Chapter 5

Box’noxia (Trade Planet), Sector 98-A, Neutral Space
The Milky Way Galaxy
2398

Tiff scowled at the ugly, hissing puddle of goo and spikes that had chosen to lay in the middle of the only road she could walk down.

“What is that?” She asked.

“A g’nok,” Bryce said, nodding slowly. “Centurions love em.”

G’noks were not as cute as Tiffany had hoped – and just as Sebastian had promised, they were absolutely everywhere on the streets of the primary city of the trade planet that the colonizers had named Sn’Gar. It had originally been called Box’noxia by the locals. Said locals looked less than pleased with the change in who was the top dog around here: They were clustered in alleyways, sitting in open doorways in the shanty houses that sprawled around the glittering skyscrapers that made up the center of the trade city.

The Centurions seemed almost proud of how shitty the Kor, the natives, had things. They had planted a road right through the middle of the slums, with huge electrified fences and watchtowers. The towers were manned by star elves with heavy duty looking rifles. Most of them were bored – but a few aimed their rifles down at the Kor with malicious eagerness. Tiff could almost smell their eagerness to have a reason to shoot.

The Kor were all pretty skinny looking, with pasty gray-brown skin that sagged off their bones. They had three arms – two on the sides, with one of them emerging from their chest and terminating in a small grasping claw. Their eyes looked empty and witness. Most of them were drinking from small bulbs of plastic – filled with glowing green liquid. Tiff shuddered as she carefully stepped over the hissing g’nok.

“Why are they so...” Tiff paused. “You know. They look like my uncle after he had too much of the ‘shut the fuck up and stop asking questions Tiff’ juice.”

Bryant’s ears were pinned back against his head and his nose was wrinkled in distaste. “It’s a drug – they’re all malnourished because their food is crap and they have no healthcare.” He shook his head. “Centurion bastards.”

“Not so loud,” Bruce said, walking ahead of them. If Bryant’s nose was wrinkled up, Tiff tried to not imagine what Bruce’s nose was feeling right. He was a full on fuckmothering werewolf, walking through Slumsville, Spacetopia. Tiff’s own Hunter enhanced senses were all screaming at her: Desolation. Despair. Death.

“What’s a Centurion again?” Tiff asked as they finally emerged from the slums and started to walk through the parts of the city that were made to sell things to astros and spacers from across the neutral zone. In a single glance along the boulevard, Tiff saw more aliens doing more alien things than she had ever expected she would in her entire life. Which, admittedly, was zero and never before last week. So. Still. She saw a quarter of people who looked like hunched over armadillos, with heavy armor plating on their backs and four stubby arms which they used to manipulate things while they stood on heavily braced, tree-trunk like legs. Their tails – broad and flat – slapped the ground in unison. They were haggling over a gun bigger than her entire torso with a tall, gray skinned ... woman? wearing a shapeless gown of glittering silver.

There were ants. Literally, giant ants, walking along as if they were the most normal thing in the world. They were surrounded by a haze of shimmering black spheres, which warbled and chirruped in a dozen languages. Some of the ants were carrying tall, robed figures with sleek rifles on their backs, who looked down at her as their mounts (friends?) stomped by. But then her attention was drawn by a star elf reaching out with what was unmistakably a clove of garlic, clutched in his hand, a crucifix in the other. “Vampire supplies, young miss?” He called out. “Buy it for fifty UC, and you’ll never fear a vampire again! Vampire supplies!”

“No thanks, I’m good!” Tiff said, holding up her hand and backing away. Bryant caught her arm and ushered her away.

“Centurions are one of the major imperial powers,” he whispered. “They’re the star elves that refused to join the Federation. They didn’t want to give up conquering planets. Or the colosseum.”

“Colosseum? Like in Rome?” Tiff asked.

“Do you think they called themselves Centurions?” Bryant asked as they stepped past the stalls and into a large open air plaza. A massive screen dominated one of the skyscrapers. On it, two warriors were facing off against one another. One of them was one of those huge armadillo guys, though he was missing two of his arms – making him look more human, if you ignored the stumps. He was holding a massive battleaxe in his arm, while across from him, a space elf with a pair of buzzing daggers darted backwards. She had short cropped black hair and dark black eyes and she was dressed in a mesh top and fishnet leggings and that was it for her battle armor.

“And it looks – yes! Shadowknife has baited The Tower!” An excited voice boomed from the speakers as the armadillo looking gladiator swung his battle ax over handed, smashing it down into the ground. Shadowknife sprang over him, slamming her knife between one of his armor plates and jerking it free, spraying green blood into the air. Cheers filled the air.

“Holy fuckballs...” Tiff whispered as music blared from the speaker. It was really fucking familiar music too. Her brow furrowed. “ ... is that...” She cocked her head.

“It’s an ancient Earth melody, yeah,” Bruce said, pausing to turn back and face her and Bryce. The other marines were fanning out through the crowd, acting like a normal independent crew, doing normal crew things. “The Capellans asked for our entire Alpha Site storage copy. In the interests of peaceful interactions between us and a then unknown alien race, we agreed. It’s all media, nothing like state secrets. And so, that’s why you can buy merch based off human properties across-”

“Is that a fucking Darth Vader action fucking figure?” Tiff blurted out, walking over to a tacky kiosk that was manned by a floating bag of shimmering gas contained in a glistening, membranous cal. Tentacles floated below the gas bag and they flared with an inner light as a calm voice spoke from it.

“You can buy any number of Agents of Empire action figures you wish at my kiosk human,” the gas-bag said. “They are all in their original packaging.”

Tiff picked the plastic package up, turning it around, and read aloud: “Tevan Mok is a cybernetically augmented...” She narrowed her eyes. The race name of the Star Elves, as it transpired, was written out as a fifteen character long collection of symbols that she was fairly certain would literally require her to rip her tongue out to pronounce. “Star Elf...” She muttered. “Who loyally serves the just Emperor to hunt down the terrorists responsible for destroying the Den’Bok Defense Station, including his wicked son, Luuke Starkiller, that’s some fucking bullshit!”

“I think it’s kind of funny,” Bryant admitted, walking over and picking up an action figure – it was a snarling, brown haired lady who definitely reminded Tiff of a certain actress she knew. “Leeya the Terror Republican.”

“Oh, sure, she’s a Republican, meh mhe meh...” Tiff threw the Darth Vader knockoff back onto the table, scowling at the gas-bag. “I should sue. I’m the only capitalist left in the whole Federation, ergo, I own Star Wars, you piece of ... you ... what are you?”

“She’s new,” Bryant said, hurriedly, taking Tiff’s arm and gently guiding her back to Bruce, who was shaking his head slightly. He leaned forward, whispering to Tiff.

“Chill, Tiff.”

“Fine. Chilled. Chilled to the max. But doesn’t it honk you guys off? They’re stealing human ... art ... stuff and art ... fucking it!” She flung up her hands. “When I was in high school, it was all, don’t copy that floppy this and that...” She shook her head as Bruce and Bryce took her arms and guided her away from the stalls while, up on the screen, the armadillo sank to the ground in defeat. Tiff tried to kick a g’nok in her irritation, but like a human cat, the spiky sphere of blobby mucus was a lot faster than she expected.

Tidal Force – the club that the Capellan was staying at – was located near the beaches. Here, all signs of the Kor were carefully eradicated. It might have gotten in the way of people’s enjoyment of the silvery white expanse of perfect sand – which positively glowed under the pale blue white light of the sun. The water that roared and crashed against the sand smelled strongly of salt – enough to tingle memories of going to Florida during family vacation. Back before ... well, everything. Tiff looked out at the sea, and at the beaches, and at the sunbathing aliens who were enjoying the beach, and shook her head slowly.

“You’d think aliens wouldn’t enjoy beaches,” she whispered.

“Beaches are a common geographic feature,” Bryce said, grinning. “Life tends to evolve on planets with water. Water has beaches. People tend to use water to ship things – the physics of boats are the same on almost every planet. Ergo. Beaches.” He shrugged. “It’s no more crazy than most of us being bipedal and biocular.”

“Right...” Tiff tore her eyes from the beaches and checked out the club. It looked like a ring of steel metal jutting up and out of the water – approachable by a wooden pier built out above the waves. Tiff put her hands on her hips. “How are we going to handle the fact that we’re none of us Rokea?” She looked at Bryce’s blank face. “Weresharks, bro. Garou are werewolves, Rokea are weresharks, does no one learn this shit anymore?”

Bruce grinned. “I got it. But don’t worry, I brought something along that should help.” He pulled out a small pill, holding it out to her. “The Blues developed it – it’s a gill pill.”

“Gill pill ... does it make me-” Tiff started.

“Nah,” Bruce said, shaking his head. “It just adjusts the cell membranes in your lungs so they can draw oxygen from water for an hour.” Tiff took the pill and eyed it – it was a small, flexible blue orb, which made her narrow her eyes.

“That sounds really fucking dangerous,” she said.

“Your lungs will still be able to process air, don’t worry,” Bruce said, popping his pill.

“No, I mean, it’s fucking with my lungs,” Tiff said, then popped the pill. It went down her throat without her having to swallow – almost like it was pushed down her throat by its own power. She put her hand to her throat and almost tried to cough and hack it up. “Oh, wait, fuck, transformation immunity!” She closed her eyes, focusing hard as she tried to keep her body from rejection the transformation. A burning sensation started in her lungs – then faded. She opened her eyes, slowly. “Did it work?”

Bryce took her hand in his – the silky smoothness of his dark fingers sending a goosebumps wave up her arm. He held her wrist out and then pressed his handheld phone to it, before holding the phone up, nodding. “Yup, it worked,” he said.

“Noyce!” Tiff pumped her fist. “Lets go take a dive.”

She started forward, her boots clunking and thumping on the

Bryce popped his pill and followed after, sparing a single glance for Bruce. Bruce grinned back at her.

The two walked past the sign that Tiff had ignored.

No Clothing Allowed.

The circular disk that Tiff had seen from the shore was, up close, actually a hollow depression. Some water slipped over the edges, leaving it damp and glistening, but the interior was mostly unflooded. There was a circular set of stairs, ringing around the depression until it reached a door, where a pair of aliens that looked a bit like bottle-nose dolphins if given bow flexes and bulking powder for several months had been crammed into a pair of suits and given sunglasses. The suits were alien and the sunglasses were oddly angular, but the general picture of them was so familiar it actually made Tiff a little grumpy.

“You couldn’t have worn, like, rings around your ankles or something?” she asked, narrowing her eyes as she looked them up and down.

The two dolphin aliens looked her over from behind their sunglasses. “Human?” The dolphin on the right asked.

“Nooo, I’m a vampire,” Tiff said, standing directly in the sunlight.

“Funny,” the dolphin alien to the left said.

“Dress code says no clothes,” the dolphin alien on the right said.

“So, strip, or get lost, human,” the dolphin alien on the left said.

Tiff stood, gaping at them. Then she laughed. “Oh, har har har, very funny. Get the human to get her ... jibbly wibblies out and- ahhhhh!” She turned at the sound of footsteps. She snapped her head back forward to not look at Bryce, who was naked, and Bruce, who was very naked. The two men were chatting casually as they walked down the stairs. The picosecond of a glance that Tiff had spared them had been enough to impress upon her that Bryce’s exotic red and black coloration extended allll over his lithe body, and that Bruce was covered in bright scars and had belly muscles that went on for miles and was just the most hunky fucking guy she had ever met. Her cheeks burned as she stammered.

“Bribe? Bribes still work, right? Bribe bribe arino!”

The two dolphin-aliens laughed. The one on the right grinned at her. “We’re paid a huge amount by the owner to keep weapons and guns out of his club. That means none of your fancy human tricks. No gadgets. No gizmos. No replicators.” He snarled.

“If I had a frigging replicator, I’d-” Tiff closed her eyes. She blushed. “Fine. It’s the 24th century. Nudity taboos are stupid and smell bad.” She started to fiddle with the buttons on her top.

“Do you want to guard the front-” Bruce started.

“I. Got. This.” Tiff said, undoing button after button. Soon, her top was off. Then her pants. Then she stood there in her bra and her panties, looking at the two dolphin aliens. Their complete lack of giving a single isolated fuck about her dress or lack there of did give her a tiny smidge more confidence. They were aliens! They wouldn’t care about her booty. She reached back, undoing her bra, then sliding her panties down. She wriggled free, then spread her arms. “Tda!”

“Damn,” Bryce whispered.

“What?” She turned and saw that his Gal’Sem dick was as bright blue as his tongue. She blushed and looked away. “Nothing!”

“ ... I’m the one whose supposed to say nothing,” Bryce said – while Bruce reached over and took hold of of the edge of Bryce’s masker and cranked at a dial there, which clicked and ratcheted. When she glanced back, Bryce was no longer sporting quite the same impressive amount of hardware. She blushed as Bryce whispered. “Thanks, Bruce.”

“Don’t mention it,” he rumbled, then smacked Bryce’s shoulder as the two dolphin aliens opened the door and Tiff walked straight into a wall of water. She hadn’t realized the faint distortion in the air had been water and stepping through it made her choke on her own breath. Water gushed down her throat and she stumbled in slow motion through the water, blinking away confusion as her lungs accepted the water and she felt the same rush of oxygen that she got after holding her breath for a while. Her heart hammered and she leaned against the wall, trying to get used to this feeling.

Bruce and Bryce had entered with considerably more aplomb, but even Bruce had to stop and put his hand to his chest. But she saw the same effect on him as she was feeling now – the brain just forgot about air. She wasn’t sure if it was the pill or her human brain’s relentless ability to get used to anything. Either way, she was breathing water now. She grinned and gave Bryce a thumbs up. Bryce thumbs up back at her, then spoke. His words came out warbly and distorted. “You haven’t seen nothing yet.”

The three of them walked – in a bouncing, floaty way – through the water and came to a door that opened to a flight of stairs leading down into the Tidal Force itself. The floor was lit cubes of glowing sand, shifting and sliding in time with the throbbing music that pulsed through the water in an almost visible wave of sonic distortions. It carried into her ears, into her bones, and it massaged Tiff’s muscles – making her feet almost like she was floating in a comforting blanket of sensual massaging. There was a bar, serving glowing ... no ... not a bar. It was more like a food table, because the glimmering sentient octopus looking guy behind the counter was handing out glowing sea slugs. Some of them had large spikes, and as she watched, two dolphin looking aliens picked them up and slammed them, spike first, into the sides of their necks, before they went back to the dance floor. The dance was three dimensional and swirling, with aliens darting hither and thither and yon.

The music was being provided by a DJ – another one of those octopi, working hard on a keyboard that looked like it was mostly made of bone and mollusk shell – and a singing female dolphin alien. She lacked the long bottle nose of the male types, and had a kind of wavy, kelp like hair. Her nose was flush to her face and slitted and she had sharp, razor teeth. And something about the midnight black of her eyes caught Tiff’s eyes and made her feel ... weird.

Maybe it was the music.

Yeah, it was the music, definitely the music. She was crooning in a language Tiff didn’t know – but her Hunter’s instinct could hear the same seductive cadences a vampire might have used. Come. Come to me. Fall into my eyes. Let me nuzzle your neck. Bare your throat to me. The dark promises that made you want the plunge at the end. She looked away from the dancer – who she had noticed, was not dressed. At all. No one here was, and she was beginning to notice that under the clothes ... all aliens were, in some way, quite fuckable.

“Where’s the Capellan?” She whispered, her voice coming out as a string of bubbles.

“Lets fan out and find him,” Bruce said. “If anything happens, make for the exit. And keep an eye out for trouble.”

Bryce nodded and Tiff gave a nervous thumbs up. Water flowed past her naked body and she saw a few aliens checking her out – which made her blush. She tried to move with a confident grace, kicking away from the stairs and pumping her legs to sail through the water. She floated down before the bar, swinging down and settling before the octopus tender. “Sup,” she said, her mouth bubbling and frothing. The bartender’s skin flared and glowed with luminescent patches and a collar wrapped around the base of its massive, fluted body flickered.

“A surfacer? Don’t see many of you here unless you’re coming to spawn,” he said. “What can I get you? Adam? Bluegill? Fish?”

“I don’t have any credits,” Tiff said, grinning. “At least, I left it all in my pants, upstairs.” She blushed, aware she was sticking her rump out. She stood up and tried to look as if she wasn’t covering her breasts with her arms while she covered her breasts with her arms.

“We bill you as you go,” the octopus said. “Besides. You look like a spacer that just came in from a hard trip.”

“Hooo boy you can fuckeray that say again!” Tiff said. “Fine! Hit me up for some ... A ... Adam?”

“All right, one genetic re-sequencing coming up,” the octopus said.

“Bluegill! I mean! Bluegill!” Tiff said, nodding as the octopus turned back to her, holding a wriggling, pincered, six limbed creature that twitched and writhed in his tentacled grasp. Tiff blinked at it. “That’s a Bluegill?”

“You let it crawl into your ear-”

“Fish! I’d like some fish!” Tiff said.

“Humans ... I didn’t know humans were so picky,” the octopus said, turning away from her and jamming the bluegill back into its bottle. He tapped at a curved nautalis shell which glowed to life. Tiff spent a few seconds being incredibly confused until a shockingly cold hand closed around her shoulder. She tensed and ready to slam her elbow backwards into someone’s sternum – then only stopped when she realized that a sleek, blue skinned alien woman had stepped up beside her. She was short and covered with shimmering tattoos that almost hurt Tiff’s eyes to look at. She, unlike Tiff, had gills, and when she grinned, she had sharp, sharp, sharp teeth.

“Hey cutie,” the girl said.

“ ... hey?” Tiff asked. “Uh ... just...” She coughed. “My name’s Tiff.”

“I’m Fish,” the girl said.

Tiff’s entire body turned red.

“So, did you just want a dance, or-” Fish started.

“Ohmyfuckinggod,” Tiff put her hands over her face and sagged against the side of the bar as the octopus shifted over to hand out undersea creatures with narcotic properties to some other aliens who were done dancing. “I don’t want a dance.” Tiff slid her hands away from her face, looking utterly mortified – and when she saw Fish’s grin, it just made her want to shrink into a tiny puddle of absolute embarrassment even harder. “I’m not ... you know ... gay. I don’t normally go to bars to pick up ... scary shark ladies.”

“Scary?” Fish arched an eyebrow ridge. “Normally, people go for sexy.”

Fighting the cyber-zombie with the grenade launcher arm was less embarrassing, Tiff thought as she let her head slowly drift down to bonk against the wooden top of the bar. “Sexero, sexeray...” She muttered, then looked up. “Listen, I’m new to this whole space thing.”

“First trip out?” Fish asked, swinging her legs up under her and settling down on the bar next to Tiff. She sat on it casually, without seeming to worry that she’d get her butt over what people put their drinks on. Of course, from what Tiff had seen, this place didn’t exactly look that sanitary. They were all swimming and kissing and doing drugs in the same fucking water supply. And here, she’d been creeped out by people peeing in the same pool as her.

“You can say that,” Tiff said. “You ever wake up one day, and think the day’s gonna go one way. Then it goes and goes, nah, Tiffany. You’re going to end up four hundred light years from home, tied to a vampire master, being checked out by a shark-lady hooker.”

“Heh, hooker...” Fish said, chuckling. “I mean. I haven’t hooked you yet, cutie.” Her finger slid along Tiff’s hair, playfully. Tiff’s eyes bugged and she froze. That was how lesbians worked? Their vision tracked by movement? No, fuck, that was T-rexes.

“Do you know the Capellan?” Tiff asked, trying to distract the girl from hitting on her. Not that she hated it. Actually. It was kind of flattering. But ... Tiff blushed and took all the jumbled up, confused impulses that were flicking through her head, and tried to cram them into a closet. If she had transcribed her thoughts down, it’d have been: Uh, well, objectively, pretty, gills? Gills? Did you know girls could have gills? They look nice. Kinda like a vampire’s chomzone. Gills. Blue. Sharp teeth. I like sharp teeth. Fuck. No. I like fangs. No, I don’t like fangs. Vampire fangs. I like master. Girl. Girls are pretty? What? No. Jealous? Yes. I wish I was that pretty. Tattoos pretty. Girls? What? Girls? Vampire? Shark? What?

“Facilitator?” Fish asked. “Yeah, why?”

Tiff’s confused, muddled thoughts stopped mid-closet-shove and she almost heard a cha-ching in her head. She lifted her head off the bartop, grinning. “Mind telling me about him?”

“Sure,” Fish said. Then her grin grew wicked. Sharp. Jagged. God. How many teeth could one woman have and still have a mouth and not just more teeth. “But it’ll have to be in my rooms.”

“Oh!” Tiff said. Privacy. “Oh.” So she gets paid. “O ... Oh...” She gets paid for fucking you.

“Just as a warning, though.” Fish leaned in close. Her voice warbled through the water and caressed against Tiff’s ear like a physical presence – the audio equivalent of a finger, stroking her ear. “I bite.”

Ohhhh.

Fish stood and kicked away – her feet knifing through the water and sending her darting off. I glanced over and saw that Bryce was currently in the middle of the dance floor, near a star elf who was wearing a kind of collar around his neck that looked like it was serving as artificial gills. She had no idea where Bruce was, so she caught Bryce’s eyes and gave him a nod, then jerked her head after Fish. Bryce gave her a subtle nod and Tiff blushed and started to swim after the other girl, trying to keep her thighs close together and one of her arms over her chest.

Fish swamp to a tunnel that led in and out of the central area. She grabbed onto the edge of a corner and tugged herself around it – and when Tiff followed her, she saw that she had come to a small, circular room. A large jellyfish hovered in the corner of it, providing shimmering iridescence. Fish gestured her forward, reclining against a carved bit of sandstone. She smiled at Tiff.

“So, you wanted to talk about Facilitator?” she asked.

“Yeah ... is this room private?” Tiff asked, looking behind her. The water in the doorway shimmered, then turned to a solid silver. Fish nodded, subtly.

“The owner will be recording us,” she said, casually. “But he doesn’t owe Facilitator any money according to what I’ve heard.”

Tiff bit her lip. “Comforting...” She shook her head, then flitted over to the jellyfish, careful to not get herself near enough to the tendrils to risk a brush or a touch. Fish watched her with a wry little smile – lips still closed tight enough to hide the sharp jaggedness of them. “So, how long has he been around here? Have you seen him selling to anyone?”

“He’s a Capellan,” Fish said. “It’d be easier to list people he hasn’t sold too.”

“Any shapeshifters?” Tiff asked, gulping slightly. One of the tendrils of the jellyfish brushed against her thigh despite her attempt to stay a bit away – and the touch tingled along her skin. She hissed, softly. “This isn’t toxic, right?”

“Only to people with silicon based biologies,” Fish said. “For most carbon based lifeforms, it’s nothing too bad. Just a mild aphrodisiac.” She grinned at Tiff. Tiff blushed, her skin beginning to throb. She pushed her thighs together and she scowled.

“Could have warned me,” she said.

“Could have asked. What’s your name again?” she asked.

“Tiff,” Tiff said, her cheeks heating. “Tiffany Winters.”

“Humans have two names?” Fish asked, cocking her head. Her long, kelp-like hair rippled in the air behind her. Her gill flaps opened as she breathed in, drawing Tiff’s attention down to the curve of her neck. Tiff shook her head and tried to keep her attention on Fish’s eyes. Of course, Fish’s eyes were deep, deep black too. “Interesting. Greedy.”

“Thanks. Huh?” Tiff shook her head. “Listen. I’m here...” She pushed a bit closer. “My crew’s interested in buying something from the Capellan. Something seriously high tech.”

Fish nodded. “I thought you humans were from the Federation, the place where a week can’t go by without you shitting out a new piece of miraculous technology.”

“What have you heard about the Federation?” Tiff asked, curious to hear about things from someone outside – and trying to play it cool and casual. She stretched her arms out, just to show how casual she was, and four of the jelly’s tendrils wrapped around her wrist, bicep, and shoulder. Tiff froze, her eyes wide, as Fish tossed her head a bit, sending delicious ripples through her her whole blue-gray skinned body. Tiff tried to start working her wrist free without tearing at the jellyfish, each motion sending new crawling shivers along her body. Her skin prickled with goose flesh and her nipples were getting harder and harder.

“Oh. You know. You hear from the Emperors that you’re nothing but a bunch of decadent rabble rousers, barely worth the time it’d take to wipe off the face of the galaxy. The criminals say you’re insane, the desperate say you’re saints,” Fish said, quietly. “And everyone caught in between likes to shoot the shit about the race with a thousand masks.” She grinned. “You know, we’re not even sure which is the real human.”

“Huh?” Tiff asked, pinching a tendril and unwinding it.

“Well. Stop me if I’m wrong: Humans are born human. Then, if one of the big animal-hybrids bite them, they can change into those animals? But then there are the immortal ones. Those can bite you too? Is it true they drink blood? That’s what I can’t believe.” She shook her head. “There are critters out there that drink blood, but not only blood. And not only blood of their own kind. It seems...” She chuckled. “You do know those tendrils grow back, right?”

“Thank god!” Tiff wrenched her wrist free, several bits of jellyfish floating free into the air. Fish laughed a musical, gargling laugh, then swam over and began to pluck the bits of jelly out of the water. She casually thumbed one into her mouth mouth, chewing.

“So,” she said. “Which is the real human, cutie?”

Tiff was very very aware of how close the sexy shark girl hooker was to her. She gulped, slowly. “T-That ... that’s, uh, a matter, for, uh, for, religious. Stuff. Phili-so-fey...” She blushed. “A-Also, you know, you’re only thinking of ... vampchomps and werefloofs. There’s also, like, g-gargoyles.” She blushed. “A gargoyle is a living statue that turns into a statue when its daylight and moves around at night. Red eyes. Claws. Real strong. U-Used to be big in Scotland. Uh. You know.” She blushed, furiously. “I met one, once. Total bitch, t-turned everyone watching cable news into stone, you know, weird. Weird day. Night. Evening. It was the evening, actually. A-Anywho, uh, I kicked her in the face, and she fell down this big pit, and ... like ... uh...” She shivered, slightly as Fish, watching her, plucked another bit of jellyfish out of the air. “D-Does that ... taste good?”