The most prominent Summer that Alex could see was sitting over At the Bar, with Nathan, but there were a few others scattered around the room. Mostly with Motley's it seemed, but there were two that seemed to have claimed a table in the name of their court. Either that, or they weren't very interested in speaking to anyone else.
The first was a man with black spots speckled into his hair, small tufts of fur sprouted from the tips of pointed ears, and large, yellow cat eyes stared out at those around him. He wore a large carhart jacket over a tee-shirt, cargo pants, and combat boots, and the edge of his jacket had been brushed back to reveal a knife on his belt.
The other was a small, thin woman, with pallid skin splotched with patches of black that occasionally seemed to drift beneath the surface. She wore all black clothing, and a black leather jacket hid whatever weapons she might, or might not, have brought.
Alex walks over to the pair at the table. He introduces himself before taking a seat.
"Hello. I'm Alex. Alex Rivers. I'm with Summer here in Sacramento, and I would like to get to know the Summers in your group. Who is visiting, who is staying for the long haul, what your plans are. I would also like to talk a bit about who we are and how things work here."
"What makes you think we don't know 'who we are?'" the man with the tufted ears replied, his cat's eyes narrowing.
"Easy, Cath," replied the woman with the drifting clouds of oil beneath her skin. "You know how it goes, new blood gets tested. Words sometimes work just as well as muscles."
"You sound like fucking Cong'er," Cath spat back, to which the woman merely shrugged.
"But fine, give your speech, or whatever. I wouldn't expect anything else from a Sun's Tongue."
"I'm not here to test anyone. If there's anything I enjoy less than dick measuring contests, I haven't found it yet. But here's the problem. We'd heard rumors that a few people from San Francisco might be interested in moving here. What nobody expected was your leader showing up here tonight with a small army. You can understand how that might put people on edge... I'm just trying to get a sense of what's going on. Who in this group is planning to swear in and settle down here, and what their plans are after that. Everyone is tense right now, being around strangers... but we start going from strangers to neighbors by learning more about each other."
"Our leader?" Cath asked, turning to look at the woman.
"Got me," she replied with a shrug.
"Well, whatever, look," Cath continued, "we came to stay. Maybe not forever, but for now. Good enough, yeah? As for plans, I don't know, maybe we're still figuring that out?"
There was definitely a taunting quality to the fang toothed smile the man shared.
"But sure, I don't mind swapping stories in the meantime. You wanna go first?"
"I will," the woman interrupted.
"Unless, you do wanna go first," she added a moment later.
"You can both tell your stories, but first let me get this out of the way. I only have one story to tell, and it is a short one. 'A powerful enemy from the Other Side did terrible harm to this Freehold. He is still out there, and he plans to do even worse. The End.' The moral of this story is that we all have to work together. I know in other places competition is the norm. The Courts fight each other. People scheme and backstab and make excuses about survival of the fittest and how they're making the community stronger by weeding out the weak. That's not how we work here. We're not into the whole 'second prize is a set of steak knives; third prize is you're fired' thing. We all work together... the Courts and the people in them. We all have something to offer, even if we're not the strongest, the most popular or the prettiest. What matters is that everyone does their best and offers the best of themselves. We may not all like each other, but we can still be allies. Because the real enemy is Out There. The moment you see anyone here as an enemy is when you need to start thinking about going somewhere else. And this isn't just Summer macho talk. Ask anyone from the other Courts, and they'll tell you the same thing."
Cath and the woman shared a look as Alex spoke, but both remained silent while he talked, attentive beyond that one moment of nonverbal discussion.
Finally, after Alex's small speech had ended, the woman spoke up.
"Well, that sort of mentality is exactly the reason why we'd like to stay. My name is Elle, by the way. Cath already got introduce, in a way," she continued, gesturing at the now quiet man with the cat's eyes.
"Our story is this: we were both Dust Grunts back in 'Cisco. We got farmed out to people that wanted things done. Long story short, we got sick of it. Especially since, the way things were going, we were gonna start getting farmed out a whole hell of a lot more, but not against the enemy Out There."
Cath nodded.
"We'd rather be in a 'Hold like this. Even if there was some good money back in 'Cisco."
"I'm glad to hear that. We can certainly use good people."
Alex pauses.
"To be honest, I don't know that much about San Francisco. It sounds like there's trouble there, and we don't want that spilling over into our Freehold. You don't need to snitch or name names, and you don't need to talk about it right now in a public place like this, but we would like to get a general idea of what's going on and what to look out for. I also wouldn't mind an introduction to the other Summers who plan to stay. Our Court here has had some setbacks, and we have a lot to talk about."
"Look, if you're wanting some kind of political treatise, or an intelligence report, or whatever, you're talking to people in the wrong court," Cath replied, the contemplative silence from just moments before entirely absent.
"Basic situation is this: if anyone from San Fran comes here, and isn't willing to make a pledge, then they're gonna be fucking trouble. Full stop."
"Speaking of pledges, though," Elle interrupted, "we should go make our own before the night ends. We'll talk again soon," she promised, nodding to Alex once before rising. Cath rose, too, and after making their farewells, went to formalize their pledges.
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