There's Got To Be A Morning After
Posted on May 26, 2014 @ 7:56pm by Raxl Dreyton
Edited on on Jun 05, 2014 @ 8:42am
Mission:
The Tangled Webs We Weave
Location: Gillen City
Tags: Raxl
= There’s Got To Be A Morning After =
(cont'd from "Stacking The Deck")
LOCATION: Gillen City, 3rd moon of VASTER II
SCENE: Hotel Room
STARDATE: [2.14] 0426.0227
Somewhere, somebody was banging on a door. From somewhere underneath at least three bottles of bloodwine and some rather comely Orion dabo girls, Raxl Dreyton rolled over in bed and decided to ignore it. He blindly grabbed a flimsy pillow and wrapped it around his head without ever really achieving anything that could be considered true consciousness. Meanwhile, the pounding continued. Eventually, a shrill voice was added to the din.
“Dreyton! Open up!”
Rax opened one eye, the thick fog of the hangover already settling over him, and weighed his options. It struck him as unlikely that the person banging so insistently on his door was waiting to surprise him with a hearty steak-and-egg breakfast and a bucket of high-grade painkillers, so Rax decided he’d wait for them to eventually get tired and go away.
“If you don’t open up, we’ll melt the door down!”
Rax grumbled and opened his other eye. Apparently patience was out of the question. He sat up, the pounding on his head drowning out the pounding on his door, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His lips were still sticky with the alcohol from the night before.
“Ugh,” Raxl said.
“Did you hear me, Dreyton?” said the door-pounder. “I said-”
“I heard you,” Raxl grumbled quietly. He tried to stand. His legs were unsteady, and he braced himself against the wall to keep from falling. He almost tripped over a pile of clothing as he went. He looked down and saw a black bra clinging to his foot, and that’s when he looked back at the bed and saw the green-skinned woman laying there, tangled in bedsheets, still sleeping.
“Oh,” Rax said. He couldn’t remember her name, and had a feeling he’d never asked for it.
The pounding continued.
“Dreyton! Open the door, now!”
Rax looked at the door, then at the woman, then back at the door. His mind began to sluggishly piece things together.
“Oh,” he said again.
“Alright, boys,” came the voice from behind the door. “Blast your way in.”
“Wait!” Rax called, trying to ignore the blast of silvery pain that rippled through his head as he did. “I’m coming! Give me a minute, willya?”
He stumbled to the door and thumbed the control for the security panel. The screen blinked to life, and he got a somewhat blurry, low-quality picture of three figures standing on the other side of his door: a short, sour-faced Ferengi standing between a burly Nausicaan and an equally muscled Klingon. The strongmen were each holding what appeared to be disruptor rifles, though Rax couldn’t be sure between his headache and the low quality of the image.
“Dreyton! Open the door now!” the Ferengi yowled.
“Sorry, Riss,” Raxl said. “I was asleep.”
“I don’t care *what* you were doing,” the Ferengi named Riss said. “Open the door this instant!”
“Uh,” Rax said, glancing back at his bed. The Orion woman hadn’t stirred. “Can you come back in ten minutes? I’m… not decent.”
“I *know* she’s in there, Dreyton!” Riss shouted.
Suddenly, the haze seemed to clear slightly, and Raxl could remember Riss introducing him to the sleeping Orion beauty at some point the night before. He hadn’t used her name, instead introducing her as...
**Fiancé,** Rax thought. **Oh hell.**
“Dreyton!” Riss called again.
“Just a minute!” Raxl said. He grabbed at the clothes balled up by the bed and began sorting through them. “The, uh… door is stuck!”
“Then I’ll blast it out of the frame!” Riss said.
“No no, don’t do that,” Rax said. He pulled on his pants and grabbed for his shirt. “That door doesn’t belong to me.”
“It’s *my* door, Dreyton!” Riss screeched. “You’re in *my* hotel!”
“Then you should really call someone about these doors,” Rax said. He’d successfully pulled on his shirt, though it was backwards and inside-out, and began looking frantically around for his boots. “This is a fire hazard!”
“I’ve had *enough* talking, Dreyton!” Riss said. “You’re only making this worse for yourself!”
Rax quickly pieced together what he could of the situation. The Ferengi named Riss was a “respected businessman”, which on this backwater moon was a just a euphemism for midlevel crime boss. The sleazepit Rax had spent the night in was called The Latinum Lady, a hotel/gambling hall that catered to wealthy but not-so-reputable clientele who wanted a nice, out-of-the-way place to conduct business. Sometimes that meant making money, often it meant spending it, and the Riss took a cut of the action no matter which way the funds were flowing. Normally, this place would be out of Rax’s price-range, but after turning in a pair of bounties to the local authorities (authorities that were, in effect, owned by Riss and his silent partners), Raxl had some money to spend and Riss had owed him a few free spins at the dabo table.
Raxl wondered why Riss hadn’t simply overridden the door controls, and decided that part of the appeal this place offered was security and anonymity. It would hurt the Ferengi’s business if he just went around forcing his way into peoples’ rooms… and since the room was certainly loaded with surveillance equipment, it also wouldn’t be necessary.
Unless one of the guests decided to sleep with the owner’s fiancé, that is.
“Listen, Riss,” Rax said, trying his best to sound reasonable even though his speech was still slurred. “I don’t know what you think went on in here last night-”
“You won’t talk your way out of this one, Dreyton,” Riss said. “Open the door now and maybe I’ll leave you with enough fingers to hold a liquor bottle!”
“That’s actually not the worst deal I’ve ever been offered,” Rax said, mostly to himself. He found one of his boots and slipped it on, but the other one had apparently fallen into a localized spatial anomaly. On the bed, the Orion woman stirred.
“I’m going to count to three,” Riss said. “And then I’ll tell my men to melt this door into slag and come in after you! And you’ll also be responsible for the damages, by the way!”
“Oh, great,” Rax said, rolling his eyes. “You’re gonna bill me before you kill me.”
“One!”
Rax’s eyes went to the dirty window by the bed. He couldn’t remember what floor of the hotel he was on, and the window was too caked with grime to easily see through.
“Two!”
Rax looked back at the security console. On the screen, he could see the two bodyguards had raised their disruptors to aim at the door, and Riss had stepped back to be safely outside the line of fire. Apparently, the Ferengi wasn’t bluffing. Rax glanced back at the window.
“I don’t suppose you have a comment card I could fill out after my stay?” Rax asked.
“Three!” Riss called. “Blast the door in, boys!”
There was a flash on the security screen, then the picture went dead. The metal door to the hotel room began to glow a sinister red, and Raxl could hear the hum of disruptor beams. He decided he was out of alternatives.
The Orion woman had finally opened her eyes, just in time to see Rax stepping onto the bed next to her. He stepped over her carefully, then slammed his shoulder into the window less carefully.
“Raxie?” the woman blinked.
“Oh!” Rax said, slamming his shoulder into the window again. “Hi there.”
The woman looked at the door, which had started to bow and warp under the disruptor beams. Then she looked back to Raxl.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Listen,” Rax said, continuing to slam his shoulder against the window. “Last night was great. Probably great. But I don’t know if I’m emotionally ready for a relationship. You seem like a really nice girl-”
“The door is melting,” the Orion yawned, apparently not really listening.
“Say, do you happen to remember what floor this is?” Raxl asked. Just then, the window gave way, coming out of the frame with an audible *pop!*, and then Raxl was falling, end over end over end.
“Bye,” the Orion woman said, laying back to down again.
============================================================
NRPG: I’m going out of town for the next few days, so I wanted to get another post out before I go. Not really sure what I’ll do with Raxl, but I figure it couldn’t hurt to have another loutish rogue sleazing around the galaxy in case we need to fill the ranks.
Shawn Putnam
a.k.a.
Jake Crichton, Commander
Chief Engineering Officer
USS DISCOVERY