An offer you can't refuse

For the next half hour or so, I was in complete panic mode. Frantically, I asked around. The security, the lobby. None of them had anything helpful to say. They promised to look into the matter. But that was all.

Eventually, we returned back to my room. Back to the only clue I had.

My throat dried up, as I read the two small lines over and over again. The initial adrenaline rush dissipated, replaced with the hard reality of my situation.

For a short, crazy moment, I almost wanted to burst out laughing. I just dealt with Beatrice and her Devil. Barely escaped eternal damnation. Things where just starting to look up. And now this? Come on, this is getting ridiculous. There is a limit to how much a man can take.

“What the bloody hell!”, Fisti roared, her usual temperament fully returned as she punched the wall. “Who’s yer next opponent? I’m gonna smash their rotten face in!”

“Are you stupid?” Cassandra let out a loud sigh, as if that question was self evident.

But before Cassandra could elaborate further, the cackling started.

"My, if it isn't the consequences of your actions", Beatrice sneered . “If only you had surrendered to me like a good boy! Now your precious catgirl got catnaped instead! Sucks to suck, I guess!”

I blanked.

With blind fury I grabbed the ex-witch and pushed her against the wall. I had a Dirk at her throat before I even realized. "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! IF IT WASN'T FOR YOU...!"

“Kill me then”, the witch calmly remarked. “You should have done so already.”

I trembled with rage and anger. Before I could do something I would regret I shoved the bitch towards Cassandra. "Spank her some more."

“With pleasure, daddy.”

"L-look just forget about the barny witch, ok? We gotta save Aiju!", Fisti glared out the window. "She got to be in town, right? Let's find these crooks and bash their filthy eads in!"

I nodded. Wasting time her will accomplish nothing. I readied my dirks. “Let’s go.”

“And do what?”, Cassandra casually asked between slaps. “Run around like headless tebasakis? You two need to calm the fuck down.”

“Are ya suggesting we just sit around?!”, Fisti angrily paced up and down. “We gotta do something!”

Cassandra was not impressed. “I suggest we first analyze our situation. Without screaming preferably. Starting with against who Daddy is supposed to be surrendering in the first place.”

I didn’t like to admit it but Cassandra had the right of it. Taking a very deep breath, I turned on magic vision. A spunky girl with a large stick was fighting against a giant robot. She was doing a pretty good job at it, but that was not the fight I was interested in. I quickly switched over to the result screen.

Third Round Bracket A Fight 2 Sexy-Knight Sanakia vs. Treasure Hunter Feena

Perhaps the most uneven match up in Round 3! The accomplished Treasure Hunter Feena was the favorite by far. In a jack of all trade manner, Feena was a resoundingly well rounded fighter. Meanwhile Sanakia's strongest quality seemed to be her enthusiasm. And yet, in these matches you just never know how things go. In the opening frenzy Feena made the catastrophic blunder of tangling herself up in her own whip! This allowed the rookie squire to kill the treasure hunters mere minutes into the battle! Whoever bet on this plucky underdogs victory no doubt made a fortune. Lucky you!

“How unfortunate for Feena”, Cassandra chuckled in derision. “A low class Galmon making it into the finals is pretty much unheard of. If you bet on her, you could make your money back a hundredfold.”

“That girl knight is a Galmon?”, I asked, somewhat dumbly.

"You don't even know that?", Beatrice gave me a mocking smile. "That one is called a Sexy-Knight. Doesn't have her usual costume on though. Perhaps not quite chaste enough for Sir Goldfish knight. Oh, pardon me. Do you know what chaste means? Perhaps, I shouldn't expect to much from the unwashed..."

SPANK!

"Eeeeeeeeeek!"

“Hold on!”, Fisti gasped and snatched up the **** letter again. “That squiggly thing at the bottom! That’s an S! And it’s golden! Like the golden knight, Silvester Spartano d’artagan!”

“You're right!”, I exclaimed. Was Sanakia in on it too? Or just a pawn? Regardless, if that bastard had hurt Aiju...

“Why, that holier then thou two bit villain!” Fist crumbled up the letter. “Let’s go kick his holy arse!”

Beatrice cackled at the suggestion. “My, what a troubling trio of troglodytes you are. Jumping at conclusions like a mob of headless tebasakis. Tell me, what sort of lackwitted imbecile signs a **** letter with his own initials?”

Cassandra rewarded Beatrice’s reasoning with a particularly hard slap. “Don’t rope me in with these two. Brat has the right of it though, this ain’t goldenboy pulling the strings here.”

Fisti then suggested Sanakia as the culprit, but Cassandra shot that down too. “Not likely, Sexy-Knights are obsessed with justice. Mere thought of being part of such a scheme would cause her cute head to explode.”

"So, in the end, we don't have any leads", I said, now that panic, anger and excitement had passed, I only felt empty. “I...might have to comply with their demands.”

“And give in to such villains?”, Fisti was horrified. “Mari, ya can’t!”

Cassandra on the other hand merely shrugged. “Why not? You could probably beat the Sexy-Knight, but beyond her come the real monsters. Seems like a pretty good place to call it quits before your luck runs out.”

“But Mari would have to surrender!”

“Yeah, against one of goldenboy's pets. They are famous for freeing their slaves.”

Unfortunately, that got Beatrice to interfere again. “My, for a slaver you sure are naive. These church bastards are a lot more vicious then you think. Besides...”

“More spankings?”, interrupted Cassandra.

Any more then this and her butt might turn into butter. I allowed the bratty witch to speak.

“What makes you think the blackmailer uphold their end of the bargain?”, the witch surmised. “Your pet is a loose end. Once the culprit got what they want, the cat will end up in the Rubine river.”

My stomach sank. “If Aiju gets hurt, I will not rest before...”

“Yeah, yeah, very manly of you, but that doesn't bring your precious cat back now, does it?”, the ex-witch smiled smugly “Luckily for you, I, the great witch of miracles Beatrice have a brilliant plan.”

In a rare display, both Cassandra and Fisti groaned in unison. I certainly shared their sentiment. But I was grasping at straws here. “Fine. What do you suggest?”, I asked with a sigh.

Beatrice cackled. “Come forth, my familiar! Grace thee soil with thy unholy presence. Femto!”

You're kidding me!

For a short, agonizing eternity everyone hold their breath. And then, suddenly...

Nothing happened.

“The fuck you think you’re doing, brat!”, Cassandra roared and resumed her spankings, this time extra hard.

Beatrice screamed in pain but could only uselessly wiggle her butt at the renewed ****. “Ey! Stop it! Femto! I know you can hear me, you stupid, useless deviiiiiil!”

…

..

.

“I only wanted to offer Femto my soul”, explained a grumbling Beatrice who rubbed her very sore rear. “You know, to save the kitty cat.”

“That is not going to happen”, I stated firmly. “If anybody has to offer up their soul it will be me.”

“Will ya stop it with this self-sacrifice shite already?”, Fisti objected loudly. “Ya think Aiju would want that?”

She would absolutely hate it. But if it meant saving Aiju…What kind of Master would I be if I abandoned her? But even that apparently wasn’t enticing enough for Femto to show up.

"Oh, fucking hell...", Cassandra let out a sigh, grabbed herself a drink and pretty much downed it. "Fine. Before we rely on fucking devils again, I have a plan."

Suffice to say, everyone else in the room was skeptical at that admission.

"Yer having a plan? All ya did was bitch and moan so far, slaver", Fisti growled.

"Well, shit", Cassandra quickly downed her second glass. Whatever she is about to say clearly required a decent amount of mental preparation.

"How about this", the slaver finally said. "What if I could guarantee the Nekotamata's safety? Providing, of course, you throw that match."

"THAT is your plan?", Beatrice for once was saying what we all were thinking. "You gullible moron! These are gangster we are talking about! How could you possible guarantee that!"

“Because”, the huntress gave us a sly smirk. “I know exactly who’s behind this.”