The neon logos of gaming corporations flickered across Rei's face as she leaned closer to the screen, fingers twitching over the controller. Luna sat cross-legged beside her sister, her lips pursed in concentration as their avatars battled through a war-torn cityscape.
"I've almost got the high score this time," Rei muttered, her character rounding a corner and unloading a clip into a cluster of enemy bots. Sparks flew, and the mechanical soldiers crumpled.
Luna snorted. "In your dreams, sis." Her avatar kicked down a door and sprayed the room with gunfire, racking up bonus points.
Their trash-talk dissolved into playful shoves and laughs—the timeless twin antics that provided solace in the antiseptic chill of their temporary quarters.
Two days had passed since they completed their bounty hunting training, and the commissioner hasn't contacted them yet.
Rei glanced at the computer terminal, its black screen like an unblinking eye waiting for new orders. How many more hours until—
The shrill tone of an incoming message shattered her focus. Luna whooped as her fighter jet blasted Rei's character into pixelated oblivion.
They dropped the controllers, scrambling for the terminal. Rei stabbed the display and Fiona's terse message filled the screen.
Her heart thudded as she scanned the update. A breathless cry burst from her lips. "We did it! We're hunters!"
Luna slammed into her, squealing joyously as they bounced around the cramped space in a tangle of flying limbs. After their training in combat sims and marksmanship drills and harrowing real-world scenarios, the grueling regimen had paid off.
"Can you believe it?" Luna crowed, eyes sparkling. "We're actual bounty hunters now!"
"With actual licenses to kick criminal ass all across this hellhole of a city." Rei wore a ferocious grin, adrenaline thrumming through her veins. “We will pay off our debt in no time.”
They basked in the triumph, lost in visions of tracking down Moreau City's most wanted vermin through its cyberpunk alleys and skidways. Their first genuine mission as legal hunters loomed before them, ripe with promise and peril.
But first, they had to claim their prize. Rei read the last lines of Fiona's message. "We need to hustle down to their headquarters and get our papers squared away."
Luna swept up her jacket, already moving toward the door. "Then let's not keep Lady Law waiting. This city's scum won't hunt itself."
The fire burned in their eyes as twin smiles stretched across their faces—the expressions of unleashed predators ready to stalk their neon-drenched urban jungle. A new, dangerous breed had been certified, one that would paint the streets in crimson retribution.
*****
A hazy mauve dusk cloaked Moreau City as Rei and Luna emerged from the police building, their new bounty hunter licenses clutched triumphantly in their paws. The elderly desk attendant, a grizzled bear woman straight out of a medieval fable, had offered one last piece of advice with her gravelly bleat.
"First place ya greenhorns should hit is the HUB. That's where all the real players congregate to swap intel and snag the hottest bounties." Her rheumy eyes glinted with sly mischief. "Course, finding the entrance is a whole 'nother trial. But I'd be a sorry disgrace not to at least point freshly-minted hunters in the right direction."
Following her crooked directions, the twins prowled the lurid, cyberpunk streets in search of the elusive Hunter Union Base. Bioluminescent signs flickered in a dozen diverse languages, advertising everything from narco-stims, bio-enhancements, and cyberware upgrades. Modded gangers and pleasure huskers leered from dingy alcoves with invasive optical enhancements.
The hairs along Luna's spine prickled beneath her blue jacket, her feline audits twitching at every shadowed sound. She gripped her gun in her holster with white knuckles. "This 'HUB' better reveal itself soon, or we're fresh meat."
"It's supposedly tucked away near those abandoned biomech plants on Dekkard Row." Rei's words emerged clipped, scarcely masking her nervous energy. Her pink feline eyes whirred as she scanned their surroundings for potential threats.
They prowled the desolate alleys and crumbling husks of factories, seeking any clue of the clandestine Guild HQ. Luna's tail lashed in frustration as the shadows deepened to inky black.
Just as she opened her mouth to suggest they call it a night, a dark figure appeared before her eyes in the shadow. The stream from the sewer vents gave the unknown entity a ghostly vibe.
Rei paused as the hairs on the back of her neck stood. “Someone is coming.”
Taking no chances, Luna dropped into a crouch, gun extended, feline eyes slitted against the stinging haze. She glimpsed the hulking silhouette—one she recognized with a surge of dismay as Rally, the dog bounty hunter who had saved her from a murderous brute last week.
"Well, well," rumbled the German shepherd's gravelly timbre. "I’m surprised to find you kittens here." He holstered his sidearm, smiling a lopsided grin. "What brings you here? More trouble?”
Rei shuffled awkwardly on her feet, blinking away the sting of smoke in the city air. "Rally! Um, yeah… We’re bounty hunters now! And we are looking for the HUB here. Can you show us where it is?”
"Bounty hunters, huh? And you wish me to point the way?" He barked a raucous laugh that set Rei's ears twitching. "I never thought you cuties would be interested in catching criminals for cash. But I’m not the type who gets into anyone’s business. Follow me close, and I will get you there.”
Luna shot her twin a sidelong look, nostrils flaring at the musky scent of damp canine radiating from their unlikely guide. She knew Rei's interest in their gruff savior had ventured beyond mere hero-worship. The girl could practically taste her sister's smitten pheromones, cloying and sweet.
Rather than voice her exasperation, Luna merely sheathed her gun and brushed her short blue hair. "Well, then? Are we just going to loiter here all night like street buskers? Lead the way, dog breath."
Rally flashed a toothy smirk and spun on his heels without response. Rei hurried to follow, pink eyes shining, while Luna brought up the rear with a martyred sigh. She hoped their crush's reputation for sniffing out Moreau City's most wanted would prove worth putting up with his ripe musk.
*****
The dank reek of stale sewage hung heavy as Rally ushered them deeper into the shadowed crevice between the rusted biomech factories. Rei wrinkled his nose but pressed onward, his cyber-lens zooming to scan every potential crevice or hiding spot. One didn't last long in Moreau's food chain by dropping their guard.
"Just a little further, kitties," Rally's gravelly voice drifted back. He paused beside a graffiti-scrawled wall, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air currents. Satisfied, he extended one calloused finger and depressed a concealed button.
With a pneumatic hiss, a section of the ferrocrete ground split open to reveal a descending stone staircase caked in grime. Rei exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Luna before their canine guide gestured them forward with a cocky grin.
"No point in hesitating at the threshold," he rumbled. "Either you want a piece of the action or you better crawl back to the MCPD's litter box."
Luna arched one navy brow but said nothing, instead shoving past Rally to lead the way with her chin jutting out defiantly. Rei lingered a half-step behind, basking in their savior's musky, masculine scent until a sharp elbow in his side jolted him into motion.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
They descended through subterranean shadows into an expansive grotto lit by flickering neon signs and holographic wanted bulletins. A whole bustling town seemed to thrive beneath the city streets—ramshackle vendor stalls overflowed with an eclectic array of weapons, cyberware, and narco-vices. Aramid-clad bounty hunters of every transhuman variety lounged on battered sofas, drinking and dicing amid raucous laughter. A sewer river flowed through the chamber to a tunnel at the end.
Rei gaped, completely unprepared for the thrumming hive of illicit activity tucked away in these tunnels. Even with their training, the MCPD had given no inkling the city's bounty hunter backbone operated in such anarchic independence.
"Welcome to the HUB, kits," Rally announced with a sweep of his burly arms. "The biggest little underground guild beneath Moreau City." His smile flashed, one canine tusk peeking over his bottom lip. "I'd offer a more extensive orientation, but we've got a strict don't-ask, don't-smell policy down here."
They fell into step beside him as he wove through the buzzing warrens. There, no one batted an eye at the eccentric hybridized patrons, not even when a cheetah-woman sporting scorpion arc-whips sauntered past with a swish of her spotted tail.
"As you've probably guessed, this 'Hunter Union Base' operates completely off any corporation grid," Rally explained without preamble. "We're the anti-establishment's stopgap against the norms who think they run this burg."
He spit over his shoulder, clearly holding zero love for the corporatist powers controlling the city's aboveground operations. "Laws and jurisdictions are just red tape down here. All that matters is who's got the biggest set of synth-brass balls and whose will is strongest."
Rei swallowed hard, mouth abruptly dry as the true implications settled over him. They'd willingly crossed the threshold into a world completely untamed by legal constraints.
Still, Luna seemed utterly nonplussed, sauntering along with her typical hunter's swagger. "So," she prompted their disheveled guide, "I take it this little underground outpost has its fingers in all the vices upstairs? How's a fresh-faced hunter supposed to stake their rep when the whole system is off the corporatists' books?"
Rally barked out a laugh, slapping one meaty paw against a nearby vending kiosk. "Quick study, I like that! You're damned right this place deals in all the 'extracurriculars'—anything from third-eye narco-stims to black-market cyber-mods to hacking the latest cloaking tech or smart-fabric armor. We've got market tentacles wriggling every which way."
His smile turned wolfish as he leaned closer, hot breath ruffling the fur on Rei's cheek. "But for a kit still working on cutting their fangs, I'd suggest starting smaller. Get your hands wet with some bounties on small-fry gangers or hustlers first."
Rei's heart hammered like a cybernetically enhanced jackhammer against his ribs. Every word from Rally's growling timbre made the young feline's pulse race even hotter.
Oblivious to her sister's distraction, Luna nodded once in understanding. "Any chance a pair of fresh hunters might get their claws on some intel from a...reputable source? For the right price, of course?"
"For you two?" Rally smirked, his augmented gaze roving over their lithe frames with a glimmer of appreciation that made Rei's tail frizz behind him. "I might just be able to hook you up with a few names you can trust down here. 'Course, depending how well you establish your reps, you might earn yourselves a handler who can cut through the noise."
He clapped Rei hard enough on the shoulder to make the younger cat stagger. Luna shot her twin with a knowing look that drew an indigo flush beneath her cheeks.
The pulsating neon signs and holographic billboards bathed everything in lurid shades of electric blues and burning crimsons as Rally led them through the labyrinthine underbelly of the HUB. He seemed to take a perverse glee in forcing the freshly initiated twins to witness the full unvarnished depravity of Moreau City's seedy underbelly.
Eventually, he waved them toward a shop in a wall advertising "Gearhead Shack.”
"This hole-in-the-wall may not look like much," Rally growled over the cacophony of jeers and drunken catcalls assaulting them from all sides. "But trust me, if you two fledglings are serious about establishing yourselves on the hunt, this is one of the first stops you'll want to hit."
He pushed through a battered steel door; the hinges groaning in protest. A waft of solvent and scorched circuitry flooded out to accost their sensitive feline nostrils. Inside, a compact workspace overflowed with an incomprehensible jumble of wires, spare parts, and half-dismantled robotic limbs. A pair of dexterous hands moved with blurring speed amid the chaos, re-routing cables and soldering components with dizzying efficiency.
"Oi, Hiro!" Rally barked, making Rei's cat ears bristle. "We've got some fresh meat for you to sink your molars into."
The slim, crow-tousled young man spun on his stool, goggles askew over magnified eyes. Despite his youthful features, the intense focus burning behind those obsidian orbs hinted at an old soul.
"Well, well," he murmured in greeting, mopping his sweaty brow with the back of one grease-stained hand. "If it isn't the hot dog himself, sniffing around my workshop again." His smile turned lopsided as he regarded Rei and Luna hovering uncertainty in the doorway. "Let me guess - more strays in need of some serious gear upgrades before the predators pick them clean?"
Rally snorted smoke through his nostrils. "Can it with the puppy puns, kid. I'm just playing den mother for the MCPD's latest batch of prospects." He jerked his muzzle toward the twins. "Bounty hunters Rei and Luna, meet Hiro Watanabe - the HUB's resident genius when it comes to modding tech no megacorp would ever dream of certifying."
Hiro cocked one dark brow, dragging his goggles up to rest amid the sweat-matted spikes of his hair. His appraising stare flickered over the twins with open appreciation. "Well, I'll be an uplinked malware virus..." He let out a long, low whistle. "I'd heard we had some fresh blood circulating from the Constables' kennel, but nobody mentioned they were recruiting actual idols."
Luna's jaw dropped. "H-how did you—?"
"Please." Hiro flashed a rakish grin. "You two might fly under those sexy anonymity filters outside, but I'd recognize those faces anywhere.”
Rounding his workbench, he thrust out one calloused hand to grasp Rei's in a firm shake, clearly unfazed by the cybernetic augmentations woven beneath his fur. "Been a fan since your debut, no lie. Your music kept me busy during my work.”
He winked one eye conspiratorially. "But don't worry—your secret's safe in the HUB's twisting catacombs. Nobody breaks that code of silence if they know what's good for 'em."
From the corner of her eye, Luna caught the hint of a sly grin curving Rally's muzzle as he regarded her with open amusement. Her flush deepened at the teasing glint in his wolfish gaze. Straightening her spine, she pasted on her best haughty performer's scowl.
"We'd appreciate you keeping our...other vocations to yourself," she bit out with as much composure as she could muster. "At least until we've established ourselves as legitimate hunters worth taking seriously."
The hint of pleading vulnerability in her tone seemed to disarm the young techie, who merely nodded and gestured toward his cluttered workspace.
"Fair enough, anything to keep talent like yourselves in the groove." He scooped up a battered felt-tip marker and tossed it toward Rei with a wink. "Maybe you can grease my palm by slapping some fresh ink on my humble little operation here."
Chuckling under his breath, Rei snagged the pen with ease and moved to accommodate the request by autographing a nearby toolbox. Luna rolled her eyes but did the same, unable to resist showing off her elegant calligraphy scripted beneath his own hasty scrawl.
Hiro beamed like a pup presented with a fresh bone as he regarded their twin signatures. "Seriously, you two are gonna go far in this burg with skills like that. Speaking of which..." He cast a meaningful glance toward Rally hovering nearby. "Maybe the big dog here can throw a few recommendations your way about essential tech upgrades for greenhorns hunting their first bounties?"
The dog man's husky rumble made both twins start like cornered prey. "Way ahead of you, kid. Got plenty of armor mods and custom augmentations in mind for our little furballs." His fangs glinted in the crimson underglow as he regarded them with naked hunger. "Believe me, they'll be kitted to the synthetic whiskers by the time I'm done prepping their first live hunt…”
*****
The throbbing bass line and screeching synthpunk riffs assaulted Rei's heightened senses like an auditory migraine as Rally pushed open the battered steel door. A haze of acrid smoke and spilled alcohol fumes wafted outward, stinging his eyes and nostrils with their noxious blend.
Beneath the pulse of crimson and indigo lighting, the dingy dive bar known as Laser Blast teemed with the most vicious assortment of felons and mercenaries Rei had ever witnessed outside a prison deadlock. Sideways glares from cold, pitiless eyes followed their progression through the crowded space, sizing them up like fresh wounded gazelle stumbling into a lion's den.
Hands drifted toward concealed holsters or wickedly curved cyber-blades as the restless mob of hunters parted just enough to allow them through the gauntlet of hardened stares. A massive Sasquatch-like brute flexed his knuckle clusters menacingly until Luna met his sneer with a challenging glare that had the beast's lumbering footsteps faltering.
Rally seemed oblivious to the palpable tension sizzling through the air, or maybe he simply basked in it like a lizard soaking up gamma rays. He chuckled gruffly at the upturned muzzles and curled lips tracking their every move toward the pitted bar top.
"I'd get used to those warm welcomes, kittens," he rumbled without breaking stride. "Most of the crusty vets in here only respect one breed of hunter - the kind that walks softly but still kicks enough tail to earn their place at the trough."
He slapped his palm against the sticky bar with enough force to rattle the metal stools bolted along its length. "Oi, Chico! You awake under that mountain of cheap tequila or what?"
A grizzled, whiskered face resembling an ancient chihuahua emerged slowly from behind the shelter of teetering bottle pyramids, tongue lolling out to lick his leathery chops. Despite the midget's diminutive stature—only a meter in height even counting the cybernetic limbs extending from his battered torso—there was a fierce, ruthless intellect smoldering in those beady black eyes.
"Well, well..." he rasped in a grating baritone at odds with his miniature frame. His gaze swept over Rei and Luna with naked disdain. "The litter keeps growing bigger." Pointed metallic fangs glinted as his lipless muzzle stretched in an approximation of a smile. "I give this sad batch of MCPD rejects a week before they hand in their licenses and crawl back to their reggie cages."
Rei's hackles rose at the insult, but before he could bristle a retort, Luna cut him off with a fierce growl of her own.
"Keep running that toxic muzzle, runt, and you'll be guzzling your next meal through a straw before this 'sad batch' is done putting your scraggly ass on ice."
Instead of reacting with anger or aggression, Chico merely tossed back his whiskey head and brayed with genuine laughter. "Girl's got a definite set of synth-brass ones on her! I like that..." He slapped the bar with a clang of metal on metal, jerking his chin toward the gleaming taps. "So what'll it be, fur-lices? Laser Blast serves up a mean pitcher of deionized diesel for any wanna-be hunters thirsty for an honest night's hydration."
Rally rumbled out an appreciative chuckle, easing himself onto a stool and shaking his tousled head at Luna's simmering affront. "Stand down, little hellcat. The puny scrap dog was just messing with your nerves to gauge if you've got thicker skin than that lycra onesie." Turning back to Chico without missing a beat, he jerked his thumb toward the indignant twins. "Fix them up a couple of Meteor Showers. But keep 'em virgin—I don't need these two getting hammered before their first live bounty drops."
Luna snarled wordlessly, but took the stool beside Rei, arms crossed over her lithe frame in a sulk. Her sister squeezed her knee once in silent commiseration before turning a diplomatic smile toward their diminutive host.
"We'd appreciate anything that doesn't come with an extortion tax or surprise toxin spiking. Just your standard Showers would be great, thanks."
Maybe it was the lack of hostility or righteous indignation in her tone, but something about Rei's calm acceptance seemed to pacify the grizzled chihuahua. With a few deft strokes of his artificial paws, Chico assembled their orders with surprising finesse, sliding two lurid magenta martinis dripping with condensation toward the huntress twins.
"You two better sip slow, and not just 'cause of the syrupy kick," he warned in a conspiratorial rasp. "I got a feeling Rally's saving the real high-proof hellfire for when the action starts..."
He punctuated the statement by uncapping a fresh bottle of amber liquid and sloshing a generous glug into a steel vessel which he kicked toward the wolfman with a clang. Rally snatched it up without missing a beat, clinking his glass against Rei's offered one.
"To new blood in the Concrete Jungle...and their first taste of the hunt." His smile turned downright predatory as he locked gazes with the younger male. "May you bathe in the neon thrill of hot crimson vengeance under these moonless streets."
Luna steeled herself with a bracing sip of her lurid cocktail. Beside her, Rei mirrored the bravado with a cocky grin playing over his features.
Together, they chorused their first toast to a new way of life in this twisting underworld.
"To earn our fangs like true Hunters of Moreau City!”