, I sware, I'll kill you myself, do you hear me?!"
Lou blinked. "What? What are you talking about?"
Sparkling burst out laughing, and fell back against the bobcats chest. "Damn you Lou."
She stopped laughing, crying instead, bringing a fisted paw down on his shoulder.
"Damn you." She closed her eyes and cried with mingled relief, anger and exhaustion upon his chest. Lou just moved a paw over and lightly stroked her head fur. After a few moments she fell asleep again. Lou looked up to see Valentine slumped against the wall, and Darryl sprawled in a chair, both sleeping as well.
"I guess I missed something important."
Lou's recovery progressed swiftly after the Healing. He slept for 36 hours straight and awoke to the cool morning of a new day. Sore, a bit weak, but not deathly so, and certainly feeling a lot better than the first time he had awakened.
He managed to get himself from out of the bed, pulling the catheter from his arm. It hurt like blazes but was better than being tied to the bed. Taking inventory of his own heath situation, he discovered he had the energy to walk. He did so, moving his muscles for the first time in weeks, hissing to himself as pins and needles coursed through his body.
After a few minutes of hobbling around his room, Lou decided he could use some fresh air. He walked out of the small room and down a corridor which led to the courtyard of Foy's villa. Magnificent gardens and ponds filled with Koi dotted the courtyard, stone paths connected them all. He stepped into a pair of slippers and pulled his robe tighter to his body, it was a cool morning.
Across the courtyard he made out two figures, one easily identified as Sparkling, his old friend. As for the other, well, he looked familiar, but he couldn't quite place him.
". . . .so that's how Lou found me. Quite embarrassing, if you ask me." Valentine's ears blushed a furious scarlet beneath his fur.
Sparkling bit her tongue to keep from laughing, she managed to chuckle despite herself, and immediately put a paw on Valentine's shoulder. "I'm sorry hon, but that's hilarious. Couldn't you have waited a little longer to go to the bathroom?" She fought down another wave of laughter, hiding it by taking a drink of her coffee from her mug.
Valentine shrugged. "I had to go, and besides, if I hadn't, I wouldn't have met Lou, or Darryl might have capped me later on. All in all I think it wasn't so bad."
"I suppose so." She said.
Valentine heard a sound up ahead of them and raised his head to look forward more. He expected to see Darryl, or Foy, or a servant of the latter. He didn't expect to find who was wandering towards them.
"Lou!"
"Lou! What the heck are you doing out of bed, get back in there before you go and hurt yourself again!" Sparkling didn't expect to see Lou, either.
"Ha, you should be talking, miss drain yourself to nothing and collapse from shock. You have more reason to be bedridden than me, I'm healed." Lou grinned and finished ambling the distance between him and the pair walking.
Lou half expected to be smacked, but instead found himself wearing a cat for a new shirt as Sparkling attached herself to him and hugged fiercely. "I missed you." She said simply.
Lou returned the hug and smiled. "Me, too. Just wish you didn't have to be reunited to my guts as well."
A small chuckle and Sparks detached herself from Lou and resumed being a more normal feline. "Yeah, well. If you hadn't gotten yourself blasted to bits I'd probably not have seen you again. You're better, and I've just got a headache. Not too much to complain about if it means I get to see my favorite bobcat bro again, right?"
"Right." Lou said, smiling.
"If you ask me, I'd say everything worked out okay. But then again I'm just a dumb skunk, always getting caught with his pants down." Valentine smirked at Lou.
Lou blinked at Valentine and his brain finally clicked on. "Goddamned! Valentine! Sorry, I didn't recognize you with your clothing on. Wait, always? Who did you flash this time?"
Valentine struggled not to blush or laugh. "I didn't, I just figured I'd say something to jog your memory." He grinned mischievously. "Although I could walk around naked for you. Would that help you recognize me from now on?"
Lou sputtered and tried not to fall over laughing. "Ahh no, it's all right, I'll remember you, gods!" He shook his head. "You're horrible Val!"
"I try." He said simply.
Sparkling shook her head and chuckled. "Males." She stared off towards the other side of the courtyard and spotted someone else stalking towards the trio. "Well, well, well. Lou I'd think up a good excuse for almost getting yourself killed again, your mate is coming and it looks as if she's out for blood."
"Lou Jacob Bobcat, what the hell is wrong with you?" Rascha blurted at soon as she was within shouting distance of Lou. She wore jeans, a t-shirt, and a laptop bag slung over a shoulder. "I sware to the goddess, I'm away from you for a moment and you've gotten yourself dug halfway into the grave." She paced the remaining distance to the group and with a growl picked up Lou and practically crushed him in her arms. He returned the hug as tightly as he could and nuzzled her neck, changing the growl to a purr.
"Curiosity killed the cat love. You know me, always have a paw in it." He smiled.
"Yeah, right." Rascha put the bobcat down and smiled back at him, the façade of her anger gone.
"Well, all we need now is Darryl and we'll have our whole group. Well, Foy too, where is he anyway?" Lou looked from Valentine to Rascha.
Valentine answered. "Darryl's back at your house getting things together for your return and Foy's busy in Tokyo. For now, Foy said, the Villa is ours for use. Along with whatever we could need or ask for."
Lou nodded, feeling both aware and completely exhausted from being abroad from his bed for so long. "Alright. We need to have a pow-wow, gather our intel and get our next plan of action together. Hon, Val, go to the house and pick up everything we'll need."
Rascha arched one of her brows at Lou. "And you'll be. . . ?"
"Sleeping. I'm exhausted." He grinned sheepishly. "This is the most I've done in almost a month."
"Doctors orders, too, in case you decide to think otherwise Louy." Sparkling bared her teeth at the bobcat. "And don't think I wont pin you to your bed to make sure you sleep."
Rascha chuckled and wrapped an arm around Sparkling. "She's got my permission, don't give Sparks any trouble Lou." Sparkling and Rascha both smiled sweetly at Lou.
"Oh, great. I get shot and all of a sudden I'm supposed to lose all my common sense and therefore must be ordered around by a bunch of girls, whom have never had any common sense in their lives, I might add. Wonderful."
Sparkling pointed towards the general vicinity of Lou's room. "To bed."
Lou awoke later that evening to find Darryl and Rascha hovering over a laptop with Valentine leafing through folders of intelligence. He sat up quietly enough so that everyone jumped when he cleared his throat and asked if there was anything he could do. "Where's Sparks, anyway?" He asked.
"She excused herself as soon as she knew you were asleep." Valentine commented absently. "She said something about a headache and not really feeling as if she should hear what was going to happen." He shrugged.
Lou nodded to himself. She's never liked violence, so there's reason enough to not want to be here. Lou wondered, not for the first time, about how she felt about his line of work, and how he chose to live his life. He fancied that she didn't care for it much, which always led him to wondering why she's always been such a steadfast friend. Someone who avoids violence, and bathes in positive things in life just shouldn't want to be around someone who throws himself into danger every two seconds, who seemed on occasion to thrive on strife and aggression, and who would rather blast through a problem guns blazing than talk about it.
Lou chased his thoughts around for a while until he reached the conclusion he always did. Sparks just liked him. She didn't need a reason to be his friend, she just was. And that was always good enough for him, seeing as the bobcat could NEVER figure out why anyone would want to be his friend.
"Well hopefully she'll be back long enough to say goodbye to." Lou said to himself as he glanced over his mate and friends shoulders to stare at the lines of. . . .whatever it was. To Lou it could have been formulas to space-time and interdimensional gateways to another universe, or the recipe to the colonel's chicken. Lou was just around to blow shit up and solve problems, not to figure out exactly how the problems worked. That was Darryl's specialty. Well, that and always finding some new way of sneaking into wherever they needed to go.
"So, what's up?" He said to anyone who cared to answer.
Darryl lifted his wolfish muzzle up from staring at the lines of stuff flying past the laptop screen and looked at Lou. "Problems."
"What's new? Do we have any hard evidence telling us why the heck we blew crap up from the future?"
Darryl nodded once, grimly. "And you are not going to like it Lou."
Lou smirked. "Should I sit down and brace myself?"
Rascha turned away from the laptop and looked at Lou, her light brown eyes clouded with worry. "You might want to."
Lou's stomach decided to do loops as he nodded. "I guess so." He sat back down on the edge of the bed he had napped in, the hospital bed had been replaced with a more conventional one.
"Lou, Foy does not know we have this information. Which is the only reason he allowed us to use his Villa, and the only reason any of us are still alive." Darryl stared straight into the bobcat's eyes, and Lou had no reason not to believe what the wolf was telling him.
"Lou, from what we've seen so far on this disk, we aren't fighting to save anything. We're helping tear our world apart." Rascha shook her head slowly and growled to no one but herself.
Lou tried to keep his cynical side from surfacing, but couldn't hold it back completely. "Just our world, eh?"
Valentine chuckled, sounding like bones grating upon skulls. "Yeah, just our world. Ahh, I've told a lie, it's really our galaxy that's gonna be torn apart. To be fair, our universe. We're helping to tear our entire reality apart."
"Oh you're no fun anymore." Lou blinked.
"Actually we are not at the funny part yet, Lou." Darryl tapped at the laptop for a moment and with a bleep the screen shifted.
Darryl moved out of the way so Lou had an unobstructed view of the laptop screen. A list of names, dates and objectives were listed, along with marks for being completed, or dates for plans to be executed. There were extensive notes accompanying each plan.
Lou was only interested in one name: Sumoyaki-no-Foy. Foy Sauce.
The check mark next to the name must have meant the objective had been accomplished, Lou thought to himself. The task-list for Foy read very simply: "Warehouse 2, Pier 3, South Seaport Drive. Canisters originating from 1602HJun212342 arriving at 1602HJun212002. Destroy canisters by any means necessary. Eliminate evidence."
1602HJun212342? "Is that a date?" Lou asked, pointing a claw at the numbers on the screen.
Darryl nodded. "Sixteen hundred two hours, June twenty-first, year 2342."
"Jeebus." Lou said. He sat there for a moment, trying unsuccessfully to collect his wits. "So, how does this tie into our helping to destroy the world?"
Valentine looked up from the folder he was leafing through. "I'll explain that. This actually starts in the future, about six years before those canisters were sent back here. Apparently, certain people want the future changed in their favor."
"So who is it? I assume it isn't Starbucks wanting to monopolize the coffee industry for the next three hundred and forty years." Lou was beginning to get impatient.
"We aren't exactly sure. But what we do know, from what information we've gotten from that hard drive, is that these people were once high ranking officials in a quasi-demonic new world order. The background on that would be enough to write a few sci-fi best sellers upon by the way, but it isn't that important to us.
"What is important, is that whomever helped to destroy that new world order led the rest of the world into a utopian society. Again, the name or names of who those people were aren't here either, or we haven't found them." Valentine stared at Lou. "So what would you chose: Satan worshipers, or a perfect world without famine, bloodshed, pestilence, disease, war, pain, sadness. . . . I could go on."
"I'm sure you could, however I'm sufficiently convinced." Lou sighed and had a case of the heebie-jeebies dancing up and down his spine. "Any idea of what we should do about this?"
Darryl, Valentine and Rascha all nodded their heads at once. Rascha managed to talk first however. "Simple hon. The dates are chronologically ordered, about three months apart. The first one was that warehouse with Foy. The next one is a month and a half away. And they all occur within our city, oddly enough. So whatever happens in the future, this place must be ground zero.
"So our plan is this. We go forth and kick ass." Rascha could be so wonderfully direct sometimes.
"Sounds good to me. Obviously we aren't telling Foy Sauce that we've made this startling discovery."
Darryl snorted. "Yeah, that should be blatantly obvious Mr. Bobcat"
"Unless you think we don't have enough challenge, Lou?" Valentine added.
Lou poked his tongue out. "You're right, I don't. Strip naked and go tell Foy, maybe he'll be too busy laughing at you to notice what you say to him."
"Err, no thanks." Valentine bristled and blushed at the same time.
Rascha patted Valentine's shoulder to placate the skunk. "If you two are done bickering, we should get started. I think a little spy work is in order, we should reconnoiter the areas where the next events are going to take place to get a feel for them."
Lou nodded. "Good idea, and I can think of no one better suited to that than you."
Rascha nodded and lashed her tail. "Damn straight."
"Okay, Val and Darryl, you two are doing a good enough job making yourselves useful, see what else you can get out of that hard drive and report when you find anything." Lou stood and stretched out, deciding he needed a workout to straighten his thoughts and perhaps digest some of this information. I've had enough shocks for one day, he thought to himself.
"And what shall our oh-so-intrepid-leader be doing?" Darryl smirked at Lou.
"Working out. I've been bedridden for the better part of a month."
"Take a shower first, Lou, you stinky." Valentine smirked.
"Right, well, with that fact established, lets hop to it. We've got six weeks and we aren't going to waste an hour. Let's get to pruning the trees of reality."