Hyenas 2

"¡Hola chicas, y buenas noches!"
(Hello girls, and good evening!)
"I am really so glad you could all be here this evening. Thank you all for being here."

"Most of you probably saw the messages about what I've been up to for these last few weeks, or more precisely the last seven weeks. Well I signed up for a traveling gig with a Leon that was doing business opportunity explorations, and I got a bunch of viewbies recorded in memcache for our enjoyment.
First place we went was on an FTL hop towards the Euphemistes Group in Shengar Quadrant."

"This Leon, my new boss, he was apparently well connected. For example we actually got to meet the warpship pilot. Her name was Nav, but it was just a coincidental sound resemblance."

"I mean friends, we got the deluxe tour treatment, she even showed us the pilot's console. It didn't take long to realize that folks were trying to impress the Leon. That observation was repeated with a lot of what I saw throughout the experience. And I gotta say the pay was sweet too."

"We made our fist wormhole jump through the Nanzinger Gate Wormhole."

"I have to say the jump itself was one Hell of a light show!"

"But then we popped out just outside the Bootes Cluster. More stars than you could imagine all pretty much jammed together like some huge ornament in a darkened sky."

"The first planet we visited is named 20Carbon, and this was a view of its moon on our landfall approach. No lights anywhere to be seen."

"And before long we arrived at the Langmuir Escarpment which kind of marked the edge of a huge hydrocarbon plain formation."

"The hydrocarbon plains formations looked more like ranges of foothills just going on and on."

"Even up close the hydrocarbon surface wasn't that much to look at until you got deeper into the hills."

"One thing we saw that seemed of great interest to the Leon were the hydrocarbon pilgrims.
This one had been on a quest for decades. And for what? Well they would know it when they found it. Strange to say the least."

"On towards late afternoon we got pretty close to an eruption vent and decided to watch what might happen."

"After a time as darkness fell quite a few strange looking beings began gathering at the vent.
They all seemed to get along with one another just fine. I have no idea what their business there might have been."

"Well you all know me well enough to know by now that I try not to judge entities by their physical presentation, so I can't say what these hydrocarbon Crawlers were focused on. But the Leon had some exchanges with them, so sentience must be presumed."

"Then we encountered this group that were called hydrocarbon shells, or simply Shells for short. I don't know if it is fair to assume that this group was any more or less evolved and advanced than the Crawlers, but they did look like they were enjoying themselves. And once again, the Leon seemed to be able to communicate with them. You can see they were of differing shapes and sizes."

"Then finally we met with a pair of the hydrocarbon Highbreds. Now these guys seemed ready to assert their superiority, oh so much better than these others. Yet and still it was obvious that they had a deferrence towards the Leon.
I am not sure what to make of all these events on 20Carbon, but of one thing I am certain. Some kind of a deal went down, the Highbreds made an exchange with the Leon. And it was one of these kinds of deals where both sides left happy, very happy."

"So our next landfall was on Brengare near High City. Lots of dark spires reaching to spotted skies. Just a dark and almost foreboding scene."

"We saw the first light from the city from a few clicks out, like a beacon in the dark. There didn't seem to be any lights outside the city itself."

"It was night when we arrived, and strangely enough the only lights seemed to be used on vehicles of some sort. The buildings themselves didn't seem to be illuminated."

"I thought this group was kind of a kawaii portrait of High City happy aliens."

"By daylight the city itself almost looked like a modern neo metroplex, until you realized that a good bit of it was fairly radioactive. Partly a series of missteps that unleashed a number of nuclear devices. Part of it flux storms."

"We got to witness a flux storm when a radiation jet that streamed off a nearby star sprayed the planet. Of course we never in any danger even so."

"They had some tech they had constructed, this thing they called the Zenphar Pyramid that was supposed to deflect or redirect the rad stream. Never misjudge what strong faith can accomplish. Yet this example failed to deliver."

"So as it has happened, there are significant areas around High City that are slums at edge of the slag flats. And that, mi chicas, was exactly where the Elon was heading!
Don't nod out on me just yet."

"Some of these areas were just your normal strange neighborhood on an alien world, know?"
SheLa chuckled at her humor.

"But some of these High City slag flats neighborhoods had the look of an intense experience with psyotropic medications. Like trippin big time, and to these guys it was just the normal everyday experience, daily life."

"The deeper we ventured into the flats the stranger things became. One place there was this group that called themselves 63 zapo that evidenced a good bit of body distortion."

"But as we moved along you can see that one group of weird looking characters was simply replaced with another. This place right here was the kind of seedy looking hood where you didn't want to be out after dark.
But none of it seemed to concern the Leon."

"The Leon definitely knew where we were going and pretty soon we got to a place called the Babylon Slum. Everywhere there were beings in various stages and kinds of altered perception. It was like the proverbial aliens on drugs scene."

"An alien girl hit on the Elon. She was purveying all manner of erotic fantasy experiences, and for the Elon she was proffering a special discount introductory rate. Weird, the Elon thanked her for her interest in a good time and he gave her a 100 Credit script. I thought she was going to swoon but we kept walking."

"Then finally this woman stepped out from a side door and said that she was Elian the Alien here to introduce us to the Doctor."

"Now this guy had the most beatific and kindly gaze, he said he had been an entomology professor, hence his abiding interest in bugs. But I knew right away, this guy was a reptilian shapeshifter. I looked at the Elon like you know, alarmed, and he gave me a look that said "Yes, I know" along with a slight smile. Then the Elon suggested we continue our business on the island."

"The Professor controlled, if not owned, a tropical island that was a pretty nice resort. It was one of a small archipelago on the major ocean."

"Besides the bugs the Prof had an interest in biomorphic engineering. This girl, Hunterr was her name, she could breathe underwater. The Prof didn't give us a clue about why he had created this one."

"One of his creations was a popstar sort, a singer of psychedelic dreams. Some of her intonations and accents synergised with the activity of a popular drug, and she was Idoru to her fans."

"We saw on girl that was obviously and totally wasted on whatever agent that seemed to provoke such an intense subjective ecstasy as we saw here."

"The last of the Professor's creations we got to view was a lovely alien girl with some distorted attributes.We didn't much into detail about the intent of these modifications. Then the Elon made some understanding or another with the Professor and it was all smiles when we left."

"So here I am back home safe and sound. The Elon said this was a test run and it had all gone well, and even better there would be more trips soon! Wow!"

At that point, Feral the cat offered up the suggestion that SheLa simply must keep them all posted about her further adventures with the Elon. And especially anything juicy or better yet, kinky...

Feral had begun the fade of his avatar and was chuckling away merrily at something unfathomably humorous.