Infinity Inc/Chimes/Jangling
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Fehral slid out of the shadows on the third shelf from the top and studied the pale-furred tiger on the ground. He looked far more satisfied, somehow, than he had been earlier that day. Occasionally his gaze shot back toward the bright intersection where Brigid's Verse still posed, as if checking for new instructions; but Iceberia's ears cupped forward and his eyelids drooped. He felt good about life.
In Fehral's years of experience, a self-satisfied thug was a problem waiting to happen.
Fehral huffed in silent annoyance, but drooped her tail down the side of the shelving unit anyway, and let it sway until his head turned to follow the motion.
Found, she informed him in the short motions of the gesture code, as if picking up a needle from the air in front of her. Yours.
Iceberia lazily rose to his considerable height, stretched, yawned, and rubbed his back. Slow, he complained.
"Then keep up," she suggested aloud. Fehral turned on the spot, flicking her tail.
She peeked around her left shoulder at him once, in the dull illumination of an emergency sign, careful to keep a not-quite-innocent expression in her body language. Iceberia was a little too busy with his efforts to move quickly and quietly, and not lose track of her. He barely had time to register annoyance at Fehral's display before she turned sharply leftward around a corner. When Iceberia reached that spot, she had already disappeared up an extended flight of stairs.
The tiger didn't manage to catch up until he touched the third landing, where Fehral hunched patiently near an iron railing. She arched her whiskers toward the center of the large chamber below them. Enemy. Six. Target. No gun.
Iceberia edged forward until he could just barely see the tops of six heads. One, hairless, had swirling tattoos that arched up over the back of his head. That would be the target. Iceberia grinned to himself in anticipation.
Help?
The tiger sneered down at Fehral's offer. He bounded around the catwalk, leaped to a stack of crates, and plucked icy daggers out of what had moments ago been empty air. The first enemy to turn toward Iceberia's roar took both daggers in his eyes; he went down screaming.
Fehral leaned on the railing, frustrated and bored. Stupid tiger spends too much time showing off, she mused irritably. He had defeated three of the target's guards so far, but the remaining two drove him slowly back while the target fled toward safety.
"You aren't chasing him," Brigid's Verse noted heatedly from the stairwell.
Startled, Fehral twisted to bring the red-haired woman into view. "Tiger no call," she pointed out virtuously. "Delta say Fehral wait."
"That's true," the higher-ranked minion conceded. Overlooking the battlefield, Brigid's Verse flung out her right hand imperiously. A cylinder of fire ignited in the air around the target, who crashed into its perimeter before he could catch himself. He started screaming, which made his guards flinch away from pummelling the tiger-man long enough that Verse's second gesture summoned cages with fire bars around each of them. Chuckling, Iceberia crafted more ice daggers out of the air near his hands so he could finish off his prey.
"Good leopard," Opal condescendingly praised. "Go find that missing data drive."
Burying a hiss of annoyance, Fehral dropped her hands -- her upper paws -- to the metal mesh of the catwalk. She scurried off to explore the last unknown shadows of the warehouse.
Much to her surprise, Iceberia caught up again before the screaming ceased.
"You no fight?"
"Nyet," the tiger growled. "Delta."
Fehral listened for a heartbeat to the crackling noises that echoed off the cement walls. "S'pose. You already win."
Iceberia rumbled what might be agreement. Fehral resumed her exploration cautiously. At a door, she barred Iceberia's path briefly with her tail while she straightened up to manipulate the latch.
For several seconds, Fehral held the door only an inch open while she concentrated. Nothing larger than a rat, a "real" rat instead of a human-creature hybrid, moved; the escaping wisp of stuffy air smelled like cotton, lemon oil, and dust. When she pulled the door far enough open to enter, Iceberia shouldered his way through close on her heels.
The small room contained shrinkwrapped pallets of cloth bolts, boxes with pictures of various lace designs, and industrial-sized spools of thread in many bright colors. A dressmaker's dummy stood near the center of the room, bristling with straight pins.
Iceberia stopped, however, to poke the dead body sprawled two feet beyond the door. He looked up at Fehral accusingly.
"Fehral not do," she declared firmly. "You saw."
He jostled the corpse a few more times while Fehral shoved her way between various boxes, searching for a data drive not much larger than a folded pair of boot socks. The next time she was looking in his direction, Iceberia demanded, "You Delta not," and he finished with only the hand-gesture part of the command: obey.
Fehral stared at him quizzically. A few minutes' thought gave her a reasonable guess as to his intended question. "Really. Not pretend. Dance not say that order." At the expression of sheer disbelief he gave, she expanded, "He not need. He is Killing Dance. You see Dance fight, you see Dance punish, silly tiger, you get."
By degrees, the disbelief faded in his eyes. "See. Da."
"Hah. Yes. Fehral no want stupid trouble." Dusting off her hands, she looked around the room with some annoyance. "Stupid blink light thing not here. Or is hid. Have to take all apart."
Iceberia curled his lip at the notion. His attention returned to the corpse once more. Stupid cat kill, he gestured in annoyance. Delta punish you.
Fehral bristled at the accusation. "Listen, stupid! Fehral not do. Look. You see holes?" Crouching by the dead man, she fanned her fingers wide to touch the bottom edge of each hole at once. "You see Fehral? Very far. Claws not right. Not how Fehral kill. Look." With exaggerated stalking motions she crept over to the dressmaker's dummy, settled in a deep stance, then lunged upward suddenly to drive her claws up under the imaginary victim's ribcage. As she withdrew her hand again, Fehral rose to a more comfortable nearly-upright posture. "Holes. Close but not touch. Claws go up. Not away. See?"
The tiger scowled at the marks on the dummy, and on the body. He even deigned to lay one of his short fingers in the space between punctures on the latter, which only proved her point further. While Fehral picked stuffing out of her claws, Iceberia grunted his disappointment.
"Fehral been good," she apprised the scowling tiger. As an afterthought, she turned to rake her claws sideways through the dummy, obscuring the evidence for any investigator who might come along later.
A hard, rectangular object slid out of the dummy's central mass, slapping to the floor with a resounding clunk. Fehral blinked at it for a moment before she started to laugh.
Found, she told the air as she crouched to pick the data drive up. "We go give to Verse."
Iceberia snatched the drive from her hands. "MY Delta," he snarled.
"No want you stupid Delta!" Fehral snarled back. "Fine. You give."
Fehral even let Iceberia lead the way back to the previous battlefield, figuring it wasn't worth the trouble to deflate his smug strut. The captured enemies were nothing but char, the flames gone and the scene still damp from the emergency sprinkler. Iceberia prowled directly up to Brigid's Verse. Tapping one claw on the logo of crossed hatchets, he shoved the drive into the redhead's hands.
"Good tiger," Verse cooed. "Extra supper for you. Any trouble?"
"Nyet," Iceberia started to say, when the sharp report of a small explosion rang out. Running men appeared at the smoking ruin of a far wall, clothed in brightly-colored silk and obscured by hoods. The leading man swerved for Brigid's Verse, gesturing at the drive she still grasped; after a few steps, half those behind him followed, shouting. Iceberia lunged a few steps forward, putting space between himself and Verse, creating ice daggers and sharp shards with all of his strength. The leopard Alpha vibrated in her skin for a moment, clearly fighting some urge, before she turned to scramble into the maze of crates stacked on and near the shelves.
"Fehral!" Verse's voice cracked like a whip, causing the small leopard-woman to flinch as if ducking a blow. "Obey Iceberia!"
The tiger, astonished to hear his name, badly missed his next throw. He started to laugh, despite his danger: a full-bodied, husky sound like a rhythmic series of roars.
On Fehral, meanwhile, the effect of the command could have been mistaken for the crash of an energy wave battering her to the ground. She stumbled, fell, forced herself shakingly upright, only to have her joints give out again. The leopard tossed her head as if to knock away an oppressive blanket.
The most appalling howl ripped its way out of Fehral's throat. When she rose again, seething, she glared at Brigid's Verse for a full ten seconds before her focus turned toward the embattled tiger.
He was far too occupied to notice, by then. Verse realized the flaw in her entire plan might just be that her Alpha could barely stitch together a sentence when he was at leisure; he would not get the chance to take any advantage of her plotting until long after the danger had passed. Tucking the drive inadequately under one arm, she began setting fire cages around as many enemies as she could see.
"Fehral," a guttural voice hissed from a spot just inches behind Opal's neck, "obeys the Killing Dance. Because Owner command. Stupid Verse not tame me!"
She had to drop the data drive to do it, but Brigid's Verse twisted without hesitation to grab the Alpha balanced on a shipping carton behind her. Using all of her momentum, she threw the leopard bodily into the middle of Iceberia's fight.
"If you want my cooperation, you will do as I bid!"
The crush of bodies and the capering bars of flame hid Fehral from Opal's view as she retrieved the data drive. She heard Iceberia growl threateningly, which might have been directed at his attackers or the fire itself as easily as his diminutive peer. The fire suppression system creaked back to life, adding more chaos everywhere. Opal lost track even of the starkly black-on-white gleam from her tiger's fur. Finally nervous, she retreated to a more defensible spot under the catwalk around the room.
After several long minutes, Iceberia lumbered out of the smoke, followed by the ragged smudge of Fehral's exhausted form. Neither Alpha Hybrid would look at the other, as if renewed hostilities could only be avoided by mutual failure to acknowledge one another's presence, but Iceberia knew Opal would reward him if he reported any disobedience on the other's part. He remained disgruntledly taciturn under her questioning glance.
"Enemy gone," Fehral muttered sullenly. Her voice was almost too rough to make out.
Opal sighed. "Fine. Good work. Let us have no more disturbance between here and the base."
