Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Self Destruct

The club was dark, an electronic human beat thundered through the floor as neon lights flashed and faded in time with the music. They kept it like that to keep off unwanted visitors. Generally only humans, Drev and Tesraki were willing to come into such an establishment. It tended to keep away all the goodie goodies who were to logical or law-abiding to see the true value of running under the radar.

Plus the music was loud enough, ad the humans were strange enough that they tended to draw the attention away from other aliens, and as far as the humans went, you just made sure to have half naked humans, and that generally dealt with anyone else who might be eavesdropping. Kinda hard to concentrate when your baser instincts are taking over.

It was with these rules and precautions in place that the syndicate met with each other, under the throbbing pulse of the club's beat, and the glowing light of neon.

There were five of them all together.

There were two Tesraki. One a young female with velvety black fur sitting cuddled close to a serious-faced dark-skinned human. He didn't seem to notice her clinging to his arm as she was. In fact, he didn't seem to notice much, a distant far-away look in his eyes either the product of cortical damage or the ravages of drugs though he was big, and acted as a good deterrent for anyone, human, or otherwise who might think about approaching uninvited.

Just to the side of them were two drev, one of them a mysterious pearlescent silver, and the other a rare sheen of black run up and down with strange rainbow light. He kept quiet his head down towards the table.

The last figure sat at the head of the table. A tesraki, tawny in color. One of his ears was rather mangled flopped constantly to one side and unable to move as the other was. He was missing a finger on his left hand leaving him with only three fingers, though all seven of his remaining digits were covered in rings and jewels. His beady black eyes blinked int the strobing of the neon lights.

"Well, do you have it."

The dark furred Drev glowered at him while stroking her large human companion's arm, "Payment first."

The tesraki snarled, "Like I would trust you with payment."

"Then at least let me make sure you have the credits." She patted the human's arm. If you don't I will be forced to ask Z to deal with you, and he doesn't like having to deal with people."

Noctus snarled, but pulled a bag of credits from his belt and tossed it onto the table, a few of them spilling out onto it's clear reflective surface dancing with the blue and pink neon lights overhead.

She reached out a hand beady black eyes wide with greed, but her hand was slapped away, "Now my information."

She sighed but leaned back in her chair, "What do you want first, the object or the other information."

"Why not talk about the object first."

She shrugged, "No big deal. You'll be able to find it in one of the shops on fifth three days from tomorrow. At that point it will be at its most vulnerable, and you will be able to take it without too much difficulty. Between the times of high sun, and a first moon low, security will be minimal, and anyone talented enough will be able to get in and take it. Now ... coming into the real problem, is actually getting out."

Noctus crossed his arms, "Go on." A group of loud drunken humans stumbled into the room adding a greater degree of chaos to the room.

"The GA has caught wind of our activities...."

Noctus groaned head thudding against the table as he rested his forehead against the cold glass.

"Expect to see some old friends of yours, Noctis." The silver drev teased her yellow eyes squinted with amusement and pleasure at the Tesraki's expense.