I made my way through confusing streets, slowing near unfamiliar people and doing my best to look normal. Thankfully, my bleeding gums and bruised through healed fast enough that for my uncovered bits, I wasn’t accosted by the well-meaning, only for being a weird pale person.
My gut wound was less fine, but it was a burn, not a bullet, which would be far more complicated to explain.
‘Yes, don’t worry, I’m supposed to be bleeding all over the place,’ probably wouldn’t fly.
I would have had to use Pinkys medicine for that, but I wanted to make sure I was in the clear before I did that.
It also made my skin itch thinking about it, so I was ok to just not and say I did, but if I needed it, I could use it. I figured I could probably be fine… So long as nothing else happened.
I knocked on a wooden crate as I passed down an alleyway and stopped when I came upon a bustling marketplace. People dressed in rough fabric shopped at temporary stalls, and a few more permanent places were open for business.
I pulled back into the alley and asked, “Do you know where Pinky’s place is from here? Do you have a map in your head or something?”
“Not particularly,” Lilly answered, “I could tell you the direction based on where we walked, but you would need to find your way back,” she told me.
“Anything I could do to speed that along?” I asked her.
“Get a map,” she replied.
“Shoot, why didn’t I think of that?” I asked her sarcastically.
She sighed, repeating, “A map, a data one, electronic. You know, on a computer?”
“Why would a Computer have a map in their head?” I asked her, unsure what a math nerd would do with an electric map, which sounded rather dangerous.
“You know what… Just find a map. I’ll try to figure out how to copy it for my use,” she sighed.
“Couldn’t you just remember it from my vision? Futz with it like my ears? Or sense it like you did on the Throne?” I asked.
“Your brain processes the image; I could try, but it’s… not too good. You don’t have any optics in your head for me to use; otherwise, it would be way better. As for trying with my scanning… I suppose if the map is hand-drawn, I could. I could feel the groves in the page.”
“What, you’re a super advanced artificial person with bad vision?” I asked her.
“It's not a vision issue, I can detect it, it's just-”
“I know you're about to say something about how vision works, but that won’t change, and you need glasses,” I told her.
She didn’t argue back for a moment before asking, “What kind of barbarian requires glasses? No! Don’t tell me; I think I understand; you can’t correct their vision.”
“Yeah, we have to make it with glass lenses… Ohh, the humanity,” I snarked.
“No Snark from you… Or I’ll tell Pinky,” she threatened.
I chuckled as I exited the alley and decided to check around. I was safer in a crowd dressed like this than wandering.
Honestly, what did she think Pinky could do? She could chew me out, and… OK, I guess I was her guest… And I bet she could get kind of gooey or be all sad or disappointed. That would hit me where it hurt, right in my little malformed black heart.
I might as well try and find a map… And supplies if I was going to be here for longer than a few days. Maybe I could figure out some stuff to help me get my ship working, like finding where I could get a replacement engine. Checking my watch and getting my pouches out so I could have working pockets, I found that I had what I assumed to be a few hours left.
I kept my robe closed, my bags buckled, and my credit chit away from prying hands.
I wasn’t used to the atmosphere I found walking around looking for my niche demands, with people shouting endlessly about their products and services. It took me a bit to realize why I didn’t either.
There were no brands. No names. Nothing.
It was always, “Try my fresh fish; you won't regret it; too expensive? Come back at close!” Instead of naming a brand or a name or even what it was, without using any buzzwords or fancy marketing, it was alien. I realized they were also haggling, deciding on prices, and not just paying.
It was close and well-knit, and it set me off because it felt like everyone here knew one another. It set me off because I was an outsider, and outsiders got noticed.
If it weren’t for how packed it was, I felt that would have been true.
I was an outsider, but logically, not all of these people could know each other. They weren’t neighbours; they were just… Lunatics. They had a culture in common.
I got through the press, primarily unseen for my height, the lunatics towering head and shoulders above me. It was hard to read, but at least they didn’t call out to me. Most of the stuff on offer was common goods and services. Haircuts, which I could do on my own, produce vat meat, vat produce, plastics, wood, leather, cloth, and all bio. There were a few different ones.
Complex dodads, metal and plastic from other districts, sharp gismos, shimmering trinkets, and jugs of labelled stuff I could not distinguish in the thousands. There were a few parts that I could use in the Junker, but lightbulbs, switches and things I could fidget with didn’t count, so I moved on. There were all sorts, but by the time I arrived at what looked like a food stand, I was disappointed.
Like so often, I headed for the one place I could see that was always the right place to go. It was the place where you went after a long day to rest a weary head. It was one of the oldest professions in history, minus the bit where, technically, for us, all people had a professional history of equal length.
A place where you could go to talk with someone. A place of understanding.
I went to a bar.
I changed first, obviously, re-adjusted, and set myself up in the clean wood confines of a public restroom with cat doodles. The only thing I couldn’t get good enough to take was my weapons, which I left in the side bags instead of holstered. They were just too obvious in an open setting, and as fleshy as the shoot-out at a bar was, it wasn’t what happened. The empty sheath and other identifiers got bagged to slim down my profile. The side bags were emptied except for the trinkets, which got pouched because you never knew when sharing a smoke would open some doors.
I fixed my clothes to make them comfortable, then went out in my drab garments to the best place I could find.
I read the crowd and found my way to a side street lit with little red lanterns, to the source of the inebriated and boisterous… Then, I picked the one with the least coming out and walked on in.
Red Skirt Izakaya was its name, and it stood in the shadow of the closest tower, a jade monolith of wood, windows and smooth surfaces that encroached on the skyline, wonderous from above and looming from the ground. The street was cast in the evening dusk.
It looked like it had survived the last war; the boards were old but still cared for. A good little hole-in-the-wall, my favourite kind of bar. I walked up to the entry and turned in, and as I did, the colour in the corner of my eye caught my attention. Turning to look, strips of colour showed themselves, hidden from the road but visible at the threshold.
They looked like flags, though if they were, they were of no nation I knew of. Perhaps, the prefectures had a flag, or they were historical. A little nod to the past.
Hell, maybe it was older than the last war. I didn’t exactly have a plaque to read.
I pulled it open and walked on in.
It was unreasonably cozy inside, with snug leather, warm wood and orange light. It wasn’t classy, but it was cozy. There was a bit of a crowd, but they were here and there. Some in booths, some at the bar on stools. Toward the back, the soft sound of music floated down the hall which blended with the low chatter of the people talking.
“Lilly, can you send Pinky a message to tell me when she gets off work?” I whispered.
“Sent,” She said chipper.
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I wandered up to the bar and sat the bag down in front of me, where it wouldn’t bug anyone. I checked to see if anyone was looking at me as I did, but I only spotted one girl looking at me, dressed in scholarly robes and surrounded by her peers. She looked like a dainty little thing, short but unmistakably a lunatic, just one that enjoyed gravity... Or was just short? That was also a possibility. She stared, only to mutter a ‘huh’ before realizing I was staring back and looked away with a blush.
To one side was a woman with a hell of a lot of brown hair, a fine white scar that roughed her lip and the edge of her ear like a paw had torn past her face at an angle. She looked like she was muscle, but she was on her lonesome. On the other side, further down, were a few normal lunatics.
Hoping to lift myself up to the stool and pull the stool in silently, I looked around at head height to find the bartender before looking down.
Down below was the most adorable little creature I’d ever seen. She had the same features as the woman beside me; they were the same kind of person, but she was tiny. An itty, biddy woman with too-big eyes, a kitten next to a mountain lioness. They were all teary, looking like two shiny yellow-amber eyes with a mop of brown-white hair, dressed in a tiny hostess outfit and a red skirt.
Looking at her activated something in me, something dormant and ancient human function. It made my heart go all weird. Warm and fuzzy, like a had some kind of fluffy parasite.
She stared up at me with her all too big eyes and asked, “Hewow, wewcome to the Red Skirt Izakaya. Whaat can I get fow you? A dwink to start?” She asked.
Every word seemed to send a stabbing feeling through my heart, while also stun-locking me as I tryed to make sure I parsed them, I managed to nod and gabber out, “What good?”
“Ehwething, but Spirits cost mower,” she told me, pulling out a tiny pen and notepad.
I looked at her and asked, “More than normal?”
Nodding, she explained, “I need to wuwes a shtool,” before pointing back to where the bottles were, placed on a shelf that she couldn’t reach, with a few kid's stepstools and a few solid boxes on the ground.
“That…” I told her, processing the image of her climbing a perilous rickety staircase, “Makes a lot of sense… I’ll take a beer, whatever you… uh, recommend?” I told her, weirded out by the thought of her drinking beer.
I mean, I knew she was small, but she would probably be old enough to drink if she was working behind the counter. But she looked like a wee little one because of her funky head and big eyes.
“Mmhm, Mmhm,” she said before grabbing a mug and pouring it, climbing up on a single step before placing it on the counter for me.
“Thank you, um, mam,” I told her before turning to the lady sitting next to me and asking, “Is she fucking with me?”
She looked at me, her silted eyes widening slightly, and said, “Who knows, nyah, can’t tell with the old hag, nyah.” In a monotone, except for the nyah, which was so high-pitched and loaded, I could hear my confusion snap in half from the cognitive load of her voice.
I let out a sigh, “Oh, thank god. You had me going for a moment there, the both of you,” I told her.
“Hmm? Bu- But this is houw I talk,” the tiny bartender told me.
I looked over at the tall one and squinted.
“Huh? Don’t look at me. I told you, you can’t tell with the hag; sometimes she’s messing with people, sometimes she's just normal. It’s hard to tell because almost nothing changes,” she shrugged.
“You unbelievable bitch… You got me twice. Shame on me, I guess,” I told her.
“Bitch?” She said, eyeing me, “I would have to agree… I am an unbelievable bitch.”
She said it dryly, the words shifting the lip scar as her mouth turned into a grin.
I gave her a blank look.
“What? Not funny? I thought that was a good one… Shame,” she said disappointed.
“I’m not saying it's not funny,” I told her, “I’m just saying that someone as tall as you should leave the low-hanging fruit for me… You are one of the first born, not a dog; I get it. I’ve never met one of you in the flesh, I don’t think. Your… Well your not what I expected. Neither of you are.”
The tiger and the kitten both turned to me; the little one's big eyes flickered, focusing on me, while the big one’s long, tufted ears twitched up, her pupils narrowing.
I wouldn’t have noticed it normally, but they had a thing where they were expressing through their eyes and my transformed state picked up on it.
Maybe peacekeeper was worth something, after all.
“Don’t take that the wrong way,” I told her quickly, “I don’t know much, just what a Chronicler told me; it's just you two look almost nothing alike. She looks…” I said, before correcting my statement, “Well, I think you triggered some kind of cute, related instinct that made me have heart palpitations, and you look like you’re her natural predator that thawed out of an ice cube… I think you have more hair than she has a body. Great hair, by the way; I keep mine short for… Well, we're both professionals of a sort, part of the trade.”
“Professional…” The Tiger said, rolling the word across her rough tongue. “Heart palpitations?” The Kitten asked, less concerned, leaning on her hand.
The Tiger looked at me, not in a casual manner, but in the threat assessment way you expected muscle to.
“You don’t know much about the firstborn, but you learned it from a Chronicler? Creepy bugs… Anyway, you’re a… Professional and a tourist?” She asked.
“A little. I’m not from around here… Not that you couldn’t tell from this,” I told her, gesturing to my face and hair, letting it shift back and forth.
“What's your name?” She asked.
“What's your name?” I asked right back.
We stared at one another, and I held a finger up, quickly asking The Kitten, “Can I smoke in here?”
She blinked at me and said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Depawsit for tway, and pay for each use, you wahan’ta tab?”
Parsing her words and leaning up a bit into the pouch that had my usual junk and not my stims and gun, I pulled my pack and lighter out, placing them on the counter. And held up two fingers.
“One, what does it do for me? I could just pay when I get up. If there’s something extra, I’ll even pay a bit upfront, no fuss... And two, are you two regulars here? I mean, you work here,” I said to Kitten. “And you might or might not,” I gestured toward Tiger, “but are you here regularly? I wouldn’t mind coming here if there was a familiar face.”
Kitten and Tiger looked between one another and made a few minute motions of their body, gestures I couldn’t read. After a few side-to-side head motions, one of the patrons down the other side called out, “Another Pint?” and Kitten quickly pulled out an ashtray for me before hopping off the stool and zooming over to the other side to serve them.
“I get that you’re a tourist, but you're acting like we're best buddies. It’s suspicious. I would want that name, but I doubt it means anything around here, so tell me, what kind of professional are you?” the muscular woman asked.
“I find stuff, I retrieve stuff, and I put holes in stuff,” I told her before pulling out a cigarette and offering one to her, “smoke?”
She took it in hand, and I offered her a light. Leaning in, she quickly lit the cigarette, and I followed.
Sucking in a deep breath, I let out a plume of thin grey smoke. I had the feeling she was testing me, examining me.
Like she was playing with her food.
“I can understand not trusting outsiders, but I’m not asking for your life story, I’m just asking if I get a tab and pay a bunch up front so I can come back over and over again, I want to know if someone familiar will be here… Simple as.”
She looked at me, her face taking on something like a scowl before she let out a plume, her mouth still open, and said, “You are totally oblivious, aren’t you? You have no idea about anything,” She said, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“I don’t know what you're going on right now,” I told her, taking a sip of my beer.
When I looked back, her eyes were narrowed, and she was glaring at me.
I raised my eyebrows and put down my mug.
“Come on, lay it on me. What did I fuck up? If you don’t tell me, I’ll just keep doing it until you tell me, you know, to spite you,” I told her, puffing while she sized up my neck.
“Wahs up,” Kitten asked, coming back up to us.
“She doesn’t know where she is,” She said to her pocket-sized companion.
“Huh… Oh, pass,” she said, reaching her tiny hands up on the counter and grabbing the lighter.
I looked down at her as she flicked the lighter to life and pulled a tiny roll out of a fold hidden in her red skirt. She lit up a tiny little herbal cigarette of her own and passed the lighter back up.
Watching the big-eyed, round-headed tiny thing smoke a cigarette while she flipped a switch with a crisp clink and stepped back up to the count as all three of us huddled around the ashtray like co-workers on break. Sudden airflow pulling the plume up into the ceiling of the bar.
“So you have anything extra I get by opening a longer term tab with you guys?” I asked the little smoker.
“Nuts, parcewls, and no browken knee cawps,” she told me seriously, blowing a smoke ring up toward a grate.
I thought she was joking for a second, and then I turned toward the big girl and pointed my finger at both of them.
“Hold on, is that what I missed? You’re in a gang?” I asked.
She looked at me but didn’t answer.
“I pegged you as muscle the moment I sat down next to you,” I told her.
She looked at me funny, like she couldn’t quite read me. I had somehow jumped out of her comprehension, a floater skating out of your vision.
“I think I broke her; quick, bring the machine over; I’ll pay now. I’m thinking ¢1000,” I told Kitten.
She gave a joyful hop as she got off the stool and walked over to a blocky terminal, passing it over to me. I paid, checking to make sure it was only ¢1000. I was making friends here, not trying to get fleeced.
By the time I was done, she was still trying to figure out what I was doing here… Or perhaps she was staring at an invisible pink unicorn; I couldn’t tell with her; too much cat, not enough girls to read it.
“So, what's your crew called?” I asked her.
“The Split Tail clan is not a crew… It's not a gang… It's a family. A Fa-Ma-Ly!” She said, “You hear this idiot? A crew?” she asked her diminutive companion who just shrugged.
“Don’t get on my back about it,” I told her, “So now that we got that out of the way, I got a question.”
“Shoot, before I have to stick a foot in your ass for disrespecting the Dam,” she told me, blowing smoke in my face.
I raise an eyebrow and a single hand to calm her.
“Don’t get your tail in a twist,” I told her.
“We don’t even have—” she started before I cut off her squabble. You know, I need to assert my dominance a little.
“So… Where could I find a map?”
----------------------------------------
Of all the places I could have run into a familiar face while walking around without my transformation on, of all the people I could have been with, I would have never imagined that I would have crossed paths with Bandit.
Man, I was glad she was bad at noticing the obvious. That and Lilly had been sending me texts all day while I was doing reactor work and told me she wouldn’t tell her anything that might make things awkward.
Normally, I figured that would be a bad spot on our brilliant new friendship, but everyone was entitled to privacy.
Still, of all the possible Iazakyas she could have wandered into, she found the one I dragged my beleaguered colleagues of the Jade Tower after work to because I had a discount and got everyone some nice food for reasonable prices.
“Small world,” I murmured, looking back at Bandit as she went back and forth with the Bouncer and Bartender, working her newfound magic with her silver tongue.
“What’s with her Akaitori? You keep staring at her,” one of my colleagues asked, tearing me from my somewhat weird stare.
“Hmm? Nothing, I just thought she was good-looking,” I told him, a white lie.
I folded back into the conversation about my friend's assets, which I followed along with but didn’t weigh in on.
Honestly, of all the places to bumble into, an alternative bar three hours before a girl's night with the Red Skirts girls and guys that frequently ended in dirty bedsheets was not one of the places I thought I would find the most oblivious ‘ambidextrous’ person in the entire prefecture.
I would need to head out soon to get home and transform before she found a map back to my place.
Now I just needed to figure out a better line to excuse myself. I left the stove on only worked so many times before people started to think you were an arsonist.