's and my mercenaries, Rel and Loren. Having just slaughtered a hotel full of people. Mel colored, I drew, and I yet again am astonished by the sheer awesomeness to result.

------------

The doorman blinked. "And you are...?"

The man of the couple before him sneered. He was one of those fish-people, the doorman knew it right off from the gills and the webbing on his ungloved hands. The doorman hated those fish-people, but these two were certainly dressed for the party. The fish-man, from the looks of it, had definitely been part of such occasions before... there were few things that put a pallor on someone's face and a hollow in one's eyes as quickly as a slave-trading soiree.

"I am Marcel Demerei-- of the southern Demerais-- and this is my wife and business partner, Lucille." His accent was French, very much so.

Lucille shot him an adoring look, before sizing up the doorman. Now she was a real looker... the straps of her evening gown fell from her shoulders like suggestions of what an evening with her might hold. Oh-so-blue eyes gazed suggestively up as one pristine, white-gloved hand touched the edge of her shawl... A fine and lovely specimen of human female. Something was very wrong with the situation, the doorman realized after a moment.

"I thought the Demereis were very... isolationist," said the doorman. "Yet your wife's a human?"

"I said the southern Demereis, you idiot," snapped Marcel. "Those northern fools don't realize what a mistake they are making, sitting around inbreeding. We from the south, we prefer women who are not our first cousins." That earned a titter of laughter from Lucille, which in turn earned an adoring look from Marcel. "They do not realize that those who cling to history are doomed to be eaten by the future."

The word "doomed" was the password. The doorman opened the door, pausing only to hiss to Marcel: "So you're the ones who've kept us waiting! Get in there so the party can begin."

After they were in, he turned away from the door, only to face a long steel skewer that punctured him through the throat before its owner bolted shut the door.

"Lucille?" muttered Lucille, giving Marcel an incredulous look.

"Oh, like Marcel is any better," he said with a grin in her direction.

Before too much time had passed, they were seated at the table, listening to the man responsible for this party giving a speech. Marcel watched with the fixation of one who lacks alternate activity, and Lucille made doe eyes at various attractive men around the table.

When food was served, there was a brief moment of unsettlement-- Marcel gave Lucille a look that indicated more than a little panic under its sheen of adoration. Perhaps if one looked carefully after that, one would notice that his eyes kept flicking to her plate, her cutlery, and which fork she was using to eat what.

However, one might also have noted that during the dancing he was not leading so much as steering.

They gazed earnestly into each other's eyes much of the time, continually whispering sweet nothings as their waltz took them towards the center of the room. The planner of the party had done quite a lot of searching to find an orchestra composed entirely of those who had no problems with slavery that could still play well... The music undulated across the room like a massive curtain of sound thrown into the wind. One delicately heeled silver woman's shoe touched gracefully the very center of the floor, and suddenly the music stopped as the conductor dropped dead on the floor with a knife sticking out of his spine.

"And now we begin," said Marcel, and the next hour and a half was a blur of red activity.

Interesting snippets included the chandelier suddenly falling under the weight of a maniacally cackling woman, crashing down onto the ground to smash the hapless fools sitting under it.... The same woman bludgeoning someone to death with a shoe. A pale man launching forks into people's heads with enough strength to strike them dead; the same man ducking elegantly just as an enthusiastically-thrown body flew over his head. The woman throttling someone to death with the man's suit jacket.

And then, suddenly, after the death throes of the final person, there was silence. The man and the woman exchanged a look, and suddenly began scrounging for anything of value, piling jewelry and decorations into two massive brown sacks each. They disassembled the chandelier, piling gold and crystal into the bags. Wordlessly, they dragged over a tacky, gilded hotel sofa, plunged their weapons into it, and simultaneously collapsed.

And then, as any two normal healthy beings would do, they started laughing too hard to breathe.

"I think they--" Loren had to take a break for another fit of laughter. "I think they will need a new s-sofa, ma petite," and they both lost it again.

"And probably-- wallpaper," Rel managed.

Their laughter, hysterical in its relief, carried far through the halls of the suddenly-empty hotel banquet hall.