Katulinith had long ago decided that straining his wings and his dignity in a lengthy competition with other bravado-filled males for the honor of siring a clutch on a single female was below him. Tradition was not on his side in these cases; being lowered to merely 'one of the pack' was unacceptable to him, and of course, everyone knew only females rose. So Katulinith, the black-amber king of his patch of Star City's underworld, conducted his seductions and perversions in private.

Then that had changed. At the first rumors of male-riser flights trickling in through the Nexus grapevines, Katulinith was intruiged. He'd have to investigate these rumors, he'd decided. But then a giant ship, called most fittingly the Twisted Fate, had come along, and now here he was.

Katulinith sat with his long-furred tail around his feet, blood rushing through his veins, tingling energy suffusing his form and making every part of him ready for the flight ahead. Two flights had taken place before his and he could smell them in the air; the rut, the rage, the triumph -- the leftovers of any good mating chase, literal or not. It seemed to be an evening, of sorts, in this flight bay, with long shadows and little light, and he had carefully chosen one of those rare patches of illumination to sit himself in as his assortment of chasers gathered. He would not look at them as they arranged themselves on the turf behind him; no, to look at them would be to aknowledge them, would be to encourage them.

Finally, he could scent five gathered, which constituted all of them. He rose, then, padding casually across springy ground, and smiled to himself as he heard the sounds of wings being readied behind him. He paused...tensing...but there was one more thing to do. He reached out and touched a familiar mind, snaking into her psyche inexorably, pleased at her nonresistance. You will watch this, he told LaTeya, and took five running steps and launched himself into the flight bay's skies.

There was a rush behind him and Katulinith counted the takeoffs he heard. One, two, three, four...There was no fifth. As he gained speed and altitude, he looked below him. One of his chasers met his eyes, earthbound and pounding along through the shadows at high speeds, her catlike head down and her two yellow tails flowing behind her like streamers. He laughed and dismissed her.

As Katulinith flew, he opened his mind to the flurry of thoughts behind him. As the five draconic shapes shot through the artificial skies, moving higher and faster, he took in what he could of each of them, until he had what he wanted. Then the real chase began.

Jesmin Kiona was taking the lead, her enthusiasm firing her onwards and her long body allowing her to move through the air with little resistance. This was her chance! He looked even better than she remembered, moving through long streamers of light that caught his amber fur and made it shine like fire. Whether or not he was The One, Jesmin wanted to win this flight! And it was starting to look like she might!

The closest chaser after her was Licata the Whorling. Throwing off her own light that warred with Veinvolt's, she coiled through the air almost beside Jesmin, her eyes on the prize. Coming up alongside her was Veinvolt, the other glowing creature of this flight, imperturbable and unreadable. She looked a million miles away, but the fact that she was gaining on the two chasers in front of her spoke to how untrue that was.

The pale yellow Athanasian, Touch The Sun, was getting frustrated. Her wings scooped air as fast as she could get them to, but her form, bulkier than any of the other chasers, was just not aerodynamic enough. She huffed to herself and strained to gain back the ground she was losing, but by the time she was within touching distance of Licata, she was feeling the burn.

A nasty thought came to her, though nothing of it showed on her muzzle. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

She reached out and grabbed Licata's tail, pulling herself forward.

The whorling screeched loudly and everyone but Veinvolt missed a beat. Licata turned on her attacker and surprised Touch the Sun by fighting back. She knew she would fall behind now, but at least she could take the other one with her! As a fight broke out between the two, they started to fall back down towards the artificial earth, a ball of angry female.

That left two chasers fighting for a place at Katulinith's tail. Jesmin glanced at Veinvolt, who was ignoring her, and strained forward. She was so close!

Katulinith, passive but for the beating of his wings, smiled to himself and teleported.

The two females banked, as their quarry blinked out of sight. "What!" Jesmin exclaimed, upset, and she and Veinvolt looked at each other. Veinvolt was the first to move, splitting away from the part-daemon female and starting a search for Katulinith. Jesmin soon did the same, scanning the skies hurriedly.

Katulinith watched this all from far, far behind and below. He'd taken note of this particular bit of ground as he'd flown past and had teleported back to it, coming in for a landing as he considered what to do next and enjoyed the upset confusion of his two remaining chasers. His eyes tracked the Nightmourner, a species he'd heard of in his dealings with the less savoury of Star City's inhabitants, but quickly jumped back to Jesmin. He smiled and watched her.

An unexpectedly strong upsurging of lust sent Katulinith to his feet, and he snapped his wings open and disappeared once more.

At the same time, a brown form lunged out of the bushes nearby, but the pounce was aborted when Twenty-Six realized her quarry had disappeared. She hissed, tentacles writhing. Damn! A second earlier and she would have had him!

Katulinith had teleported himself back into the higher sky, and he swooped, gaining his wings and stabilizing himself before looking about. Good; he was exactly where he wanted to be. As Jesmin looked up, Katulinith swooped down, until he was flying inches away from the serpentine female.

Leaning down, he ran his tongue up the back of her neck, not an easy feat mid-flight. Jesmin's breath caught in her throat and a shiver worked its way down her long spine. Was this it? He was leaning his muzzle in right next to her head, and she dared not do anything but keep the flightpath she'd been on; then he was hissing in her ear.

"You would be a fun one to play with," he purred, "you're so full of want, little one. Have you ever been had before? Mmmm...." He was reaching down, and Jesmin felt her heart beating much too hard in her chest. "Come and find me, I'll be waiting for you." Then he laughed and reached out to give her a shove right in the middle of her back, not enough to hurt, just enough to send her already-unbalanced self tumbling. While she was regrouping, he disappeared again.

Jesmin didn't quite know what to think of that, but she felt shaky, and knew a dismissal when she heard one. She carefully changed her trajectory to regain the ground.

Katulinith circled, and spotted his next quarry, diving down towards her distinctive yellow-green light predatorily. Nightmourners, he had heard, were the source of a powerful narcotic, and Katulinith, though exceedingly careful not to cultivate a dependence on any substance, was not a stranger to mixing sex and drugs. It helped that she was an attractive specimen of dragonhood. He slid up behind her and caught her attention by touching that tail-globe of hers.

The dragoness banked and tried to execute a quick turn, but Katulinith followed her, pulling a long, thin strand from her orb and bringing it to his muzzle. He groaned, feeling the magic move through him, feeling the first hint of strangeness moving behind his eyes to produce little bursts of joy, to bring colors to the shadows around him. He met Veinvolt's eyes and found blankness, silence, as they circled in the low light, met it and countered with the loudness of his own physical appetites. And then with a bubble of euphoria growing and pressing out against his ribcage, he used the last of his rapidly-fading lucidity to lunge toward her through the air with a powerful wingbeat and wrap tight around her. He would later sample more of that magical drug of hers, but for now, as they fell towards the earth, there were other needs to sate.

Twenty-Six watched them fall, nursing her annoyance. The other spurned chasers had moved out of the area, but the tentacled female felt cheated. She'd had a plan and he'd escaped her, but that wasn't good enough. She could find a way around this new obstacle.

She moved to another patch of bushes near where the ball of twining lims, tails and necks would land, watching the proceedings with narrowed eyes, until Katulinith and Veinvolt flopped apart, and the latter moved to rest in the shadowed lee of a nearby boulder. She watched and smiled as Katulinith boosted himself to a greater delirious high with strands from the Nightmourner's tail, feeling his emotional state move further and further from the norm. Good boy, she thought, and when he was laying there in a haze of hallucinatory sensations and Veinvolt stood to leave the flight-grounds, that was when Twenty-Six made her move.

She stepped out of the bushes, tentacles held at her sides loosely, and looked down at Katulinith. This would be as easy as manipulating any herd-stupid crowd. She took the leftover desire from the mating before and the joy he was feeling from the drug and worked with them, feeling him ignite into lust once more. Stepping forward, she leaned down to look him in the eyes, suppressing the smug grin she was feeling.

That was really all she needed to do. Katulinith laughed through his haze and reached for her with both forepaws. She moved to oblige, letting her own desire rise now that she had cornered her prize, wrapping tentacles and tails around him tightly. Flight customs be damned; Twenty-Six always got what she wanted.