Amelia´s Secret
"Thank you, Captain. So…I had gone to Purstreet 6, found the building I was seeking, and knocked upon the door. A male feline answered, and I told him how I was holding a wanted pirate in a shelter not far away.
"The feline seemed glad to help, since he knew me from when his cousin---you, Amelia---had been on a trip to her home planet, quite some time ago (everybody looked on Amelia). He was quick to tell me that he hated pirates as much as his cousin did. He went with me to the shelter where we were holding Scroop. I told him what he had done to me, and how his cousin must of been feeling right now.
"Well, he went rather mad after that, and before I or my friend could stop hime, he'd given the rogue Scroop three broken legs and had blackened one eye. When he came to his senses, he quickly summoned the authorities on Felinisia, and told them everything. Suffice to say, Scroop was hanged three years ago, on this very day."
"Thanks be," Silver said. Everybody looked on him curiously. "As Mr. Arrow so eloquently put it, Scropp was a royal pain in the butt. On me honor, he was!"
Amelia nodded in satisfaction, and said to Arrow, "So you met Freddy, I presume. How was he?"
"The same old Freddy, you know. He's been coloring his hair, and now has tattoos everywhere."
"Is that so? Remarkable," Amelia said. "Well, I shall have to visit him some time. I haven't seen that old spacedog since I was twenty." Then she began to scratch her arm rather vigorously.
"Amelia, stop! You know that if keep scratching like that, you'll only make the itching that much worse," Sarah said to Amelia in a kind, concerned voice.
"I'm afraid I don't care, Mrs. Hawkins," she said and continued scratching. Jim thought this hilarious, and began to laugh, which made Amelia none too happy.
"You may laugh now, Mr. Hawkins, but I'll have you know that fleas do jump from body to body. Keep laughing like that and I'll make certain that you're the next infested," she said to him, still scratching.
Morph turned into a little Amelia scratching and said, "Next infested. Next infested." He then transformed into a tiny Jim scratching furiously. Jim frowned, and stopped laughing.
Amelia gave him rather smug look, and a wan smile.
"So, how do you know this Freddy, Amelia?" Sarah looked to Amelia.
"Oh, we're related. He's the son of my mother's sister. We're very close, even if he is…well, a little odd."
"Odd? What do you mean?" Jim looked over at Amelia, curious.
"Well, unlike most felinids, he has colored every single hair on his body brown, with a series of stripe-like tattoos to give him the look of a tiger. In addition, he…er, had an operation of sorts to affix a tiger tail on his bum. And, last but not least, he recently has taken to always going about the streets without any clothes on his upper body," Amelia said. "He's always been the odd one, our Freddy. Though…he's never a dull fellow. Why, I remember the one time he encouraged me go to a tattoo shop myself…"
"No way! You've got a tattoo?" Jim, the Doppler kids, Sarah and Silver all said.
"Well, yes…though, it's only a little one…of my ship, you know," she said.
"Just a teeny tiny one," Delbert admitted, then blushed. "It just covers her back."
Amelia's blonde daughter looked at her mother and said, "You got a tattoo of a ship, one that covers your whole back, and yet you keep telling me that I can't have even a little heart tattooed on my upper arm?"
"Decidedly unfair, I know…but yes, all the same, dear," Amelia said.
"I still don't believe that you have a tattoo, Captain," Jim said with a grin. "I think I'm going to want to see some proof."
Amelia sighed, rolling her eyes. She then stood up and carefully lifted her T–shirt up her back up so that they could see her tattoo. It was an exact copy of her Legacy, all the way down to a few little figures standing on her decks.
"I gave the tattoo fellow a little picture. He did a rather good job, I think," she said and then hid her tattoo again, and sat back down.
"Wow, Mom! How old were you when you got that tattoo?" her teenage boy asked.
"Hmm. I believe I had turned sixteen by then," she said.
"But, why did you get it, Momma?" the red-headed girl asked.
"I told you. My cousin insisted I get a tattoo, and he dragged me to the best tattoo shop on Felinesia. Freddy gave me the idea, and I gave the tattoo artist that picture I told you of…and then there was no turning back," Amelia said. Then another flea got her attention, and she began to scratch her tummy without thinking.
"It's really that bad, isn't it, dear?" Delbert asked his wife. She nodded miserably.
"Back to the point," Silver said. "So what happened after Scroop was hanged, Mr. Arrow?"