She brings down her sword, cutting through the air as it makes its way to Takeshi’s head. The boy parries the blow and goes for a jab that Alex dodges, slashing at him as she sidesteps. It hits him in the shoulder and he grunts as what remains of his right arm begins to bruise. Alex backs away and resets her stance, she doesn’t have to, but this is a demonstration for the kids, not an actual match.
They go again and again to the cheers of a bunch of children.
Roan claps.
Takeshi isn’t an amateur with the blade, but he’s no master either. His foundations are as solid as steel, but he seems to struggle with the frenetic nature of combat. Which makes him difficult to overwhelm, but easy to predict, and she’s all about prediction. As a strike hits his leg Takeshi steps back and holds up a hand.
“Enough,” he says, “I think the children have gotten a good enough example, and I’ve received a good enough beating.”
Alex scowls at him, “we’ve barely fought at all.”
Takeshi raises a brow, “we’ve been sparring for half an hour.”
“Yeah, so?”
That actually earns a chuckle from the boy.
-
Alex brings the weight up, then brings it down.
Up and down, up and down.
The rhythm of panted breaths and tearing muscle. She’s been exercising a lot in her free time to make up for the lost muscle of the past few months. Although curiously she doesn’t feel any weaker, managing the same weight with the same consistency as though she still had that muscle. Probably more magic bullshit.
She wonders how much of that will encompass her life, it’s already saved her on multiple occasions, and now it seems to slowly be ingraining itself into everything she does. Shame she can’t really test anything except her mark until her soul is at least somewhat repaired. Speaking of, she hasn’t tested it since that first time, maybe it’s slightly better now? Or at least good enough where she can practice without curling up into a ball. Maybe she could find a way back into her soul space to speed up the process?
All in due time, she just has to stay alive. Which isn’t as hard as it should be considering her mark. She’s honestly kind of impressed that Sasha and Aki are still breathing if she were being honest. So many opportunities to die that she’s barely dodged because of mystical bullshit while their normal asses navigate a minefield.
She really needs to encourage them to learn some fucking magic.
All in due time.
“Missus Alex?”
A young girl's voice breaks her stream of consciousness. Alex racks the barbell and sits up to face her.
“Not a Missus,” Alex points out, “I’d need to be married for that.”
Ai’s face is a picture of confusion, “why?”
Alex shrugs, “It basically means that you’re someones ‘Missus’ while if your alone you’re just a Miss.”
“Do boys get called something other than mister?”
“Yes, I like to refer to them as ‘pussy ass bitches’”
Ai tilts her head, “That doesn’t sound right.”
Alex puffs out her chest, “Well I’m older, and stronger, so that makes me right.”
Ai scrunches up her face but chooses not to comment.
“So, what did you want?” Alex asks.
Ai looks down and shuffles her feet, “you fought the green and purple men right?”
Alex nods and leans forward, “yeah, why, looking for a story?”
Ai shakes her head, “just…were they scary?”
Alex is a bit taken aback by the question, “Yeah,” she says, “but not for me. I’m…special, hard to kill. But my friends aren’t, they're just as vulnerable as the next chump, so when we’d get into fights there was always the chance that I’d lose one of them. Made me take more risks so the bullets would fly towards me instead of them.”
Ai just nods, not commenting on the ‘special’ comment. “Will they come here?” Ai whispers.
Alex smiles and gets up to ruffle the girls hair, “this is the Crossroads Ai, safest place in Arthas, coming here with the intention for violence is practically suicide.”
-
Sasha is walking in circles, she can’t sit still, doing so is dangerous. So she walks in circles, her eyes pinging with a phone call from Alex. She stares at it, not answering, she can’t talk right now, she shouldn’t talk right now. The voicemail starts to play “hey Sasha just wanted to check and see if you’re okay. Tell me If you need anything alright?”
How nice. Alex is so nice. It’s a reminder, an important reminder.
She keeps walking.
-
“So is this like pasta?” Anya questions as she pokes it with her fork.
Both Fadi and Alex gasp, “That’s macarona bechamel girl, do not compare it to that second rate slop.” Fadi says
Anya scrunches her brow, “pasta’s pretty good though”
“Your taste buds are fucked then” Alex replies.
Anya shrugs and takes a bite of her meal, “eh, it’s okay. Little weird with the cream and meat. Not as good as pasta though.”
Both of them look at her scandalized to which the girl giggles.
“You’ve brought a blasphemer to my stall Alex” Fadi intones.
-
Anya skips through the crowds with childlike glee, she doesn’t get to go out often, considering how much Alex raves about the dangers of the city. She thinks she’s exaggerating honestly, at least until she saw her arm. How did she survive someone who could do that in one swing? Not that she’s complaining, other than a few acquaintances from the clinic, Alex is her only real friend in this city. She misses home a lot, but the opportunity to become a Maestro doesn’t grow on trees.
“Alex! We need to get you new clothes.” Anya states.
Alex groans but there’s a slight smile fighting it’s way onto her face, she can’t hide her excitement from Anya! She knows the needs of a maiden, and that is clothes, mocha, and gossip! She’ll get Alex hooked to at least one of those, and clothes are the most important contender. How can she survive with a near empty wardrobe? Insanity!
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“Ok, fine, but they have to match my gang colors. I don’t want to let anyone think I’m an easy target just ‘cuz I chose to wear green or some shit.”
Anya gives her a confused look, “wouldn’t that associate you with the Bastion though.”
Alex barks a laugh, “Do I look like a Bastion crony? Color isn’t our only way to tell which gang someones a part of. Take my Katana, or the Kingdoms weird as fuck fashion choices.”
“I don’t know, toga’s look kinda comfy, and those sashes are so stylish!”
“You’re a weird kid Anya.”
Anya puffs out her chest proudly, “I aim to impress!”
That gets a chuckle out of Alex.
They keep moving through the crowd, chatting idly. Alex avoids her war stories fortunately, knowing that Anya doesn’t really enjoy the topic. A lot of patients have been coming in lately, mostly gangers, and mostly because of bullets. Although there are a few who have survived explosions. Those are the worst by far, a bullet wound is fairly discrete if its a normal freaking bullet, but explosives? That leaves a lot of gore. On the plus side she’s getting more experience with skin grafts and puncture wounds, hooray! There isn’t really a set time for when she can become a Maestro, she could technically take the test now, she would fail but she could. So the more experience she earns the closer she gets to her passion.
Her goal is to be a Maestro by eighteen!
No slacking for that to happen. Still, she can enjoy moments like these, the many months where Alex was gone was…draining;and lonely, really lonely. But now she’s back! So they can make up for lost time.
Suddenly her vision is filled with stars and she stumbles to the ground. Somebody says something but it’s muddled by the throbbing of her head. She brings a hand up to her hair and feels something wet, she starts panicking. Her head whips around to find Alex impaling a boy with her sword. Blood coats the blade as his body slides of and Alex turns to face someone else.
“You crazy bitch!” Someone says, “you fucking killed Malcom.”
“He hurt my friend.” Alex growls in a tone Anya has never heard her use before, she doesn’t like it. It’s scary. Alex isn’t scary, she’s fun and grumpy, but not scary. Never scary. Anya looks at Alex as she squares up against three gangers pointing SMGs at her. They’re all wearing red, but it’s not the same shade of red that Alex wears, darker, more muddy. They also don’t have katana’s.
“That’s how beatdowns go, cunt! This wasn’t supposed to be a fucking execution. What the fuck is wrong with you?!?” She says as she waves her SMG at Alex. Anya looks around panicked, the crowd has cleared a little arena for them, some hurrying away and some watching.
“Help!” Anya screams, but nobody responds, “get the police!”
A few of the bystanders straight up laugh at her, “that’s a good one kid” says a man as he rubs tears out of his eyes. Anya looks perplexed at him, a kid just died, and two more are about to get gunned down, why are they laughing? What’s so funny?
“Your friend doesn’t know how this city works, does she.” One of the gangers sneer.
Alex ignores him.
“Anya, get the fuck out of here “ she says.
Anya stammers, “I-I can’t leave you.”
“Yes you can.” Alex says in the scary voice while staring at the three gangers, “and you will.”
Anya gulps down, and in shame goes to run away.
She barely makes it two steps before she’s gunned down.
-
“-So while you could use a single script hack to shut off all of someone’s cybernetics, it’ll have to contend with the firewalls of each cybernetic at the same time.” Aki says excitedly as Roan is enraptured, “Single scripts are better for small time shit, like hacking a vending machine or a lock. Chain scripts are the bread and butter of cybernetic quick hacks. Want to shut down someone's arm? Code a targeting script, an overheat script, a cooling shutdown script for each method possible, and voila. The arm’ll overheat and cause an emergency shutdown, making it functionally useless. Now, If you want an Overburn quick hack, you just add a script that stops the emergency shutdown. Those are better for internal cybernetics though, or eyes.”
Roan waves his hand like he’s in a class asking for permission to speak.
Aki nods at him.
{Can hack biochips?}
Aki tilts his head.
“Kind of, but not really. Biochips are made to be independent from the net, so if they had an access slot and you had a connection cord, you technically could. But then you’d have to focus on keeping your targets alive so you can actually klep their creds. Not really worth it”
Roan deflates a bit but asks his next question.
{How useful} he asks, {only rich have cybernetics}
Aki points at him, “that and the Bastion, but you just answered your own question. Only people with big money can afford cybernetics. So they're either rich or very effective soldiers, either way they’ll be much tougher to kill.”
He twirls his finger than points at his laptop.
“Quick hacks like these are their Achilles heel. Unless they got a trained netrunner to code their firewalls or set up defence Daemons, they’ll just have the standard package, making them helpless to the power of coding.”
The door bursts open and a bloodied Alex enters the room.
“Alex? What happened?” Aki asks.
“I need to talk to Ellie, now” she growls.
-
She sits on a couch in one of her warehouses, munching on an apple as she watches the mechanics work on the walkers. They’ve all been damaged, some of them need to be salvaged. What’s she doing here? Mostly professional curiosity, and it’s pretty hilarious to watch the underlings scramble once they realize who she is. She doesn’t like to flaunt her status, but occasionally she does just for kicks. She manifests a digital clock in her vision. Just a few minutes left. She already had to deal with the pink one, she still doesn’t know if that was the wisest investment, but it will be interesting. Now the tall one wants to chat, after getting herself bloody with some small time gangers. She wonders what she’s gonna ask, if it’s to exact revenge for her she’s going over to Lost Hope to slap that girl silly.
“Miss,” says Kirin, “is it necessary for you to be here? You’re making the workers nervous.”
Ellie shrugs, “It’s not my problem if they’ve got no backbone”
“Yes, but it’s not necessary for you to be here”
“No, but I'm curious about the actual state of our Walkers, instead of the little papers a bunch of suck ups send to my desk. So far I'm disappointed.”
Kirin sighs “please don’t purge your staff. Last time I had to do all the fucking work while we looked for more.”
“Oh I’ll only be getting rid of a few, the ones that met my expectations get to stay.”
Kirin grunts.
Her optics ring as someone tries to contact her.
Ellie accepts the call as her eyes turn yellow.
“I need a job,” Alex says instantly.
Ellie raises a brow, “feeling bold today are we, what, not even a hello?”
“Hello, I need a job.”
Now this is amusing, but also a little out of line. Can’t have that.
“Girl, it’s best if you remember who it is you’re talking to”
The line goes silent for a moment, but only a moment.
“Sorry,” she says, “but I need money, and I need it quick”
“A little desperate are we?”
“Yes”
Ellie takes a bite out of her apple. “Your going to have to tell me why”
The line is silent for a bit before Alex answers, “got into a fight. A friend got hurt, badly. Fucking idiot only has a basic insurance plan so their not covering the fucking bullet wounds-”
“And the extended stay” Ellie finishes for her.
Ellie feels like if she were face-to-face, she’d get a nod.
“They part of the gang?” Ellie already knows that she isn’t, but best not to let her little investment think that she’s spying on her. They always get so prickly when privacy’s involved.
“No,” she says.
“Then why should I care?” Ellie says simply, and she means it too, what the fuck does she care about some nobody intern? Why risk a perfectly good asset on a suicide run to keep that intern alive? She knows how much money hospital stays cost, the gangs are their biggest customers after all, the amount of work she’d need to do would need to be dangerous to get that kinda creds. Then again…If she survives she’ll be even more valuable. Hmmmm.
“...please Ellie. I need to do this, I’ll even do it at a discount, I don’t fucking care, just give me some jobs.”
Ellie mulls it over in her mind, investments are considered risks, and this is a little extreme so early. But the girl already survived being behind enemy lines, and from what she saw in that little scuffle she’s become someone to genuinely fear because of it.
“Alright,” Ellie says “I’ll throw you a bone. I’ve got a few fires that need to be put out, but keep the others out of it. I don’t want them dying on your little suicide mission.”