I slammed to an abrupt halt in the air, feeling the weight of my armor slam into me as I jarred against my harness, controlling my rapid breathing to ward off the blackout that always loomed right at the edges of flight. I gave myself a quarter of a second to reorient, and then hit it again, firing straight down in a boost-assisted dive.

The swarm of biological semi-sentient needles tore through the air where I'd hovered and began turning in a wide arc back towards me again, correcting to chase ceaselessly after me.

In the moment, however, I had a few seconds respite from their chase, and unloaded two full salvos of missiles from my arm launchers, and then peppered the husk of bone and sinew with AP rounds as I accelerated off again, hearing the satisfactory crunch of meat exploding as the micro-missiles found their mark.

I loved Athan dearly, and did not regret any time I had spent with him or in pursuit of him, but things were often more visceral, simple, and downright enjoyable without him. Pitting strength against strength, on the truest competition there was, a game of life and death where only one victor could emerge, it truly was what I lived for.

And with luck, what the hideous flesh-beast beneath me would die for. It was an Exhuman of biological mastery, shaping and reshaping itself to suit the flow of battle. It was an unspeakable horror of the truest sense, attacking by one means, only to change tact with a sudden explosion of gore and a new set of limbs bursting forth.

He...or she, whichever it had once been...roared his disapproval of the incendiary warheads in the missiles I'd fired, and flailed, shifting its shape randomly to extinguish the flames which clung tenaciously to it. It stopped, rolled, even tried to envelop the flames in new folds of flesh, however painful that must have been.

The damned monstrosity stood no chance as the hellfire consumed it. This was a specially formulated chemical agent which released its own oxygen as it burned. Without specific countermeasures or a body of water to dilute and extinguish the solution at once, it would continue to burn for several minutes unstoppably.

By the end of those minutes, the beast had shuddered and shrieked to a halt, and naught remained of it by the lingering smell of burning flesh and a husk filled with embers. The needles had been driven into the ground, chasing me in a blind dive, the acid it had spewed at me would be neutralized and removed, and the mucus membranes it had slung between buildings…

...well, I was not sure how they would clean those, but I wouldn't have to partake in the messy affair, so it was of no concern.

I allowed myself a moment of repose near the wretched creature's remains to give the scene a moment of finality. Forced myself to stare at its twisted, tortured, and very extremely dead shell. Come to terms with the realization that this horror existed, yes, but also that it was dead.

I found this was necessary to keep beasts such as these from creeping into my dreams at night. Others in my occupation tended towards more public and raucous celebrations which gave them the closure and finality they needed to close the book on an Exhuman, as it were, but I found it impossible to juxtapose a monstrous death as part of a civilized life.

One more moment in the air watching the dread thing and I was off. Back to my hotel, not a glamourous base of operations, but my current one.

Half an hour later, I was stripping in front of mirrored closet in the narrow confines of my hotel, stylus hanging out of my mouth while I filed a report on a tablet holo.

The bounty on this Exhuman had been exceptionally high, and given its combat potential, unpredictability, and love of violence, I understood exactly why.

Blackett had been true to his word and rescinded the criminal charges even before leaving the battlefield, and I had no issue in procuring medical aid or reinstating myself with the association. My family, however, saw me as still tainted and refused all attempts to contact them. I was not hurting financially, but I did not have the safety buffer I once did. I appreciated the large bounty's convenient timing.

Of course, I would have taken it even were I not in financial hardship. At the association, I was the 'crazy one', as it were, who took the bounties which others deemed too dangerous. Let the others squabble about the easy money or good publicity of working low-pay, low-risk bounties. Removing filth from the earth was what drove me.

And it did not hurt that it happened to be fantastically lucrative, I thought as I watched the credits roll into my account. Of course at least a half of it would be gone to taxes, refuel and repairs, the expensive ordinance I'd used, administrative fees, association cut, etc., etc..

I got the last of my armor off and put it on the counter, perilously close to the sink, with the rest, and unzipped my flight suit with a contented sigh, feeling my skin prickle back to life as I shook the creases out of my tank top.

The room's holo lit up and rung. A call?

I walked to the bed area, still wearing half the flight suit still, the top half hanging from my hips and tapped a button on the small holo on the wall.

"Hello, Ms. Karu? Please excuse the interruption."

"It is no problem. What seems to be the issue?"

"No issue, ma'am. You have a visitor waiting at the reception counter."

"I see...thank you."

I tapped the panel and hung up. A visitor? Completely unexpected. The only people I was expecting to contact me were Lia and AEGIS, and they wouldn't know my exact whereabouts at any given time...even I didn't, moving wherever the posted bounties took me. Also, I assumed they had the decency to call before appearing, unannounced.

I frowned. A trap, perhaps. I had a concealed carry permit of course, but any firearms I had on me could hardly be concealed. Unlike the event with the terrapath in Newbruck, this was a planned op, and I had packed accordingly. No point in bringing a small-caliber weapon.

Which meant...either I met this visitor fully naked, or fully loaded, so to speak. But which?

I looked at the mirrored closet in the bathroom, my armor visible on the countertop in its reflection, and rubbed at an angry spot in my armpit where the harness had rubbed my sports bra into my flesh.

To hell with it, naked it was.

Not...literally naked, though I did finish disrobing entirely so that I could put on jeans and a beige sweater. I likely should have showered, but the guest, whoever they were, was already waiting. My subtle musk would have to be their penance for dropping in unexpectedly.

I was still wary until I saw the figure loitering at the counter, a black man with short dreads tied up in a ponytail with a beard short enough to look accidental, but groomed enough to definitely not be. He smiled broadly at me and opened his arms welcomingly as I approached.

"Karu! Wan love, my yute!"

"Deej, it is good to see you," I said, with a smile. "What brings you here?"

"The monster you put down. He'd been tearin' up the city for days, and I thought, no Karu means these monsters gonna run out of control. Didn't think you'd be back so soon."

"I'm sorry, I hadn't seen you'd taken the contract. You know I never would have had I seen--"

"I hadn't, don't you worry," he gave me another easy smile. "Wasn't sure I was up to it, but I thought, someone otta do it, yah?"

I, like everyone in the agency, loved Deej, I was fairly certain. He was a solid compatriot, capable, yet compassionate, strong enough to earn respect, but easygoing enough to avoid enemies. He slipped in and out of proper English and some Jamaican slang as ever it suit him, which was jarring to those unaccustomed, but as I grew to know him, I realized it had more to do with the subject matter and less with how serious he was being.

His name was also not actually Deej. That was a hunter alias, as nearly all of us had. Typically, his real name would be carefully-protected information, but Deej had no problem with letting everybody know his name was really Rojê Castillo, and yes, he was a half-Spanish, half-black Jamaican-American.

"Yes, my apologies for being lax as of late," I said with a sigh. Deej indicated we should walk and talk, and we left the poor girl behind the counter in peace and headed for the front door. "Things have been complicated for me recently."

"I heard. I'm surprised there's any XPCA left after hearing Karu was after 'em."

"I wasn't after them, they were after me."

"Aha, but you's a hunta', don't nobody stay huntin' Karu for long before she's after 'em."

I smiled despite the ridiculousness of the complement. Deej steered us into one of the small expensive bars that always seemed to crop up around hotels for tourists too lazy to venture into the city proper but still needing to hemorrhage money and imbibe alcohol.

"It's my treat," he said, reading my sour face.

"It's noon. I find the concept of drinking at noon absurd, no matter who is treating whom."

"Well then I'll drink and order you something to hold and find absurd," he said grinning.

Of course he did exactly that, and I found myself in a small booth with a mojito in my hand, sitting opposite his rum and coke and grinning face. He took a swig and slouched.

"My yute, I heard yah was back in town so fast, after all the trouble out there...and I just had one question. It's why I came looking you up after your fight. Is why you holdin' that drink, yah?"

"What's your question then?" I took a sip of the drink and found it weak. More like a mint daiquiri than a real mojito. But we were in a crappy tourist bar, what did I expect?

"Are ya feelin' irie?"

"What?"

"Are you feeling alright?"

"Why...why wouldn't I be?" I was a little stunned by this sudden prying into my personal life. People at the association often had an almost zealous line drawn between personal and professional lives by tradition.

"Because you just killed a ton of the good guys to protect an Exhuman. Everyone at the agency heard about it, and now suddenly, you ain't out there, and you back here. Doesn't take a genius to see that you boy is gone taken, and you back killin' the bad man like it's not the weekend."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"I don't see your point."

"Yah, you do, Karu. I may not buy you drinks every day, but we bredren. I ain't Luminary, and when something happens to you, I worry."

"So what happened to me that makes you feel you must worry?" I asked. I was fishing to see how much he knew, as much as I was trying to avoid the subject.

He sighed, probably already aware of my game. "You got a boy worth fighting over, worth dying over, and he's gone. And now you're back pretending all is irie, and wearin' a jetpack and a smile. Ain't no good."

I took another drink. This was exactly the reason people liked Deej so much. He wasn't afraid to ask the questions he thought needed asking, and thought they needed asking because he was a good guy.

"Look. I appreciate the concern, I do. Unfortunately, how I am feeling is not important right now. Whether I'm happy, or mad, or crying myself to sleep every night, none of that brings him closer to returned to me. I know not what I can do, and so I am simply doing as I always have. Be prepared, keep an eye and ear open, protect the meek."

"That's no way to live."

"Maybe in the long run, but right now, it's a fine way to live. Asht--the...the man, he is strong. He radiates with a will and destiny that far outshines my own. Whatever God has in store for him, I know it will not be so inglorious as vanishing into the halls of the XPCA and never again seeing the sun. Be it in a month or five years, I must simply have faith and be ready."

"Ready for what, I wonder. You make it sound like a prison break."

"I don't know," I said, sighing and leaning back in the uncomfortable booth. "I am supposed to hear from some friends, but it's been over a week and still nothing. I checked my wrist holo and then remembered I wasn't wearing my suit.

He finished his drink and smiled. "I know something the two of us can do that would take your minds off the man for a while. Like old times, when you were new at the agency, yah?"

"You...you're serious?" I asked.

"As ever," he said with a grin.

"Things are not as they were before. I am no starry-eyed cadet, lost in the big scary world. I am a full hunter, and have been for years now. I do not think you will find me easy prey."

I was grinning, I realized, and too late realized that was exactly what he had been going for. How much attention had this man been paying me these years to know exactly how to push my buttons?

"I'm counting on it. I have a few new tricks I think you'll like as well."

"Where do you want to do it? We will need somewhere large and deserted if we do not wish to make a scene."

"It's Phoenix," he said with a shrug. "There's nothing but large and deserted in every direction from here."

"Let us call it west, then," I said with a grin.

"See you in fifteen?"

I slammed the rest of my drink and stood. "See you there, then."

About twelve minutes later, I was back in the air, unconcerned with the chafing in my armpits as I flew west, visor scanning for his IFF transponder. There, in the middle of vast nothingness, dirt and scrubby round bushes and maybe the odd rock, he was waiting for me.

Like me, he was all geared up. Taking the punnier approach, Deej was his name, and sound was his means of attack. He had a modified exosuit which bore speakers instead of weapons, and I knew from experience that his onboard systems could determine the resonating frequency of any substance he tapped with an echoing pulse and shatter it with a focused resonating blast of sound.

Any material, any distance, practically, in any direction. It was no wonder he was still a hunter, even if he was already thirty when I first joined. I flew to a halt next to him and touched down, taking a few steps to arrest my sloppy landing.

"You're late!" he shouted, his voice synthesized, but instead of coming out robotic and emotionless like most exosuits had, his was enhanced, his deep voice crisp with rich, flavorful tones. It reverberated through me, and almost made me feel like the sound was coming from my own lungs.

"I am two minutes early!"

"I'm here first, and that means you late!" He laughed. His exosuit was also unusual that instead of a HUD, he had a transparent dome where you could see him and he could see you. No need for fancy optics or hiding behind a mask, Deej preferred things the old-fashioned way.

"Just like old times?" I asked, hovering into the air.

"Let's say first one knocked on their ass loses, yah?"

"I have the advantage of my ass being in the air."

"And also much smaller and nicer than mine, but it still works for me," he replied.

"Fair enough, old man!" I shouted.

And we began.

As I darted around, firing disarmed micro-missiles at the exosuit, I had flashbacks to when I was new at the agency and Deej had taken me under his wing, along with a couple of the other senior members. At the time I was surly and lost, committed to nothing more than improvement and vengeance, in a rush to purify the world of all of its evils overnight.

I still was, in a way, but somewhere along the path, I had turned from fighting him with a grimace to doing so with a grin. We were old friends, he and I, as close as any got in a business where every contract could be one's last. Both of us loved the thrill of the fight, pushing ourselves to our limits, pressing our strength and our wills into an opponent until one of them broke.

Today, I decided, that one wouldn't be me.

Also unlike most exosuits, Deej was fast. He was a powerfully built man, but I believed his best event would be a 20-meter sprint. Almost as easily as I sailed through the air on my plasma wings, he and his exosuit tore across the ground, zig-zagging lightning quick, outpacing and confusing my missiles until they hit each other or simply fell to the ground in defeat.

His suit was mostly black with yellow trim, and was slimmer than most models, but also brimming with thrusters on every major surface. In a moment he could skate to and fro, gliding in circles around you. Not around me, of course, being in the air, but that's where the sonic blasts came in.

A direct hit could punch me out of the sky or shatter all my armor, or even my bones, instantly. I doubted he'd have it cranked up that high for a little sparring match, but he did have to turn it up enough to knock me down. My job was to keep myself from getting direct hit, which was difficult given the lack of cover out here, but he did still have to aim if he wanted any real force in his blows.

I twisted as I fired low-energy lasers directly into his face, hoping to blind him, but he'd predicted where I'd exit my loop and clipped me with a blast. Even indirectly, it set my flight path wobbling and made my leg vibrate weirdly, where the blast had hit me most directly.

I soared off, but my leg just kept vibrating. I gave it a shake to restore some feeling to it and then a moment later, the shinguard on my armor simply shattered.

"Hey, that was expensive!" I yelled.

He laughed. "Then don't get hit!"

Some stupid new trick of his about resonating frequencies, I was sure. I wasn't a green rookie anymore, two could play at that game. I glanced up and left within my visor's HUD and activated a different row of micro-missiles, feeling the servos work in my arms as the new battery loaded.

Knowing he was too fast and smart to rely on the missile's tracking alone, I decided to deliver them personally. I stopped to turn, showing myself for a fraction of a second, and then, knowing he'd seen me and was already firing on my facing, fired backwards at full-force, straight down and back into him.

I felt his blasts rip through the air near me, enough to set one of my shoulders vibrating, and slapped the armor piece to cancel out its internal harmonics with some good old concussive percussion, and then, as I flew past him backwards, unloaded a chain of missiles point-blank.

At least two or three got him before he could swerve out of their way, but the damage was done. Where the impacts had landed, adhesive goo began to spread, creeping its way across and into seams in his suit, immobilizing him and plugging air intakes and thrusters.

"Oh, that is dirty," he said, with a grin. "Yah think the hotel does dry cleanin'?"

He was slowed down, and more importantly, his means of evasion were decreased with the loss of half of his thrusters. Instead of being able to instantly rocket away in any direction, he only had a few options now. Forward, backwards, to the right, or somewhere in between. It gave me a blind spot, and I punished him ruthlessly for it.

He was still an incredible old hunter, however, and battled me bitterly, even at only half capacity. We spent several minutes circling and picking at each other, creating a beautiful spectacle of glowing thruster flare and blue plasma, explosions and gunfire, two friends dancing in the midday desert sun without a care.

I couldn't knock him down though. Even using live rounds, I doubted I could punch the exosuit enough to knock him over without killing him in the process, and I obviously wasn't using those. I would have to get more creative. Or...less.

The adhesive was beginning to go. This whole time, he'd been working away at it, pitting the enormous strength of the exosuit against the restricting foam until finally, it began to crack and tear. Ironically, if it had been anywhere but on his body, he could have shattered it with a single sound, but his suit was obviously not designed to shoot itself.

I had been working my way in closer and lower now. I only had a few more moments before he was totally free and I'd lose my mobility edge against him. I had the option of either re-upping the adhesive, going in for the kill, or trying something totally crazy.

So of course, it was time for option C.

Now at his level, hovering only inches from the ground, I moved around him as fast as he moved around the rocky sand. I was a mirage, appearing and disappearing all around him, peppering him with distracting gun and laser fire, while inching ever closer, imperceptibly.

In the same moment I saw his arm snap free from the adhesive, I struck, suddenly appearing behind him and landing bodily on top of him, or jumping on his back, as it were. He laughed as he teetered forward, looking over his shoulder through the clear domed helmet at me. I realized I was laughing too, as I clung to him like a backpack.

In a moment, he snapped both arms forward and I felt more than heard a sonic boom, as an enormous acoustic shockwave went off between him and the ground he was falling towards. The explosion hurtled both of us in the air, spinning slowly as we hurtled back down towards the earth, I realized I was going to hit first.

He was going to crush me, if I stayed on his back.

My wings deployed with a thought, but I couldn't move. I snapped my head downwards to look at where my arm was lodged, and my visor helpfully pinpointed adhesive residue across his back which I was now stuck in.

He laughed maniacally as we sailed down towards the earth, my jetpack doing everything in its power to right us and get me out from under him, but it was incapable of moving anything so large and heavy as an exosuit.

The ground raced towards us. I closed my eyes. Even with them closed, I could hear the altimeter screaming in my ears, saw the numbers flashing down before my eyelids.

There was a crash. A titanic, earth-shuddering crash. I kept my eyes scrunched closed, wondering what the damage was going to be. If I needed a regenerator again so soon.

I...never touched the ground. Even falling back-first, he'd locked his suit's arms and legs bending backwards so they would impact the ground first, and the sheer strength of the exosuit absorbed the impact without bending or failing. He held both of us off the ground, bent over backwards like some insane crab.

And then, slowly, gently even, he lowered the arch of his back until my butt touched the ground.

"Point for Deej!" he shouted. I sighed. Just like old times. With a flourish, he spun and landed back on his feet, and then gingerly peeled me off his back, the huge servos of the exosuit insistently tearing at the stubborn gel until I was free.

"How did you know I was going to do that?" I asked, breathing heavily and resting on my butt, since he'd worked so hard to put me on it.

"I didn't, of course. One never knows what will happen in a battle, just adapts."

"Well, you adapted the hell out of me. I thought for sure I had you."

He laughed and began the process of stepping out of his suit.

"Care for another drink?" He asked.

"It is only one."

"I heard complainin' earlier about drinkin' at noon, not one," he said with a grin. "Your treat, this time?"

"I suppose I owe you at least that much. You've done me a huge service yet again, Deej. I do not know how I can repay you."

"Don't thank me just yet," he said with an even cockier grin. "I talked to some of the others at the association, and, well, you may not be the most popular, but we all agree that you're the most right. If there's trouble with you and your man, we be behind yah."

"I appreciate that, too," I said, smiling.

"No, I don't think you do. 'Cuz you see, this ain't just a we support yah in some nebulous way. We got ourselves a plan."

We linked comms and chatted about what he'd spoken about with the others and how we could move forward from here, and the more I heard, the more I liked where this was going.

We were almost at the bar when I got a message from AEGIS, confirming they had also begun operations on Athan, and also, hi, how was I? I felt akin to a school girl texting back her best friend as I loosely outlined the salient points of my life and inquired into hers.

Athan, Lia, AEGIS, even Saga, and now Deej and the others. Truly, God must bless my works to grace me with such good friendships in this life. I realized, even as the two of us pulled up to a bar, me landing in the doorway in full airborne armor and him leaving his exosuit in the parking lot, I was smiling still. Smiling the whole way there, through texting AEGIS, listening to his plan, smiling through the whole fight.

Despite the horrors I faced, the troubles I dealt with, I felt more at-ease now than ever. It was hard not to, with such friends as these by my side.