She brought me into the back, but I was a little surprised when she brought me to the Dam, the strange, slightly large cat being massaged by the large woman who had stood behind her the day before.

She had a look of incredible serenity, the kind where she seemed to be sleeping, her cat mouth open.

Blissful.

“I wish I had the capacity to be that relaxed,” I murmured. It looked nice.

Then again, I saw it as an opening, which made me a little tense.

The Dam let a slight “mrow” noise before she seemed to come to herself. Coherence returned to her face as the cat retreated.

“Pardon?” She asked, her voice washed in the afterglow.

“I said I wish I could drop into a coma like that, Dam. The kittens keeping you up?” I asked.

“So needy. I can’t remember being so helpless… Regardless, are you here to make a deal?” She asked.

“How could I not, with the ever-expanding benevolence I’ve been shown?” I asked her, a tennie wennie bit of sarcasm clear.

“Translation?” She asked as she was lifted, held in the perch of the taller woman’s arms so she could survey the world.

“She needs money, she's broke, and she doesn’t want to be in debt to us,” The Lioness said.

“I mean… I could pay now. I would just be credit less,” I told her, rubbing my fingers together in the universal gesture for money. “I need those credits for my hobbies. It’s expensive being a smoking day drinker. And then there’s rent to think about.”

At least that got a smirk out of the big bouncer.

And who said I couldn’t be social?

Me, that’s who. I said that, but that was a secret between me, myself, and now Lilly.

“All’s well, that ends well, no?” The Dam asked. “We are in need of the services of a woman for hire, and one who we can trust more than a group of street rats… Tell me, what's your opinion of complex jobs? More complex than your three cute bullet points.”

“How complex?” I asked, the idea making me weary.

The reason I gave the bullet points wasn’t because I couldn’t do more than find, retrieve and put holes in things, it was because that became increasingly shaky the second it started expanding, like an unsupported truss falling out of a building.

If I could do one, I could do more than one, and if you started stringing those three things together, suddenly, I was tied down in a clusterfuck of epic proportions for funds.

“We have three problems, but they are separate. One is the changing of the guard happening now. We need to make sure our eyes and ears are clean and clear, but they started getting worried; we need you to solve that problem. The second is just… Checking in on one of our neighbours. They're erratic, like mice scattering underfoot, and we want to make sure they don’t start acting unwisely. The third relates to last night… That’s the complicated one.” She said, listing each out.

Two complex jobs were the not complex ones. Fantastic.

I was already puzzling out what those could mean, considering each of those could go a dozen ways with at least twice that number in points of failure. They could be less intimidating than I was expecting, but the reality was often worse than you could possibly imagine, and I had a vivid imagination.

Uncaring or unaware of my sudden growing migraine, at least until Lilly set my body to tingling as it went away, she began to arm wrestle with my quickly ailing brain.

“We need you to… Check in on them. They’re acting unwisely. We expect those… Shipping with us is to be done upfront, and payment is to be made on time, but they’re not playing or paying with us. We’re expecting them to start playing with dirt, but we’re going to start the mud fight first. We have the water; we just need you to go fetch some dirt. Either they’re smart, or they get buried in mud… You understand?”

I didn’t.

It was like she was allergic to explaining what she wanted me to do. I understood not saying something like, 'Go put a bullet in Jonny Joe,' because it could be illegal and criminality was a thin line to walk, but by god, it was so opaque it was hard to tell the scale of those details.

“I understand the idea. I can see the picture you're paying, and so long as you're paying, I’m at the table… But I’m going to need details to stay. So far, there’s nothing that breaks the old laws, but I need you to start showing me the edges, or I can’t play. If you get me my documents and help me get registered like was insinuated, how would you feel about doing this privately but above board where were both clean and clear?” I asked her.

I did my best to phrase it as a very simple request, but it was a lot more than that. Contracts through the guild were checked to make sure the reasoning was sound. No openly breaking the old law, mostly. So long as it passed the smell test, it would be clean and kosher, and she would know that.

“The Guild has leaks; two of them can go through the guild… But our eyes and ears would be in danger if someone squealed to the wrong bureaucrat that we were going to put our paw on the scale,” she told me, “You would be doing it for us, or not at all.”

I gave her a look, blank and hollow, as I paid attention to her word and tone.

She made it sound like she was concerned, but you couldn’t trust a person based on their outward appearance, not now. She had met me nursing a bunch of kittens and was speaking to me frankly and on a level, but that made part of me weary.

She was the leader of a criminal organization looking to cover her corners, dot her I’s and cross her T’s. Would she lie? Yes. Absolutely. Was she playing me? Probably, yes. But was she trying to strong-arm me? Was she trying to play me?

I decided to dive into it with my gut and, in a phrase that only Pinky could say without cringing, ‘vibe checked’ the cat.

There was something that lay in this cat that led her to act how she did, but looking at it, picking it apart on the surface did not add up. The math led to dead ends.

She could be fucking with me, but if she did, she would probably get Pinky pissed off at her. If she didn’t care about Pinky, why did the rest of them seem to genuinely care about her? Was she playing her entire ‘family’? What would be incredibly stupid, but she was more aware than your average moon nut, so that didn’t make sense either.

Something about this entire damn thing told me she had a higher opinion of me than she should have. The way the Bouncer talked about me fit the exact opposite way, and that led me to the only answer I could come up with.

She was aware of the things that went bump in the night, and she was afraid of them.

That was a tenuous piece to bridge that gap, but that was the only answer I had. It fit, but it was a tenuous fit. It was the kind of thing you slapped duct tape over and learned to pray to.

But as a cat may logic out, if I fits, I sits. It was a line of reasoning anyone with a budget and a need could understand.

“I’ll do it, but I’m telling you right now, if you take that job sideways, I’m taking the retainer and walking, and I will be getting a retainer for it. Half up front is normal for big jobs like that.” I told her eye to eye, her sitting on high like a jungle cat in a tree, and me some manner of creatures she absolutely should not drop on. There was no mutual win here; we both would get what we wanted in the end.

***

Pinky got back to me after the blitz of registration, and taking contracts, and working out details.

“Phew, I’m finally back,” she said, winding down on her flying sword right down into the midst of the three cat women and me, just far enough away from a crowded area.

The large woman, the one that cared for the Dam, was holding the other two cats. The small one being carried greeted Pinky with a “Bubby!” though the remaining three of us were less enthusiastic, as was right, given our station as the least enjoyable of our group. We noble few had to fight the magic-slinging bureaucromancer while the little one got a lollypop.

If only… If only.

Pinky gave the little one and the Dam a pet on the head. I had no idea how she got away with that. The Dam clearly viewed Pinky differently than me; she was a little marshmallow, and even a scary marshmallow was soft. I was a… Well, the only thing about me keeping me out of that territory was my eyes and my mannerisms.

That would be a good trick, my internal manipulator told me. I could just let it run and make me sound like a silly little thing.

“Sup, Pinky. I was wondering when you would drop on by. You missed dinner,” I told her.

“And the dinner rush. Lucky, lucky,” the Dam said.

“Dynamic prices are good for our pockets,” the tall woman said.

“That’s dirty,” Pinky said before looking at the lollipop-sucking little one, “Don’t become like Molly.”

Who Molly was, I had no idea. I was allergic to names, but the little one seemed to understand, so it worked out. She nodded wisely.

“As heartfelt as this is, can I assume the details of our deal are clarified to your liking, Amber?” The Dam asked; my now illegal-legal name on Luna said with all the sincerity of a joke.

Pinky, looking ever unflappable, was flapped by this.

“Uh? Wah? I… Aw, man. Again? How many people know the na-ha-ame?” She asked, sobbing tone dragging out ‘name’ into something more akin to the song, her sword mirroring her act as she took her soft fists, leaned her head on me and started ‘Punching’ me.

Her fists hurt me non, and her sword was a little funny, but she was clearly devastated, even if this was clearly an act.

“There, there, my fin friend, it’s a secret name, only known to you, me, Mei, probably the five guys I met at the bar, the Dam and her people… And every person who has access to the records on Luna,” I told her, my social instincts weighing in to help me twist the knife ever so gently, my hand coming up to pet her on the head, the springy little cow lick on her head refusing to be felled by the plane of my hand.

“Uh?” She asked.

“I needed paperwork, and for so many reasons, I couldn’t even start. Good news, considering our mutual friend here… Besides, given our mutual friend, I can also pay for some classy food… Or just a lot. We can get some stuff for a binge, and I can pay,” I told her.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Huh?” she repeated.

I looked at her as she looked up at me, eyes too big, her punishment staling at this new piece of information.

“The Dam here has some work for someone of my skills, and I need a bunch of things she has that I don’t,” I told her, and then, knowing that it didn’t explain enough and that she was the closest thing I had to a friend outside of my own head, I added, “I’ll tell you more when I’m done doing some work tonight, I’ll be back soon, ok? If you haven’t done a patrol, do a patrol, and then I’ll be ready… Just not here.”

She didn’t look happy, but she also seemed to take something from that, and I would have to be willing to pay it because I had a retainer and work to do.

We had stuff we didn’t know about each other; I didn’t trust Pinky with all of my stuff, and one day we would part ways, but here and now, she was being good as gold with me, and I would not let it be said, that I didn’t pay a friend back in kind.

It was probably because my mood was so good.

That probably helped.

I’m sure it had nothing to do with it, especially not all the credits. Dear god, the credits. I could do so much with this, getting some stuff to binge-watch a show in peace, some snacks and drinks that wouldn’t even eat into the value of the final.

And now I had a bonus identity. I could register the Junker, pay my fare, pay for the repair, pay my tab + interest + three times that amount, burn half the credits on hookers and blow and still pay for the food. It was the kind of deal I would get when I was really fucked, and lady luck finally stopped kicking me in the cooch.

I didn’t know what I should pray for. If this was a side effect of my luck, I needed to pray for my life, but if not, I needed to pray for thanks. I could deal with that. Surely, it couldn’t be that bad.

“I could always just… Come with you?” she pointed out, “It’s not like I can’t take care of myself.”

At that, I hesitated.

“It’s… Not that kind of work,” the Dam pointed out.

“It’s a whole lot of old law work, Pinky,” I told her, “Just because you could do it doesn’t mean you should. The whole reason why people like me exist is to minimize the number of people like me.”

She seemed to be comforted not at all by that admittance, and I could understand why she wouldn’t be. The math was the Archanges work; it was also an after-the-fact thing, but the kind of thing that came up to explain why some people killing people was ok, actually.

The math went, one person kills another person. This was a bad thing. But now another person kills them right back. By killing a killer, the number of killers didn’t go down, but the first killer had placed themselves outside the law and was, therefore, not protected, leaving one killer free and clear. But, if that second killer killed a second killer, the number went down.

To the Archangels, this was a reasonable caveat, but they could be very cold and detached from the day-to-day lives of the flock they shepherded.

It was how bounty hunters came into being, but that same cold pathological shadow made it a grim thing.

“The fact that you grimaced like that is the exact reason I’m not bringing you Pinky, but I’ll be back before you know it. Besides…” I said, letting my mouth climb into a smirk, “Most of the work I’ll be doing is quiet, and you’re bound to draw eyes. No offence, but walking around with those out is not quiet,” I told her, pointing down at her chest.

It really was distracting, and there was no way she didn’t know that. I gave it a high chance that if I had a stone that gave me clothes when I transformed, it would show off enough skin to make me look like a harlot when the entire point was manipulating others.

“You’ll be back?” she asked.

“By the witching hour or not at all,” I told her before thinking of something clever and sticking out a pinkie. “Pinky promise?”

The tall woman groaned, the child did not like it, and the Dam rolled her eyes so hard that I heard it, even if I couldn’t see it, but Pinky got an ever so tiny smile, though her eyes were appraising.

“I’m sorry… I just couldn’t help myself,” I told them.

“I’ll kick your butt if you leave me hanging. I want to see your reaction to the mid-season reveal so badly,” she told me, taking up my Pinkie with one of hers and, in doing so, letting the puns win.

They were the father of all wordplay, and I was much like that father... Or more of a drunk uncle. Were pick-up lines the drunk uncle? I was losing track of where I was going with this; the alcohol was making my mind slide around a little, but such was where the best... or, I supposed, the most cursed ideas came from.

I slid that entire train of thought into a box, deciding that it was at least moderately cursed and going nowhere and focused up.

“I would expect nothing less. I do periodically need my ass kicked… Now, I’ll head off and do my best to map out everything… I’ll give you an update tomorrow before heading out,” I told her.

“I’ll do more than kick your ass. I still expect a girl's night with you, and since you’re so rich, you can pay,” she told me, stepping back to motion her sword down, “Oh, also, don’t stress yourself out,” she said to the Dam, “it’s especially bad while you’re still nursing.”

And like that, she was off, hoping on her flying death machine before flying off into the night… Which was still weirdly bright out, considering all the lights and the

The Dam sighed.

“She had to go reminding me… I hate to cut this heartfelt time with you short, but I need to be off. It’s getting late; they’ll be mewling now; I just know it.” She said, her voice dragging into something tired and rumbly.

And off they went.

I stood there, watching the woman carry a cat in one arm and a child in the other with equal importance, the little one looking back and saying, “Bye bye, crazy lady,” as they turned a corner and disappeared into the twists and turns of the city scape.

I let them go out of earshot, making sure not to speak loud enough for the kid to hear me muttering, “Fucking weird ass species, that one.”

“I personally think they were created like that.” Lilly said, “They’re early work, certainly. Pre-empire humanity’s templates were poor at best, and a partial cat isn’t balanced, not in a small form… Also, I’m ready to help you speed up your progress on your new windfall, though I don’t quite know what would be best.”

“I’ll pretend I understand what you mean,” I told her, “but I think you can probably help, especially if you can see some things through walls. Anything out of the ordinary could be helpful for the two we can work on tonight.”

“It’s not that hard to understand. You’re Human, but most templates are similar; they’re based on a proven design with minor alterations for minor desired traits... But that base is fully capable. The Dam's head is slightly disproportioned, and the small ones, like the bartender, have a speech impediment, along with their body. In a vacuum, they would likely be selected against, resulting in an eventual cascade toward extinction.” Lilly told me.

I thought about that a moment before beginning to move through the streets toward my first target, that of the neighbouring faction of ne’er do wells.

“I would imagine that with anyone else, that would be hyperbole. But you’re being serious,” I told her.

“The Dam doesn’t have hands, Jacalyn. A cat is more than capable of survival, but with an enlarged head, they would also have issues with childbirth. A generation of high infant and maternal mortality would be bad enough. And it would be worse with the small bodies and large heads of the smaller first-kin. The larger-bodied ones represent a far more balanced form. If you were to compare the number of first-kin, how many of each type have you found? What are the proportions? Those are de. They're issues for them,” Lilly said her tone was a rare one of triumph as she seemed to take pride in the topic.

And I could see the point she was trying to make, which was a mark of her growth. I had seen easily over a hundred of the two taller kinds. The bipedal cats and their weird cat-like expressions and the muscle women were found plenty, but the small forms... I had seen what, maybe twenty total. That was something that did strike me as rather telling, but only because Lilly had pointed out a line of reasoning behind it. It was something I might have noticed, but I wouldn't have placed it as important, much in the same way some random detail to Lilly might go without notice.

She was like me, but different, same core, different focus. And that growth interested me, it was good to see her not saying defective, like we were all precision parts with a few loose tolerances to many.

I mean... She stuttered it, but that was still progress.

“Shit, now I feel bad about it,” I told Lilly as I took a corner and made my way onto a thoroughfare; the best way I could think of was to make my way over to the next district because I could catch a ride with someone.

There were many a Lunatic on this road, though there were also guards about, their puke coloration like a bird showing off the ugliest plumage in existence as they kept the peace. I kept my distance, even if it was unlikely that I would be noticed as I tried to pick out someone with a cart.

Lilly kept me company as I spurred her on to talk about things I could barely comprehend, like body layouts and genetic inheritance, until I found my way over; the driver was confused by my choice of location, so he left quickly.

I could understand why he would be, the place was a slum, the ramshackle buildings standing four stories at least were dwarfed by the rises of the distant towers. The entire thing looked like it got taller further in; the buildings, even this far out, looked like they were stacked atop one another, as if they only had so much area, and they started building up, but no one had any intention of planning it out.

It was the most advanced slum I had ever seen; its organic stacking gave little rhyme or reason. There was, around the border of the district, a tiny wall, though it was more of a delineation kind of wall than a keep people out kind of wall. You could literally step over it.

There was a placard by the ‘gate,’ but it wasn’t written in the common tongue.

I let myself in, the metal plates of the old city in a city seemingly never replaced, the structure not dilapidated but dated, and the walls, floors and ceilings coated not in grime but a long history of habitation. I had come here for two main reasons. Number the first because the gang here had been acting fucky, and the Dam wanted to know what the fuck was going on… The second reason was that the point of contact for the goods was here on the edge, closer to the warehouses. Considering the other option would require me to approach government officials in a setting where others couldn’t overhear us talking, and thus, had to be done very delicately, this was the preferable option and the most time-sensitive one.

After all, with the loss of the goods the lunatics, that was to say insane, behind the attack I had blundered into would move. This meant that I needed information, and I needed to know where to go. Because I couldn’t find a damn map of the city worth a damn, and if finding a map of this place was like finding a heroin needle in a haystack. Not only was it a massive pain in the ass, but it was both unsanitary and would probably give you wasting sickness the second you got your hand on it.

Considering how this place was laid out, I could now understand why.

I made my way inside. The hallways along the edge of the area were thin corridors like an apartment, with long stretches of suffocating tightness that broke off and off and off in a confusing nightmare maze. It had maps inside. They did not help; each was wrong. If Lilly didn’t start chiming directions to help map out the nightmare I would be lost and I was glad I wasn't. It was the kind of layout that made my skin prickle as I slunk through the halls, walking past the inhabitants of the slum. Every corridor split, and the tight halls and tighter dwellings would make every step a fight through a choke point where you could be fought every foot from beside. One giant organically formed a kill box.

The people were worse.

They were grimy people, dirty people, but I could tell they were all in one another's pockets. It had a homey atmosphere, which it probably shouldn’t. It was just a memory of another time imprinted onto the present like a stamp that reminded me too much of the inside of the cramped compartments of ships and the never-ending metal halls and prefab modules of Pallas. These grungey people were my kind of people, but not in a good way. I knew them, even without meeting them, and I hated them. They might speak differently and look a little different, but I could see in them the same taint that made me hate Pallas.

The very fact that an outsider had come through would be repeated, the gangs would know I was snooping, they just wouldn’t know who was snooping. It limited my reach and my ability to find details. The best I would be getting was passive checks, and even that invited people to look straight back at me. When that was a grandma that was one thing, when it was five drugged up teenage boys with guns who had been given the mandate of heaven by a drug lord it was quite an issue. Worse, I bet they were probably also being paid in sex from equally drugged up teenage girls. I certainly wouldn't put it past them, sex and drugs were how you made boys into killers on the cheep, and everything here was cheep.

Great people... If you wanted to find a reason to put them down like the rabid animals they were, anyway.

Even so, I made my way around and let Lilly guide my path. It was a nightmare. Gangs, plural, weren’t just present but in force and part of normal society. It had more signs of organized crime than it had signs of habitation. Worse, as I came into the inner area, the area opened; the ‘streets,’ for what that word counted for, were dim of natural light from the towering pillars of the cityscape despite the continued light of the ‘night.’

There were useful vantages, roads over rooftops that let me peer down as if I was a sight-seer. I got to witness drugged shells of people passed out in the gutter and the crazed that always managed to pop up when you added together poverty and substance abuse. There were also patrols, just not from guards. Gangs enforced the peace here. There were a few special basket cases that seemed to make the hair rise on even the gang's necks, the kind of guy who argued with a brick wall kind of crazy.

I found that while the outer wall was a kind of den, the true focal points were the inner towers that reached a little higher than the outskirts, their tops open to see the view. That done, and still unable and unwilling to talk to the populace and give away the aim of my game, I moved toward the edge of my vantage of a walkway, the sounds of life beneath me reaching up through open windows.

I decided to smoke as I moved over and out towards the slightly open end, the average buildings dropping down to a comfortable three stories, the outer edge and the periodic towering housing blocks keeping the rooftop walkways in a comfortable shade away form the storefront lights.

I was moving to find the point of contact when I spotted a cluster of people moving along the road that stood out. The crowd stayed away from them; the gangs watched, and the way they moved drew my eye, slightly too precise for a gang. Their clothing had no sign of what or who they were. Well, most of their clothing.

Two of them were familiar, but one was different. She was being walked around, weapons pointed at her back where her arms were cuffed.

She still looked like shit, and so did Blackbird, the cocky shit walking around like he was a general leading a host.

“Now, what are these two chuckle fucks doing here?” I murmured to myself.

“And what are they doing together?” Lilly chimed in; my own suspicion mirrored back onto me.

And what were they doing together, moving toward the same place I was going? I already knew that she was part of the same organization, but I doupted she would give up her own. Blackbird carrying her around was also not what I would have expected.

“I suppose we’re going to find out,” I murmured, slipping Righty free, six cylinders of solid shot ready to part the group from the mortal coil.

And so we followed from behind, stalking them across the roofs of the slum.