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Date Posted: 21:13:42 02/25/02 Mon
Author: Dogstar and Leash
Subject: The art of having nothing to say.

Leash bristles at the words of the first man, but before she can reply (with words that would probably shame her forever in the eyes of the Transcendent One), somebody else does it for her, and less offensively, to be sure. And again, and finally, another voice. This one is making a valid point: he is the kindly, open-faced young otter-morph with the shy smile, one of the few other "Underworlders" in the room.

He's saying something that Leash should have known, but had forgotten. He's right, too. As he speaks she finds herself thinking of Dogstar's lethal aim, his killing rage, and his complete lack of empathy. He's nowhere near unusual in the world he inhabits. That they inhabit. And she looks about the table, searching desperately for faces which could conceivably combat that cool-hearted, bloody-minded mercilessness; and she finds very few. Most of them are the prosperous, pink-and-white faces of merchants, some of them pompous, some of them worried, none of them hardened fighters in any sense.

But - and here, to her surprise, she finds that sly sleekness of mind that makes a businesswoman in the lower end of Kiyonis' world of traders seeping back in to her pious heart - they do have other assets. What characteristic do all of those fleshy faces hold in common?

The look of the wealthy.

"You're right," she breathes to Teddy. "We must be careful. We must weed out the 'revolutionaries' without causing undue fuss. No unnecessary drama . . ." She swallows, and, admittably, has to force out the next words: "Could we try using money instead of firearms and explosives? I mean assassins. I know, I know," sternness here, in case anybody is going to contradict her, "that some of these 'revolutionaries' must be assassins, but not all of them. Could we, perhaps, buy the services of those who can go straight to the root of this terrorism, and eliminate it?"

Could they?

A swallowed thought at the back of her mind. Some deaths are necessary.

Somehow, Dogstar fails to be pleased by the prospect of action, where normally it should have his heart pounding and his normally errant thought processes trickling into one purposeful predatory stream. He even fails to feel the slightest satisfaction at having such capable colleagues in this endeavour. (But why should he? He rarely has colleagues - they have a nasty habit of cutting in on both action and profit.)

He has floated along in a cloud of unpleasant emotions - sullenness, lack of eagerness, even a faint distaste - all the way to the towering great, white building, and now he crouches with the rest of the little group, nursing his Magnum distractedly. He has nothing to add to their sharp thoughts and cruel plans; all he's along for is the killing.

There's a pressure, building up inside of him, like an abscess, growing and swelling to bursting point, and the only way to heal it is by lancing it.

Whether they succeed or are gruesomely killed tonight, Dogstar finds that all he will feel when it is over is relief.

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Oh sod. Hate double-posts. Hate boards which trick you into believing that your message has not been posted. Please ignore one of these. My apologies. (NT) -- Leigh, 21:14:53 02/25/02 Mon