arboreal_priestess | The Golden Oasis, Las Vegas, Friday Morning

They made it back to the hotel many hours and several bottles of champagne later, laughing as they tried to keep themselves from toppling over. Verity's knees gave out halfway up the stairs. Liam scooped her up, slung her over his shoulder, and carried her the rest of the way - and the giant horseman's glaive Al had given her as a wedding present and that she had carried all through the night. The best part? No one in Vegas had cared. Verity unlocked the door while dangling upside down and giggling incessantly. The mice cheered when they entered the room.

"HAIL! HAIL THE RETURN OF THE ARBOREAL PRIESTESS!"

"Shhh," Verity said. Her shushing was somewhat undermined by her giggles, and by the hiccups she was starting to develop. "Gotta be quiet, mice. No pets allowed."

"Verity is very, very drunk," said Liam proudly. "I am slightly less drunk." That he was drunk at all was pretty surprising, considering his usual reluctance. But it was the night before their wedding...

"Because you're bigger than me, you jerk," Verity said, doing her best to punch him in the knee. It would have been easier if his knees hadn't insisted on moving when she tried to hit them. It wasn't fair. She crossed her arms and sulked. "Stupid mass."

"I also drank more water," said Liam. He waved a hand at the mice. "Stay out here, you adorably vicious examples of the genus Rodentia. I am going to defile your priestess like...like..."

"The Normans defiled Lindesfarne?" Verity suggested.

"Yes," said Liam. "That." He raised his chin and carted Verity into the bedroom as half the mice cheered for the God of Distant Stars and the other half took up the cry, "HAIL TO THE DEFILING!" That was going to become a holiday and, dammit, Verity was too drunk to care. She barely remembered to shove the door shut at the last second. Barely. She might have been drunk, but there was no such thing as 'drunk enough to forget that the mice were watching. That was a level of inebriation that implied liver failure and death. Which might still be better than having sex while the mice were in the room.

Verity	Morning dawned bright and early and impossible to ignore, due to the fact that they had both been too drunk the night before to think about closing the curtains. For once, Verity rolled out of bed first, bouncing to her feet, and trotting toward the bathroom to begin her ablutions.
Liam	Liam generally didn't have issues with hangovers, but he'd kind of assumed Verity wanted to sleep in. And sleep in they had! But now, the absence of a warm body next to him had Liam grumbling in disappointment. "How are you this alert before coffee?" he asked suspiciously. He'd been waking up with her near every morning for over a year at this point, after all.
Verity	"Today's our wedding day," Verity said with a stupid grin, squirting a healthy dollop of toothpaste onto her brush. It smelled of mint. That was better than the things she currently smelled like. Open seafood buffets and champagne cocktails did not a sweet day-after perfume make. "Besides, I learned how to wake up the day after a night of drinking. You never really had to. Try doing dance camp and monitoring the local woods for cryptid activity without ever slipping so much that the instructors catch on. You get real, real good at shrugging things off." That didn't even go into college, where the usual parties had taken her away from both her studies and her duties, if only temporarily. The classes had to be passed and the duties had to be done, and so she'd figured out how to do it all. Her smile turned soft. "I'm only lazy at home cause you make it so I can be."
Liam	"Yeah, that makes sense," Liam acknowledged, his own smile going more than a little dopey, gathering the clothes he’d discarded last night (or technically speaking, absurdly early this morning), and padding over to the bathroom once he heard the shower start going. With a sigh, he scrubbed one hand through his hair and watched with a sort of resigned dismay as a cascade of glitter fell into the sink. Vegas was nearly as bad as Fandom in that respect.
Verity	Verity grinned and flicked a handful of suds at him before withdrawing back to the safety of the shower. "Are you sure you're going to be up for getting married tonight?" she teased over the spray. "Because we can postpone, if you're too hungover to deal with an Elvis impersonator."
Liam	Liam rolled his eyes and snorted in amusement, because she knew full well how hungover he wasn't. Still- "Are we really getting married by an Elvis impersonator?"
Verity	Bah. Since when did trolling have to be based in actual facts? "Assuming we can find one, why not? You only have one chance to elope to Vegas and have a ridiculous theme wedding." Verity rinsed the shampoo out of her hair. "Besides, that way the minister will be wearing more sequins than I am."
Liam	"That is something I would very much like to see," Liam admitted. "But if you think I'm interested in delaying our marriage one minute more than absolutely necessary, it's possible you're the one who had too much to drink," he shot back.
Verity	"You say the sweetest things." Verity turned off the water, wrapping a towel around herself as she stepped out of the shower, and kissed his cheek. "Get cleaned up. Al's going to expect us to be there soon, and it's never a good idea to keep him waiting." She winked at him. "And I want a nice, shiny, clean husband, not this scapegrace I see before me."
Liam	"Scapegrace, hrmph," Liam scoffed, already stripping off his boxers and moving to take his turn in the shower.
Verity	Verity laughed while toweling off her hair and getting into the robe supplied by the hotel. She was still laughing when she stepped out into the front room of the suite. About half the mice were on the couch, still watching television - a Truth and Justice marathon, from the looks of things. Someone knocked on the door. Verity stopped where she was, giving the mice a hard look. "Okay, fess up," she said. "Did you order room service without permission?" It was entirely possible that they had permission, of course. She and Liam had been really drunk the night before.
Aeslin Mice	"No, Priestess," squeaked one of the mice. The knock came again.
Verity	Verity pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to chase away the last of her hangover. It worked about as well as she had expected it to, which was to say, not at all. "Okay, get out of sight," she said. "I'll see what's up." The mice scattered, vanishing under the furniture in an instant. She walked toward the door, leaning up onto her toes to look out the peephole. There was no one there. "Huh," she said, dropping back to the flats of her feet. "Must've had the wrong room." She started to turn away. The knock came a third time.
Hired Goons	This time Verity whirled, grabbed the doorknob, and opened the door before whoever had been knocking could duck out of sight. She'd been expecting to find a group of kids who thought that they were being funny, or maybe a hotel busboy with a breakfast tray. Instead, she found herself looking down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. It was in the hands of a man who looked like he ate bricks for breakfast. He was flanked by two equally rough-looking companions, one male and one female, both dressed in leather, denim, and a substantial helping of dust. "Hi," said the man in the middle.
Verity	"Wrong room," Verity said brightly, and slammed the door on him. As she'd been expecting, it didn't actually close: one of the trio had managed to get his foot in the opening before the door could latch. That was breaking into a hotel room 101, and she would have been disappointed if they hadn't managed it. Relieved, but disappointed. What it did was buy her some time - almost nine whole seconds, between the slam, the bewildered 'did she just slam the door on a man with a gun?' pause, and the door banging open again. Nine seconds was all she needed. There wasn't time to get to her own guns, which were still under the pillows on the bed, but there was time to get to her wedding present. When the door opened, the three goons from the hall found her braced in a defensive stance, holding a full-sized horseman's glaive in front of her. As expected, all three of them stopped and stared. Eight-foot long polearms had that effect on people. "I am tired, I am hung-over, and I did not order room service," Verity snarled, hitting the butt of the glaive against the wall. Which just happened to be the wall that was shared with the bathroom. "Get the hell out of my hotel room."
Liam	And over in the bathroom, Liam was just pulling on a shirt when he heard that thumping noise. There weren't too many reasons Liam could think of for a noise like that, and all of the ones he could think of certainly didn't herald anything good. Grabbing a towel, he came out into the bedroom, eyes darting around as he searched for- Yes, there. Right on the bedside table. That's exactly what he needed.
Goon #2	"What the hell is that thing?" demanded Goon #2, staring at the weapon Verity was holding in front of them. He was short and stocky, and even though it was the year of our lord twenty-nineteen, he was sporting a mohawk-and-mustache combo. If Verity had been looking for a man to stand in front of a biker bar and nod silently to people, he would have been her first choice.
Goon #3	"It's a can opener on a stick," said Goon #3, the only woman. She sneered. "Just give us the vermin and no one has to get hurt, sweetie. You can take your pretty bleached blonde head back to bed and sleep off the rest of whatever you drank last night."
Verity	"Wait, what?" Any traces of sleepiness that had managed to survive the arrival of their unexpected guests fled as her words sunk in. Verity's eyes narrowed. "Who the hell sent you?"
Goon #1	Goon #1 thumbed back the hammer on his gun, aiming it straight for her chest. "We're the ones with the guns, sweetheart, so I think we get to ask the questions. Where are they?"
Goon #3	"Talking about the mice. We know you have them. Now fork them over."
Verity	Well, crap. "Let me think about that for a second," Verity said, taking a half-step backward and knocking the butt of the glaive against the wall one last time. She'd thought she heard Liam moving about, but it never hurt to take extra precautions. Then she lunged forward-- --and planted the blade end in the floor. The goons started to laugh, taking the move for the mistake of an amateur. Until Verity shoved off from the floor and suddenly had the makeshift equivalent of a fireman's pole in the middle of the room. People who make fun of pole dancing have never actually tried it. The core strength required to hang your entire body from your arms while you move in three-dimensional space is immense. And the psychological impact of whipping around in a perfect arc and planting your feet square in the face of the man who was just pointing a gun at you is not to be underestimated.
Goon #1	Goon #1 made a squawking noise as he staggered backward, dropping the gun. Verity allowed her momentum to carry her around for another kick. Sadly, Goon #3 had enough of a grasp of physics that she ducked, leaving Verity to sail harmlessly past overhead.
	Oh, well. Time for plan B. Verity let go of the pole, hit the wall with both feet, and flipped herself back into an upright position, landing with both fists up and ready to swing. Unfortunately, the goons were also ready to square off. Goon #2 produced a gun of his own. How unoriginal. Goon #3 had a length of chain, which she began whipping around over her head. That was a little better, if extremely impractical. Verity paused to stare at her. "Seriously? What do you think this is, ~~meta for-~~Beyond Thunderdome?"
The Goons	"She broke my nose!" said Goon #1, through his fingers. "Kill her!" The woman obeyed by whipping the chain at Verity, who ducked, and the chain got wrapped around the glaive. The second goon brought his gun up to bear, aiming it at Verity's center of mass. "Now'd be a good time to give up," he said.
Verity	Uhhh no actually, now would be a good time for Liam to burst out of the bedroom, rolled-up towel in hand. "Verity!" he shouted, to give her a heads-up as he tossed it in her direction.
Verity	"I love you so much!" Verity snatched the towel out of the air, shoved her hand inside, and pulled out her own gun. Well. one of them. "Hi," she said, wheeling on Goon #2 with a bright smile. His eyes widened as he saw the pistol in her hand. "Wanna see who the faster shot is? Spoiler alert: probably not you."
Liam	"If this were literally any other day, I'd encourage you to try anyway, 'cause it'd be funny," Liam said, launching himself over the couch and in the path of Goon #3, grabbing her wrists and wrenching her around so her arms were trapped behind her. "But we've got a pretty busy day planned and you've already put us behind schedule, so..."
The Goons	Goon #1, blood pouring down his face, was smart enough to see the writing on the wall. He turned and bolted for the door. That would probably have worked out okay for him, if the mice hadn't run a dental floss tripwire across the opening. He went down hard, and he didn't get back up. Goon #3 struggled in Liam's grip, but couldn't break it. "Do something you idiot!" she hissed.
Goon #2	The second goon looked from his unconscious friend to his immobilized friend to the gun pointed directly at his face and did the only smart thing in this situation. He tossed his gun on the floor and raised his hands high.
Verity	The mice cheered. Verity grinned. "Well," she said, voice full of amused satisfaction. "That's one hell of a wakeup call. You wanna keep an eye on them, babe? I'm gonna throw some clothes on." Fighting bad guys in a bathrobe was one thing, but interrogating them that way was just wrong.
Liam	"Of course," Liam said easily, already securing Goon #3's hands with a zip tie from his pocket. What? Who didn't carry around a few zip ties in case you needed to tie up any would-be trespassers? They were a lot easier to conceal than handcuffs, that was for sure.
Verity	"Huh," Verity said, coming back into the room fully dressed and still slapping on some weapons. "Has the front desk called?"
Liam	Liam frowned. "No," he said slowly, realizing what that must mean.
Verity	"Right," Verity said, filing that away to deal with later. She turned to the goons instead. "Here's how this is going to work. I'm going to ask who sent you. You're going to tell me. Then we're going to take our things, including the mice, and we're going to leave you here. I know I can trust you not to call the police, because I'm guessing you want to deal with them about as much as I do. In return for your cooperation, I will leave you with all your fingers. Do we have a deal?"
Goon #2	"Sit on it and spin, bitch," said Goon #2.
Verity	"Aw." Verity produced a throwing knife from her belt, twirling it between her fingers before flinging it at him. It socked into the wood of the already battered chair right between his legs, less than an inch from his genitals. He went pale and her smile grew wider. "How about you don't use that word anymore, and I don't make you regret it?"
Liam	"You know," Liam said casually, "My chivalrous side says I should step in when men talk to you like that, but it's just so much fun to watch you work."
Verity	"I am the gift that keeps on giving," Verity said blithely, before focusing on the goons again. "Come on. One of you has to be willing to give up your employer." She had plenty more knives and a willingness to use them.
Goon #1	"Lady, we would, believe me, but we don't know," said the first goon. His nose had stopped leaking, largely due to the wads of tissue paper jammed in both nostrils. He was going to make a mess the next time he sneezed. "We got a call from one of the brokers we work with, said he had a confirmed Aeslin colony in this hotel, and that it would be an easy pickup, on account of the people who were rooming with them had gotten wasted last night."
Liam	Liam vaguely remembered a few complementary bottles of champagne. They'd still been sealed, so he'd both assumed they were safe to drink. He hadn't considered the possibility that getting them drunk might have been the goal all along. Inwardly, he resolved not to make any more exceptions to his personal drinking rules. Outwardly, he just scowled down at the goons. "If your broker knew we were out drinking, why didn't you just make the pickup then?" Ugh, even just saying that, talking like the mice were a commodity, made his stomach crawl.
Goon #3	"We tried," said Goon #3, glaring daggers at them both. "We searched this whole damn place, and we didn't see a single mouse. So we figured maybe they only came out when you were around."
Verity	Verity looked down at the mice, who were sitting on the floor around her feet. "Is this true?" she asked. "Why didn't you say anything?"
Aeslin Priest	"Because we Did Not Know, Priestess," said the head priest, stroking his whiskers with his forepaws and bowing his head in contrition. "We were granted permission to Hunt, and so Hunt we did. We have grown restless, sealed in the Car of Rental for so long. We wished to feel the wind in our fur, and to taste blood against our teeth."
Verity	"...Right." The mice had gone out, which she had told them was okay, and as a consequence, when the goons had come to visit, they hadn't been there to be taken. The narrowness of their escape chilled her as she swung her eyes back to the goons. "So a broker called you and told you what, exactly?"
Goon #1	"That you had a healthy Aeslin colony traveling with you," repeated Goon #1. "Lady, I don't know if you're stupid or just perverse, but we could still make a deal. We were promised a half-million each for any live mice we brought in. Two million for every breeding pair. We could split it, fifty-fifty. Just untie us and grab your rodents, and you'll be rich before dark."
Liam	Liam's fist hit him square between the eyes, rocking his head back so hard it practically hit his spine. He groaned, and stopped talking. Liam turned to scowl at the other two, who shied away as much as their ropes would let them. That... didn't particularly make him feel any better.
Verity	The naked gratitude on Verity's face might. From the way her knuckles were white on her weapon suggested it was taking everything she had not to follow it up with something worse. "Aeslin mice are intelligent creatures," she said. It was a struggle to keep her voice steady, rather than shaking with rage. "What you're talking about, what you tried to do? That's slavery. Unless you were planning to purge their current religion by breeding them and then killing the adults. That's murder. And I don't suggest telling me if that was the idea."
The Goons	They didn't have to say a word. Their eyes darted to the side, looking at anything but her face.
Verity	Verity had to take a deep breath. And then another The urge to leave shallow graves in a motel parking lot had rarely been so strong. "Okay. Well, you kept our deal. We're leaving. You don't call the police, and I don't call my parents. Everyone gets to walk away."
Goon #3	"Your parents?" demanded Goon #3. "What the hell, lady? You think we're gonna be afraid of you tattling to Mommy and Daddy?"
Verity	"Oh, good, nobody told you. Hi." Verity smiled at her, a great baring of her teeth, like she was getting ready to rip out the other woman's throat and swallow it. "You just tried to steal a group of living, sentient creatures from the latest generation of the Price family." The conscious thieves turned white. Nobody spoke again as Verity and Liam gathered their things - including the mice - and made their way out of the room, leaving the goons behind.
Liam	And at the last moment, Liam cranked the thermostat up to full, shutting the door on the goons' dismayed faces. "It won't kill them, but they might wish it had," he said with a smirk and a shrug.
Verity	"My hero," Verity replied with a semi-besotted smile. Yeah. Marrying him was the right idea. There was one more piece of business to take care of before they left. Liam carried their things - including Verity's glaive, yes - while she sauntered up to the front desk. There was no one there except for the clerk. He blanched when he saw them, and scrambled to his feet when he saw that she was still smiling. "Hi," Verity purred, dropping a handful of crumpled bills on the counter in front of him. "I guess we made a bit of a mess upstairs. Oopsie. But you're not going to charge us a cleaning fee, because if you did, I'd need to tell my family that you're a black market wildlife dealer, and that you tried to take my mice." She was going to tell them anyway. They couldn't let something like this go unchecked. Worse for him, she was going to tell Al. As a member of the Las Vegas cryptid community, he would be very interested in what had happened to them.
Front Desk Clerk	"Oh my God," muttered the clerk. Louder, he said, "I'll scream if you touch me."
Liam	Liam rolled his eyes. "You say that like we're the bad guys here. We're not. We're just the people who wanted to have a nice, quiet holiday, and you're the one who ruined it by sending poachers after us."
Verity	"I won't try to explain why what you did was wrong. I'm sure you already know. But I will give you some advice: retire. Right now, while you still have hands. Because the folks around here aren't going to be thrilled when they hear what you did," Verity added. Helpfully!
Front Desk Clerk	He slumped for a moment before pulling himself laboriously upright and asking, "How did you know?"
Verity	"This is a dive. Even in a dive, when a gun goes off, management should want to know what the hell is going on. You told us it was you as soon as you left your goons alone to finish us off." Verity shook her head. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have believed I could get comfortable anywhere that wasn't owned by an ally. But damn, I wish you hadn't been an asshole." Verity turned and walked away, Liam falling into step beside her. She'd tell Al about him; within the week, whatever connections he had would be cutting him off to protect themselves. Within a month, no place in Vegas with a connection to the cryptid community would be willing to work with him. It wasn't much. It was what she had, or at least, it was what she had that didn't involve breaking bones and possibly going to prison. Sometimes, though, prison didn't sound like such a high cost.
Liam	Except then the mice would be hiding more or less all the time and scavenging horrible prison food. "Where to now?" Liam asked as they reached the rental car, safely stowing the mice in the back seat.
Verity	Dammit. Good points. "The bank," Verity sighed. "Let's get this over with."