👥 Collaboration Collateral 👥

Chapter 2

The shapeshifting gijinka abhored being treated like an animal. She had enough hunters, poachers and slave traders in her life to allow a conceited duchess tease her over a collar.

I'm not a house pet, I'm free to go wherever I want, whenever I want. And I'm not gonna let anyone change that. Mewmi bared her sharp fangs teeth and flicked her tail angrily.

The mana hunter had found the gymnaseum with traditional training equipment; treadmills, weights, dumb bells, barbells, kettlebells, squat stands, parallettes, resistance bands, stability balls, battle ropes.

The usual, though anexed to the gym there was a storeroom full of various weapons; swords, rapiers, shields, lances, battleaxes, maces, scythes, bows and arrows, you name it. The weapons were provided by the staff for the competitors to use at their disposal exclusively for fighting in the arena. Felix perused the area and found the arsenal.

If the word arse wasn't slur for anus, he would definitely be an arse man when it came to grabbing the arsenal.

“Not bad, but I've seen better guns at my bunker.” Felix commented as he walked past the cat-o-nine-tails and found a schematic of the stadium laminated on the wall. Apparently, there was a field that was used as a free space to practice archery. Since there were no archers, he could use the location for target practice.

Felix smirked then headed on his way there.

Stella stood in line to order Micah's cocoa capuccino with macademia nuts. She had no problem getting her coworker a cup of coffee, the only thing that annoyed her was the sarcasm. She understood that Micah was a fun sized sassmeister by nature, but she would get at each others nerves. They coinhabited in a spaceship for 4 human years. Which was 15 Amoebian years for Micah, and nearly 2¼ years for Stella. It was cabin fever mixed with intergalactic space travel on steroids. Her ruby eyes snagged on the menu board of the coffee stand.

“Your order.”

“One cocoa capuccino with macademia nuts, please.” Stella requested in her southern accent.

“That'll be 3 dollars.”

Stella took out her credit card.

“We only accept cash ma'am.” The cashier said.

“I only have credits.”

“Physical cash only.”

Stella narrowed her eyes at the employee before taking out her wallet from the inside of her jacket and opened it to reveal slate dollar bills ranging from 12000, 10000, 5000, 1000, 500, 100 with the Đ symbol as she picked three Đ1000 and one Đ500 and passed it to the cashier.

The Raptor Squad had walked down the hall as Rexy, Indy and Verdauga had gone to the foodstands while Shadow perched on a bench and had noticed Micah dressed in scrubs and a face mask, and saw medical supplies such as swabs, syringes, vials, and samples. The banner said FREE Vaccinations. Spino and Bary stood with Shadow, the trio untrusting.