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“She’s not the same as the Pouncellor,” Nepeta says, staring you down over her porcelain cup, “because the Pouncellor is more involved in legal matters.” You feel like you are being stared down by a very stern set of milk saucers—everything is filled in white, and yeah, you’re not able to prove that she’s staring at you, but hey. She is. There is literally no one else for her to stare at, unless she’s flipped off the diving board of afterlife insanity to do a triple-twist swan dive right into the end zone. You’re pretty sure that’s how swimming works.
“So the Huntress isn’t a lady-skele-trader, right? She’s more of a Catwoman, but without the scandal and with a little extra leather on the side.” You lean into the sugar pile at your back, because you are one sweet dude. The sugar soured once it saw you strut into the Land of Lady Cat Ass Troll, which is fifty shades of fucking ridiculous, considering that you just made it up. Point was, your girl here must have tasted your saccharine vibes the second you fell into tea town, because she pounded your ass into next week. Pounced. She pounced it.
Granted, you had a rump so plush that any self-respecting cat troll would want to stretch out and sun on it. And the aforementioned self-respecting cat troll was currently pelting you with sugar cubes.
“Pay attention if you’re going to ask me about my characters.” Oops. Your shades deflect the last of her assault, and the sugar cube decides to take a load off in your little teacup Jacuzzi. You set it down on the low table between you and her, the picture of schoolboy attentiveness.
“Sorry, got carried away in my own furry fantasy. Character building, rump toning, all that jazz. Allocated like ten points to rowdiness and fifty to cool kid composure, you know. So, Huntress. Leather or latex?”
You aren’t one hundred percent sure, but you think that cat troll here did an eye roll so hardcore that she’d fit right in to a B supernatural horror flick. We are talking Exorcist levels of spinning, luckily confined to those eye sockets. She’s also cracking a smile like a tectonic fissure, though, so she’s on board. You’re manning the S.S. Ass Catastrophe, and you are chugging straight for the illest irony iceburg that you can see. You are going to do it. You are going to talk furry characters with her.
“She’s not a legislacerator, and she wears the pelts of the prey she kills.” She sounds a shade curt when she sets her tea down to cross her arms. You decide to switch tactics to apply some ice to the hot scald that you must have thrown on her when you were blasting through your stream of consciousness on the back of a freight-train full of antsy football players. You were basically plowing her, is what you mean. Plowing through her Huntress talk. That. That’s what you mean.
“Alright, so this sick troll Huntress just roams the jungle scene, ripping the fur off of unsuspecting monsters before gobbling their flesh like a sexy boogeyman.” When you slide your phresh observation her way, you rest your elbows on the table and bridge your fingers. God, you have got this cool suit pressed and fitted, today. Not even death can throw a hitch in your groove.
“What?” She laughs. “No, the Huntress hunts. Like,” and she trails off, head cocking to the side and hand coming up to touch the corner of her mouth. Looks like someone’s in the kitchen with Dina, up there. You don’t have time to ask before she’s shot up like Jack’s beanstalk—she’s tall and green and broad, so you’re wondering if you’ll have to climb her—and grinning down at you. She rounds the table like she’s a starving carnivore and you’re an all-meat buffet, still bloody and underneath an army of neon arrows.
“The Huntress prowls the sugary boundaries of her new territory. The ground is gritty under her paws, but she hungers for fresh meat.” Her tail drags behind her when she crouches, stalking closer in an arc that suggests that she might not terrorize you right off the bat. “What’s this? She’s caught a new scent. This may be her lucky break.” When she catches your eye, she grins and sinks low. Is she a snake? Nah, she’s a Grade A video about a cat chasing a laser pointer, but the laser pointer is you.
You slide out from between the table and your sugar pile, because you just bought a ticket to the ironic role-play monorail. Destination: hilarity. If your Bro could see you now, he’d probably bunp knuckles with you like you’re reenacting an epic and fully clothed version of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel wet dream.
“Too bad Akwete Purrmusk ain’t planning on letting some wild child from the sugar dunes chaw him like a bone,” you say, and stand up. “His jungle ass is too meaty for the Huntress to wrap her lips around.” You ice the cake by giving her a turn and popping out your ass like you were born to do it. God, you are too good. From over your shoulder, you see her eying your merch as she tiger-prowls closer. Yeah, you wouldn’t be able to resist, either.
“Akwete Purrmusk has steel glutes,” she says, “but the Huntress doesn’t see enough meat there to eat.” The smile on her face is a double dog dare, and you don’t know what she’s double dog daring you for but it is on. You can crank that irony meter like Soulja Boy, lickety split. She isn’t done, though; she’s about in arm’s reach and looking smug as all get out. “He’s lucky, too, because the Huntress is the fiercest predator in these hills.”
Like you’re going to let that stand on more than one leg. You’ll defend the Strider name until you’ve run a gauntlet of abject humiliation so crushing that the irony of your participation cubes, because what other cool human dude is gonna get down and fifteen kinds of furry with cat troll Tarzan?
You drop it like its hot, which is to say, you fly down on all fours like you’re a yiffmaster in the flesh and ready to romp. You turn towards her and strut, getting all down and prowly with your bad self and catching an eyeful of her fog light grin. It’s more than a little disorienting, but when you dick around you put a ring on it. You commit.
“The Huntress better check it before she wrecks it, because Akwete Purrmusk don’t fuck around. He is about to get ten kinds of nasty with his naughty lynx ass. He’s got a second skin of latex bullshit and tail for days, alright? The Huntress doesn’t stand a chance now that he’s got her blipping all over his radar.” You kind of remember what a lynx looks like, in that you remember that it’s a cat.
“Is Akwete Purrmusk issuing a challenge for dominance?” You are impressed with how into this she’s getting; she’s reared up on her knees, looming over you like Cobra Starship with none of the raunch. Then, she crosses her arms in a quick x, which you don’t get. “And OOC really quick! Lynxes don’t have that much tail, Dave.”
What?
“What?” You stare at her from all fours, at her silly x and the little wrinkles on the bridge of her nose where her brows are scrunched up.
“Lynxes. They have little tails. I thought you should know, that’s all. OOC over.” She flashes you another smile like an apologetic bird, and then flops down to sink her fingers into the sugar cubes. “The Huntress waits for Akwete to state his terms. She isn’t afraid of him.”
Wait, what?
“No, hold up, you can’t just drop a truth bomb between my ears and not say anything else about it. You just threw off my fursuit boogie, Nepeta. That’s unethical. I need a thorough debriefing and a form to sign. How do you even know about lynxes? I thought trolls had weird bullshit names and spouted technical jargon to talk about everything.” Rude. Was she raised in a cave? You don’t have time to tack that witty question on, because she’s got those lamplight eyes blinking in your direction and puffed-out cheeks.
“Dave, you can’t talk OOC unless you do the thing!” She crosses her arms again. That x is bleeping you out hardcore, and you blow your hair off of your forehead with your huff. Your artistic license is being censored harder than MTV, right now.
“That sounds like pussyfooting around the question,” you say, because it so is. She is straight up blowing over your question, Hurricane Rudetroll, desolating your knowledge neighborhood and fucking up your sense of security. You are betrayed. You are terrified and awestruck by the sick way she tears through the tissue paper front of pretending to care about the words coming out of your mouth. But nah, you don’t really mind. Looking like you do is important for immersing yourself in the experience. The furry role-play experience.
“Oh my god, Dave.” She blows air hard through her lips, looking like a 5 on the snarliness scale when everything on her face knits and furrows. “Just role play with me, already.”
You don’t have time to comment on how demanding she is when you’d only pestered her once or twice, which doesn’t even count as a first date. You don’t have time because that x of her arms falls apart as she leaps at you (and it’s funny, because Time. Being out of time as a Time player is wiggedy-whack, and also incredibly stupid). It takes one inhale of Dreambubble time for her to sail off the sugar cubes, and half of an exhale before her hands are on your shoulders and you are skidding backwards like her pseudo-snow toboggan.
“The Huntress strikes preemptively, because Akwete was being slow and ruining the pace of the story,” she says, and grins down at you as you both come to a stop. There is so much sugar down the back of your shirt, right now. It’s piled around your shoulders. It’s everywhere. She’s lucky you’re already dead, so you can’t fall into a diabetic coma where you lay. You reach up to try and shove her off of you, but she’s sturdier than she looks (and she already looks sturdy as the Titanic. Except watertight and solid).
While you’re zoning out, thinking about sugar and rap and everything else that a guy like you needs to ponder—like how firm her shoulders were where you shoved them, Jesus Christ—she is left waiting. And waiting. And then she gives you a little shake where her hands curl into your shirt, and what might have been an expectant stare, if she still had pupils and other eye junk to define it.
There you go again. Oops.
“Akwete Purrmusk had to take a minute to wonder what the hell he was, since he apparently isn’t a lynx. Maybe he’s a lynx with a radical tail. The Huntress may never know.”
“The Huntress thinks Akwete should respond with a challenge, before she decides to eat him up.” Above you, she licks her chops to cite her evidence. Girl could write an A+ paper, at this rate.
“Akwete Purrmusk thinks the Huntress needs to chillax for two seconds while his back exfoliates. But he totally challenges the Huntress to a rap battle, because the only thing rowdier than his ass is his rhythm and rhyme.”
Nepeta’s nose wrinkles up at the bridge, and her mouth purses to match. She looks thoroughly unimpressed with Akwete’s offer. She comes off way more enthusiastic for your weird shit when she’s trolling you. You are insulted, until she raises one eyebrow like a flag of surrender. That’s good, because you are so ready to flaunt Akwete’s off the wall lyricism.
“The Huntress accepts,” she says, and she dismounts from your sweet toboggan torso to shove her hands under your armpits and hike you upright. You don’t stagger when she sets you down, just like you don’t huff and whine a little bit because her hands are in your armpits. Way to go straight for second base, Nepeta. She grins at you like she knows, and gives your sides a squeeze before her hands fall away. “Take your first strike, Akwete.”
You scratch your cheek and give her a shrug, more than willing to preen and show off some. You’re a shimmering Quetzalcoatl with peacocks for feathers, and the Huntress just asked you to spread your wings. Seconds set the beat in the back of your mind, and you rap out the rhythm in the meat of your palms.
“The name’s Purrmusk, rowdy ass of the bubble
I hate to hesitate but love to cause some trouble,
‘Cause it ain’t everyday I get to stomp and play,
But now I got a date to make the Huntress pay
For the challenge that she chucks to dominate my fucks,
Tries to twist ‘em real hard to really milk her luck,
But Akwete brings the beat and no teat to suck,
So this Huntress better figure out how to duck
From this verbal onslaught I have running amok,
Kickflip Godzilla gonna fuck shit up
In lil’ Tokyo full of bad dubs and decisions,
This cat ain’t got no rhythm,
Opinion;
This poor pussycat ain’t got no heart,
Save for the one I gotta break and restart.”
You watch her dart down onto the sugar, all fours, and circle her like she circles you. When you fall to follow her lead, you keep that easy gait and smirk. The cubes clump between your fingers while she’s looking caught off guard, which makes you puff up more. White or not, those eyes are blown wide and fixed in your direction like a compass that shoots true North.
“The Huntress is impressed,” she finally spits out, “but she doesn’t think Akwete is the best.” You watch her circle tighter while she bites the black line of her lip, turned into a little slip-n’-slide frown. Her tongue takes a train wreck down it to crash into the corner. Wasted. She’s stalling hard.
“Does the Huntress want to put her words to the test, or slap on a set of Heelys so her game can rest?” You raise your eyebrows high enough to cut through the atmosphere when she circles closer still. Girl has a frown on her face long enough to belt the Equator.
“Akwete needs to shut his mouth,” she says, and hip checks you into tomorrow when she slides to close the gap between you. You hit sugar sideways, then roll to your back as she prompts you with her front paws. Her hands. Her palms and digits, which you currently just scored like a champion (333-CAT-BUTT). Point is, she rolled you over to straddle your stomach like a saddle. “Because rap battles are stupid, and real predators fight with their claws and teeth.”
When she grins down on you, you buck your hips to try and unseat her. That was a joke, considering that she’s not on your hips, and also considering that you’re the Wicked Witch of the West, trapped under a house. The Commodores couldn’t say it better. All she does is scoot up a hair to bracket your ribs with her thighs. You feel like the toothpick on a decorative umbrella, if the decorative umbrella were built for a bomb shelter. You don’t have tank gals on you every day, dead or not. Luckily, you know how to make the best of this situation—this situation of being used as a chair by a troll jungle babe. A lesser man would try to get his mack on, but you know that winning is more important.
“So you give up?” You stretch your arms up, then lace your hands behind your head. May as well put on airs of total chillitude, because that’s what you are: the personification of a chill pill. Nepeta’s fluffed up like a dust bunny. Got her cheeks all chipmunked out, probably full of righteous offense taken.
“A huntress never gives up.” Her curt tone says all. Called it. You shrug, helpless as you can, and watch her from behind your shades.
“But you just gave up.”
“The Huntress never said that,” she says, and crosses her arms. “She wanted to tell Akwete that his test was stupid. That’s all.” Her thighs squeeze your sides some when she settles, and her arms unfold so her hands can hover over your cheeks. When you open your mouth, she squishes them together. Remember that gauntlet you were running? You want company, you’ve decided.
“So rap,” you dare, and it comes out kind of ‘been in the back pocket of your favorite pants’ kind of rumpled, but hey. It’s understandable, judging from her sour frown. Oh, and that little detail of how her hands are smushing and stretching undignified shapes with your mouth.
“Fine. I—er, the Huntress will. She wanted to warm up, that’s all.” You reach up to swat at her hands, sacrificing sweet skull cushioning for defense of your rugged good looks. It works to prompt them away, leaving your cheeks set on ‘slow burn’ and her hands back on your shoulders. She’s going to rap on top of you. Okay, sure. You put your hands back beneath your head, so casual. Not even a fraction of awkwardness shows up, because you are so used to ladies pawing all up on your biz.
You’re the embodiment of an Axe commercial that mated vigorously with an Old Spice commercial, after all.
“Warmed up yet?” You clear your throat and wiggle some, because the sugar down your shirt isn’t that cozy. Nepeta slides back like a piece on your old turntables, and adjusts your chill factor to ‘Cold War’ when she sits back on your pelvis. God, you are so cool, all of a sudden. It hits you out of nowhere, how unflappable and arctic tundra you are. Damn. You’re cooler than being cool. You’re ice cold.
“Alright, alright,” she sighs, and sets her hands on her thighs like she’s the crowning glory of a regal precipice, instead of perched precariously over your royal jewels and scepter. You hold your breath out of respect for her impending rhymes, and not for any other reason. She tilts her head, shifts to get cozy, and misses the nigh undetectable noise that you would have made, were your smooth serenity not over nine thousand. Then, she rattles out these fucking weird clicks and whirrs and rough chirrs that sound like words that were shaken and stirred by the most shitfaced bartender on the face of the Earth. No, seriously, you can feel her vibrating with whatever monstrosity is dropping the bass in her chest.
You’ve become so totally cold that you are frozen in place. Goodbye, Dave Strider; hello, his handsome ice-sculpture double. She should probably move, if she doesn’t want to get frostbite. You’d tell her, if she weren’t making a buzzy ruckus that went right to your bone. Your skeleton. Your bones that are part of your skeleton.
She peters off into a dried-up purr, then trickles down to the nothing that lets you feel aftershocks on your skin. She also stares at you. Hard. Hard like your skeleton. Hard like Wolverine’s crazy adamantium claws. Hard like the explanation that the question on her face is going to provoke.
“Just my monster rod,” you say, with a perfect, even tone. Even enough to measure dead center on one of those yellow-fluid-bubble-rulers. No breaking at all. Your fingers scritch up into your hair, because you have an itch. “I use it to summon monsters.”
She’s still sitting on you, which is one of the seven mysteries of the world. You have no idea why she isn’t moving. Her smile is more mysterious than Mona Lisa’s, and like, ten degrees more crooked. It’s also super awkward, which is the opposite of you and your verbal finesse.
“But I won’t,” you say, moving one hand to cough into, “because, y’know. Monsters.”
“Does that mean you surrender, Akwete?” Compared to her troll noises from the raunchy sex toy abyss, her normal troll voice sounds smaller. You just kind of lay there and take it like a champ. She’s running this gauntlet, you think, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to take it lying down in anything but a literal sense.
“Tie.”
“So you do.”
“Yep.”