Last edited 02 Dec 2001 02:45 PM

Kitchen to the left, waiting/sitting/parlor room and front door to the right.  Scents assailed her as she reached the bottom, and she turned quickly left, toward the less pleasant of them.

"Zebra.  May I see you a moment?"

Against her better judgment, Sh'heyla turned back, to the sitting room.  Ace was there, leaning back in one of the chairs.  He was in uniform, unsurprisingly -- tan leather tunic buttoned up along the left and right sides, long leather gloves, high leather boots -- lots of leather, in fact.  I'm sure the local mind doctors must have a field day with him, Sh'heyla thought to herself, with a small snort.   It was better to think in those terms, than that he was dressed in animal skins ...

A large leather belt with crossed holsters completed the ensemble.  One of the big guns (Sh'heyla snickered silently again) was out, and Ace was slowly, absently, twirling it back and forth.

He usually went masked, but here in the HQ his mask was off, and his pale blue eyes were bright, piercing, as they watched her enter.  That brought her up short for half a moment. Despite her internal mockery, Sh'heyla knew a number of things about Ace.  First, he was a good, noble man, at least as such things were measured around here.  Second, he was an unparalleled shot.  Third, he was a brilliant tactician.  

But most important, fourth, he was team leader.  Herd leader, was how Sh'heyla thought of it, though she refrained from using the term.  Nonetheless, no matter how great her continuous resentment, there was also a sense of duty and obedience.  Within limits, of course.  And, naturally, it was her prerogative to challenge him.  Perhaps, some day.

But not that morning.  He gestured for her to sit.  She made a small face -- chairs that fit them rarely were comfortable for her.  Instead, she moved against a wall, and crouched down slightly against it, eyes flitting about the room before returning to the sandy-haired team leader.

"Sheila, we have a problem."  The mangling of her name was so common, she didn't even correct him.  She wasn't even sure most of them could even hear the difference.  "The Cook County Press Club," he continued, in his calm, precise baritone.  "Yesterday afternoon."

Therk.  She raised both hands, the closest she could manage to a shrug.  "Mob hit on the deputy chief of police.  I prevented it.  They should be grateful."

Ace sighed.  "They were.  Until you called the deputy chief a capering idiot for issuing challenges and then going out in public without adequate security."

"Briggs is a capering idiot."

"On an open mic, Sheila.  In front of the members of the Cook County Press Club."

She snorted.  "They shouldn't be reporting the truth?"

"That is not the point, and you know it."  He got up.  She straightened a bit against the wall, not wanting to be too submissive to him.  "Regardless of the deputy chief's -- ill-considered actions, he holds a position of authority in the city that we have to respect."  At her beginning to protest, he held up a hand.  "All right, if not respect, at least recognize.  The position, if not the man."

Ace finished twirling the gun in his left hand, and slid it easily into the holster on his right.  "To the extent that the police and politicians cooperate with us, our job is easier, more efficient, more effective.  To the extent that they consider us an enemy, our job is harder, more of an effort, less effective.  That job, Sheila, is why we're here in the first place, right?"

"Maybe why you're here, Ace," she suddenly snapped at him, fed up with the patronizing dressing down.  She turned and stomped out of the room, hooves ringing on the tile floor.  

"Sheila!"

"Some of us had much less choice."

As she exited, she heard him muttering, "Well, at least I never have problems like this with Copper."

Which parting comment probably constituted Strike 4 for the morning.  

*     *     *

When she entered the kitchen area, the Gambler was sitting up on the counter in front of the microwave, tossing playing cards into his top hat, which sat, up-ended, in the middle of the floor.  

Glancing at it, Sh'heyla barked out a laugh.  "You're slipping, Gambler.  You've missed quite a few there."

The Gambler paused, then reached up and removed the cigar -- the source of the foul odor in the room -- from his mouth.  "Ma'am, there is missing, and then there is simply striking other than where the obvious target is."  He smiled beneath his neat, grey moustache, and nodded toward the hat.

Sh'heyla looked again.  The cards not in the hat were actually in an elaborate pattern, upon second consideration.  Face cards were arranged neatly around one side of the hat, other cards were stacked in combinations of twenty-one pips each.  Except the last pair, which were only fifteen.  She turned back to the Gambler, to see a Six of Clubs sail lazily through the air and land atop that stack, forming a perfect cross.

"Feh!" she spat, and kicked the hat and cards away with one hoof.  She stomped over to the fridge and opened its right door, crouching down to get to the vegetable bins.  She pulled out a head of celery.

"Gracious is, they say, as gracious does," the Gambler noted in his soft, gentlemanly drawl.  He started tossing cards onto the hat where it lay on its side.  They balanced perfectly atop its round body as he did so.

Sh'heyla took the opportunity, since it was lying in front of the pantry doors, to give the hat another kick, this time up into the air.  The Gambler landed a card into it as it spun.  "Threk f'rr'ha!" she shouted, swiveled about in a lighting move, and scythed one of her hooves across the hat in mid-air.

The two halves of the hat clunked to the hardwood floor of the kitchen.

The Gambler sighed, and took a long puff from his cigar.  "Ah lose more hats that way," he lamented.

"Keep up with that smoking, Jones" Sh'heyla commented back, "and you are liable to lose a lung.  The same way."  She opened the bifold doors of the pantry, letting the odors there wash over her, before she found a tall jar of vegemite.  

"Ah would ask," the Gambler said, "how it is you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  But yours seems to have no right sides."

The jar open, she broke off a stalk of celery, dipped it in deep to the spread, and then downed the stock with three quick chomps.  Heavenly.  There were at least a few things this planet did right.  "You needn't worry," she told him, breaking off another stalk.  "You won't be invited to it any time soon."

He clapped a hand across his chest, and threw his head back.  "Cut to the quick," he cried out, melodramatically.  He dropped the pose, and leaned over closer to her from where he still sat on the counter.  "Ah'll ask you to repeat that in -- oh, let's see --"  He counted quickly on the fingers of one hand.  "-- eighteen days."

She started, hesitating before consuming another celery stalk.

The Gambler chuckled at her.  "I can do math as well as the next man, and I'm more observant than most.  Some would call you manic-depressive in your sociability.  I can think of another term for when an otherwise cranky female is suddenly much more -- receptive?"

She stared at him for a moment with her large, dark eyes.  Then she threw the celery stick in her hand at him, and stomped away from the kitchen.  "Hah!" he laughed behind her.

As if my mating times are anything that he has a right to discuss, she thought furiously.  Just because the damned females here are always in heat, doesn't mean that fop should be criticizing me.

She considered going back and thrashing him soundly -- or worse.  Despite his gimmicky cards and explosive chips and other tricks, she had no doubt she could do it.

She shook her head as she continued down the hall.  Ace would just get angrier than he already was.

"Zebra!"  Speak of the angry one.  She was headed for the front door, and he was still there in the sitting room.  Sitting.  "Sheila, I wanted to talk with you about the New York trip before you --"

"Patrolling," she snapped at him, pulling open the door, and letting it slam behind her.

If he had another stupid comment, it wasn't audible out in the hallway.  Which was  refreshing change, and just what she wanted.  Snorting, she trotted down to their private elevator, and headed for the outside world.

*     *     *

She hit the streets running, up the ramp from the parking area below, turning onto the avenue at thirty miles per hour, and cranking up the speed from there, hitting sixty by the time she reached the corner at Lakeshore.

This is what life is about, she considered as she ran, pavement blurring beneath her.  True, she couldn't hit her top speeds here, on roadways congested with cars and sidewalks with pedestrians.  As always, her reflexes and thoughts sped up with her body, so she was easily able to weave her way around those obstacles, but it still slowed her down.

There were times when she'd escape the city, head out to the rural farmlands that existed surprisingly close to such an urban population.  There she could run, leap, open up completely.

But the city, for all its obstacles, had one advantage.  People.  Not so much as individuals -- each of whom was, to her, a grating, demanding, irritant -- but as a group.  Her herd, if she looked at it that way.  Their sounds and smells and sights and actions could all be seen as one long aggravation, but when she was out and about in them, not interacting but merely being among them, then they were, in their own way, a great comfort.

She would never let on how lonely she was.  But being out in the city somehow made up for much of it.

Her hooves were a blur, their sound on the concrete and asphalt a pounding staccato, passing even before people could realize they were coming, let alone what they were.  A black and white streak, dark eyes taking in everything she saw, looking for patterns that were wrong, that indicated --

She spotted him a block away -- child truck bearing down he'll never make it move move move! -- and made it just in time, skidding in a sharp circle, grabbing the boy, pirouette-carrying him just beyond harm so close that its wind and vibration ran through her body as if it were her own.

"Tommy!"  The boy's mother was just beginning to grasp what was happening, or what could have happened, and her shriek pierced through the other noises on the street.  

Zebra had come to a stop, and was putting the boy down.  He was wide-eyed, still not quite grasping the danger from the truck he had just spotted moments before.  

"Tommy!" the mother wailed again, reaching his side and grabbing him in a hug that was just as likely to smother the tot as comfort him.  "Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!" she wailed.

Sheila snorted, long and disgusted.  "Keep him out of the roadway, and you won't need to shout his name," she snapped, and then was off again.

"Wha --" the mother was saying, still confused, though it would sink in a minute or two later.  She blinked at the black-and-white apparition who had saved her son, and was now a dwindling spot, far down the street.

*     *    *

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Copyright © 2001 David C. Hill