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Save Point: The Ranthuri's Lair

Beneath the Azatlan Waterfront

The Ranthuri's Lair is very much....

....well, not what Terrowne would really have expected of a not-that legal-club with an entrance shaped like the jaws of a mythical creature, a maw, if you will, and located in a the cleaned-up facilities of a former underground genetics laboratory.

Reasonable assumptions would have included low lighting, loud unnecessarily percussion-heavy music and a clientele actively on or possibly selling various drugs and similar sundries. Possible smokiness would have been an option depending on whether any of the above were being burned, vaped or otherwise aerosolized.

Fortunately the Lair is nowhere near that bad and seems to have attracted surprisingly upmarket customers, presumably up-and-coming young types with a decent pay-packet but an urge to live on the edge. There is live music but it's not dance-thrash, although you could dance to it and some people are, with surprisingly sensual results. It seems to be some sort of modernized retro-tribal thing that sounds like it would be played on a street-corner or late at night round a campfire by bored sailors of sundry origin, or bards to warriors before a battle. The complexity of the sounds being produced is quite unexpected.

Rather than trying to refit the place too much, whoever did the design has played to its strengths, leaving plenty of brushed metal on the floor and walls where the original main space, some sort of open laboratory, was made as seamless as possible in case it had to be sterilized abruptly. So it doesn't look too industrial, hanging lengths of green fabric have been hung in the corners where they drape down to the floors, ending in a curve. The roof lighting has been replaced by club lights and speakers, so that everyone can feel the music.

They've kept the original outer doors, which slide open upwards with a satisfying whoosh as couples exit, sometimes too closely together, to the toilets or whatever private rooms are back there. Each door has an authentic if scratched and faded designation number on it.

The remaining walls have been eclectically decorated with a mixture of pictures and portraits in various styles, interspersed with viewing screens that show various content according to some inexplicable plan. Some of them show, muted, what must have been the original corporate safety video for the original genetics facility, with a crisp scientist demonstrating safety procedures in the manner of an improbably upmarket airline stewardess. In the event of an emergency, the lights will go out and glowing lines painted invisibly on the floor can be followed to safety, which would be why the numbers on the doors still look so bright after all these years. It's a clever circumvention of fire-safety requirements which would otherwise be burdensome.

Circular tables have been cleverly distributed around the room, denser in the corners and fewer toward the front, to naturally create an open space into which the patrons can emerge to dance or do whatever they see fit until they tire of it, at which point they call fall back to their tables and recover in the dimmer corners with their friends until they feel up to doing it again. However, the open space also serves to draw the central focus of the room to a sort of shallowly raised half-moon dais up against the back wall, almost like a stage with the green drapes to either side, which is where the music is currently being played.

Terrowne admires the mad portraits in between the viewing screens. They're in an impeccably classical style, as though the Ranthuri's Lair is gently poking fun at both the pretensions of the upper class and the expectations of the lower. A gorgeous nude woman leans back comfortably against a tree-stump shattered by lighting, only she has the head of snarling wolf. Another stands upright, perfectly human, on a block of stone graved with occult symbols, only she has four arms, one pair brushing her hair back and the other pair dripping with cupped handfuls of some sort of annointing oil. A winged warrioress blows a long and twisted rams-horn, trying to summon help with desperate composure as she is dragged down bloodily into a ranthuri's maw. A small ship of ancient design with a curled-back prow and eyes before the storm sails past on the shallow ocean, as seen from inside the dark mouth of a crumbling cave, past the iron cage in which a trapped feline figure sings.

The right-hand wall has been transformed with the installation of a long bench into an extended bar, although it does not go quite all the way along and a space at the far end with occasional waitresses scantily clad in a specific uniform suggests that it is possible to order food as well as drinks from a kitchen somewhere behind the bar. There are the expected tall backless seats at the edge of the bar; not all occupied, so Terrowne takes one and searches the room.

"Hi, names Raimius," says the nearest bartender, a tallish young guy with decent muscles and a sun-and-stars tattoo splashed across his shoulder. "What'd ya like?"

"Clean shot, no cover," suggests Terrowne. "Actually, make that two, one for my weird wolfy friend here. I think he's taken with your décor."

Sethkill is scrutinising the woman with-snarling-wolf-head for cultural clues. Being wolfish may have risky undertones around here.

"So, who are the musicians?" he continues, making conversation as the clean shots are poured, to try and get on good terms with the barman.

"Surprised you haven't heard of them. Were you out of town or something? They call themselves the Dancing Girls. Actually started off as an all-female classical chamber quartet - well, with one sub in case something happened, so technically a quintet - but they got sick of being disrespected and considered all pretentious, so they decided to take a leaf from a very different sort of ancient history and reinvent themselves as dancing girls in the actual primitive culture sense. You know, show up at the party almost naked, play musical instruments, make themselves available to the guests. That's part of their thing - every gig they play, when its over, they each pick a girl or guy they like out of the audience and entertain them, if you know what I mean."

The change was definitely for the best, concludes Terrowne as he carefully sips his drink and looks out at the stage, admiring the five vigorously playing musicians who are most undoubtedly enjoying themselves immensely in a hair-swinging, freely sweating kind of way that almost makes them glow. All five of them are completely naked except for their instruments and a slender tan-leather collar decorated with emeralds, as though to mark them out as a matching set. They've all enhanced themselves with full body transgenic animalism upgrades, each a different species but all of them with paler fur down the belly and breasts.

The effect is softened by the fact that they are still predominantly human, so they all still look kind of similar, enhancing the look of a carefully chosen set. He counts one with dark hair and a short page cut, playing a round-bellied fat lute with a somber concentration that totally belies her obvious passion, and another using a stringed instrument played with a bow, with straight blond hair down to her shoulders. A third is kneeling behind and embracing a large harp almost as tall as she is in that position, and a fourth uses both hands to jauntily support a wooden flute, shaking her curly red-blonde locks and dancing as she plays.

The remaining member of the group seems to be their former backup and emergency substitute, since she's been issued with a sort of metal disc that acts a hand-cymbal or drum, and a padded striker that can be used in all sorts of different way to make or mute various sounds. She's singing and beating her cymbal and generally providing light-hearted comic relief as she dances joyously between and around her friends.

Terrowne is enjoying the music and trying not to think about the all-too literal deadline that will be arriving shortly, or what will happen to these magnificent women, or the guys in the bar, or the bartender pouring the drinks next to him. He entertains the fantasy that there might be time for snacks of some kind, and then regretfully dismisses it.

Just as he's about to ask Raimius some direct questions that may cause more trouble than they're worth, the bartender suddenly stops wiping down the already-clean surface, cocks his head and listens to the music for a second, and then puts down the cloth. "Got to go. I'm doubling as the events announcer tonight," he declares, and then heads down the bar to the exit at the far end. As he goes, he retrieves a small clip-on mike and hooks it carefully over the collar of his shirt.

The frantic song the Dancing Girls are playing winds its way up to a noisy climax, punctuated by a sudden silence and the sound of them panting and grinning with rapturous enthusiasm. Some of the people at the tables applaud or not as the mood takes them, and those dancing on the floor reluctantly split up and head back to neglected food and drinks. Raimius pauses skillfully for a second, judging the exact moment that it's over, and then steps forward into the lights.

"Ladies and gentleman - and anything else in the audience - give it up for the Dancing Girls!"

There is a second and more comprehensive burst of clapping. Sethkill looks nervous, presumably because this means of showing appreciation is still foreign to him, and does not participate.

"Now, these delightful ladies have just finished their set, and you all know what that means!"

At this there is even more applause and some shrill whistles.

"If you're lucky, they may like the look of you, so don't be surprised if you're the one they choose! Ladies, please try not to be jealous if they pick your boyfriend! Gentlemen, remember to ask first if you want to join in!"

By now it's mostly whistles and cheers. The Dancing Girls, still most naked and quite unashamed, stride out excitedly into the crowd and make their picks, hooking some surprising choices by the collars with precisely-clawed and string-callused fingertips, and leading them along behind with gentle alacrity out one of the doors at the back, where a room is presumably already made up. It's hard to tell exactly who is exploiting who.

"...and for those of you who didn't get picked, don't worry, because you won't be the ones missing tonight's main event! As you know, here at the Ranthuri's Lair we have a reputation for providing the most interesting and innovative adult entertainments currently on offer! And for quite some time now, our regular nightly sex fights have attracted quite an enthusiastic audience!"

(More cat calls and whistles)

"Tonight, however, we will be settling a grudge! Yes, that's right, a certain specific someone has been foolish enough to impugn our reputation! Not only has she called our most intense and exciting sport trashy, dishonorable and vulgar, she has herself volunteered to participate in order to try and teach us a lesson!"

(Audience booing and anger)

"Now for such a special event, we're not just going to front with one of our usual ladies. You know them all! You love them all! But for something like this, it's time to call in the biggest guns! The baddest ass! And the juiciest pussy! Ladies and gentlemen, Cleo Ymaris Estar!"

It becomes apparent then that the raised dais is even more like a stage then he realised, because one of the hanging drapes is pushed aside, revealing a concealed door hidden behind it, and suddenly he can't stop looking. He can barely even breathe.

~*~

The lights steady their illumination on the stage, and Cleo steps out.

Dressed in steel-blue and grey fighting silks, draping, semi-translucent, she has the physique of a fighter or a strip-dancer, but the muzzle and features of a lioness. And a long, sweeping tail, thick and strong, that emerges from her sleek and muscular haunches where the tailbone should be. This is not just some girl playing at faux-animalism with augmentations and mods, but an actual lioness in body and soul.

Terrowne whispers something that sounds like 'finally'. Even Sethkill is stirred, something in the shape of her muzzle and eyes reminding him of Keselt, who is his own ideal of beauty.

The patterns of her fur are complex, thickest around her muzzle where she has full coverage and graceful whiskers like a feral lioness. The fur thins away across the rest of her, however, to a finer coating layer that in no way disguises the beauty of her skin. It's almost coppery at the roots to tawny lioness yellow at the tips, and this gives her an added reflective specular gloss where the fur is thick enough. Adding to the complexity is a path of paler colored, more whitish fur above her eyes, under her chin, and down her belly and breasts, a more fully developed adult version of the same patterns he saw on the musician-girls before.

She hasn't shaved. Her armpits are thick and hairy and blonde, as is her crotch, and a little spray of fur juts out from underneath her tail. Much to his surprise, this turns him on where normally it might put him off. She's strong.

Cleo's hair is something else too, more like a mane, with an intricate gradation of colors. It seems to start out almost black at her scalp, but then passes rapidly through increments of brown into steadily increasing blondness as it grows out, as though the very action of being exposed to the sun was etching the pigment out. The color never quite fades away, remaining as rich as ever to about halfway down her back, where the mane naturally thins out.

Her eyes are green, but what a remarkable shade of green, deep like the ocean, slightly blue or greyish when seen from the right angle but predominantly the deepest polished jade. It almost distracts him for a second from seeing that the white of her eyes really isn't; the sclera are an odd shade of very pale gold.

The inside of her mouth is brilliantly pink, the gums bulging around impressively white primary canines just like an actual lioness as she licks her lips with an equally broad and ridged tongue, but where the outer skin transitions into the inner pinkness, there is a brief band of a darker terracotta shade that gives her the look of having rich, full lips, even though as a true lioness she actually doesn't, or at least not so much. It is a pattern that repeats elsewhere, between her legs and hips, across her breasts and nipples.

Terrowne is still catching up. "She has a tail. She has an actual tail! One look and I want her."

Sethkill too is impressed by the lure of the exotic. Cleo is positively overwhelming.

He'd estimate her height at about six feet, almost exactly, nice and tall, a feline you could look up to. Her breasts are just a little too large, not in a bad way, but in one that definitely draws all of the attention. They curve a little and jut as they go downward, firmly presented but not fake like one of those artificial boob-jobs that used to be popular back in the day. Just well-supported.

She's quite enormously muscular, but it's not overt. Instead, her strength is hidden under smooth curves, like she knew just where to stop training it, a distinction all too few succeed in making. When she moves and stretches, it's smooth and powerful, concealed sinew curling to place her feet and spread the weight of her body exactly where she needs it, hips flexing gracefully with no hint of effort showing on the outside.

"Well,damn," he concludes, assessing her physique. What's visible through the silks matches what's shown through the slits that sway as she moves, teasing at a more complete nakedness.

"Standing at 1.82 meters tall and weighing 186 kilograms, with a feline muscle density you can only wet-dream of... frequently defeated in all-out sexual combat, but only once she feels like it... behold the one, the only, the Lioness!"

Cleo raises her muzzle and roars triumphantly. It's not a real roar, the throaty 'huff!' designed to echo over the pridelands and claim territory for a male lion, but it's what a real lion's roar should sound like in a better world, what people imagine when they think of the idea. Her tongue ripples in an ullulating motion as she draws from deep in her chest to power this mighty sound.

"And now, her opponent. That girl you've seen hanging around wearing too much leather, but too chicken to just come in and get some... at an unimpressive 1.65 meters and an all-too-human 75 kilograms... Kirstine de N'Marie, who styles herself the Hawk!"

Kirstine steps out from behind the curtain on her side of the stage, more clumsily than Cleo did just because she hasn't done it before, and whilst there is a small amount of booing she gets quite a few cheers as well, and she doesn't look as disadvantaged as he would've thought. The leather is quite a decent suit of hard practice armour, in plain matte black with flat rivets, and shows plenty of signs of wear and tear, scratches where its owner trains, presumably with great devotion.

It covers her quite thoroughly from the neck down, and there are no obvious weaknesses. Cleo must have allowed her to wear it to offset her own massive weight advantage, which might be why she's wearing nothing but fragile silk. Winning in any explicit manner will require peeling Kirstine out of her leathers like something that lives inside a shell.

Kirstine, in fact, could be argued to be very much Cleo's opposite. Short dark hair, fighters honour and combat professionalism. She has a pissed-off look on her face, an expression which is sharp and kind of pinched, which is probably to her advantage as she can almost certainly take a punch to the face with minimal damage. Her leather armour is perhaps unnecessarily tight, but she most probably has a ready explanation about how it aids her agility or something. What muscle can be seen around her neck and shoulders is tight and wiry, almost gaunt.

A stylized hawk with wings raised in flight, clutching at a jagged-edged sun, has been embossed into the breastplate of the leathers in a fine layer of gold. Weighing so little, Terrowne might guess that she practically flies and can jump to impressive heights and distances. He imagines intense training, herself against herself, whereas Cleo has gone out to live life. That might be why they call her the Hawk.

"Gonna teach you a lesson bitch," she scowls darkly, face angry, without even the good grace to wait for the announcer to finish. This is clearly the sort of woman who would divorce her own parents for expecting her to do unreasonable things like being vaguely civil to them, or maybe charge someone who called her shorty with sexual harassment. Unfortunately for Kirstine, when Raimius outlines the rules, it becomes apparent that this is not going to be an option here.

~*~

"Most of you probably already know the rules! However, for the benefit of any first-timers here, I will provide a basic summary to explain what is going on!

"As is the standard procedure, both fighters in this match have already signed a legal document waiving their usual legal rights against personal violation. What this means is that either of the participants can attempt any strike, hold, or penetration, even those of an explicitly sexual nature. No moves are banned unless they might be likely to kill one's opponent or inflict some form of permanent damage, which with modern combat augmentation is extraordinarily unlikely. And no, psychological trauma doesn't count!

"For the purposes of this match, the raised platform of this stage will be considered the boundary of the arena. Should you be outed, the match will be paused until you both re-enter the ring, so don't be afraid to take a break if you feel you need one. There is no time limit. The winner is the first one to either knock out her opponent, or pin her and make her climax. In the second case, we are of course relying on your personal honor, ladies, to make you admit to those intimate feelings you may be just a little embarassed to express.

"Do you both understand the rules as they have been explained to you?"

Kirstine sidles forward gingerly and then swiftly raps her knuckles against Cleo's far more calmly outstretched fist, before ducking back out of range. "Yes," she exclaims angrily.

"I wrote them," observes Cleo insolently.

"Then... begin!"

~*~

In a measure of mutual skill, when they finally decide to attack one another after some initial shuffling and weighing one another up, they do so at the exact same moment. Cleo leaps in the manner of a cat hunting a bird, lower and with paws outstretched, but the Hawk dances upward and into flight, gaining the advantage of height.

As they tumble past each other they both lash out for advantage, reaching at one another. Cleo's silks cover nothing and she's unashamed as she twists and paws upward, clawing for Kirstines extended leather-strapped leg, which is hooked downward at her in the manner of her namesake raptor grabbing at prey. Neither attack quite connects correctly, less a counter on each others part than a simple failure of the initial attempt. Cleo fails to hook the leather straps she was probably aiming for and, deflecting, Kirstines stabbing kick becomes a sort of step-off from Cleo's shoulder that uses the lionesses vastly greater mass to give her additional lift, out of the way.

Struck downward, Cleo is able to tumble out and hit the ground sliding backward with one claw-trailing hand extended in front of her. Kirstine, less conveniently deflected and dangerously high, manages to push off again from the back wall of the stage to land hard and somewhat sideways a safe distance away.

Having taken each others measure, they force themselves to their feet, each driven on as they watch the other, and then circle carefully, warily waiting for a suitable opening.

Cleo opens with the next move, folding improbably downward and sideways at the waist to spin herself into a very non-standard walkover kick to the head, something that a former gymnast or maybe a cheerleader might attempt as it involves absolute faith in not touching the ground. Made to improvise, uncertain whether to defend or crouch, the Hawk tries for a combination of the two and is hit hard, but takes it on the chest plates of her armour and is only staggered, not injured.

Briefly Kirstine reclaims the advantage, as Cleo is unable to follow-up until she can draw herself back into balance after completing this startling feat. From her crouching position, Kirstine is perfectly placed to line up all her strength, raising herself bodily up off the floor on one arm and kicking out with both feet, upper furthest extended.

At its maximum extension, this long extended kick (that leaves Kirstine dreadfully vulnerable to humiliating pinning) catches Cleo just above the knee on the outer thigh as she lands. A very little further forward and down and she'd have been rendered briefly incapable of standing, knee badly damaged, but as it is all there is from the hit is pain and that, she can live with.

She growls, then staggers a couple of steps back toward Kirstine and, as she tries to rise, stikes out with a closed fist in a long, drawn out blow that slams the would-be Hawk in the side of the head as she tries to stand. The black-armoured bitch falls backward, half-stunned, but then manages to trip Cleo even as she tumbles.

For several exciting moments the fight degenerates into a classic grappling beat-it-out, as the two fall across one another and Kirstine scrambles madly to avoid being pinned and penetrated under Cleos superior weight, preferably by getting on top of her and doing the same with more technical moves that mere strength cannot break. Seeing them tightly pressed, lioness cat-girl in torn silks battling a domineering bitch in leather far smaller than she is, the audience cheers.

(Bets are being taken at several tables on the side. Kirstine, surprisingly, is the long-shot hope for those who'd like to see Cleo dominated and convincingly broken, and at three-to-one she's taking most of the action. The home crowd is placing more conservative money for a smaller return.)

Someone gets leverage after a few intense seconds and the struggle becomes a roll, each of them accelerating the other into an ever-increasing spin in the hope that the resulting centripetal force will tear them apart before they can be forced together.

Kirstine, weighing less, loses her grip first (or is lost from Cleo's grasp, depending on your point of view) as they reach the edge of the stage. It's Cleo who slides to a halt on her side and the Hawk who is flung through the air, thrown all the way off the stage to crash clumsily between two of the tables.

Cleo makes it look good by twisting around and seating herself tidily on the edge of the stage, almost instantly regaining her composure, feet not quite on the ground and so still technically in the ring. She brushes her hair back, sidelining some stray locks, then blows Kirstine a little kiss.

"Please come back?" she begs. "I still want to play."

She stretches her upper body almost lissomely. Everyone in the audience who likes girls finds out that they are wishing they were ones who received that invitation.

Perfectly happy to exploit the rules where it serves her purposes, Kirstine takes her time, allows the members of the surrounding crowd to help her to her feet and dust her off. She stretches and walks it off, allowing her body time to repair itself. She takes wine from a decanter on someones table without asking, grabs a leftover snack or something from another and washes it down, then approaches the stage again, clearly not wanting to appear a supplicant but forced into it anyway by the necessity of reaching her rival.

Aggravated to the point of making a really serious effort, Kirstine carefully climbs back onto the stage at a distance, whilst Cleo springs up lightly to her feet and resumes her shifting defensive pose. As she retreats, the Hawk willingly follows, as though allured by her graceful gestures.

In a flurry of motion, Kirstine strikes out continuously in a series of many levelled kicks, designed to keep the situation under control by providing a barricade between herself and the lioness. As light as she is, she knows that she can keep this up for as long as she needs, and when Cleo runs out of room to retreat or simply tries to counter-attack, she'll be surely be drawn into it and then the Hawk can just kick her into submission with superior technical moves.

Cleo is having none of it and just falls back, however, defending in a series of sinuous motions as she leans back and under and around the various sweeps, using her forearms and shoulders to deflect anything that gets through. She looks happy, almost like she's going to laugh, delighted at finding a challenge worthy of her, and doesn't seem to even care that she's running out of stage.

When Kirstine attempts a particularly difficult overhead downward-striking axe kick, she finds out exactly why. Instead of evading the move backward, the joyfully perspiring lioness side-steps straight into it and winds up smiling straight into Kirstines face, big fangs right in front of her and hot breath upon her. Then instead of hurting her, she neatly hooks with her claws the series of heavy straps to the left and right that support the weight of the leather chest-plate, and windmills effortlessly through them.

She sways under the predictable retaliatory punch and sweeps back past her, out of the way, now that she's the one with freedom of the stage. The overlapped layers of black leather fall forward, still connected at the base, exposing the comfortably snagged and worn sports bra that Kirstine wears under her armour. She clutches at the flopping material, then gives it up as a bad game when she realises that she can't possibly win with one hand tied up in holding her top closed.

In all fairness, there's not really that much to see. Her breasts are relatively small, sculpted down by training so much, and the flat nipples are firmly constrained by the neutral-coloured elasticity of the support wear. But across the top of her minimal cleavage is a sharp scar, which has been tatttooed over with a deeply purple ink some time long ago, judging by the way the shading blurrs off at the edges. The two semi-circular curved cuts have been transformed by the artist into the outstetched wings of a hawk, raised in flight, the hollow circle of the sun between its talons.

"I was hoping I could see that again," Cleo praises her. "It's beautiful work. C'mon, you know what you want to do to me."

Kirstine goes after her with a passion. With seemingly no limit to Cleos provocations, Kirstine stops holding back completely and goes for it. Because this showy lioness has got to be hurting, impossible muscle density or not, after fighting for this long and deflecting this many hits. Moving uses up energy when you're that heavy in a way her own lightweight but efficient style doesn't.

She pursues an incredibly fast combination, all of the light but speedy attacks blocked by Cleos stubborn defense, but that's not what they're for. The whole lineup, all the gestures and individual movements, are all just part of her special secret, something far beyond the limits that she'd never be allowed in ordinary competition, but the announcer said it, anything goes, right?

She's practised it only in private, when no-one else was around, but as far as she can see the main concept appears sound. As the blades of her hands form a very specific series of angles and begin to crackle and sting, Cleo is driven back into her most solid defensive pose, both heavily muscled arms crossed in front of her upper body with claws extended outward, but she is also trapped in place by the fact that moving left or right would force her to take an open hit.

Suddenly, Kirstine stretches forward with the bases of both her palms together, almost like the extended claws of a hawk, a flat-palmed hit that would score no damage whatsoever against the braced ridges of Cleos clenched abs, were it not for the fact that it is accompanied by a sparking burst of electricity. At the exact instant the stored charge finally erupts from her hands, everyone in the club with the slightest hint of sensitivity hears a sound that is not a sound inside their head, a pressure and a static absence of noise like a flat-lined scream.

Cleo convulses around her own muscled abdomen as the charge hits, already tauntened muscles clenching inward agonizingly far as her body turns against itself. The muscles across her ribcage under her breasts clench tight and lock up, making it hard to breathe. It's like she's beeen hit with a taser in the crotch. She makes a sort of painful coughing sound, a deep hot huff, and then almost totally loses all form and balance both for a couple of seconds as her nervous system resets. If she wasn't as strong as she was, she'd have fallen collapsed to her knees, totally exposed.

Terrowne watches in horrified fascination. There have been steadily increasing reports of people developing unexpected abilities of various kinds from emergent interactions between different exotic augmentations, as the enhancements unlock strange things that were in them anyway just waiting to be expressed... yet based on everything he's heard and seen today, Kirstine seems to be obsessed with a clean fight and makes it a point of honor to be no more than human. Perhaps just the standard medical upgrades everyone has these days were enough to expose what was already inside her? In which case, she must be far more powerful than she actually appears...

No-one ever tells you that having powers hurts. Kirstine takes no actual damage from her own attack, but she can still feel the electricty seethe through the nervous system of her hands, producing a temporary tingling numbness that significantly reduces her dexterity.

Unable to precisely feel her fingers, she clenches her fists into numbed clubs, leans sideways, and furiously starts punching Cleo with a brutal series of short jabbing sideways uppercuts, going for instinctively selected weak points, hitting her between the legs and as low in the crotch as she can, viciously tenderizing the underhang of her vulnerable belly, often punching her in the breasts instead whenever that seems likely to miss. Her aim isn't very accurate but it doesn't need to be.

Cleo doesn't so much fall back as she is beaten back, pinned against the back wall of the stage by Kirstines rising fists until she makes a new sort of sound, almost like a sob, then falls sideways alongside the wall and somehow turns it into a sort of backward rollover, still coiled up as tight as she can to reduce the inevitable damage when she straightens herself out and tears at cramped up muscles. However, this weird evasion has given her the few seconds she needed to regain control over her own body, and ends with her then scurrying painfully back, pushing herself away against the wall, still hunched over and using her other hand to clutch at her midriff.

"That was good, that was really good!" she exclaims, barely able to speak, teetering against the far edge of the semi-circular stage from the combination of the electric shock and repeated punches to the crotch. She's visibly bruised. "I nearly came right there," she admits, so infuriatingly. "Ohhh, once you get going you're a natural. Come on, just let loose!"

There follows a series of mad dashings as Cleo tries to shake it off, dashing about the perimeter of the stage like a cat chasing a swift unseen mouse, frantically trying to warm her body back into motion. Kirstine chases, likewise trying to get the feeling back into her hands and compensating with more long kicks that are just too slow to quite catch up with her. Of course either of them could just drop off the stage at any time and take a break, but they both seem to have completely forgotten about that, or if they haven't they're unwilling to do so in their passion to punish one another. It's hard to tell whether it's pride or anger that's speaking through their movements as they give chase.

Kirstine closes in and catches up, only to find that she has already been played and Cleo has just been pretending to recover more slowly than she actually was. The mid-level, heel-first kick that should have caught her unable to escape and pinned her against the back wall misses completely as its target twists and springs off the very barrier that was supposed to trap her.

If she'd been emotionally uninvolved enough to watch all the 'unofficial videos' posted to various sites showing Cleos sensual-combat prowess, she might have seen this coming. But she'd talked herself out of watching grainy footage of a worthless horny cat-slut getting laid for the pleasure of an audience, because wanting to watch that would be kind of messed-up, right?

It's a decision she doesn't know she's now going to be regretting.

Cleo vaults into the air and shows off her famous 'cunt-splitter kick' by striking in two completely different directions simultaneously, targeting the back wall with one padded foot and Kirstine's chest with the other, doubling the force of the hit and wowing the audience. She could just have easily have gone for the face but in a split-second, spread-pussy decision she goes for the more noble option, torquing her tail slightly to change her aim for the scar across Kirstines breasts.

It's the most awesomely explicit defensive kick ever.

As Kirstine staggers back, Cleo lands in a sinuous sort of pose, flat above the ground with one palm down before her and her jaw just inches above the stage floor, tail risen high, threshing and coiling angrily behind her. It looks incredibly awesome and ridiculously stylish, something out of an action movie perhaps, and her fans cheer. Kirstine goes sliding back on her ass, gets up slowly, recovers and looks decidedly discomposed.

She rubs the site of the impact casually, trying to look unimpressed, then realizes that what she's doing is just giving the audience even more of a show. Cleo bares a fang playfully in response, as though excited at her own cleverness and just how much she's riled her rival. There's no malice to it, only an enthusiastic desire to keep going and bring this to a triumphant climax (quite possibly whilst straddling Kirstine).

"Just be grateful this wasn't a fetish match," pants Cleo. "Just think of all the things I could do to you to indulge myself. Pierce everything you have. Put a steel slave collar on you. Penetrate you in all sorts of places you've never been penetrated before. We could have such fun!"

Sethkill finds himself wondering if anal piercings would be allowed and if so, just how long you would have to wear your forfeit. Keselt tried one once and spent a week or so with a soft twist-tie between her legs until she tired of the inconvenience and let it grow back. It was just too damn hard to put the ring in blind by herself, even with a mirror. Although Sethkill was perfectly willing to help, ultimately she was a bit embarrassed by the whole thing.

They circle each other again, this time more warily. Cleo seems eager for the excitement of being truly challenged, but Kirstine clearly just wants to win and teach her a lesson with the hard edges of her fists. It's like watching two wild animals challenge for leadership, even down to the promise of a humiliating submission at the finish which has the crowd on the edges of their seats. There hasn't been much blood yet, but that's just because they both know what they're doing.

Kirstine tries to come up with a strategy for pressing her advantage. The shock-strike worked brilliantly - she'd tested it against a padded sheet of soft plate copper at home with a multimeter attached, and it had roughly the same output as an industrial electric fence designed to keep wild animals at bay, so was perfectly suited for stopping this feline beast - but now that Cleo's seen it and more importantly felt it in her guts, there's no way she's going to be standing still for it again. It was a one-shot wonder she doesn't dare repeat.

She decides to simply go with the full precision of her extensive training in various martial arts, draws herself up into perfect form, embraces the stillness of mind that makes everything seem to move very slowly, and attacks.

The end of the fight is actually incredibly quick. Cleo, seemingly pleased that her opponent has finally gotten into the spirit of things and is just going for it, counter-attacks in a swift flurry of short-range swatting motions almost too fast to see, her weight and strength belying what must be an incredible swiftness. Every move is both attack and defence, a pure exchange of clean and decisive moves just like Kirstine must have always wanted, but one that lasts only seconds before Kirstine is drawn in too deep and Cleo leaps straight on top of her.

A missed paw slides past Kirstines neck, then curls around with claws extended and drags her affectionately close as Cleo swarms onto her like she was hunting a roebuck, overpowering her and dragging her down with simple strength and weight. It's not quite over and the exchange goes on for just as long again even as Kirstine is falling over backwards under her, as Cleo tries for a variety of grabs and Kirstine instinctively deflects them with a range of technical counters, but by the time her head hits the ground with a stunning crack it's been over for a significant faction of a second already and she knows it.

Sethkill, watching, realizes that Cleo could have done this any time, even right at the start. She just wanted to see what Kirstine could do, see her moves, provoke her systematically into a total and outright attack from which she couldn't possibly retreat. It's almost like love, turned weirdly inside out, a desire to see exposed everything the other has to offer.

Fully victorious, Cleo leans over Kirstine from a position of total dominance, one knee pressed up against her chest, both her arms pinned by the lionesses elbows, the ankle of the other leg that's supporting her weight casually hooked over Kirstines trailing limb. She leans close, pressing her tongue archly up against the back of those huge, glitteringly white incisors, and for a moment it looks as though she's going to kiss her.

Kirstine flinches and tries to get away, but she can't even move. It's like she's a cat playing with a downed bird, trapped between her forepaws.

Then Cleo suddenly springs up, changing her mind, although she's taking no chances and keeps one foot firmly planned on the Hawks chest, flipping the chest plate back into place with a casual skerrick of her clawed toes so the contact isn't flesh-to-flesh.

"Everybody!" she declares, addressing the eager audience. "I know you were looking forward to seeing some exciting and not quite strictly voluntary action, but I really don't think its fair to do all the nasty, nasty things that are going through my dirty little mind right now to a girl who isn't really up for it. That wouldn't be any fun at all...."

She lets them hang as the mood starts to grow ugly, then effortlessly lets herself continue, "...so I've decided to let you all do them to me instead! Let's face it, I did have just a slight advantage... in every possible way. Height... weight... fantastic tits...."

She stretches, flexes and caresses herself to the delight of the Lair's clientele as she names off her attributes, taking the chance to work off some of the hits she's taken and ease out the heat.

"....so I guess the after-party's on me. Or in me. Or really just whatever you all collectively want. Because anyone who's brave enough right now to follow me now to one of our private rooms will get to see and do to me all of the amazingly indecent, depraved, submissive things that my little crashed birdie here has got me thinking."

She casually strips off her fighting silks in one fluid motion right in front of everybody, just to get her point across, not that they really covered anything anyway. When she wipes her muzzle clean of perspiration with the balled up cloth, all it does is give everyone an amazing view of her raised breasts and sweaty golden-furred armpits.

The only thing the silks really disguised, in fact, is a hint of slight wetness between her thighs and the way she's practically radiating a sort of agressive feminine allure, a hotly excited pheromonal scent of victory in combat crossed with intimate personal triumph. Her tail is standing up straight and high, baring anything it might normally cover, and she springs lightly down from the stage, to circulate around the room and collect her personal entourage, letting people touch her and feel her muscles and be drawn along, until she's collected a significant fraction of everyone in the room and is taking the party with her somewhere out the back through one of the doors that lead to the private rooms.

Her hard nipples are already being tugged agressively by her most daring companions as she is escourted out of the main room like a hero or a sacrifice, and she's being lifted up off her feet and almost carried to make sure that she doesn't get to have any second thoughts or get away. It looks like she's in for some intense use before it's over.

It's all that anyone left in the room can do to look away, in fact, and Terrowne watches her exit with a sort of enthralled rapture, almost mesmerized, right up until the moment he can't see her anymore. "Thank goodness she won," he exclaims, almost as though he knew this would happen and something unfortunate would have been the outcome if it had gone the other way. Sethkill finds the whole encounter almost suspect, really.

Up on the stage, Raimius is helping the defeated Hawk pull herself together, mostly unnoticed. She swipes at him angrily when he tries to help her hold the damaged leather plates of her chest-piece in place, so she can try to tie them back with what's left of the fastening straps. Determined to walk off the stage on her own, she sways alarmingly when she drops off the edge to the floor, and one of her knees nearly goes out from under her. Raimius ends up helping her to seat at the stage-end of the bar anyway, mainly by letting her use him as someone handy to angrily elbow and shoulder-barge against.

Terrowne picks up interesting snatches of their exchange that include "...drink on the house" and "she was trying to be nice..." from Raimius, and "...trying to make me look bad" and "pay up on the forfeit..." from a distressed-looking Kirstine. Why she should be upset at being let off the hook and not made to do something she was clearly deeply distressed at the prospect of is anyones guess, but it doesn't stop her from taking the drink.

Perhaps she's just one of those people who decompresses suddenly afterwards, and starts crying, or desperately complaining to anyone who'll listen. Or indeed trying to argue themselves out of what they already know just happened, trying to find an excuse and pass the blame.

People are strange.

~*~

They give it about two minutes to let the stragglers clear. It seems that general depravity has a quite a sharp attendance curve, the mutual encouragement of friends and other parties becoming increasingly necessary to induce attendance until, not that much later, minds have been firmly made up.

It requires something of an act of will for Terrowne to finish his drink, get up by himself, take the arm of another male (if a somewhat wolvish one) and calmly head towards the same door Cleo and her adoring host so recently exited. He could swear he gets a number of dirty looks, divided evenly between envy at his audacity and distaste for same.

Raimius is getting ready to announce the next act as they exit. It seems that the sex-fight was in fact scheduled to go a little longer, more of a show piece, rather than the oddly serious encounter that just went down. One of the waitresses is stripping off her uniform for an impromptu filler act of some kind, in front of the audience.

Once the doors has slid closed behind them, they fall into a more serious mode of approach, flanking the corners, swapping positions as they take point for one another. It just seems to come naturally, perhaps from too many weave games and simulations in Sethkills case, but he's met die hard players who practised continually and still never quite got it to flow naturally. Perhaps there is reason after all behind this strange mission, why three people who have never met before have to be together at the particular moment that it all goes down.

It's for nothing, because all they encounter are some shipping boxes tagged with crypt-codes and the words 'Ranthuri's Lair' on the sticky-labels. Non-perishable goods of some kind, still waiting for their visit to the kitchen cool stores.

The room Cleo has taken the party to can be located from quite some distance away because it's outside the perimeter of the original automated doors, and neither is it completely soundproof. Although it's not quite possible to make out specifics, that many people in one room make it the noisiest point in its surroundings, and Sethkills ears flick. He points it out and they make their way there. The floors out here are polished concrete, pipes run externally along the underside of the roofs, and it's a little lonely for all the action happening inside. Possibly this was, or maybe still is, part of some sort of delivery route.

Terrowne sidles up to the door - he has the less remarkable profile, no tall ears or horns, is what they're both subconsciously thinking - and, finding it unlocked and incompletely closed, cracks it open a fraction to get a quick look inside.

"Are they getting busy in there," he reports in discrete whisper of admiration. "She really works fast. She's already got all the stray girlfriends and interested ladies helping her to entertain their menfolk while they wait their turn with her. She must be incredibly persuasive."

"There's not much time left," points out Sethkill. "We need to extract her swiftly so we can have a private talk with her, one to one, and persuade her to come with us to safety."

"Good luck with that. I imagine she gets a lot of offers from random guys to come with them, all by herself, to really secure private places. Based on the fact that she's still here, somehow I don't think it ever quite stuck."

"I think I might be able to make her sleep," says Sethkill, after fiddling with both sets of thumbs errantly for a few moments thinking about it. He rubs one ear with what seems to be a worried gesture. "All of them, actually."

"How would that work then? Magic?"

"It's not really magic," Sethkill interjects irritatedly. "That's just the carrier wave. You heard the noise, yes? When Kirstine gut-zapped her?" He makes a clawed-hand and sound-effect designed to indicate general electric shockage.

"Sort of like flat static?"

"Amateur effort. Anyone else who is sensitive to it can feel the causal manipulation, knows what is going on. You can do the same thing much more smoothly and quietly, use it to send a message instead. Get a limited understanding of what someone else is thinking, or influence them below the level of consciousness to change what they think."

"That sounds... well, deeply morally questionable, actually."

"Not even sure if it would work on your species. It's a sort of, well, a song, really. A sleeping song. It synchronizes the waves in the brain, draws them out to be long and smooth, like when you're deeply and happily asleep. It's something you would sing to your sethuress late at night to help her sleep. Or she would sing it to you. When you are warm and happy and not resisting."

"Well that's dreadfully long odds. Worth a shot though. If it slows them down enough we could just run in and grab her, I suppose... could you use me to calibrate the song?"

"You would let me do this?" Sethkill seems surprised.

"It's been an inappropriate sort of day. Why not? Just wake me up when you're done."

Sethkill closes his eyes for a second to clear his mind, starts humming gently under his breath, somewhere deep in his chest. The song is very faint at first and he changes it slowly as he goes along, trying to feel for the same sort of response in the minds around him as he would if this was some more intimate situation, singing gently to Keselt in a warm bed after a long day of work.

Terrownes thoughts are oddly clear to him, as though he is being carefully permitted a glimpse of the exterior of something that he wouldn't necessarily understand when seen from the inside out. Like a controlled model, or an interface to work with that does not expose any of the real internal functions. He doesn't question being let in like this, because this is exactly what he needs and as he changes the song, in a sort of ongoing improvisation like something he might play on the steel-blade at a friends house, he gradually croons more loudly, letting the volume increase.

An unseen blanket of calming spreads out around him like a ripple of sound waves. This variant on the song does not make him sleepy at all, in fact he's completely alert despite being immersed, something that wouldn't be possible amongst his own species. The re-envisioned song comes out as a sort of harmonic plainchant, full of deep noises, like something deep underwater. Some of the sounds he can make are beneath the level of human hearing, sub-audible, but he goes with it.

Terrowne is leaning sideways on the doorframe, asleep on his feet. It's impossible to tell how much time has passed exactly, but it can't have been very long at all. Sethkill opens the door and fastens it back with a sort of foot-actuated hook he finds on the inside while he's still singing, to cover any noise that the motion might produce, then lets the song trail off slowly.

He grabs Terrowne's shoulder and gives him quick shake. Terrowne twitches, the hypnic jerk of falling resisting the submission to sleep, nearly says something and then astutely remains silent.

The sleeping song has worked far, far better than Sethkill would ever have guessed. At home it wouldn't have worked, because it's well known and social conditioning says it's something you should only ever give in to voluntarily from a loved one, otherwise it's probably a prank or trick. Here, an unsuspecting audience already engaged in an activity that is relaxing and pleasurable, who have never encountered it before, have been dropped like stones.

Girls are blissfully asleep and snoring faintly with their boyfriends still-erect cocks deep inside them. Guys who would never dream of doing something so girly spoon lovingly with friendly sluts who have invited themselves along to work the party.

Looking at each other, Sethkill and Terrowne silently agree that they should work quickly.

Steeping carefully around and over the various sleepers, they make their way to the centre of the tangle, where Cleo has blissed out right in the middle of the attentions of five or six different persons. A certain amount of gentle nudging is required to get various appendages out of the way so they can try to pick her up and move her. When Terrowne tries to prop up her shoulders, her muzzle lolls sideways and a thick slather of creamy white semen dribbles down the entire length of her chin, catching on her lioness whiskers and weighing them down on one side.

Precious seconds are wasted as he gently but carefully wipes off her chin and she makes a sort of murring, purring noise that seems to suggest she's just fine with this and tucks her muzzle back into the curve of her shoulderblade. There's a selection of paper tissues in his pocket, the last of them from the drinks downstairs and showing only the faintest cresents of spilled alcohol, and it takes almost all of them to handle the mess.

He throws the sticky ball of wadded tissues into a suitably distant corner and they struggle to lift her. She's exactly as heavy as the ring announcements would suggest, and if they weren't both already augmented in various ways they'd never succeed, which might explain how she's stayed safe from interested kidnappers all these years. Furthermore, the last time her clothing was seen she'd just used it as a sweat-rag and tossed it aside, which means that they are now lugging a very heavy naked cat around with them.

It's basically like some sort of veterinary procedure gone horribly wrong. They manage to step around stray legs and arms and get her to the door.

"Now what?"