I looked around as we exited the ship, taking in the moon city we landed on. The atmosphere felt like any other class M planet, breathable. The tall silvery buildings high above accumulated rust at their bottoms. At the landing pad where I had expertly parked, if I do say so myself, the walls around it began to close themselves off above me as several droids came to life, and they started cleaning the exterior of my ship.

A docking attendant came through a side door and approached me. The attendant had a disheveled appearance and a scruffy beard. He held out a pad and said in a bored tone, “Name, length of stay, and credits, please.” Taking the pad and I wrote.

Name: Ford Sinn

length of stay: unknown

Then I entered a generous amount of credits into the pad’s payment options, then stopped when I saw the account and routing number needed. Turning, I called back, “Haru! I require your assistance.”

Haru stumbled out of the ship and brushed her hair back, composing herself and puffing out her chest before approaching confidently and speaking sensually, “Yes, Ma’am. How may I be of assistance?”

I bit my tongue to avoid saying something sexual back to her and managed to speak in a whisper so the man next to them couldn’t hear, “Could you give me the account and routing number that was sent to you recently?”

“Why, of course,” Haru responded, “just one moment,” she pulled out a small comms pad and began to scroll through it, searching for the message that contained the information. Once she found it several minutes later, she handed it to me, and I began entering the numbers and then handed the pad back to the docking attendant.

The man looked down at the pad with a beat red face and said hastily, “Th-thank you for coming,” and hurried back to his side door, going through it.

I immediately turned to Haru, “You can assist me in bed! AHH!” I said and yelping as Haru flicked my forehead.

“No,” Haru replied, “Anyways, what’s the plan?”

“I’m going to look around and find who I can,” I replied, rubbing my forehead, “You two can do whatever, but when I say it’s time to go, we go.”

Haru sighed and said, “All right, I’m going to stay with the ship and make sure nobody steals it.”

At that moment, Sparky exited the ship and said, “I’m going to stay too. With landing maneuvers like that, the ship will need repairs.”

“All right,” I said with a shrug, “I’ll bring back something for you all to eat.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Haru said, stretching and walking back into the ship, “I’m going to take a nap and go through all these messages. Might have to change my contact info again.”

“Well, then stop giving out that info!” I chastised.

“I need money!” Haru countered.

“You don’t need that! You need a sugar mama! Like me!” I countered back as I walked out the main door to the hanger. As the automatic door opened and shut behind me, I could hear Haru yelling insults and feel Sparky rolling her eyes at the exchange. Once the door shut, I tugged at the hem of my leather jacket and muttered, “Yep, she wants me.”

I began walking down the corridor past many different people. Some of them working, some of them commuting to work. I paid them no mind as I walked by with a bright smile and looked for the smell of chemicals. If I found chemicals, I would find a lead to a friend. And the next member of my team.

***

I walked around aimlessly for what seemed like hours, searching for the smell of chemicals. When I heard a commotion in an ally way nearby. Something interesting was happening. Making my way toward it, hoping I would not be too late to steal some poor victim’s wallet. When I rounded the corner, I saw a group of ragged-looking men beating a child. Aww, fuck. The child won’t have any money to steal. I felt disappointment go through me, then a gust of wind blew through the ally, carrying the smell of chemicals I had been searching for all this time.

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Activating a few cybernetics and tracing the smell coming from… the child?! Fuck, now I got to save the kid! They had better be useful! I pulled three throwing knives from a pocket within my jacket and counted four men and one woman, the woman standing back and watching the beating. I threw one of my knives at the first and closest man, impaling his jugular vein. As he screamed in pain and collapsed to the ground, the other four people jumped in surprise and scrambled for something in their pockets.

I didn’t give them a chance. I dashed forward, throwing another two knives that planted themselves in two of the men’s windpipes. As they choked on the knives, the last two managed to pull old pistols from their pockets. Judging from the look of the guns, they were Glock 1911s, not a bad model.

But they were too slow.

I reached the last man, grabbed his gun, pulled it from his hand, and hit him with an uppercut using the butt of the gun, knocking him out. Then quickly turned, grabbing the 1911 in the woman’s hands, twisting the weapon out of her hands, and sticking her throat, making her double over.

Smirking, I pocketed the weapons and pulled a carbon steel blade from a hidden shieth sawn into the back of my jacket and stabbed down on the woman’s head, the blade sliding easily into the back of her head. I then casually walked over and sliced the last man’s throat.

“That was so boring!” I moaned as I bent down to wipe my knife’s blade on a man’s shirt and collected the other three knives from the corpses. Then I turned to look at the child, still curled in a ball and peering through their fingers in fear. “It’s all right,” I said in a pleasant, comforting voice, “I won’t hurt you. Why were they beating you?”

The child pushed themselves up and looked at me with red irises and bloodshot eyes. Their hair had mats of grime in it and grew to their shoulders. Their clothes had mud, oil, and blood stains, as if they lived in a slaughterhouse full of pigs. “They w-were mad because I s-stole one of their w-wallets,” the kid said in a very young male voice after a moment of hesitation.

I smiled and extended a hand, “May I see it?”

The young boy pointed to the first body, “He took it back from me. Then they started beating me.”

“Ah, I see. What’s your name?”

The boy looked down as though ashamed, “I-I don’t have one.”

I tilted my head and asked, “You’re an orphan?” the boy nodded. Then I added, “So was I.”

The kid looked up in surprise, “You were?” he asked.

“Yep, but that’s beside the point,” I said, waving him off and taking a few whiffs of the air, “Could you tell me why you smell like chemicals? A mix of chloroform, hydrogen peroxide, and many others besides. Do you run messages for a man that works with those things?”

The kid visibly paled, “Y-yes. W-why?”

“I’m an old friend of his. Do you mind telling me where I could find him?”

The kid hesitated for several minutes before answering, “Y-you’ll smell him if you g-go that way,” he said and pointed in the direction I had come from.

I smiled and said, “Thanks, kid. I’d say stay out of trouble, but we know that won’t happen,” I stood and ruffled the kid’s disgusting hair, then made my way to the ally’s end in the direction the kid indicated.

As I reached the ally’s end, where the hustle and bustle of civilians ignored the gory scene behind me, someone grabbed my right leg before I could walk further. Looking down, I saw the kid holding onto my knee as if his life depended on it. He looked up and blurted out, louder than was necessary, “Umm, Mrs. Lady, umm, could you… could you teach me how to do that?!” he said, pointing at the corpses.

A small smile curled my lips as I knelt and looked the kid in the eyes, “I could, but why would I?” I asked, testing the kid.

“W-what?”

“Why would I teach you? What reason should I have to teach a six-year-old child to kill?”

“I’m eight!”

“Same difference. Why should I teach you? When you haven’t killed before.”

“I can kill! Please give me a chance!”

I studied the kid for a moment, considering everything from all angles. He’s the right age to be devoted to me and seems willing enough. Maybe a test is needed to be sure. I thought of how I could test the kid, then asked, “You live in an orphanage somewhere near here, right?” the kid nodded, and I pulled one of the Glock 1911s and a knife from my pockets, handing it to the kid. “Go and kill everyone in there and burn the place down. If I hear the victims were burned alive, you will never see or hear from me again. If I hear they were killed, then the orphanage burned, and if you evade the cops long enough. I will find you and teach you. And by the time I’m done training you, the galaxy will be yours.”

“The Galaxy?” the kid asked, astonished.

“The Galaxy and everything within it.”

The kid’s jaw dropped, then he asked, “H-how will you find me?”

I thought for a minute, “You know, you’re right. It would not be easy. I’ll give you a name. The cops will catch you before I can. So, tell them your name, Baun, when they catch you.”

Baun’s eyes glimmered with pride, “Baun. My name’s Baun!?”

I smiled sardonically, “Yep, now go and earn your place by my side,” I said as I stood and walked into the crowd. Disappearing into nothingness as I did so the kid couldn’t follow me. I wonder if he’ll go through with it.

***