“Tiger Lily, and Ricin,” I told her, smoothing her sweat-slicked hair back. “What do you need to fix it?”

Her eyes widened and a bitter laugh broke her trembling lips. “F-f-f-funeral.” She muttered.

I looked around the room. It was a simple rent-by-the-hour rectangular box in a Coronian sex club. It had a a bed and nightstands, chains hanging from the ceiling and sadomasochistic implements on the walls. There were two half orcs laying on the ground, one unconscious, the other groaning over a shattered knee. There was a greasy rat of a man standing with his back to the wall.

Jasper. Ayaka’s poisoner.

“No.” I lifted her in my arms and laid her on the bed, and then rounded on the grinning Jasper. “There must be an antivenom.” I reasoned. “You wouldn’t have kept that poison around without one. What do you want for it?”

“That, my dear Breaker,” the rat of a man replied, “is something of a long story.”

“He’s lying,” Ayaka croaked from the bed, her throat raw from vomiting. “There is no cure.”

“That’s all I needed to know.” I said. I stalked across the space separating me from the greasy bastard and clapped my hands to either side of his head, putting my thumbs in his eyes and shoving so his head snapped back and nearly cracked a hole in the wall. He crumpled to the ground, maybe alive, maybe dead. I didn’t really care.

I clambered into my clothing and boots - Jasper and his guards had caught me and the catwoman in the act - and picked Ayaka up as if she were a toy doll. We both still smelled like sex, like the long night of Animal Behavior we’d shared. But I had no time to steep in those memories. I had to save the nekojin.

I had to get her to the ocean.