“So why are all of you here, anyhow?” Nest asked.

“Narrative convenience,” Mak said, as he finished folding up some sheet music into a folder. “See you tomorrow, boss, and see you later, Nest.”

“Huh?”

“Mak, what are the lottery numbers for tomorrow night?” Alex asked.

“Three of you have enough money, I think,” Mak said, tipping his cap, and exiting the room.

“So anyhow,” Nest said, figuring there was no rational response to that, “I mean, Mr. Carey owns the place….”

“You call me Mr. Carey again and you’re never allowed back in.”

“But Dr. Archer, and Epistratichos Tarsuss….”

“Next train up to Tayas Mons runs in ninety minutes,” Nick said. “We could rush to Carey Station and wait, or drop by here at closing time, and hang out and since Alex can’t legally sell alcohol after closing time, he has to give it to us for free.”

“’Has to’ is a strong term,” Alex said. “I could make ‘em drink water. But Zhan’s wife lets me crash at her place, and I get to make fun of Nick’s Vikings for never being as good as the Packers, so it works out.”

“Don’t ask,” Zhan said, “you don’t really need to know the difference between American football and football everywhere else.”

“It’s not hard, just soccer in America, football in England,” Nick said. “It’s….”

“Like I said,” said Zhan, with finality. “Point is, we could hop the Red Line, ride it to Carey Station, and then wait there for an hour with only that one pikzlup place open this time of night, or, since Alex is usually down here this particular day in the cycle, we can wander over here and drink, and listen to you talk about your bad date.”

“Ah. Well. So, you were saying I shouldn’t be mad about her picking me up without asking.”

“No, no,” Alex said. “You’ve got every right to be annoyed. But you also have to keep it in perspective. This woman was trying to kidnap humans a few weeks ago, she thought we were all pets. You think she’s gonna magically get it this quick? She’s from where, Archavia?”

“Utgarlthar,” Nest said.

“Jotnar girl! Oh, I should have warned you,” Alex said with a grin. “They’re trouble.”

“They are?”

“Yes. Yes they are….” Alex said with a wide grin.

“Well, anyhow,” Nest said, “I tried not to make a big deal out of it. But it didn’t go better from there….”

* * *

A first date is a bit like a job interview, in that you’re trying to make a good impression, trying not to say anything idiotic, and yet still trying to figure out whether you really want to be brought on board to do this work. Even when the pay sounds great, you’re well-qualified, and you feel like you’re putting your best foot forward, it’s awkward.

“So, uh… where did you…were you a pet first, or….” Liss asked, wincing just a bit.

“No, I was born in Gla,” Nest said.

“Gla. Okay…what’s…where is Gla?”

“It’s a little town about four skonos outside of Atlantis.”

“What’s…a sknonuh?”

“Oh, right…let’s see, about thirty kilometers…wait, no, that’s metric….”

“What’s ‘metric’?”

“Earth system of measurements. Secretary of Defense wants us senior noncoms to know Earth measurements in case we ever need to coordinate with them.”

“But…Earth is protected by Titans,” Liss said. “You can’t visit them.”

“They might visit us, though, some day. And if they do, we need to be ready to work with them.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Liss said. “Earth isn’t going to invent warp ships, they’re…..”

She stopped, and shook her head. “I mean…you guys had to have technology given to you.”

Nest crossed his arms. “Not much. Most of it was done by us. You guys downloaded Earth’s…what’s the name…doesn’t matter, it’s a network of information on computer. Somehow we got a hold of it. The guns we use are based on what we’ve read from Earth’s knowledge base, and we’re getting better all the time. I mean, there are some devices that the Goddess – I mean, Lady Tarsuss – gives to us. But….”

“Okay, okay. I get it. So, what made you join the military?”

“Gla was a major battlefield in the war.”

“The war?”

“The Avalonian Civil War. It was the place the Avalonian Guard won its decisive victory over the Khalinites.” Seeing Liss’s blank look, Nest added, “They were religious zealots, believed in a vengeful goddess who wanted nothing but death and destruction.”

“Humans, then.”

“Yup. Anyhow, you grow up in Gla, you grow up hearing how the guard liberated Gla from the Khalinites, and then saved us from the bandits after that, and basically, it’s hard not to learn about how great the guard is your whole life and not want to sign up the second you get the chance. You know,” he said, “everyone wants to be a hero.”

“I didn’t,” Liss sighed. “But then, my mom was a con artist, so I grew up learning how to trick people. I think I’m better at it than she is, but then, she got arrested when I was 13, so clearly, she wasn’t as good as she thought….”

“What about your dad?”

“What about him? I never met him. He denied paternity, and when there was DNA proof, he just gave Mom a portion of his salary for support, and that was that. Didn’t want me when mom went to prison, that’s why I ended up in foster care.”

“That’s lousy,” Nest said. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“It’s okay. Well…no, it isn’t,” Liss said. “But it is what it is. I just wish that I felt better about the things I’ve done…my first marriage…it broke up over my smuggling, you know.”

“I didn’t. I knew you were a smuggler, but…well, that must have been hard.”

“It was,” Liss said. “I don’t blame him. And I’m not sorry to be working for Lady Tarsuss as a courier now.”

“You ever think about getting back together with him, now that you’re legit?”

Liss shook her head. “No, no. If he’d loved me…really loved me…he knew why I did what I did. He would have stayed with me, maybe tried to talk me into doing something else, but…well, he left me when the going got tough. Love isn’t love unless it can survive mistakes.”

“Well, he’s missing out, then. And I’m glad you’re in a more legitimate job now. I don’t want to save you again, and I really don’t want to have to fight you again.”

Liss smiled. “I don’t want to fight you again. You’re a damn good fighter.”

“As part of a team, maybe.”

“Uh, you were sharp enough to pick up on what I was telling you, and that grounded the Akelois gorram well.”

“Like I said,” Nest replied. “As part of a team.”

* * *

“It sounds like things were going pretty well, really,” Xele said.

“Yeah, they were…for a bit,” Liss replied. “I mean, we talked about this and that, he talked about the Avalonian Guard a lot, but I mean, it’s his job, and he can take a bit more pride in it than I can in mine….”

“You’re a great smuggler,” Rixie said. “I mean, you’re a criminal, but you’re good at it.”

“I…feel like I probably shouldn’t say anything to a former Imperator that could incriminate me.”

Rixie shrugged. “If I wanted to send you away to Penthe, I have more than enough. I don’t. So don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll try not to. So, yeah, it was going okay…until we got back on the subject of pets.”

* * *

“So I have to ask you,” Nest said, finishing his drink, “why did you guys see it as so much worse for the Insectoids to get a bunch of humans than for us to be made into pets?”

“Well…the Insectoids would eat you,” Liss said.

“Sure, but the Titans would have made us into pets.”

“Well, I mean, isn’t that better?” Liss asked.

“Better? How?” Nest asked.

“Well, I mean…I know, it’s not freedom…but it’s not like human pets are treated poorly. They’re well cared-for – I mean, they’re loved. Members of the family, even.”

“They’re slaves,” Nest said. “Except not even. Slaves, from what I read, at least get to work and produce things, get some time to themselves to socialize with others. Human pets are held in captivity, some never see another human again. I’d rather be eaten.”

“But some humans are happy as pets! My second foster family had a human pet, and she was adorable! And she seemed happy almost all the time!”

“Well, she had to be! She was a pet! Did you ever ask her whether she wanted to be there?”

“No, I mean, Lorla wouldn’t have understood….”

Nest shook his head. “The hell you say! She would have understood fine! She didn’t have a choice!”

Liss paused for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m…trying to get used to this. Do you have pets, here on Avalon?”

“Yeah, dogs, cats, and some people keep dodos.”

“So you know…it would be odd, after having one of those animals at home…it would be hard to change the way you thought about it, later. It would take time to unlearn what you thought you knew.”

“Yeah, it would be weird if a dog started acting intelligent, talking, being friendly and smart. But if one did, I’d figure that others could too, especially once I’d met a few. So maybe I’m smarter than you are, you think about that?”

* * *

Nest didn’t get to “about that” while recounting this. He instead stopped, and took a deep breath. “Wow, I didn’t realize…that was kind of a lousy thing to say.”

“Kind of?” Alex chuckled. “I’ve met some Titans who would have crushed you flat for lipping off like that, or….”

His smile faded, and after a pause, he said, “Well, let’s just say that you’re lucky that she didn’t take offense to that.”

“She did,” Nest said. “I thought she was wrong to, but….”

Up on Tayas Mons, Rixie was saying, “No, you had every right to be mad.”

“I started it, though,” Liss said. “I mean, kumpja, if someone walked up to you or me and started talking about how they though bluefaces were nothing but hunters and fishers and warriors, they were surprised to see us wearing regular clothes…well, you might be able to shrug it off, but I might do more than just snap at someone.”

“I wear a few dozen braids in my hair because I want people to lip off. But then, I like a good fight,” Rixie said.

“And when you put it that way,” Xele said, “you did sound a bit like a Federationer talking about a Ler.”

“Okay, ouch,” Liss said. “Besides, I didn’t sound like a Federationer there. It was more…after that.”

* * *

Nest could tell that he’d annoyed the enormous woman in front of him, and there was a part of him that recognized that insulting a giantess was a very dangerous thing. But there was another part of him that had propelled him into the Jacks, and that part was not afraid of any creature, no matter their size.

“Look,” Liss said. “You humans are obviously smart. You kicked our group’s arses, I’ll give you that. I’m just saying that we’ve had space flight for two thousand years, and Earth doesn’t have it yet…okay, you’re opening your mouth, so maybe they have, like, basic satellites. I bet they haven’t even launched crewed missions.”

“They’ve landed people on their moon,” Nest said. “They’re planning out interplanetary missions.”

“Fine, that’s still not warp, and you know it. And if it wasn’t for Titans, they wouldn’t be this far along, The Insectoids would have eaten them up a long time ago.”

“Or maybe if the Titans hadn’t interfered with Humans on Earth, they’d be way ahead of where they are now. You know that Earth has legends of Titans? Literally, titans? Giants who used to walk the land? I’ve even heard that one of the names for giants is Jotunn. You didn’t exactly drop off spaceships for us, no, you grabbed us and made us pets. Who knows where we’d be if you’d left us alone?”

“Look, buddy, that wasn’t my call,” Liss said. “All I know is that here in the Empire, and in Jotnarherath, the vast majority of humans are capable of doing tricks and that’s about it.”

“Goddess, I thought you were different,” Nest said, slamming his glass down. “I thought, when you’d given me direction…but you just thought I was doing a damn trick, didn’t you?”

Liss had been about to level another blow, but that question jerked her up short. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry…I got…that’s not how I see you.”

“It is, though,” Nest said, accusingly. “It didn’t take much pushing for it to come out. You’re all the same, you know? You act like you think we’re your equals for a bit, but you don’t really believe it. I don’t know if the Goddess even believes it, or if she’s just playing around with us, seeing what we’ll do if she pretends for a while.”

“Lady Tarsuss…she believes it,” Liss said. “She does. I…I want to believe it, too. I have to unlearn what I’ve learned, but…I want to.”

“Right,” Nest said. “Well, maybe you do, but you can have someone else teach you. Have a good night.”

“Nest, wait,” Liss said, as he pressed a button on his tabletop, calling an elevator up the center post of the table. He got up to walk toward it, and without thinking, for the second time that night, Liss grabbed him.

His training kicked in almost immediately this time, and two seconds later, he wriggled from her fingers and kicked off her palm, executing the move perfectly…for one gee.

But they were in the compound, and the force pushed him a bit harder than he expected, landing him not on the table, but instead in between two extremely prominent features of Liss’s body, which, as he had earlier predicted, were both quite visible and accessible due to her low-cut shirt.

Liss Peten reacted to having a man drop into her cleavage by tensing up, which had the effect of pushing her breasts together, briefly holding Nest fast in between her mammaries. It took her a moment to stop, relax, and to once more retrieve Nest, this time by offering him a finger to grasp.

She set him down on the table, and could barely look at him as he stormed onto the elevator. Indeed, she stared at her drink for a very long time, giving him time to storm all the way out of the small room they were in.

* * *

“Yeah, that could have gone better,” Nick finally said.

“So you can see why I had to leave,” Nest said.

“Not really,” Alex said. “Especially given how much detail you spared on being pressed between her tits.”

“It was about the right amount of detail,” Zhan said.

“Indeed,” Nick said. “To the cleavage of Titans, one of my favorite things to be stuffed into!”

“You aren’t helping much,” Nest said.

“Well, it sounds like you went in with a massive chip on your shoulder, looking for a reason to argue. I mean, you steered the conversation back to pets, you had to know it would trip her up.”

“Look, you guys don’t understand.”

That brought a chorus of derisive laughter from the three men. “Nick, you want to say it?”

“Nah, Alex,” Nick said. “Your bar, you get the honors.”

“Rixie put me in a cage when she first found me,” Alex said. “And tried to train me. Brinn did the same for Nick. Zhan avoided all that…but that’s because he was nearly killed by Brinn’s sister, who was an evil bitch that we’re all glad is dead. You know the stories of Trell, right?”

“Wait…Trell was your sister-in-law?” Nest said, incredulously.

“She almost killed me, too,” Nick said. “Alex didn’t almost get killed by Trell, his almost-killer was Vasha Zakrov.”

“And that’s just our brushes with near-death,” Zhan said. “I can get into my friend Niall, if you’d like. All of us met Titans who didn’t treat us like people, and two of the three of us married Titans who at first didn’t see us as people. And Pryvani…she’ll be the first to admit that it took her time, too. I was just lucky she got there before I met her.”

Alex smiled. “So yes, all three of us get why you’d be leery. All three of us even get why you’d decide dating a Titan wasn’t for you. Nobody has to date anyone, that’s the rules of dating, and they’re good rules. But you didn’t have to push her to say something dumb, so why did you?”

Next looked at Alex a long time, before looking back down. “I was scared,” he said.

“Scared of dating a Titan?”

“No,” Nest said. “I was scared of how much I liked her.”