Interlude - A Roaming Raccoon's Reasonable Relationships [Part One]

“Heya, Rac!” Cat said.

Rac stared at the woman with growing horror. She found her breath catching in her throat, and her mouth filled with the electric tang of adrenaline, like licking a battery, but across her entire body and all at once.

But then she hid it with a grin.

Rac was an expert at not letting anyone know what she was thinking. The barrier had to stay up, because when it went down, bad things happened. When she lived in the undercity it was a daily requirement. Never let anyone know how sick you were, how close you were to breaking.

Maybe she’d gotten a little soft in the last week. Life had gotten better. A lot better. She wasn’t even sure if it was entirely real yet, and Cat’s appearance right here and now might be the dream turning to a nightmare.

But no. She’d long ago learned to operate past that kind of thing. Self-delusion wasn’t a weakness of hers.

“Hey,” she said. “What’re you doing here?”

Rac eyed Cat up and down real quick. The older girl was... strange. Unique, maybe? She wasn’t sure what to think of Cat half the time.

Which she supposed was normal, in its own way. Samurai were supposed to be strange, so it would be weirder if Cat wasn’t bizarre.

Right now, Cat was in a skintight suit that reminded Rac of netrunner gear, with a heavy trench coat atop that and her neon-pink scarf around her neck. And the cat ears, of course. Hell, Cat barely looked like a samurai at the moment. Some of the better-off, more experienced punks had similar gear. Not the streetpunks like Rac, but the bigger players.

Cat smiled, all teeth and eyes that squinted. Cat’s grins were always lopsided, the burnt side of her face never quite moving right. “Why Rac, why can’t it be a coincidence that we happen to meet in some elevator in a shithole mega-apartment about a quarter ways into the city?”

Rac’s grin didn’t waver, she even chuckled a little, but she could feel the sweat starting to cling to her back and armpits and palms. The backpack she was wearing felt ten times as heavy. “Yeah, funny that way,” Rac said.

She knew the charade would end soon, and then shit would get real, but every minute she kept playing along was one more minute where she stayed alive.

Those were the rules, usually.

Then Cat, because she was Cat, decided to change the script and toss the rules out on their ass. Her smile grew less sharp, her ears turned forwards and up a little, as if they were entirely natural ears instead of very high-end prosthetics. She stepped into the elevator then leaned against one of the walls, boots crossing at the ankles. “Alright, look. I’m not angry. I’m not even disappointed,” Cat said. “I’m mostly curious.” Cat crossed one arm across her chest, the other was left limp by her side, forgotten.

Rac worked her jaw, not meeting Cat’s eyes.

Cat was... fuck, Rac didn’t know where to start with Cat. Her and Gomorrah too.

Rac was a nobody, of the sort whose corpse someone would stumble over some day. She was beyond just inconsequential, and the world knew it.

Then two samurai waltzed by, broke all the rules, and decided to give Rac more than she could ever hope to have. Rac wasn’t going to wax philosophical about it or anything.

When shit went bad, she worked through it. That’s how she’d made it so far.

When shit got good? Like really, really good? Like working for a samurai, like living in a penthouse? Like three fat meals a day and a nice gig?

Rac wasn’t prepared for that.

“Did I fuck up?” Rac asked.

“Rac, I don’t even know what you did,” Cat said. “I was legit when I said I was worried.”

Rac could believe it. Cat wasn’t corpo. Cat wasn’t a bad liar, because she didn’t lie.

“I found work,” Rac said. “On the side.”

She waited for Cat to tell her off, but it never came. “Huh. Alright. Is it safe? Safe-ish? You know, I realise that I’m not actually paying you, which is kinda fucky. Sorry, I just hadn’t thought about it before just now. If you want...”

“No,” Rac said with a shake of her head.

She had a safe place to sleep, and as much food as she could eat.

She hadn’t let anyone know--except Lucy had known anyway, because that chick was scary--but in the first couple of days that Rac stayed with Cat and her kittens, she’d eaten herself sick. She’d known that it was a bad idea, and that she had to pace herself, but she did it anyway because she could.

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“I don’t need you to pay me. I’ve got... I’ve got a job, of sorts.”

“Does it have anything to do with that?” Cat said with a gesture over Rac’s shoulder.

It was to the stock of the gun sticking out of Rac’s backpack. The gun she’d printed with Cat’s alien-tech machine. The rest of the backpack was mostly ammo and a few necessities. First aid kits, some gear she thought might be handy.

She’d named the gun Heptee, because the words Heavy Plasma Turret Emplacement were engraved on its all-metal heat shield.

“Yeah, a bit,” Rac said.

One of Cat’s eyebrows rose. “Well, what’s the story? I’ve got all day, I’m on vacation right now.”

The tone she used to say vacation was somehow terrifying. It was the same way a hardcore punk might say they were ‘taking out the trash’ or something. A word loaded with shitloads of implication.

“Alright,” Rac said, making sure she sounded more excited than she felt. She was a damned fine salesgirl, if she said so herself. “So, I was looking for work. You know, just something to make a few credits. I asked around, and I found a decent gig.”

“What kind of gig?” Cat asked.

Rac shrugged. “Security work. Stand next to some low-tier suit and look tough. That’s when I made Heptee.” She pointed a thumb at the gun over her back. “Kept anyone from picking on me even if I’m small. Job went well, so I got some cred, and that got me in the door. I work with a little crew now. Or I’m trying to. This’ll be my second gig with them.”

She was glossing over a lot. The entire truth was that Rac was now, technically, a mercenary.

She wasn’t sure about all the legalese, but basically, as long as someone had a merc contract, they could sign up as a contractor-for-hire. There was a whole system in place. People needed shit done, and mercs were the answer to a lot of problems.

Crews would form and break up all the time, but mostly they were together to do a gig or two, then they’d leave or do their own thing.

The system was easy enough. Rac was a step above the lowest tier, as a tier one contractor. Nothing special, in the grand scheme of things.

“You’re going to a gig now?” Cat asked. “Along with... Heptee the very big plasma turret?”

Rac nodded her head once. Was that it? Cat would tell her to head back and Rac would be out of a job.

She... kinda liked the work, like the idiots she was working with. But Cat’s word was the rules.

Cat tilted her head to the side, then she smiled. “I’ll come with you,” she said.

“What?” Rac asked. That hadn’t been the reply she was expecting.

“Yeah, it sounds fun. Besides, I’m on vacation. What sort of gig is it? Security again? Because if it’s actually too boring I might dip.”

Rac swallowed. “You can’t come,” she said.

“Why not?” Cat asked.

Rac was stumped. Why not? She had about a million reasons why not, but her lips went ahead and said the stupidest one before her brain caught up. “You’ll embarrass me.”

Cat stared. “I’ll what?”

“Uh,” Rac said.

“Wait, do you think I’m not cool?” Cat asked. Rac had never seen her so offended before. It was kind of scary. She’d once seen Cat hang a guy by the neck over a bottomless pit only to drop him, and even then she’d done little more than shrug and grab the next guy. Even then Cat didn’t seem as annoyed as she did right here.

“No, no, you’re plenty cool,” Rac said.

Cat’s mouth worked. “Holy fuck, you don’t think I’m cool. What the hell, Rac? I’m plenty cool.”

“Yeah, super cool.”

“I’ve got like... guns, and a cool trench coat. And I have a giant fucking mecha.”

The mecha was kinda cool, Rac admitted. “Yeah, you’re cool,” she said.

“Damnit, Rac, stop rubbing it in.” Cat ran her fingers through her own hair. “Unbelievable. Myalis, do you think I’m cool?”

And there she went, talking to her AI as if the AI was just... there in the elevator with them. It was super unnerving.

“Well, screw you, I bet you’re not cool at all,” Cat said.

It took a moment for Rac to realise she was directing that to Myalis too.

She snorted, then the elevator thumped and started to move. “Right, let’s go see these friends of yours. You can present them to your entirely very cool big sister Cat.”

Rac felt her heart drop. There was no way Cat would be able to pass herself off as just a normal merc. The first time someone insulted her she’d blow their brains out and then... well, actually, that would be somewhat normal merc behaviour.

Maybe this wouldn’t be all that bad?

***