I woke up, a bit bleary in an unfamiliar place, a warm blanky wrapped around me and my hat half over my head.
The first thing I did was sit up at the start and observe the unfamiliar surroundings. Seeking enemies.
I saw a corner, and my eyes snapped to it, thinking of the dogs, and started flailing around, looking for other corners so hard I rolled off the couch, hit my head on a coffee table, and, groaned, lifted my head.
The coffee table brought back to me the memories of things done around a table of familiar height and the percussive maintenance jogged my memory.
I was in Pinky’s house, and I had been sleeping on Pinky’s couch.
The holo is frozen in a scene where one of Pinky’s magical girls is transformed, stuck on an image that looks stretched.
I reached over for my hat and it being just out of reach required me to get out of the blanket.
Instead, I clutched at the back of my head and tried to remember what had happened and I slowly pieced it together.
We spent the rest of the night slightly drunk, highly confused by the explanation of the weird side of magic. The alcohol did not help, or it did because, counterintuitively, the nonsense made more sense while buzzed, but it made remembering it harder. In that way, alcohol made everything slightly wibbly, and the talk about artifacts was somewhat more straightforward.
I couldn’t remember the way they were broken up but they were broken up into like 77 types, 21 more esoteric for the ones that didn’t fit into the four main categories, which each had 14 grades.
I mostly remembered Pinky talking about humanity getting into weird shit before Pink tossed a pack of cards and a guidebook at me and told me to read through them, and I only remembered what I did about it because the cards had memorable art. The fact that the art contained a whole lot of naked women while I was bricked harder than a shit house did not factor into it, especially not the very tasteful one that looked like a pin-up.
Pinky had then given me a reading that foretold great burdens on my wallet and decided to get more alcohol from upstairs that she brewed, and it had made both of us go off to dreamland.
Note to self: Pinky could not handle her own alcohol, and neither could I.
I looked around for any sign of the pink lady in question, but she was absent, and the place was empty.
Leaning up, I saw a little note on the table. I groaned in annoyance and unwrapped myself, scooping up my hat and unfolding the note.
To Bandit: I had a wonderful night, but I had to take my leave.
Gosh, I’m starting this with the wrong kind of letter. I’m off on my own right now, but I’ll be back later tonight. Don’t go burning down my house! I can forgive bad taste, but not arson.
Until then, feel free to fuel up if you need it. There’s also a key under the pot outside by the door if you need or want to go out. I’ll be back late-ish, so don’t go starving yourself on my behalf.
If you steal my stuff, I’ll never forgive you, and I will get it back,
XOXOXO, Pinky.
There was a lipstick-covered pair of lips on the page, and I stared at it, trying to figure out what was going through Pinky’s head when she wrote the damn letter.
“Who signs an ‘I went to work’ note with a kiss and includes a threat in the last sentence? Lilly, what kind of crazy have I found myself joining?”
“Apparently,” she said speculatively, “One that wears lipstick. I should note that there is no issue with… Erm… Getting to know one another in a biblical way as far as the legion cares, not that there seem to be any of them to object. They would only care if you get pregnant, and that would just be to implant it in an artificial womb so you can keep on keeping on.”
I rolled that around before simply saying, “I don’t think she's the kind of girl you can have a one-night stand with. She seems more like the kind of girl that gets attached, and I’m here to kill The Collector. As bricked as I am, I’m not bricked in the head, you know? Pink seems like a good person, and I don’t want to go and ruin that by breaking her heart or something when I leave, and she wants to stay.”
“Sensible, for once. I can agree with your decision,” she said, “especially because you can't seem to pick up on context.”
“Hey…” I scowled, “I can pick up on context… Sometimes. What did I miss?”
“Things I won’t tell you. Sorry, but I’m not going to stab Pinky in the back like that.”
“What the hell are you… What did I miss?”
“Nuh uh Jacalyn, not telling. That’s your can to open. You’re the animus in this relationship; figure it out on your own.”
I sat there for a moment, and the only thing I could mutter was, “What am I missing, woman?”
I tried to get her to open up after that, but she kept her mouth shut. Exhausted after just waking up and a little hungry but unwilling to raid the pantry, I headed out after transforming. I knew the other me had a wanted poster, but even if the commander got a good enough look at me to do a poster, there was no way it would be done by now. If I bumbled into him, I would be toast, but otherwise, I would be better off with boob and tan than flat and pale.
It's not like I found either form any good right now. Both forms felt wrong as if they were not my own and I had just been squatting in one of them.
I locked up after myself. And headed out for my first stop.
The closest bounty hunters guild.
I did not want a fucking bounty on my head, and so I decided to get that gone. It would be far easier to move if I wasn’t being hunted in half my forms, and the idea of letting him fuck me over while he lounged in orbit, sipping from crystal and petting a cat like a fucking asshole was not what I wanted.
I had my way through the now far more packed streets.
The people were dressed in simple clothes, not ragged but not fine. Dressed in multiple layers, they had the appearance of dresses, with not a pair of pants in sight on most of them. That appeared to be the garb of the lower classes, those pulling hand carts or hauling goods, and it brought attention to me, with my coat, hat and pants, empty sheath and holsters.
The Lunatics were skinny people, regardless of what they were. The gravity on Luna, or I supposed the natural gravity, made them twiggy than other planets, though not as twiggy as those living on the satellites. I was used to being small, but they were almost as twiggy as the people back on Pallas.
It left me weirdly nostalgic as I tried to find my way to a single building in the haystack: the wood-panelled buildings and storefronts that gave the city a grounded feeling, even with the great spires of metal in the distance and the transparent dome that kept out the vacuum visible on the other side.
I found my way there after three questions to a shopkeep who kept trying to get me to buy some sort of herbal supplement, a cobbler who scowled at my shoes and told me leather didn’t suit me, and a friendly guard who gave me a funny look when he met my eyes.
He didn’t recognize me, but he recognized something about me that I chalked up to good senses. He could tell I was a killer, even if he didn’t know it. Killers had a look at them. In my experience, you could see it in our eyes, soldiers, mercenaries and murderers alike.
The eyes were the windows of the soul, after all. Why wouldn’t you see the weight on the windowsill?
Help me he did though, giving me the direction of the nearest guild.
I started rolling out how to best deal with my issue as I walked.
First, I need to get in contact with MC. Mc was the leader of my company; he had been my leader, and while I hadn’t been one of his technically, he could vouch for me, both for character and with performance.
The collector's claims went against both. I was a money-first girl, and the amount of money offered was so fucking extraordinary that I didn’t know if there was anything I wouldn’t have passed to him to get that money.
I would need him to catch me up, but I bet my chits that I could get him to help. MC would not let me down, and he could alert the issue to other branches of the guild. He might not be a big fish, but he wasn’t a small-timer either.
Causing a stink like that would bring a whole hell of an avalanche on the Luna branch.
I was stalking around a corner when I found it, the logo of the guild that regulated mercenaries across the system, its memorable blade and bow and wave in the shape of a sailing ship and sail, when I was struck with the feeling that the plan to get my bounty removed was too easy.
The collector was canny; he had stabbed me in the back far too easily, so I knew he couldn’t be underestimated, but if so, what was the bounty for?
I hyped myself up anyway because the faster I got this over with, the better.
I was not going to be caught by anyone. I was wearing a fake face. It was the best disguise there was because it was real.
I took a deep breath.
I walked up and opened the door. It was a small branch, and like most of the buildings, it looked like it had a wood interior. I got up to the desk, got the receptionist to pass me the form and a pen, and made my way to sit down. As I did, I thought about it.
What was the point?
The problem was, as I filled the paperwork out, I couldn’t figure out what was eating at me.
“What am I missing?” I whispered to myself.
“About what?” Lilly whispered.
“This situation feels like a trap,” I whispered, getting serious side eyes from a man with a bowl of noodles a few feet over.
“Briefly explain, I can’t see it,” she whispered, and I explained the situation while the man started to glare.
“Would you mind your own business? Staring is rude, and I’m talking to a friend here,” I told him, gesturing to my hidden ear, which got the man to move over while muttering about crazy people, technology and outsiders simultaneously.
“So that’s it, but I can’t figure out why I feel like I’m missing the trap,” I told her.
She mummed, rolling the details over with her golem-like attention to detail.
“Well, if you want to puzzle it out, maybe look at the outcomes. I can’t see the trap, but I can miss stuff, I don’t know everything you do. Brand new worlds and all of that.”
I started thinking about it, murmuring aloud as I did so.
“Well… If I were dead, there wouldn’t be much of a reason to do it, I guess. Maybe it had an extra purpose I can’t see, but MC might get annoyed. There's no reason to burn a whole lot of time and effort over a dead merc. He would probably file for it to be removed, but it would otherwise be a waste of time.”
“And on the other side of it? When you're not dead?” she asked.
“Well, I would get it removed to get the heat off of me, you know, like I plan to?” I told her simply.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“And what upside could the collector have over you getting it removed?” She asked, “If the other option would result in nothing, what would the current plan result in?” She asked, her voice taking on a bit of my own confused thoughtfulness.
“Well, I would be able to walk freely because I wouldn’t have a bounty. Most likely, the guild would issue a statement… And the poster would be fined for posting the bounty.” I said the slow issue of it what I was staring down clearing in my mind.
I stopped writing.
It was a trap, a trap that would cause issues for me no matter how I took it on. If I went up to the desk and asked the receptionist to file it, I would get jumped by everyone and their mother, if I was in normal form, and the guild would issue the poster of the bounty for the reward when they brought me in or killed me, and if I somehow lived long enough to get it revoked, he would know.
He could afford multi-million bounties, so there was no way the fine on an inappropriate target would bother him, but the notice of the fine would no doubt mention me or bring his attention to me. It was a tripwire that would only go off if I lived, walking through the front door of the guild like the flat-brained moron I absolutely was and that the collector no doubt thought I was.
The only thing stoping me from possibly being jumped was my current form. Because he didn’t know about it.
But if I filed the paperwork, people might start asking questions. People might remember how I looked. People might start talking about me, and he might hear about it. Then the gig would be up.
I stood up and started walking away, making my way out, looking for a bank that would take my chit, pushing past a man as I bumped into him, drawing eyes.
I needed to get out of here, I had no clue how tight this noose was.
There could be other hidden variables. The people on the Tsarta knew my gear, my clothes, my fucking hat; the poster had some of it, and I wasn’t interested in that, causing the noose to close on me.
The Guild would have a planetary comm or they would have planetary comm access via Luna. I could call him MC up here, but I couldn’t use a normal comm; it was too far away, and the delay on it would be minutes at a time, so it wasn’t like I could connect with him normally.
But the guild wasn’t the only thing with a comm, so would a bank, I just needed to find one and get my shit in order with him.
I had to get liquid, too, and slip the noose. I had my banking chit, but no reserve chits on me. The bank would only let you put so much money on a chit, so I needed to get as much of my cash liquid and out from underfoot as I could, as fast as I could. It wouldn’t be much, but I bet MC could help with that, too, and maybe get me past daily withdrawal limits faster.
Maybe I could get one of those briefcase-sized ones for a big haul.
I made my way down the street, looking for a commerce section in the city, only to need to ask questions, many of the locals not understanding my accent, or ignoring me as the clothes changed from lower to middle class, finery coming finer, cotton to silken outerwear.
They looked like they would make nice pyjamas or underwear, but the dressy outercoats looked pretentious.
A few workers, thinking I was a prospective customer, told me directions until I broke down and bought a bowl of noodles. When I made to pay from my account, after fumbling with the stupid sticks like a twitchy kid, I found the terminal declining my account.
I paid with my reserve, the cash kept on my chit, and it went through just fine, ¢100 of my 10000 max down the drain.
Maybe I should stick to eating with Pinky and only Pinky.
There was no better way to draw the eyes off me, and Pinky didn’t seem to care for things like bounties next to her. Even with it, drawing the eyes of the guards and being near her would probably make me safer than if I were in orbit right now. And as a bonus, she would probably be willing to spot me until I figured out whatever was wrong with my account.
Despite the lack of any reason, I felt unnerved by the plot and the declined transaction and couldn’t help but notice any small glimpse, filtered through paranoia, as intrusive, and it riled me all the way to the bank.
There were plenty of reasons a transaction could be declined, but I felt it was probably connected.
Getting there, I circled around into an alley, thinking about how to approach it. Should I drop my form or not drop it? I asked Lilly about cameras and decided against it. They didn’t have my picture or cameras, so it was fine to stay safe without a change of face. Especially because most of the work would be done by not me. I just needed my chits to get my money, and the phone call would just be a conversation; they were available as a way to make banking workable and to bring in people until they became ubiquitous anyway. But still… MC might pick up on a change in my voice and get wigged out, and the people at the bank weren’t going to pull a gun on me.
It was worth not changing for however many downsides it would bring me. No one should know me. My paranoia was probably unjustified, but I was unwilling to change.
I came out of the alleyway and made my way to the front. It was solid construction, no windows, only a sign and a door. No guards are standing out front. No one seemed to be watching it either, not from any of the good spots I could see. There was what looked like a cafe, but it was empty at the moment. If I were me, I would be sitting there with a paper, waiting for someone to walk in, but I was clear, probably.
I moved it, opening the door with all the casualness I could and heading to the counter. There was one guy waiting in the room who looked ex-military, an old granny with a faithful hound at her side, and a stretched woman who had the look of too much time in space, or the low gravity of Luna next to her. The two looked like they were here together.
No one that looked like too much trouble.
The counter was empty so I rang the little bell and waited.
A perky young woman came out. She was obviously a lunatic by her stretched form and black hair, but she was also far too chipper-looking. She gave me the feeling of someone who liked her job.
“Hello, how may I help you?”
“Hello,” I said, letting myself talk automatically, my voice taking on the edge of something I worried I could not feel. Someone close to me needed some help, but I needed to contact someone to help them. I was hoping I could use your planetary communication.”
What was I doing? Why was I blabbing to this woman? What was this stupid shard getting me to say, and why was it making me sound like the way it was?
Whatever reason it had, the poor girl being strung along by my renegade mouth. Somehow, sweeping my way into a side room with a comm as the empathetic young woman worried alongside me over the story I spun about myself.
By the time she left me there and the door closed behind her as she made her way back to work, I had an overwhelming sense of wrongness pervading myself.
I felt dirty.
Somehow, I had manipulated her in a way I couldn’t even pick up on. Wormed my way into her head and fucked around on the wheel, or at least that’s how I felt. It felt gross. Like my fingers had stuff stuck to them only inside me.
It grossed me the hell out and had me instinctively rub my hand on my leg, but I reached for the phone and called MC anyway.
It took a few tries to reach him, first relaying through Luna, to Gabriel, then on to a space station, then to the frequency where he would get a call, but it went through after a few go’s where the operator had no clue where to send me.
“Hello, Philian Gulls, this is Mi-”
“Old man, I didn’t drag myself out of a tomb only to get the who are you speech,” I told him, not harshly but familiarly.
“Bandit,” he sighed, uncommon relief in his voice. “I see the news of your death has been greatly exaggerated. Let me say, I am glad your still alive, even if it has cause quite a headache.”
“Barely exaggerated, I would say it was luck that saved me, but lady luck is often more fickle than that.”
“You sure kicked off a bee hive either way. What the hell happened over there?”
“I got down there, but The Collector followed me down and backstabbed me, the fucker. Why, what the hell is going on besides the bounty anyway?”
“Oh, I see you’ve returned to civilization then. The Collector has made claims against you, suggesting that you attempted to kill him under contract. Fortunately, he seems to have limited sway with the guild; a few other companies have raised flags over his claims when he tried to implicate us as a knowing accomplice to his attempted murder. He’s trying to get his money back; did you know that?”
“I did not,” I told him, “Please tell me he didn’t.”
“He didn’t.” He confirmed, “Since you seem to want to talk money, I should tell you no matter how much money he has, as your emergency contact, I’ve put them on hold. No one will be getting the second half of your payment for now… The rumour of your death, however, might be a bit tricky; your account was frozen.”
Fuck.
“And with the impending bounty, it would be hard to do a limited withdrawal.”
Fuck.
“With your agreement, I could-”
“MC, I need you to hold that for a moment,” I told him, taking a deep fucking breath to focus on the conversation at hand and less on the way it made me want to throttle The Collector. “Would doing whatever you're suggesting inform The Collector that I am alive?”
“I… Yes, it would, why?”
“Because then he would be on guard when I go after him,” I told MC seriously, “Him knowing I’m alive would be bad. He stole my sword so he would know better than most that I’m going to be coming for him.”
“Ah… I see. That would complicate things. I don’t suppose I can get you to back off that?”
“No… No, you can’t,” I said seriously.
He sighed, “I see… Don’t include me in that. No offence, but I’m by the book. Becoming the accomplice of a murder would be bad for the company, even if you're not currently employed by the Gulls.”
I thought about that for a moment. Revenge was revenge, but on the books, smoking The Collector would still be murder.
I was personally fine with that; he had it coming, and I wasn’t going to back away from getting that revenge. Killing was killing, even if I didn’t have a piece of paper telling me I could do it, and even when I did, it wasn’t so much the paper that got me to do it; it was the reasons on the paper and the money.
I wasn’t going to question myself on the ethics of government-condoned murder when the page said serial killer, cult leader, or child molester. Each deserved a bullet, and I would deliver.
The only legal way to get revenge would be to bring him in on a bounty, but there was little in the way of anyone who could do it alive. He backstabbed me on earth. I couldn’t bring forth any evidence in a court of law. And even if he did? Assuming someone could go up there and bring him along, and he would get his day in court, the man had enough money to throw around. It would never stick, even if I found a place to bring him.
Before I could even do that, I would need to have a reason to do it; otherwise, it would just be kidnapping him.
The only way to get revenge was to kill the guy. I was going to do that anyway, but that would still be a pain… Unless I could.
“MC…” I asked him, “What would I need to do to place a bounty on The Collector?”
“That’s… That’s something I can help with,” he said thoughtfully. “You probably know more than I would, but you would need to file for that, which would alert him if he’s paying attention.”
“How long does it take to put in one and get it too… Let's say Luna?”
“I would think... about a day. If I were filing it, it would go straight to the guild office, and they would send it out from there. If you were, it would be a bit slower. You would also need more evidence. I’m trusted, but you wouldn’t be, unfortunately. A side effect of having a bounty yourself.”
“Then I’ll have to send you a list and see if I can dig up some more dirt to sweeten the deal, assuming you’re willing to push for a dead or alive on him. You are, right?” I asked, just to make sure.
“He has caused damages to the Gull’s reputation and attacked one of us; I would be more than happy to push for a DOA. Sol knows he’s rich enough that nothing else will matter. Clever thinking.”
That reassured me. I could get my revenge on him, I would just need to time it. More than that, MC was on my side in all of this. In theory, he could come looking to cash a check on me, but he wasn’t. MC might need to think about the money, but he was a good person.
“Good,” I said, relieved. “Now… The money,” I sighed.
“The money,” he sighed. “If you don’t want to file for it and alert him, there's not much I can do on my end. Unless you want to pretend you're dead and have the money sent to your next of kin.”
“I don’t suppose you can… I don’t know. Can you get them to send it to a second account or something? Can I do that? Open a second account?”
“Only if you want to get into a lot of trouble. Bypassing a frozen account like that comes with a penalty, a heavy penalty, and everyone involved would get slapped with one, too. Unless you can get someone with more sway over Luna or a bank to file for a limited withdrawal or some other way to bypass it, your shit out of luck. Or at least you are until you get the bounty through. At that point, you can kiss the bounty on yourself goodbye, and the money will be yours to grab the moment you show your head… Ehh, you are in hiding… Correct?”
“What am I an ameture? Of course, I’m hiding,” I not quite lied, “I’ll call you back when I see an opening and try stuff on my end.”
“Good luck, Bandit… And keep safe.”
“Thanks, old man. You keep safe, too.”
“I can honestly say that we're in less trouble over here, good hunting. Over and out.”
And then he hung up. Brisk but not uncaring, he might have been, but it was the MC I knew, and I would take 100 of his brisk over and outs over most people, giving me a tear-jerker any day.
Now, if only I could get someone to unfreeze me.
I headed back out into the lobby, where the old lady was talking with the bank teller, so I took a seat and started brainstorming. It wasn’t all that big of a room, and there was no view, but it at least had cushy seats, so it wasn’t all bad.
It was about twenty seconds in, and I felt the urge to look up.
The man was giving me a funny look and I stared back. He had a tattoo on his neck, but he quickly covered it and stopped looking. He had a look that told me he wasn’t from Luna, but his clothes told me otherwise.
A tattoo on the neck and an outside look to him? What were the chances?
I tried to recall the tattoo of yesterday, the paramilitary one on one of the terrorists, and compare it to what I saw, but I couldn’t get a one to one on it.
He was paler than the average lunatic, but he did have some of the same features: eyes, hair, and so on. His clothes looked similar to the clothes around him, only slimmer and less baggy.
The more I watched, the more it triggered alarm bells in my head. Not just because I was staring but because every minute thing I knew about fighting told me he had a soft, dangerous look. The kind of warning signs you started carrying when you knew how to fight and you did it too much.
He didn’t have the eyes, though, so I eventually stopped staring like a chimp. I didn’t even remember his look all that well, I was too focused on the other parts.
I felt the urge to look back, to try to remember him in case we came into conflict later, but I decided not to do that so openly. I could get a look when I walked past him.
The other occupant, the young woman who had taken to tapping her food, was a different story.
She had the eyes.
As I came in, I thought she might be with the old woman, but she didn’t look quite right on second glance. Her face was wrong, and her frame was a bit too bulky. She wasn’t a doting grandkid who came to visit Grandma from her low G job in orbit.
She had what looked like the outline of something under her clothes, hidden in a fold of her dressy-looking outer garb.
It wasn’t until the old woman left and the man closest to me stood up that she looked over. She caught me looking and started staring back.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” She asked.
“I don’t think so,” I told her, killer to killer.
She had a hand on her neck, but when she lowered it, I saw a tattoo on her neck too, but this one was familiar.
“Wait… I do know you,” she said.
Fuck, fuck, no. God damn it.
We stood at the same time as she went for her fucking bulge.
It was just my luck to bump into one of the only people I might be recognized by, and I doubted she was about to whip out anything less than a weapon.
We started our stand-off, which looked like a short blade and a sidearm, with me clearing my guns to draw.
We froze, taking one another in, when to the side, the man said, “Your hair is shifting,” and I turned to take him in the periphery, my eyes not fully leaving the woman.
“What about my hair?” I asked him, “If you haven’t noticed, we're kind of in a-” I started, only for the other woman to shout, “Shut it, I’m about to get some sweet revenge on this bitch for what she did to my friends yesterday.”
We both looked at one another, frozen in a stand-off, our hands twitching for our weapons.
“I would advise against that… As for you, you have the wrong colour, but the right effect. I think you’ll be coming with me,” the man said, reaching down into his clothes, clearing them to reveal his well-hidden blade.
In my periphery, the poor woman behind the counter did something and ran into a back room, and we started our standoff.
This was getting out of hand by the second, now there were two of them.