Redux Vol1 Ch2: Fiance?!?

Her father sat down heavily on the futon, which let out a tortured groan of sorts under his weight, which had been practically doubled due to the full-body suit of armor he was wearing. It can't be, his little girl? Engaged? And to a man he had never met?

Nope, just nope. This man had to disappear, and quickly, before the full process of bonding was finished and he would be unable to get rid of him at all. "I know what you are thinking father, but it is too late; the rite is complete." She turned, and let the sheet that she had up to this point been holding against her stomach to fall, revealing the complex pattern that now covered her abdomen. It was a flowing sort of thing, composed of black geometric designs that took up most of her stomach, covering it in intricate patterns.

At the sight of the bond mark he nearly fainted, the only thing that kept him awake was the burning rage knowing that some man he had never met was now permanently bonded with his daughter, with his little girl, he ground his teeth together and the hand on the edge of the bed gripping the futon's frame flexed, causing the metal to once again shriek in protest.

As a species the Trilska were interesting; they looked like fairly normal humanoids, like many other races that inhabited this section of the universe. The few physical exceptions to this were the eyes, and their tail which was nearly four inches thick at the base of their spine and three feet long, the amount of control they had over them practically made them a third arm, it was covered in the same skin as the rest of their body. The strangest part about them, however, was not their physical differences from humanity, but rather it was their way of connecting with other races, they can conceive children with any race that was sentient enough, but they can only bond and mate with a single partner that had to be from the opposite sex, effectively tying their lives to them through a connection. It was a deep and spiritual moment that required physical connection with no barriers, or skin on skin interaction in other words. Once the bond was formed they combined souls, effectively weaving the two of them together, causing their life forces to be one. Any child conceived between a Trilska and another race inevitably was a Trilska, though the other parent's best attributes were carried over fo the offspring.

A wordless rage burned in him, but before he could voice his obvious objections Hisra spoke: "it was so cool, how he jumped out of nowhere, and with his bare hands fought off three armed assailants that were attacking me!" If Jack was there he would have pointed out several things that were wrong with the version of the story she was telling her father, Such as how the thug's "attacks" were more verbal harassments and veiled threats than physical actions, and there was the fact that they weren't actually armed, a fact that Hisra chose to misremember for her father. But as he wasn't there no one was there to tell the actual facts to this poor distraught man, and in his desperate attempt to rationalize his daughter's actions he ate it all up like candy.

Maybe this man wasn't so bad, he had saved his daughter after all, and from three armed assailants nonetheless. Maybe, just maybe, but he would have to test this Jack, see if he lived up to the stories his daughter was telling him.

If Jack knew all the future trouble Hisra would cause him with these tales, he'd probably rip a hole in the space-time continuum with his bare hands just to come back and smack her over the head. "I see," Hethuk leaned back, his hand supporting him on the futon. "This Jack of yours, he is a native of this planet?" he asked, and he watched as his daughter's face lit up with excitement at the prospect of telling him about her fiance.

***

It had been a long meeting, much longer than the two hours that had been scheduled. Normally Jack wouldn't have had to come in today, seeing as this was normally his day off. But mandatory meetings apparently superseded days off. He sighed again and ran a hand over his face; it had been over boring stuff that they all knew already, things they had heard a million times over, things they heard so often they could probably tell it better than the manager. The chewing out had been handed down from the corporate level, getting successively more vicious each time it was delivered to a subordinate, by the time it had gotten to them it had snowballed to a real shitstorm.

With another sigh, he mounted the stairs to his apartment and started the long eight-story climb. The elevator, which had been installed in 1932, had been broken for just about as long, or at least it had seemed that way. It was one of the reasons his apartment was so cheap despite how nice it actually was, it turns out no one wants to walk up eight flights of stairs. It took a few minutes, but soon he was standing in front of his door, and like normal he pulled his keys out of his pocket to open it. He stopped right before inserting it into the lock, the tip of the key hovering just a mere centimeter away from the door handle.

Something was wrong, he could tell, it just felt like something.

Danger.

He had felt this feeling before, it was the feeling of walking into a trap. It didn't happen often, and he was never able to explain it later, but something was telling him that there was danger up ahead. Back when his father was teaching him how to fight he would often ambush Jack when he least expected it. Of course it couldn't be his father, he was nowhere near the city, him and his mother were out in their country home half a state away, getting ready to go to Vancouver. Which meant there was someone in his apartment that meant him actual harm, Jack could feel it. He took a deep breath, before inserting the key into the lock and turning the handle of the door without opening it at all. He held there for a second before springing into action. He slammed the door open with a hard shove of his shoulder and dove over the threshold angling his body so that he went towards the breakfast nook just to his right with a dive roll that would make Max Payne proud.

As it turned out, that happened to be the proper choice, as three strange black knives with glowing edges embedded themselves in the wall of the adjacent apartment. He glanced at them as they stuck there, a line of smoke rising up from where each one had hit. Thinking quickly, he reached up and opened the drawer next to his head and pulled out a kitchen knife. It was a standard knife, black resin handle riveted onto a seven-inch blade, not particularly sharp or durable, but a whole hell of a lot better than nothing at all. He pulled off the smock he was wearing and rolled out sideways from behind the counter, coming to rest in a crouch in an attempt to present as little of a target as possible. With a shout he launched himself in the direction the knives had come from, two more came his way and was able to lean to the side, dodging the first one, though he was grazed by the second. The glowing blue edge felt like ice as it sliced the upper section of his left bicep, and he almost instantly felt the limb going numb. He ignored it and charged his assailant.

Two quick steps and he was within grappling range of the knife thrower, who used a blade in his hand to stab down. Fighting the numbing sensation in his arm Jack raised the smock in his hand, bringing it up and catching the blade in the fabric. It stabbed right through, and he twisted it, locking the blade in place and not allowing the man to remove his knife. He then lashed out a kick towards the man's left thigh, only to connect with nothing. He lunged forward to try another hit, this time also stabbing with his free hand, but before he could finish the move a voice called out "Enough," he had heard before. Glancing out of the corner of his eyes he saw her, the blue-haired girl from the morning.

"Get back!" he shouted before positioning himself in between her and the assailant, using the other man's body as a counterweight to rotate so that he was standing in front of her. Seeing this, the man lowered his stance and dropped his blade much to Jack's surprise. He stepped back towards the girl a few more steps dropping into a defensive stance but was caught off guard once again when the man spoke.

"I have seen all I need to see." He said he was standing in a relaxed sort of posture now like he had not just been in a knife fight, Jack started to open his mouth, but before he could get any words out Hisra grabbed him by his hand and started to pull him back towards his bedroom. He really didn't want to leave, the adrenalin pumping through his veins screaming at him to fight, to attack. But somehow she pulled him back, away from the man.

"Daddy, please give us some time, I think Jack and I have some things to talk about," 'DADDY?!' the crazy man who had tried to kill him in his own apartment was her father? He glanced between her and the man, who looked at Jack and simply shrugged.

"As I have said, I have seen all I need, please take your time." Just what craziness did he walk into here?

Shutting the door behind them, she sighed in relief. "I'm sorry about that; my father was just testing you. I know it seems a little excessive, but you know overprotective father and all, also he wanted to make sure you were a good enough man to be my bondmate. I am really sorry for all of that!" she spoke about a mile a minute, the words tumbling out of her mouth at a speed that would have made an auctioneer envious.

"Wait, what? Mate?" In all that jabber, one word caught his attention, mate.

"Well, yes, after all you did propose to me last night." She said, looking up at him, her eyes opened wide.

"I did?"

"Well yes, silly, when you wrapped those clothes around me, what else could that be if not a proposal?"

"Huh?" his brain stopped working for a second, when it booted back up he couldn't help himself he shouted "WHAT? WHO WOULD PROPOSE LIKE THAT?"

"Is everything alright in there?" came a voice from the other side of the door, Jack hadn't even heard the man get up and cross the room.

"Yes daddy, go away I am talking with Jack!" she yelled hurling herself against the door as her father attempted to open it, he yelped in pain as it shut on the tip of his finger as she threw her weight against it.

"Fine, fine! No need to be so violent! I'll be in the ship if you need me." Somehow the sounds of the footsteps that sounded as he walked away from the door sounded hurt and dejected as he walked away, no doubt heading for his ship.

Wait, ship? What Ship?

"Ship?" Jack asked, his mouth simply repeating the word from the question he had been thinking.

"Well yes, how else would we get to earth?"

"Get to earth?"

"I'm a Trilska, my people come from the planet Anyari," She said with a smile, he opened his mouth to tell her how ridiculous that was but as he was about to she turned around and lifted up her shirt, reaching to where a silver ring of sorts was pressed against the small of her back. She pressed a button on it and pulled it away, sighing in relief as what could only be described as a tail thicker than his arm and almost twice as long materialized attached to her lower back. "You have no idea how uncomfortable it is to store your tail in a dimensional ring; it pinches something awful." She turned back towards him with a bright smile and reached up to brush some hair behind her eyes, revealing a metal ring in her ear that had some lights on it of its own. Another button press and what had originally looked like normal blue human eyes revealed themselves to be a bit larger than the human norm and while they were a normal shade of blue the puples were dimond shaped and quite large as well. "The holo field for the eyes is not to bad, though using it too long gives me headaches," she turned to him and gave him a bright smile.

"What the fuck?!?" Jack spat out not believing his eyes...