“Where are we going?” Figo asked Gabriel’s back as he stormed through the alleyway, vaguely in the direction of the quarry.
“Away,” was their captain’s answer.
“Did you find Goyun?” the archer persisted.
“Nope.”
“I hope you’ve got a good reason for walking away from my money,” Lydia said.
“I’ve…” Gabriel rubbed the back of his neck, “I’ve got an idea.”
“Why did you hesitate? Is it just me or did he hesitate?” Vish asked nobody in particular.
“Thinks!” Bling informed the mind-mapper, with a tap of her head.
“I appreciate the support, Natasha, but you might want to curb that enthusiasm.”
“What were you and Chloe chatting about back there?” Vish asked slowly.
“Umm, you’ll see.”
---
Vish awkwardly walked back to the heart of Tindra, supporting a lady at arm’s length. She stumbled and tripped with every irregularity in the road. The mind-mapper struggled to keep her upright, especially at the distance he insisted on maintaining.
“So weird, so weird, so weird,” Vish muttered under his breath.
---
They meandered between buildings to the outskirts of town. The quality of the structures regressed rapidly; before long the opulent stone manors were a distant memory, replaced by rickety wooden hovels that looked like the beating of a bird’s wings might threaten them. There were no fixed boundaries to Tindra, just a gradual degradation of civilization.
Soon enough, they reached the outer limits, where nature reclaimed the urban sprawl, and only a few flimsy huts dotted the surroundings. When he judged they were far enough away from prying eyes, Gabriel called a halt to their march, in a clearing where the grass didn’t quite dare to grow.
“Okay, we missed our shot at crashing the meeting,” Gabriel spared Lydia a reproachful glance, “but the good news is that we know where Goyun is going to be later on.”
“Can’t we just pay him a house visit?” Vish asked.
“We can’t be sure he’ll be home. Besides, we don’t even know which house is his.”
“The one that smells like piss and wine?” Vish guessed.
“I think it’s unlikely that he would urinate on his own doorstep,” Figo said.
“I dunnooo.”
“We’re not going to his house,” Gabriel informed them, “There are twelve soldiers and a fricking sorcerer that make a total of thirteen reasons I can think of not to go doing any breaking and entering in broad daylight.”
“Gabby!” Bling congratulated her brother on his excellent, albeit obvious, deduction.
“No, we’ll catch him at Chloe’s. It’s a public place, and it won’t raise too much suspicion if we get recognized,” Gabriel concluded.
“Until we drag him out of there in a burlap sack,” Vish pointed out.
“I’m hoping we won’t have to,” Gabriel said, hesitating a little before continuing, “We’re going to interrogate him inside Chloe’s.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Figo asked, a little skeptically.
---
They arrived at the jutting porch of Chloe’s.
“Oooh, boy,” Vish said, “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
The woman gave a sharp nod, almost toppling forward as she did.
---
“Well, Chloe’s isn’t a brothel, she made that abundantly clear, but it is, umm, a place of entertainment…”
They stared expectantly at their captain.
“It’s a… cabaret… of sorts,” Gabriel said meekly.
“Sooo, we’re going to do a dance number and hope he’s so impressed he just,” Vish threw up his arms, “throws Vagalad’s riches at us?”
Gabriel almost wished that were the solution.
“Not exactly,” he took a deep breath, “The upstairs rooms are reserved for, uh, private entertainment. We’re going to try and coax him up there and interrogate him behind closed doors... or curtains. I have it in my head it will probably be curtains.”
There was a moment while that sunk in.
A loose bundle of straw skittered between the mercenaries.
“You want to give our mark a lap dance,” Vish clarified.
“I am really hoping it doesn’t get that far, but I guess that’s the gist of it,” Gabriel conceded.
Vish started chuckling, “Oh boy, this is a new one, Gabe! This might be topping the list of my ‘favourite’ ideas you’ve come up with. Can I pick the music? Please let me pick the music.”
“Be serious, Vish.”
“I’m thinking something classy. Maybe we can chuck in some elven pipes. Ooh! We could have a dwarven steel drum!”
“Vish.”
The mind-mapper grudgingly halted his mental composition, “Alright, well, in all seriousness, how the hell do you expect this to go down? I suppose Chloe’s perfectly happy just to have us poach customers in her place of business, is she? Did you think of that? We almost got tackled the last time we tried to get upstairs.”
“That bit is already taken care of. We won’t be there as guests this time. Chloe is a little shorthanded tonight, and I spun her a story about losing our coin on the road.”
“You didn’t have to test your imagination much for that, I’m sure,” Lydia said, folding her… arm.
Gabriel scowled, “Anyway, she’s going to take two of us on for the evening as floor staff,” he tilted his head from side to side before adding, “She hinted that she’s no friend of The Order, and I may have ‘suggested’ that we intend to take them down a peg. She won’t openly admit it, but I think that was the clincher.”
“And, if you don’t mind me asking, who among us is supposed to be doing all of this wonderful seducing?” Vish asked.
---
Chloe clapped her hands together when she saw the pair entering.
“You must be the help that Gabriel promised! You’re just in time! This place will be filling up any minute now,” she placed a palm on her chest, “Oh my, you are a pretty thing, aren’t you?”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
---
“No way,” Lydia said, gripping the pommel of her sword.
“Now, now, Lydia, you want your coin, don’t you? Be a team player,” Vish smirked.
The warrior harrumphed.
“It’s only an act, Lydia,” Figo chimed in.
Lydia looked like she might ‘act’ like a mass-murderer again.
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking of Lydia,” Gabriel confessed.
---
“What are your names, dears?” Chloe asked with infectious cheer.
“Uh, Vish, and, uh, well…” the mind-mapper said, casting a fearfully expectant look at his colleague.
---
The iron-clad Valkyrie shifted slightly, “And why not?”
“Well for starters you’re not conventionally… I mean to say, you’re not typically, well, it’s just that you’re a,” Gabriel waved a hand indicating Lydia’s face and, thereafter, general being, “you’re a niche type.”
Lydia clenched her jaw.
There was a moment of silence.
“How dare you!” Vish spat.
“What now?”
“How dare you! Lydia is a beautiful, strong, voluptuous woman!” the mind-mapper insisted.
Lydia shifted her glare from Gabriel to Vish.
“I mean, look at her,” Vish gestured with both hands, “She’s a creature of power, of curvaceousness, of raw sexual energy!”
Lydia floored him.
Gabriel watched the mind-mapper pick himself out of the dirt, nursing a sore jaw.
“Umm, plus I didn’t think you would be interested,” the mercenary captain told Lydia.
She cracked her neck, “I’m not, but I’m still surprised you weren’t stupid enough to ask,” she said, with the slightest hint of a blush.
Gabriel’s mouth hung open. Was she actually offended that he hadn’t asked her to do something she would categorically refuse to do? That seemed beyond unreasonable. Had he missed something about her? Perhaps. To be fair, he was struggling to remember the last time he had done something that didn’t piss the warrior-woman off.
A hand being raised drew the captain’s attention away.
“Umm, if you don’t mind me asking,” Figo began, “if not Lydia, then who?”
Slowly, all eyes turned towards Bling.
The redhead was busy lowering a worm into her mouth. She paused with the wriggling creature a finger’s length from her expectant tongue.
Bling stared back at them.
“What?” she asked.
---
“Natasha!” the young woman at Vish’s side blurted in a glass-shatteringly shrill voice.
Vish and Chloe both leapt back half a horse’s length.
“Whoa,” the mind-mapper said.
“You’re certainly, umm, enthusiastic!” Chloe added.
---
“Holy shit, Gabe,” Vish muttered.
“I don’t feel very comfortable with this,” Figo said.
“That is impressively low,” Vish added.
“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Figo was near hyperventilating.
“You want to pimp out your, how shall we say,” Vish pressed an index finger against his skull, “otherwise occupied sister?”
“You’re sickening,” Lydia added for good measure.
The insults and complaints piled on. Gabriel had to shout to be heard over them.
“Wait! Wait! Wait, wait, wait. Just, fucking, wait a second,” he blew air out through his nose, “Yes, I was thinking Bling, but, also, not Bling.”
Gabriel looked from Bling to the mind-mapper.
Vish was the first to catch on.
---
“I’m-very-excited-to-work-here, thank-you-for-the-opportunity,” the redhead, who had introduced herself as Natasha, blurted in one breath.
Vish was unashamedly staring at his comrade.
“Umm, quite,” Chloe said, with a twitch of her mouth.
---
“Ooooooh! Oh, that is so much worse,” Vish said.
“What? What is it?” Figo asked.
“I mean, really, I’m sort of impressed.”
“What? Tell me, tell me.”
“Truly, diabolical.”
“Teeell me,” the archer pestered.
“Honestly, I am amazed. That is worthy of one of my plans.”
Gabriel cut the mind-mapper off, “Yes, alright, Vish, there’s no need to rub it in. I’m certainly not bloody proud of it. If I thought there were another option, I would take it.”
“What is it?” Figo asked again.
---
“There’s uniform available for you in the back. I’m sure we will have something in your size,” Chloe said pleasantly, “Just go right on through and get prepped. Service starts in ten minutes, so do hurry!” she instructed, and sauntered off to make arrangements at the bar.
“Thank you!” the fire-maned brawler squeaked after her.
“You know, you don’t have to put on a woman’s voice, when you have a woman’s voice,” Vish reminded her.
“Fuck off,” she mumbled in reply.
---
“Captain Ethics here wants one of us to take control of Bling and wiggle her stuff around to try and seduce Goyun. Does that sound about right, Gabe?”
Figo paled, “Oh, Gabriel.”
“There will be no ‘wiggling’, okay! We just have to talk to Goyun and get him to pay for a room upstairs. Then Vish can use whatever depraved methods he has up his weird wizard sleeves to make the bastard blab.”
“You want me to walk around in Bling’s body?” Figo concluded sorrowfully.
---
“Fuck off yourself,” Vish said.
“No, you fuck off!” ‘Natasha’ replied.
One of the bouncers was eyeing them warily.
The pair pretended to laugh, and pushed one another playfully.
“We give each other shit all the time. Don’t you worry; nothing to see here!” the redhead said.
“Nice one,” Vish whispered.
‘Natasha’ shook ‘her’ hair out. The crest of red was free of its normal array of adornments, “Alright, that’s enough. Time to be professional.”
---
“No, I wouldn’t ask you to do that, Figo,” Gabriel said with a wan smile.
“You want me to do it?” Vish asked.
“Fuck. No.”
“I’m not doing,” Lydia snorted.
“Oh, for gods’ sake. I’m going to do it. I don’t want any of you to do it. She’s my sister, and that’s as close to proper as we are going to get. I’m not enthusiastic about it, but it’s our best option,” Gabriel said resignedly.
“Is it though?” Vish asked.
“Just shut up and tell me if it can actually be done.”
“A body swap?”
“No, baking an eggless souffle. Of course a bloody body swap!”
The mind-mapper scratched the back of his neck, “Well, yeah. I’ll have to put one of you in Rodney for the interim, but it can be done.”
“Not a fucking chance are you putting me in that bloody cricket. That’s a two-inch hopping coffin.”
Figo’s eyes went wide, “Pardon?”
Gabriel stammered, “Oh, err, I mean, because I’m… crickophobic.”
“You told me Rodney was safe now!”
“Oh, he is, he is, no need to worry.”
“Vish told me that he had figured out a mind-mapping technique to drive away birds and animals!”
“Ho-ho, that’s riiiiight! I did, didn’t I?” the mapper said with a smirk.
“Yes, Figo, it’s perfectly safe. I just have my own personal hang-ups, you know,” Gabriel glanced at Natasha and filled his eyes with melancholy, “with the trauma?”
Figo looked like he wanted to be convinced.
“Well,” Vish said, “if you’re not going to do it, I’ll have to put Bling in Rodney.”
“No fucking way are you putting my sister in that fucking cricket,” Gabriel snapped.
Figo turned a shade of crimson that matched The Order’s robes, “I knew it! I knew it wasn’t safe! How could you let me take that risk so many times?”
Gabriel looked like he was trying to scoop out his own eyeballs, “It’s fine, Figo, it’s fine. I’m just exploring other alternatives, that’s all!” he turned to Vish, “Why can’t you just do a straight swap?”
“Whelp, that’s kind of like trying to separate piss from water, using nothing but a teaspoon.”
“By the aether.”
“You’re the piss in this analogy.”
“Yes, Vish.”
“Bling is the water.”
“I get it.”
“I’m the spoon.”
“I get it,” the captain rapped his knuckles against his skull, “Fine! Put me in the cricket. See, Figo, I’m going in the bloody cricket. Are you happy?”
He was not.
“Well, I think it’s about time you took the risk, for a change,” Figo said as defiantly as he could muster.
“There’s no risk!” Gabriel reiterated, “It will be perfectly safe so long as you two don’t fuck it up!” he added, a little louder than he meant to.
A heavy silence descended on the group.
“Oh, I see what this is about,” Vish said, “you think what happened to Natasha was our fault.”
Figo looked on the verge of tears, “Not a day goes by when I’m not sorry for what I did to Natasha.”
“Oh no, no, don’t pin that on yourself, buddy,” the mind-mapper growled, “She knew what she was getting into and she made the decision to proceed.”
“She didn’t decide to get shot,” Gabriel said, a dark sneer painted on his features.
“’Stop that crow’ you called, ‘stop it,’” Vish reminded him, “Not once did you say how or why. You’re as much to blame as any of us.”
Gabriel stared the mind-mapper down for long hard breaths before barely audibly saying, “I know.”
Vish closed his mouth.
“I know,” Gabriel repeated.
They watched him cautiously, but the captain had no follow up rebuke or complaint.
“Oh. Well, that was easy,” Vish settled back on his haunches, “so, body swap anyone?”
“Gods, Vish, give us a moment,” Figo said, wiping a tear from his eye.
“No, he’s right,” Gabriel said.
“I am?”
“The longer we think about this the harder it gets. We should just get on with it.”
“Alrighty,” Vish coaxed Rodney out onto his wrist.
“First, though, we’re going to vote on this, and it has to be unanimous. We’ve operated in grey areas before, but this might be setting the bar at a new level. I need to know that we are all in agreement,” Gabriel said through strained breaths.
Lydia shrugged, “Just get me my money.”
Figo grimaced, “I don’t like it, but, I’m going to,” he hesitated, “try and trust you.”
“Personally,” Vish grinned, “I can’t wait to see this shit show,”
“Okay, just one person left to ask.”
Gabriel slowly walked over to where Bling was playing in the mud. He stooped beside her.
“Hey, Natasha, how are you doing?”
She smiled back toothily.
“Listen, we’re close to catching Goyun. Do you remember Goyun?”
Nothing.
Gabriel continued regardless, “In order to get him, we’re going to have to do something a bit, well, crazy.”
Bling’s smile split her face. She liked that word.
“I want you and I to change bodies. I will go in here,” he tapped her lightly above the heart, “and you will go in here,” he tapped himself similarly, “does that sound okay to you? Do you understand what I’m asking?”
Bling put down the grass she had been scrunching up and brushed her hands off on her outer cloak.
She chewed her lip a moment.
“Bling,” she tapped him.
“Gabby,” she tapped herself.
Gabriel smiled, “That’s right. What do you think?”
Bling rolled her neck back and forth and stared at the sky contemplatively, humming and hawing as she did. After a brief theatric display, she started laughing.
She nodded her assent.
“Girl!” she pointed at Gabriel, guffawing now.
Gabriel sensed the mind-mapper, three arm-spans behind him, opening his mouth to say something.
“Not a word, Vish” he held up a finger, “Not a damn word.”