When Alexis sees the spark of alarm in the eyes of Sevana (a bit of an intimidating bat even<span style="font-style: italic">before</span>her display of sharpshooting and sorcery), she lets out a little canine yelp of embarrassment and fumbles with the detonator in her hands, taking her finger off the trigger but almost dropping it in the process. Holding it delicately, she hugs her arms against her sides and swishes her tail happily when Celrie offers to sit and watch the show romantically. "Oh! Of course, of course! I wouldn't dream of doing it without being all snuggled in to watch!" She started happily skipping along towards where Celrie and the others were gathered - fortunately, she had been otherwise occupied while Celrie explored the delights of mind-space alongside Maribel and considered the most darkly delicious possibilities.<br/><br/>Looking at Maribel's eyes, Celrie and Arcea could discern a complex mix of emotions, just like earlier when the coonness had been trying to decide whether to give away the ambush. On the one hand she was completely enchanted with her hyper-awareness of every inch of Celrie's body, and felt energized and refreshed like never before. But she also could see how much Celrie had exhausted herself, and thus Maribel felt that each of her words had to be carefully measured and giving Celrie the proper recognition. "I'm... well... I'm not too good at being eloquent, but... my lovely elf, I'll be thinking of you and what you, ah, did for me for an awful long time."<br/><br/>"And that catgirl warrior, she's right about you being lucky, Maribel. I'm surprised she had enough time to get to you." Deliah said, her tone more relieved than chiding. Deliah, the new heir-apparent of the Black Stripes, then looked to Arcea.<br/><div style="padding: 3px; background-color: #FFFFFF; border: 1px solid #d8d8d8; font-size: 1em;"><div style="text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCCC; margin-bottom: 3px; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: bold; display: block;"><span onclick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') {  this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;hide&lt;/a&gt;'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;show&lt;/a&gt;'; }"><b>Spoiler: </b><a href="#" onclick="return false;">show</a></span></div><div class="quotecontent"><div style="display: none;"><blockquote class="uncited"><div>Hrmph. Not that they'd ever get to her. Maybe she'd have to make a point of having words with the so-called 'princess'....but for now, it was not something that needed her full attention. Shaking her head to clear the negative thoughts from her mind, Arcea strolls over and settles in at Celrie's side, lightly resting the warm, soft fur of her exposed midsection against the slightly smaller elf's body, casually watching the exchange between her and Maribel. Oooh, seemed the coon DID make a rather....nice new friend, didn't she? "Mmm...remind me to ask for your special brand of healing one day, Celrie. Seems..." Glancing down at Maribel's shivering, pleasure-wracked form, Arcea offered up a light-hearted little laugh "...delightful."<br/><br/>Her dour expression once more turning into a surprisingly bright smile, especially considering she was speaking post-battle with her previous enemy, Arcea offers up a bright, toothy smile "Stand up folk? Hah - well, some of us, perhaps. Not all. Just remember - maybe we'll need a little help in the future, hrm? Or, if you ever swing by, maybe we can jus' make all attempts to drink each other under the table. I'd say that'd be a good way to let bygones be bygones. Might look in on us sometime, hrm? This time, without the cannons shooting at us and mechs trying to slice us to bit, thanks." The last is delivered just as Arcea strolls by, offering Delilah an almost playful hip bump "That's my type of one on one duel - a night of fun with stout drinks and good food. Consider that the 2nd condition of you walking away. Take me up on it. Celrie would love it, I bet."</div></blockquote></div></div></div><br/><br/>Deliah straightened up her shoulders a little bit and smiled at Arcea's 'conditions' with a flick of her tail. "Hoooo! You're speakin' my language now, darling! I'll go ahead and add onto that second one the condition that I bring the drinks! Not the homebrewed swill neither, I'll break out our good stocks! So long as you trust me far enough to get really lit up when I'm around." she winked and gave a pinching motion with her non-gloved hand. As she came closer to Arcea, though, she glanced down at the catgirl's feet and then looked back up at her with a more concerned expression.<br/><br/>"Er, yeah, about the first of those conditions, that we you might need a little help from our folk..." She looked back over her shoulder at the remnants of her raiding party, which at the moment consisted of just her, Maribel, and those who had already fled. "Now I'm not one to beat around the bush, Lady Cal..." Maribel, still a little buzzed off of contact with Celrie, leaned over to whisper to the elf: "Oh yes she is~ heehee!" Deliah overlooked the playful gossip and continued: "I have to figure that the most immediate favor would be for us n' the rest of the Black Stripes to stop raiding the place that you all are aiming to civilize!" She sighed and her excited posture drooped slightly. "The truth is, up 'til today, I didn't consider it to be anything but fun and an easy way to get new goods! Just didn't realize that we might one day run into a train guarded by the likes of you ladies. But most of us have been doing this kinda raiding on and off for years. Now I'll gladly tell all my kin and friends to pack up and move our little bandit village somewhere else, but I can't promise we won't just be doing the same old thing to someone else... and besides, it won't leave us with a lot of opportunity to visit."<br/><br/>Deliah looked over at Celrie then. "Of course, I'd hate to leave this stretch of forest behind, particularly now that it's gotten such a lovely new inhabitant that my cousin has grown so fond of!" She doesn't seem like she's absolutely enchanted with Celrie's beauty the way that Mari is - if anything, she seems more intrigued by Arcea - but she clearly thinks the two of them are cute together. "An' besies, my cousin still needs to make good on that promise of a nice warm coat, one way or another..."<br/><br/>"So here's what I'll propose: the way our clan history goes, the reason that we raid and steal from the empire is because all of this land out here is property of the Empress herself - or at least, it was until recently. Now I reckon that it's the empress's indirectly, by way of the new vassals it's been divided up among... which is you all. Anyway, the point is that we're all considered criminals and enemies of the state just for living, hunting, and logging in this forest - so we've always figured, if we're gonna be outlaws anyway, we might as well go all in on it. One thing led to another, we started trading with pirates and other bandits... and suddenly here we are..." She then perked up again. "But if whichever of you legally owns this particular strip of forest would give us squatting and harvesting rights, then I might be able to convince everyone to give up on the raiding." She pauses and then says, more quietly, "At least for a season or two. Anyway, point is, if you won't object to the other threescore or so of our extended clan running around out here in the shadow of that new mountainside town, then I can promise you we won't be pulling off any more train robberies or anything of the sort - unless of course there's someone who you actually want to meet with a little misfortune, heheh..."<br/><br/>She held out a hand to Arcea (again, the non-gloved one!). "Now I know I'm no Cal-cat myself, but I have to figure that after the showing you made today, the rest of YOUR kinfolk, plus your new fellow ladies there, will have to give your words a little more weight. If you can make the offer to yours, I'll make the offer to mine. Maybe me and Maribel can come up to the village there in, oh, about a week, and see if either of us is successful. And then, after that, we'll drink each-other under the table - and winner gets a kiss from your elf friend~ How's that sound?" Maribel started to speak up but Deliah hushed her with a hand; "Maribel, you weren't part of the challenge, so you don't have to win any contests for a kiss..." She looked over her shoulder again to see if any of her fellow bandits had doubled back to check on her yet; they had not, and the only ones remaining were still unconscious. "Well I don't have to fly off immediately now - if you have any other ideas or counteroffers or anything of the like, now's the time! I don't know how things work within your little clan, but the way I see it, it's more important for you, an accomplished leader on the battlefield, to be willing to accept such a deal than the thoughts of some little Cal'Drua princess who's never made an appearance."<br/><br/>Fortunately, the sounds which a certain over-aggressive marten was making in the process of being savored in and stuffed down a draconic gullet were muffled and did not interrupt Arcea and Deliah's conversation. The tall draconic male sighed and tried to make a comment to his captain about just how much he was enjoying the chance to toy with a helpless little rodent in his mouth once again, but it was mostly muffled by the sound of the bandit reacting to all of the things his tongue was doing to her. To corroborate Yasha's theory though, he seems quite proud of his efforts and snorts ostentatiously, using a clawed hand to toy with the lumpy, shifting bulge in his throat.<br/><br/>After a minute of hustling along with the detonator in her hands, Alexis sees Sevana swooping down towards her. Apparently misunderstanding the she-bat's intentions, the lupine girl doesn't wait for Sevana to descend, but rather winds up and tosses the detonator (which resembles a small silver pistol with no barrel) up to her! Sevana is forced to lunge forward to catch it, but it's moving slowly enough that she intercepts it at the top of its arc. At first, Sevana is relieved to see that the detonator hasn't been armed. That makes her a little more comfortable... but just as Sevana is starting to relax, she looks more closely and sees that Alexis accidentally set the explosives to "proximity detonation" mode, effectively turning the log obstacle into a giant booby-trap and making retrieving those charges without blowing them up impossible.<br/><br/>The grey mouse conductor, who looks like he has aged at least a decade in the past few minutes, pokes his head out of the train with a shell-shocked expression. "Oh thank the Light - I thought the explosions and gunfire would never stop, it was like being back in the war... would you all mind getting back aboard so we can get out of this hellhole, if you'll pardon me describing your new domain as such? I'd like to get you all dropped off at Catspaw before night falls. I don't trust that damned bridge, so I'm going to just take the train around it, over the river - the batteries will hold out long enough for us to get back to the track on the other side." He looks down to the still-struggling armored coon girl who has finally gotten some (though not all) of the sticky gunk off her face). "Heh - serves those miscreants right. I'm glad you all had a Clockmaker with an appreciation for the value of technology among you - I must confess, I half expected you all to run to cover rather than standing bravely to defend my train like that. I owe you all a debt."<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Annd... gotta go for now. Hope to post more later tonight and/or tomorrow! I intend to stop making only one post a week, I swear guys, but there's just so much to consider in each scene!</span>