The Quarry

[Rage Menelas]

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode]It was no great shock to Ryan when they discovered that Master Liu had flown the coop. It would've been more of a shock if he hadn't. Of course the twenty-six plus hours of intensive verbal scrutiny and interrogation the navy had put him through certainly gave the mad ninja ample opportunity to be forewarned. But in the end they accepted his story, that his motives were simple and moralistic, asked if he would testify against his master and issued an order to arrest the suspect. Of course by that time the entire artificial world probability knew about it... Oh well, no skin off his nose. At least the lady had been warned. Of course now he had an enemy for life. The thought made Ryan instinctively glance over his shoulder. He'd be doing that a lot from here on out, he suspected.

“Thank you,” Ma'areol smiled as she hugged him. “You are a good man. I fear you will be ousted from your order for this.”

“I imagine so,” he admitted, “but I could never have been part of an organization that sanctions cold-blooded murder... so... good riddance.”

“Indeed, but if you could have your wishes granted where would you go...?”

It amazed Ryan that he didn't really need to think about it. “Pella'agre.”

She cocked her head to the side at that, batted her eyes slowly and asked, “Does this involve a lady-love?”

“Yes, it does indeed. Although,” he smiled and winked, “for awhile there you almost made me forget about her.”

“Liar,” she stated succinctly, hugged him again—harder this time—and whispered into his ear, “let me work on the details of making your wishes come true.” Then she shocked him by planting a soft, sweet kiss squarely on his lips, turned and walked away. He stood wide-eyed staring at her lovely figure as it receded too rapidly into the distance, the heat of her mouth still warming his. When she was out of sight down the street, he shook himself out of his euphoria and—with more than a little bit of difficulty—did the same: turned and walked away.