“Now, I asked myself, ‘should I let him go ahead and bite her, or should I stop it’? Admittedly, it would be extremely interesting to watch, considering that I’ve never actually seen a Rysusi drink before.” Jeron stiffened and Alex felt an intense wave of relief wash over her. “Joshua!” she breathed raggedly, “Joshua Wetfire…” “Then again, I told myself, that would be extremely bad for business…” Jeron’s eyes flashed, burning into Alex’s. “This isn’t finished,” he whispered, brushing her lips with his own before he straightened up and turned. Alex swallowed hard, her lips tingling with the alarmingly searing heat of even that brief touch. Shuddering, she gasped softly, finding herself able to close her eyes and move again. She pushed herself up as quickly as she could. Brushing down his vest, Jeron glared at the figure of the young blond man who leaned indolently against the lamp pole, an amused grin on his handsome face. “Oh, it’s finished.” Joshua drawled with a smirk, “this is the second time in as many hours you’ve been caught, Rysusi.” He held up two fingers as though to illustrate to a child exactly how many ‘second’ meant. “And well, I really don’t care to have my rules thrown back in my face.” Jeron lifted an eyebrow. “Your rules?” Joshua grinned. “Yes. My rules. I am head of Vendalli’s security.” He watched the taller, much larger Rysusi captain walk slowly toward him while the pretty young woman he’d been menacing pulled herself up, her gaze flickering nervously from Jeron to Joshua. “And you, Group Captain, have one-” he held up one finger, “-more chance. Three strikes and you’re out, as the Teren’tei say.” His smile faded. “Which means, screw up again, my friend, and you’re gone. Understand?” –”Random Encounters” from “Diranda: Tales from the Fifth Quadrant” I just finished this portrait this week. This is Joshua Wetfire, the head of security at Vendalli's. He's a favorite of readers, so I'm glad I finally got a portrait done. This is postworked in the GIMP, which is where I did some playing with blur filters and soft light diffusion. It took a relatively dark picture and lightened it up rather nicely. Like all my character designs, Joshua's head morph is my own custom morph based on the M4H4 model, based on a character portrait a dear friend of mine did several years ago. Some of the items used in the portrait are: Hesperia hair (custom fitted to Josh's head), scifi monitor (from AREA-50), the Privateer outfit (fitted to H4M4).