I got quite a few interesting things out of my detour to a bar, but a place where I could get mail set wasn’t one of them. A place to get a map and a few places where I could find stuff I wanted was.

I found my way down to a curio shop and found what I was looking for a dinky old faded map, which sold for far more than I wanted by a calico cat woman who was more cat than a woman. As it turned out, the red light district that gave the bar its name, the outskirts of the red light district, was de facto under the control of the same family that the two at the bar worked for.

Why? Because this is where they lived, and like any other cat, even if you lived with them, you lived under them.

I’d give them something; they were the least intrusive gang I had ever had the fortune to meet. I usually just wanted to get rid of them, but they were more of a minorly predatory town hall than a gang. Hell, they even muscled out the guards, who avoided the place like the plague.

The curio shop had weird things in it, a few antique maps, a few dodads of unknown providence, a few broken mugs that looked like they were glued back together with gold, of all things, and in two cases, artifacts.

Leaning down while the woman peered at me like a big human cat from behind the counter, I gave them a look and murmured to check on them, but they were mundane. Lilly murmured what they did into my ear.

“Hey, how much is this case?” I asked her.

She looked at me, her head cocking in a weird way that made her look like she was staring at some manner of bird, and I shrugged and picked it up along with the map I was eyeballing and walked up to the checkout.

I brought them out, unfolding the map on the counter and putting down the case. It had a familiar symbol on it, and I was hoping that it was similar.

Lilly explaining it made so little sense that I couldn’t tell for sure, but with the way the shop lady’s ears twitched I didn’t think I could get away with whispering to Lilly to confirm.

“Hello, I would like to buy these. Could I check out?” I asked her, meeting her eyes and not blinking.

She stared for a moment before she blinked and seemed to come back to herself, purring out a value that was so overpriced that I couldn’t reasonably expect to buy it on my limited budget. I had been told to expect that, however.

“The map and the case, n’yes, map and funny case, are… 8000 credits together,” she told me smugly, in the way cats were smug.

I sighed and folded up the map, “very unfortunate, the bouncer up at the red skirt told me you had fair prices,” I told her, punctuating it by pushing the map and the case up toward her.

I held myself as cool and collected before stepping back to take my leave.

“Wait… wait! You are a friend of a sister; for a family friend, I could go lower. N’yes, I could charge only 2000 for the map and 3000 for the case, 5000 total. 30% family discount, n’yes.”

I stopped and turned back to her and my face took a pondering look to it, taping my lip, before I nodded and came back to the table, thoughtfully, eyeing the map, before, tapping the case.

“I don’t think I can get that map; I understand it's antique, but… It’s priced as a talking piece, a little too much for a map. How about just the case?” I asked her.

“For just one… Hmm, bigger discount for more than one.” She said, floating back to being a shopkeeper, “I’ll give 20% off, 3500 credits.”

“Deal,” I told her, bringing out my chit so fast that she narrowed her eyes and before making a face.

“You play me… Hmm, not like you. Buy and go,” she told me hastily.

I smiled and paid the calico woman and left, taking my secret artifact with me out the door and making my way to the closest alley to talk to Lilly.

“So, Lilly, this is one of those red boxes? Not the same, but a smaller one?” I asked her, looking at the nicely tarnished metal with a tasteful red box logo on one corner and a fancily etched front that concealed the crystal underneath.

“It’s a personal one, yes. It holds more than it looks like it can, and that model could help hold several of your items. If you're going to smoke, you can keep far more in there, on top of a lighter, and either your ammunition or Pinky's ampules, which will fit in the cigar area. Can I assume you want to power this bangle and use it?”

“Will it interfere with anything?”

“No, it just requires power to expand it, so there is no need to connect to it like the smart gun. While unpowered, it can't retrieve things; otherwise, it has its own battery to hold charge for the internal space. I will note there are some things currently in the expanded space.”

“Do it; I’ll check through it when we get back to Pinky’s. Now, did you get the map?”

“Of course, I got the map. Who do you take me for? I- I’ll put it up in the corner of your vision,” she told me.

I felt the case take a zip of power, and I put it in my side bags. I was confused when she said put it up in my vision, but then, as I blinked, a weird, squiggly thing popped up in my vision.

It was… Very bad, blurry and hard to read; the lines were simple and also a bit off, a little circle putting me in what looked like the middle of the road, or I thought it was the road; it might have been a house.

I blinked as my vision swam, my eye tingling.

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“Yeh, your image is, ahh… Much appreciated? Why is it making my eye tingle?”

“I- I don’t- Hhhhold on, let me… I have no idea. I’ll drop it for now and just give you directions instead,” she told me the tingle leaving, and the swimmy image with it.

She was stuttering again, which was a bad sign.

“Thanks for trying,” I told her, “I bet that wasn’t easy. It looked almost okay, a bit fuzzy, but that was fine. Gosh, that would be nice, having a tiny map in my eye.”

“If you had an optic im- implant, I could do it easily,” she sighed, “Unfortunately, that would require both the optic and something to install it, something automated… Considering what you’ve encountered, I’m beginning to doubt exists now.”

“There, there. We might find one… Somehow,” I told her, my best attempt at comfort.

She sighed before saying, “Left.”

We left left, working our way across the map she had in her head toward the pink house, which was not pink, winding our way out from the redlight district and away from the jade tower that cast it in shadow.

I kept myself either in crowds or hidden as best as I could, head down and did my best to hide my features, just another regular Joe. I headed up the hill after multiple of those weird gravity panels in a slightly nice residential area and found my way around to the side and to the door.

Clicking it open with the key and swinging it open to see Pinky, who fumbled before recovering into a casual lean against the wall.

We stared at each other, me one eyebrow raised, her a casual smile that did not fit the situation.

“Were you… Waiting for me?” I asked her.

“What? Noo. Course not, I’m just… Checking for dust,” she said, a lie so obvious it stood out like a sore thumb.

“Right…” I told her, “So you were waiting on me. Sorry about that.”

“Oh, no. No need to be sorry, I just got back,” she said, quickly tucking an amulet into her cleavage.

I looked at it, and then my eyes opened.

“Oh, almost walked in on you changing,” I told her, walking in and shutting the door, “Um, sorry? I kind of didn’t think about it, and I’ll knock next time to warn you.”

She continued to look at me and then asked, “Your… You're not going to ask about…”

“No, I might have shown myself, but I’m not going to poke at you, especially not in your own home. What kind of ingrate would I be if I went poking at you to show off,” I told her.

She seemed to puff up a bit, like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, a funny, very pinky smile shifting onto her face. That was… Certainly a reaction.

I looked at her and raised an eyebrow, which just got her to smile more.

“You know, you’re a goofy thing,” I told her.

“Eh, what's the point of taking life seriously? I’m here for a time, not forever; I might as well enjoy it as much as I can; I’m just glad you're willing to let me stretch my wings like this, even though I know what you look like.”

I scoffed at her, “Pinky, why would I care?”

“Because you have a wanted poster in every tower, you have a lot of money on your head, you know,” she told me, “I saw it at work and realized that the posters I walked past every day looked familiar.”

“Pinky,” I told her, raising two fingers, “I might not know a hell of a lot about you, but I know two things. One, you’re a good egg, and two, you don’t seem to care about the rule of law. And neither lead me to think you care I have a bounty that could beggar a small nation on my head.”

She looked at me, glaring a little before nodding her head a few times.

“That’s fair, I suppose. Resisting a lawful order by a guard captain does count. Fair. I do care about laws, I just don’t care about authority,” she told me.

“Cool, good to know… So, just to be sure, you don’t care? About the bounty?” I asked her.

“Ehh,” she said, giving a so-so, “I don’t read you as the major outlaw type. All those charges? Way too many to be believable… Also, it’s super cool to have a poster; they look badass, you know?”

“Do you have a poster?” I asked.

“Nah. You would think I would, with a guard being my arch nemesis, but for some reason, he won’t get one posted. It's probably some dumb honour thing. Something macho like it would be admitting defeat. I kind of wish he would, though; I want one for my wall.”

I chuckled.

It was a bit rough, more unhinged sounding than a real laugh. I was out of practice. I didn’t laugh much.

“So, are we going to do anything Pinky? Rob a bank? Watch some stuff?” I asked her, gesturing to the holo.

She looked at me like I had told a joke.

“Nah, now we go out on patrol. Someone has to make sure nothing goes bump in the night. I always give the city a pass over to make sure it’s not on fire, and then I check in with a few people. Why did you think I came over to the thingy yesterday?”

I sighed, “Sure, can I take a load off for a bit? I got this cool new thing today that Lilly tells me will help out, but I have to go through it first,” I told her, pulling out the tiny case.

She looked at it before making an “Ooo,” and going to grab food from the kitchen.

Touching it, I could feel myself discharge a tiny amount of energy into the case. Pinky came over and sat next to me, a tiny plate of finger food on the table, leaning over in interest at the tiny case.

“Open it, open it,” she whispered impatiently.

I did, clicking it open to reveal a normal-looking cigarette case split with two folds, like a book. The base of each flap had little lights, four on each side and on the long edges a tiny semi-circle to flip them.

It was currently set to one and was empty. I filled it with my preferred off-brand cancer sticks and my lighter, then flipped left to reveal the front, pressing the flap down until it lay flush.

Paste on the inside was a manifest and a panel with unknown stuff in it. I recognized the script from one of the panels around the tomb from which I had liberated Lilly.

One Cigarette, Lighter.

Two Cigars, Cutter, Lighter, Lighter Fluid, Flint.

Three Cards, Flask.

Four Assorted Effects.

I flipped through to the right. And it matched. First was my stuff, then the cigars, brown dry leaves, preserved for Sol knew how long; three was a hip flask with a logo that I couldn’t read, and little plastic cards that I also couldn’t read.

On the last were folded pieces of paper and a funny-looking pen. There was a photo of a man that looked a little like Pinky, the eye shape, the hair… Well, he had black hair, no pink. A picture of a kid, and a woman, both not human. There were other pieces of paper, folded bits covered in writing, and a tiny journal that held incomprehensible scribbles.

I leaned over and asked Pinky, “Can you read any of this? Because it’s squiggles to me.”

“Same,” she told me, “I can make out any of this; it’s weird. Similar but not right, the letters aren’t the ones my family knows, sorry.”

I supposed that was for the best; this was a deadman's personal effect.

I took the pictures of the man and his family and the scraps of paper and slipped them into the journal, leaving it in its fold and placed some of my effects in the now-empty flap. Then I got rid of the plastic cards and the hipflask and replaced them with Pinky’s medicine and ammunition. I only got twenty shots, but that was good as a holdout.

I kept the journal for now. I didn’t know what was appropriate, but the remains of life deserved some form of send-off. Hell, maybe it was the shop's ancestor; the women had looked weird and possibly cat-like… Probably not, but I could dream. The rest was impersonal and got put off to the side to be thrown out.

I flipped to the cigarettes and closed it, sighing.

“Well, there was a whole lot of not much in there. Let’s go, Pinky; if we're going to walk around the city, we might as well get walking.”

“We're not walking silly,” she giggled, “we're going to take a quick flyby on my sword.”

There was a pause as she smiled, and I looked at her, not quite sure what to say. I managed to arrange my mind and avoid looking at her chest for long enough to come up with one.

“The… The sword you crashed?” I asked her.

“The one I crashed,” she cheerfully told me.

I looked at her as she gobbled up a pickle and flicked her on the nose, and she let out a tiny little “ah” as she dropped it.