trans_9 | Ten rounds at the Drunken Dragon...

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Ten rounds at the Drunken Dragon...

The addition of a few new drinks, Kaylee hopes, will help get a few newbies into the bar, which will hopefully help it getting everyone a bit more relaxed than they have been. Not everyone on Stacy necessarily like beer or ale, so some vodka and wine open it up nicely to different tastes. Kaylee has also managed to rig up some nice cross-between-Chinese-and-folksy-sounding music, which she can be found dancing to on occasion behind the bar or while she's delivering drinks to tables.

Bar's open, everybody. Come try the new drinks--just don't start any trouble, or the Draconian in the corner will take you out.

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"Depending on the kid, that can be as stressful a task," she says with a smile. "I take it from the general mood of this place that it was dealt with well enough."

Kang nodded, "No deaths, and relatively quickly. And thankfully, this one was easy enough to watch. I wasn't sure how to handle it at first, with her being a human, but she spent the whole time reading a book."

"And who do we have to thank for not getting stepped on or eaten or whatever by a giant creature?" She thinks back to raising her son. "Lucky for you. When Marco was little, he was the sort of kid who would put forks into electrical sockets when left alone. I earned more gray hairs in his toddler years than in seven years of slavery, I can tell you."

Kang shook his head, "That, I'm not sure about yet either, though I have a feeling Luis is involved."

At that, he laughed, "Sounds like something a couple of mine would do, if given the chance, and a lot like some of the things the girls did when they were little. I think it's a constant between the races."

"Luis Sera? I met him on the observation deck a while ago. He was very charming."

"It must be one of the developmental stages for every species, the make your parents' heads explode with worry stage. It's weird to miss it, isn't it? You spend your whole time waiting until they're old enough to not need constant care and then suddenly they don't and you want to strap them with helmets and shinpads anyway."

"That's him," Kang smiled. "You managed to catch him on a rare day; he usually doesn't leave his lab unless someone drags him out by force or with bribes of alcohol." Or sex. Luis was a pretty easy man to read.

This conversation brought back memories, both good and bad, of when his regiment had been raising the females. He almost literally had done such a thing. Snorting softly, he glanced down at the wood of the bar, "It's hard to let go, but you have to. And sometimes you need someone to push you to do it."

"My husband is much the same, but swap 'lab' for 'in front of the computer' and 'bribes of alcohol' with 'classical music and football." Her smile is a bit weary at that, though. She's still worried about him, wherever he might be and if he's in the pods or not.

The downward glance doesn't go unnoticed. "God's done a good job giving me more pushes than I'd ever need. I guess He's done the same to you."

Kang understood that worry all too well.

"There's only one good thing the gods have ever done for me," Kang couldn't help a scowl. Takhisis was still a bit of a sore subject for him. "No, it was a human friend that set me straight. It's a damn shame she didn't do it sooner."

"Have you met these gods?" It's not a snarky question so much as genuinely curious. Who knows what's on this ship, or what other people have seen and experienced. Eva doesn't know what to do with her faith, because the universe has proven to her time and again that there is some greater force at work, so why not have it be the one she's been taking wine and bread for since she was young? Shouldn't there be something beyond the Ellimist, at least?

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I have," Kang nodded, glad to see that Eva was more open-minded than some of the others on the ship about polytheism and gods being real. "I spoke with one, directly, for several decades, and it was a common thing on my world for the gods to meddle in mortal affairs. At least, before they all left."

He shrugged, "It's a long story, but if you want to hear it..."

"I think it's somewhere in their contract that omnipotent beings have to either meddle with our lives or get out," she says while sipping more wine.

"I have no job, no obligations and no reason to be anywhere. Tell me as many long stories as you want and I'll listen."

Kang laughed, "And thankfully, the ones I'm familiar with chose the latter. They caused more trouble than they were worth."

He nodded and fetched a mug of ale for himself. "It starts with the creation of my race, about forty-five or forty-six years ago, best I can tell. Takhisis, a goddess, was trying yet again to take over, and she had the eggs of the metallic dragons stolen to create us. We were to be shock troops in her war. Unfortunately, we turned out to be more intelligent than planned, so the humans never allowed any females to hatch, and told all of us that none had ever been created. I'm sure you can understand why."

"Is there any specific reason they chose to leave, or were you all more trouble than you were worth as well?" she asks with a sly smile.

"Bearing in mind that understanding is not the same as condoning, yes. I'm assuming from your status as a parent that their ruse didn't last."

"The story is that they were forced to, to keep all of us mortals alive. All I know for certain is that they banded together to fight against another god, and disappeared soon after," Kang said dryly. He didn't add in the mortal champions, or the fact that he'd ended up being one of them.

"No, it didn't, but I'll get to that. We ended up losing the war, something I'm not too upset about, and I took my regiment up into the mountains where we could live in relative peace until we died from old age, whenever that turned out to be.

"During the summer of the year the gods left, we heard of a new army being formed, one that actually looked like it was going to focus on winning a war instead of backstabbing and bribing each other to gain power. I ended up offering our services as engineers, but we barely stayed in that camp for one day before leaving. Things had changed, but not their attitude toward my kind; no, we were still the dumb lizardmen, good for nothing but latrine duty and infantry." He snorted, taking a drink of his ale.

"And haven't been heard from since?"

She's listening pretty raptly. "Somehow the fact you're governing Planet Meatball here has me convinced that they were missing out. It's a shame. What happened then?"

Kang shook his head, "Not a trace. Magic didn't work properly for about a year, for anyone, either. It still doesn't work properly for mages, but those with innate abilities like me got it back." It'd gotten easier for him to talk about it, over the past few weeks, and to use it.

"Turned out it was a good thing we left, because if we hadn't, we wouldn't have found out about the twenty female eggs hidden inside Thorbardin. We managed to retrieve them, and moved out of the valley we'd lived in for close to thirty years. I had a map to an old abandoned city, and we thought it wouldn't be too difficult to travel there while raising the girls as long as we avoided the other races; but, we were harassed by goblins for nearly a year. Lost quite a few good men due to those bas- them," he corrected himself. He didn't know yet if Eva was alright with words of that nature.

"Through natural causes or the magic of technology and discovery?"

"I'm sorry for your losses. But how does said friend giving you a kick in the pants tie in?" She chuckles wickedly. "And I've had a slug drill its way through my virgin ears, Kang. A little profanity won't hurt them."

Kang laughed, "It's habit. I try to watch my language around females of other races, in case they're uncomfortable with it. Ours are used to it." Hell, sometimes they were worse than the males, it seemed.

"Mages receive their power from the moons of the three gods of magic, and when the gods left... the moons did too, to be replaced by a single one.

"There were only twenty of them. Even with the goblins hounding us, I refused to teach the girls how to use a weapon, or defend themselves. I was so afraid that they'd hurt themselves, or worse, get killed trying to fight. Of course, they weren't happy about that, especially Fonrar, and they started learning sword drill on their own when we weren't watching them. They were a little over a year old, but they'd grown up, and we'd been too blind to see it; we still saw them as hatchlings that needed to be protected," he smiled wryly. "By that point, we were holed up in a fort with about five thousand other draconians, the bulk of what was left of us, and I found out that it was the dark knights, our former 'allies', that were paying the goblins to kill us. They knew about the girls, and that they couldn't control us anymore."

The bozak held back a snort. "The one who warned us was an old friend of mine, a dark knight herself, who had helped us with finding the female eggs. She - Huzzad - stayed with the females, and unaware of what I'd said, brought the sword drill lessons to my attention. I was upset, but she... scolded me. If it weren't for her convincing me to let them learn how to fight, I fully believe we would have all been killed by the goblins."

Eva stares into her mug as Kang relays the stories. Many of the emotions resonate particularly strongly. "I suppose you should never underestimate the difference children can make when armed and trained. They can turn tides. They shouldn't have to, but they can. From what you're telling me, you did what any loving parent would."

Her next taste of wine is more gulp than sip. "I don't know how much you know about my son, but he was in a war and I was helpless to protect him. And he and a few of his allies changed the war from hopeless to a victory. He's always done the right thing in that regard, even when..." She winces, remembering holding him as she asked to be reinfested. "But if I were given a chance to go back and keep him out of it entirely, even if it meant losing the planet and the human race, well, I know what the logical thing to do would be and I know what the maternal thing to do would be, and honestly I can't say on any given day which decision I would make."

"Yes, but it wasn't the right thing to do. I shouldn't have coddled them as much as I did, and I should have listened to them sooner. Luckily, it wasn't too late," Kang smiled to himself. "They made me proud. And they still do, especially Fon."

...now that was surprising. "I knew he was in a war, but not how important his role in it was. It must have been difficult for you, being stuck in the middle and not being able to do anything."

"Who says everything one does as a parent is right? It's all so informed by impulse." She shrugs. "Why especially Fon?"

She shakes her head. "It was, but it must have been so much worse for him. He was only a kid at the time, and there were conflicts with my Yeerk that left me as potential collateral damage. It's a situation no child should ever be in." She gives a bit of a lopsided smile. "We've been a little protective of each other since."

"She's my mate," Kang grinned slightly. "And she's a damn good fighter, and leader. Smart, too."

He finished his ale, "No, it isn't. I don't blame you for that, either." He coudln't really relate to how Marco had probably felt, not being fond of his own parents (whoever they were), but having raised the girls, he had an idea.

"There's a lot to be said for intelligence. You can't prioritize it enough."

"It's in the past," she says, running her finger around the edge of her mug. "And as far as I know, there's no way to change it, so the most I can is try to protect him from the meager things I can while I'm here. Of course, he thinks that's his job for me, so it's difficult. And I've had my own recovery to tend to."

Kang nodded, "Any time I need good advice for how to handle a situation, I know that I can get it from her. She hasn't failed me yet." There were countless times on Stacy that he'd wished she was around to do just that; it felt strange to him now, not being able to go to her.

His wings rustled slightly. "You can't change it. You can only learn from it, and move on the best you can. It'll work itself out, in time."

"It's important to have that." It's one of the many reasons why she misses Peter so much. Who can she turn to if not him?

She frowns a bit. "Time's a funny thing. You feel like you just need to make it to some marker in the future and things will resolve themselves, but you're so acutely aware of it slipping away. Did you know that psychological studies show that human brains can't conceive of them feeling differently in the future than they do in the present?" She taps her temple. "We can understand it but we can't feel it."

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Ten rounds at the Drunken Dragon...

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