Touristville.
Calling anywhere in the Redmond barrens of the Seattle metroplex “safe” was wishful thinking at best and an active lie at worst, but Touristville came close to being that. It was where most “legitimate businesses” in the area chose to operate and had managed to keep itself afloat by appealing and tempting those who lived in the better parts of the Seattle metoplex to come and “take a walk on the wilder side”, hence the name. It managed to be just profitable enough to continue to survive, but not so much that any of the major player of Seattle wanted any more than a minor cut for appearances sake. That meant it was about as free as a place could get in the city, and a place that served as a melting pot for the people in Seattle. Wageslaves, street bums, and executives could all stumble out of the same bar and wander around as drinking buddies for the night before returning to their normal lives, probably never seeing or remembering each other the next day. It was rare for someone from the better parts of the city to come to Touristville and stay, but there were the occasional few who did. It was where Pedro had met Kay. He smiled at the thought of their first meeting but shook himself out of it. He needed to focus. He had a job to do before he could see her again.
Like a giant predator Kenda’s truck stalked on the outskirts of Touristville, closing in on their destination before she finally parked in an alleyway across from Sophia’s shop. It was a squat, grimy brick building with elaborate pink neon cursive lettering naming the place ‘EXOTIC ENCHANTMENTS’. From what Kay had told him there was also an AR overlay to the building that had it covered with glowing purple ivy that bloomed with heavy black roses. He’d never seen it himself though.
Pedro took one final deep breath of artificial pine scented air before opening the truck door and stepped out into the streets of Touristville. As Sophia’s shop was at the edge of it and it was around one in the afternoon there was minimal foot traffic around and the shop looked empty. That was good as he didn’t want to have to fight for the talismongers attention in the shop, he needed to get this done with quickly.
He entered the shop and heard the tinkling of the chimes from above the door as his nostrils were assaulted with the cloying smell of incense. Kenda followed in his wake, bending down to get through the doorframe and walking with a noticeable stoop to keep her head from hitting the ceiling or the many charms and dreamcatchers that hung from it. The interior was like that of an average minimart like a Stuffer Shack, except the walls were painted in a deep crimson and instead of the shelves being filled with overly caffeinated drinks, cheap low-quality household supplies and assorted junk foods, they were filled with a different sort of junk.
Mass produced “antiques” that looked like that they came from all around the world but in truth probably all came from a factory in Hoboken. Tiny vials of coloured liquids all labelled as being spiritually purified, when the only purification they’d had was maybe going through a water filter after coming out of a tap. Books were too expensive to be sitting out in a shop like this in the barrens, but there were numerous piles of pamphlets and leaflets lying about. Some free to take, others covered in plastic and only for purchase. Most serious spellcasters would never bother with such a place, but the knock-off merchandise played well for the tourists and wannabe’s, keeping Sophia’s place in business when things were slow. Pedro knew from experience that she kept all the good stuff in the back, away from the prying eyes and sticky fingers that infested the barrens.
As he made his way towards the cashers desk near the front Wilde picked up on some details in the good that were on display. Dreamcatchers had five pointed stars in black thread concealed in them, tiny anarchy symbols engraved on small plastic shabti, pamphlets espousing the merits of neo-anarchy mixed among ones professing to hold the key to unlocking ones hidden potential. Sophia’s leanings were on full display for those that knew the signs. He forced himself to ignore them, there was no point in making things more difficult than they had to be. Kay needed him to do this and do it fast.
Sophia was sitting behind the cashers desk absorbed in something in her commlink to the point that she didn’t appear to register his and Kenda’s arrival. With her beauty and poise a person could be forgiven in thinking that she was just a pretty face hired to help with sales, not the owner and operator of the business. It was likely she knew full well he was there but was waiting for him to make the first move; she had a penchant for mind games. Sophia was around fifty years old, but a casual observer would struggle to place her over her early twenties at most. One of the great advantages of being an elf was that she’d keep her youth for hundreds of years and it was something she played into in her sales pitch. Wilde had seen fist hand how she would imply that she was either older or younger than her true age if it would help her get a sale; some people put more veracity in her claims of “ancient knowledge” if they thought she was over a hundred years old, others were more inclined to fall to her charms if they believed her to be the twenty year old she appeared to be. Everything about her appearance, from her dyed golden blonde hair, to her eyes with the violet-coloured contact lenses, to the slightly tighter than necessary sweater was all carefully constructed to make her as appealing as possible to customers. Sophia Tarallo was a woman who would do almost anything for an edge in getting a sale and Wilde was hoping that would be what he could rely on to get her aid.
Wilde rang the small brass bell at the desk that finally drew Sophia’s attention away from whatever had engrossed her on her commlink. She looked up at him and her face gracefully morphed into a smiling visage, one he’d seen her apply plenty of times before to tourists she was about to swindle.
‘Pedro! è bello vederti! How are you, how have you been doing? What brings you to my humble of establishment? Are you in the market for more reagents? Or perhaps your friend is?’.Her bright eyes went glassy for just a second, almost imperceptible if you weren’t expecting it. He had figured she would assense Kenda though, Sophia did that to every new customer that walked through her doors. It made it easier to establish who was magically active and would be in the market for real magical merchandise, and who was just a rube who could be sold some of the stuff on display. Pedro was able to pick up on the slight change in expression on Sophia’s face, he was happy to throw her off guard, but wasn’t sure why she seemed confused about Kenda.‘You seem to have made some new friends carissimo. I would not have expected you to be close to one so... modern in their outlook’.Ah, that was it. She knew that he had strong feelings about heavily cybered up people like Kenda and wasn’t sure why he was hanging around with someone like her. Wilde could pick out a faint look of concern in her face, as if she was worried about him. It was just an act though. He was sure of it. She just wanted him to think she was looking out for him.‘We’re not friends’, he said in a harsher tone than he had intended. ‘We share a friend who’s in trouble, that why we came here. We need your help’.‘Oh? Ovviamente, I would be happy to offer help within reason. Are they looking for some work? Some- ‘.‘Sophia! I need a locate person spell! One big enough to cover the barrens, preferably further. And I’m willing to pay’.He yanked his mother’s ring, her health spell sustaining focus, off his finger and slammed it onto the false wooden table which shuttered in response to his action.With that, Sophia’s demeanour changed. The bland, smiling mask melted away and was replaced with a hardened inscrutable expression. She was taking things seriously now.‘And you believe that I am capable of casting such a spell carissimo?’.‘No. But you’re connected, you know people. Spellcasters with the power to be able to pull something like this off. I just need you to arrange for the casting, if you want to be involved in a group casting, I’d appreciate it, but other than organising it you don’t need to do anything. And you’ll get your payment upfront. It’s a good deal’.Sophia looked into Pedro’s eyes, seeming to bare through to his soul before looking above him to Kenda. He was sure that he would’ve felt her casting a spell on him, so he assumed that she was either trying to get a judge of how serious he was or trying to unnerve him. The still sitting elf arched a solitary eyebrow and gave out a languid sigh.‘This is about that girl you brought over here six months ago isn’t it. Kay, wasn’t it? What has happened to her?’.It was his turn to sigh now, things were taking longer than he had expected but he carried on. He needed to get Sophia to agree to this.‘Look, she was born into a megacorporation. MCT. She ran away and hid here, now it looks like they’ve found her and hired some gangers to bring her back to them. We need to find out where she is NOW. That’s why we need this spell! I don’t understand why this is taking so long, you’re getting what you wanted after all!’.There was more vitriol in his voice than he had intended but it was getting harder and harder to hold back on Sophia. Time slipped away every second that he had to explain things to her, and she was simply sitting back letting all this wash over her without emotion, like she was walking through the morning smog of Seattle.‘Pedro, tesoro, you are very talented with combat spells, gifted even. Just as your mother was with health spells dio riposi la sua anima’.His hands clenched into fists at her mentioning his mother, but he kept quiet and let her continue.‘But I do not think you are fully aware of just how powerful a spell it would take to search all of Seattle just for one person. You have little understanding of detections spells, or perhaps your own feelings are clouding your judgement?’‘Damn it I know it’s a big spell that’s why I’m giving you moms ring as a down payment for it! You were offering twenty thousand nuyen for it last time we spoke!’.‘Wait what!? It’s worth that much!?’.Kenda blurted out from behind and above Wilde. He couldn’t blame her, he hadn’t told her how much Sophia had offered him for it before as he didn’t see it as necessary, but with that sort of money he could’ve bought two pristine motorbikes or have gotten a perfect fake SIN good enough for him to pass the most intrusive of background checks and still had a couple of thousand left over. He knew it was a big ask, but the pay in return for it was equally as big.‘No miss, it is not’.‘The hell are you talking about! You offered me twenty grand for it in this building just a few months ago!’.‘Pedro! Silenzio!’.Sophia had a way of making a single word sound both commanding and threatening. He also felt a… sensation run down the back of his spine and got the distinct impression that Sophia had at least one powerful spirit on standby for security. One that was now dangerously interested in him.‘…Thank you. As I was saying, the health spell sustaining focus is not worth twenty thousand nuyen, though it is true that I offered Pedro that sum for it last time we discussed the matter. Before you stormed away that is… But in any case, the only reason that I was able to offer you such a sum was because I was approached by a prospective client that was in the market for such an item on an extremely short notice. As such I was able to convince him to pay more than the normal price for the focus so long as it came within the next few days. Hence why I asked you to bring the focus with you. Not that it mattered in the end’.She was silent for a moment, letting everything sink in for Pedro who was mentally scrambling for some way to convince her to help. He was never one for economics or haggling so didn’t know how much the focus was worth in the first place. If Sophia was telling the truth, then his ace in the hole had just sharply depreciated in value. If she was telling the truth that was. That wasn’t something he was certain of yet.‘Vabbé. In the end I was able to source another focus, so I still made a tidy profit for the deal… I understand why you would not wish to part with it carissimo I do, and I respect your choice even if I do not agree with it. I know you think me heartless, perhaps you are correct to an extent. To run a business in the barrens for as long as I have, cosa posso dire?, it requires a certain hardening of the heart. But I want you to understand that all I ever wanted was what was best for you. Onestamente’.‘If that’s true then please, please help us bring Kay back. You’ve got the contacts; you could do something to help. I have her astral signature I can replicate it to whoever needs it. I just want to get her back’.Pedro was never one for subterfuge and social manipulations, he never saw the point in them, much better to just be upfront with people he always felt. He was never going to be able to influence Sophia into doing something she didn’t want to, he lacked necessary guile and inclination for such deceptions. All he could do now was just lay bare his heart and hope that some part of her was telling the truth when she said she wanted to look out for him. She looked him in the eyes with as honest a face as he had ever seen on her and said:‘No’.With that one-word Pedro felt Kay slip further away from him. Everything seemed to become muted for a moment, the sounds from Touristville outside, the smell of incense permeating throughout the shop, the bright violet of Sophia’s eyes. Everything died a little.‘Wha-Why?!’.Sophia simply raised her hand in a small but powerful seeming gesture to remain quiet. She looked at Pedro as a parent would to their young child when they had to explain why their pet had died. He found himself gritting his teeth under her patronizing gaze.‘Pedro, you said it yourself. She has the attention of a megacorporation, and not just any, but MCT one of the ten largest megacorporation’s in the world. You speak of me having “connections” of possessing “influence”, this is correct, but it pales into insignificance compared to what one of their operatives could bring if so inclined’.‘I’m not asking you to go to war with them! Just put me in contact with some people who can help me find her! I’ll hide her away! We’ll leave the city! I’ll get her somewhere safe!’.‘Ah Pedro, there is nowhere on earth or beyond it that you could go that they could not follow. And if they truly want this girl then they will quite happily crush anyone underfoot who aids her in eluding them. This girl, Kay, she is magically active and spent some time in the university of Washington from what I recall from when you brought her over. MCT likely feels they have invested too much in her to simply let slip through their fingers, they will bring her back into the fold and make it more difficult for her to escape again. They will not kill her; she will simply be placed in a gilded cage and encouraged to do the work they expect of her’.
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‘And you’re ok with that! With her living as a slave for a corp! What about all this!’.
He grabbed a pile of pro neo-anarchist pamphlets that were tucked in between a couple of plastic kabuki masks on one of the shelves and slammed them on the desk between them.
‘What about fighting the megacorporation’s!? About standing up for people getting trodden on!? You call yourself a neo-anarchist but you’re just willing to let something like this happen without doing anything!?’.
Bursting out of her chair Sophia thrust her right index finger at Pedro’s chest as she raised her voice for the first time since they had entered her shop. Her shrill voice like nails on a chalkboard.
‘Don’t you talk to me about the cause! You were the one who ran away from it! You’re the one who spends his time performing in blood sports! Just so that you might get a place on one of their teams! I have spent decades of my life fighting against the evils of the megacorporation’s Pedro! Decades! I will not throw it all away just so you can go out in a blaze of glory for some girl you’ve known for less than a year!’
‘But you were willing to let my mom die for the cause when it was convenient for you though weren’t you!’.
SLAP!
Wilde’s cheek stung and Sophia looked upon him with venom in her eyes. Neither said a word for a moment but both showed no sign of backing down, with the dam broken Pedro was about to let loose the thoughts that had been on his mind since they’d last had this argument, but Sophia cut him off before he could start.
‘Your Mother’, he could hear the capitalisation in her voice. ‘Dedicated her life to fighting against the megacorporation’s greed and cruelties. And in the end, she wound up another of the countless victims of their oppression. Their armed thugs killed her and dozens other that day, and you dare to blame me for that!?’.
‘Cut the dreck! You convinced her to go out to that demonstration and to stand on the front lines. You told her it was going to be a peaceful protest! She was the only fragging person without a gun on her!’.
‘The corps fired first! -‘.
‘She didn’t even have armour on! You should’ve warned her! Or been there yourself! But no, you weren’t there were you?! You showed up later to take photos! You turned her into a damn martyr for your cause!’.
‘Ragazzo insolente! She would have wanted that! For something positive to come from her passing! To force others to see the malvageta of the megacorporation’s! I wanted her to be remembered as the heroine she was! Someone who stood up for the downtrodden!’.
‘Yeah, and you were happy to profit off her as well weren’t you!’.
Sophia swung another slap aimed at Wilde’s face, but expecting it, he stepped out of harm’s way. He locked his tear rimmed eyes to her own and continued his diatribe.
‘I watched you all plaster pictures of her dead body across the metroplex just to raise donations and new members! She was my mom! Your friend! And you used her!’.
‘We need donations to keep the fight going Pedro! And we needed others to see the depths to which the corporate masters of the world will sink to! It is the only way to break their foundations! Non essere infantile! You know this!’.
‘What I know is that I saw you and a bunch of the other neo-anarchist leaders in Seattle getting rich off my mom’s murder! You think I don’t know that those donations helped pay to keep this place up and running! That I don’t know that you and the others spent thousands of nuyen wineing and dining government dreckheads to try and get them on your side! You always talk about how the megacorporation’s use people as pawn, tools, that they don’t care for them at all! But you did the same damn thing in my eyes! You just justify it to yourselves saying that it’s for the greater good! And when I come here giving you a shot of literally saving someone from a lifetime of slavery to a megacorp, you just brush it off! Like the hypocritical cowardly bitch you are!’.
‘Abbastanza! GET OUT! NOW!’.
There was hate in Sophia’s eyes and a sort of palpable tension that Wilde only felt when violence was imminent. A small part of his mind registered that he could sense the presence of a spirit of some power close to him, probably prepared to strike him, the subject of its summoner’s ire, down. He didn’t care, there was too much emotion in him to continue to bottle up, it was like the floodgates within him had been breached and now everything was pouring out all at once.
A colossal hand engulfed his shoulder in a firm grip. Kenda. Pedro had forgotten that she was still behind him. A part of him had half expected her to leave once the shouting had started.
‘Wilde. We don’t have time for this. She’s not helping, we need t’ leave and find another way t’ find Kay’.
With that reminder a cold bucket of reality dowsed the fires of righteous retribution welling within him. Kenda was correct, Kay needed them and if they weren’t going to get help there then they needed to leave.
Kenda swiftly led their exit, followed by Wilde who snatched his mother’s ring off the desk before he joined her in leaving. He did his best to fight back the retorts to Sophia’s shouts and threats as they left. They hurried to the pickup truck and Kenda once again began to speed away before Wilde even had his door shut.
Exhaustion overwhelmed Sophia as she collapsed into her expensive, memory-foam padded chair. Her eyes were worn red from tears, her throat felt raw from shouting and her hand stung from where she had hit Pedro. With him gone she felt herself deflate, the anger he had evoked dissipating in his wake.
Knowing that there was still a chance that potential customers could arrive at any point she hurriedly dried her eyes and reapplied her make up, using her commlink as a mirror to help. She paused as she looked at her reflection.
‘Fottuta puttana’.
She muttered with as much venom as she had used when speaking to Pedro, if not more. Her face contorted into a grimace of distain. Pedro had been right. Ten years ago, if he or someone like him had come to her and told her about this “Kay”, that they were going to rescue her from being dragged back to the megacorp’s? She would have leaped at the chance to help. Even if his plan on having a supercharged locate spell was rather over ambitious, she could have helped him refine it into something more workable. If her own network of contacts were unable to find some trace of her that was.
But that was before.
Before she had unknowingly sent her best friend to her death. Before she had to watch her son break down in tears over her corpse. Before she had to make so many compromises for a cause that was bigger than any of them.
Sophia didn’t blame Pedro for leaving the neo-anarchist cause, for blaming her for his mother’s death. To an extent she did the same. She truly didn’t think that the protest would devolve to violence so quickly, and if it did then his mother, Maria, wouldn’t have been targeted as a non-combative. But Pedro was right, she had convinced her to go, and she hadn’t been there. Held up at the last minute because of traffic.
Fragging traffic.
Her best friend had died bleeding out in the rain drenched streets, crushed under the bodies of a dozen other people killed and Sophia had been sitting in her car complaining about its heating.
Turing Maria into a martyr for the neo-anarchist cause was her way of keeping some part of her alive, trying to bring something if not good then… transformative from the tragedy. To attempt to prevent something similar happening again.
And in doing so she had made hers a rising star in the neo-anarchist movement. People of influence both within and without the movement started to contact her and the nuyen she gained helped to solidify her position. All bought with the blood of her best friend.
The anger that Pedro felt for her part in his mother’s death was nothing compared to the hate she held for herself for it.
However, for all the self-loathing she felt due to her failings she never stopped believing in the cause. It would be a long difficult battle, one that would likely continue well after she died, hundreds of years in the future. But it would be worth it in the long run she told herself. It had to be. She’d sacrificed too much for it to be anything less.
Her continued faith in the neo-anarchist cause should have encouraged her to help Pedro in his quest regardless, but there were some lines that Sophia would not cross. That she would never cross as long as she could do so.
When she stood impotently nearby, watching Pedro crying over his mother’s body she swore an oath to her friend. That she would watch over her son and protect him as best she could. The idea of replacing Maria as a mother figure never occurred to her; she lacked any maternal instinct and wasn’t inclined to attempt to force such a thing. In any case, Pedro was already an adult, at least by the barrens standards when Maria died.
Rather what Sophia did after Maria’s death was to watch over Pedro from afar. Using her influence, she did what she could to shield him from the worst of the barrens; subtly guiding him to areas with less volatile gangs, giving his name to people who needed jobs done that paid well but were relatively safe, making sure that he always had access to a means of improving his magical aptitude. He wasn’t a fool, no child of Maria’s could be, so he probably knew about this to an extent, but not to the degree that Sophia had helped him over the years.
It had been a point of considerable concern for her when he began to compete in local Urban Brawl matches, even more so when he declared to her that he intended to one day enter the professional leagues. Sophia found the “sport” to be distasteful at best, and to compete in any official league would mean Pedro would need to gain the sponsorship of a corporation, or at least give its tacit acceptance of him. To her this was a betrayal of the principles of neo-anarchy, selling out in the most obvious of ways and not something she could condone. She had offered him no help in his Urban Brawl career thinking that would be enough to stymie him and yet he had gradually risen in the local ranks nevertheless.
Regardless of her own feelings on the matter she had to admit that Pedro had a true talent when it came to combat spells, both in casting them and in how to use them to the best effect. Maria had been the same but with health spells. Sophia sometimes wondered if the hands of fate had contrived to drive Pedro into danger with his predilection for combat spells and passion for Urban Brawl, in a way to punish her for failing Maria. If so, it was effective as over the past few years she had felt herself less able to influence Pedro who had been gradually drifting away from her.
She hoped that his disdain for the neo-anarchist movement would fade over time; that it was just a phase he was going through, looking for a more immediate subject of blame as opposed to the distant and seemingly insurmountable megacorporation’s. But Pedro remained stubbornly spiteful towards the movement, with an undertow of resentment towards her as well that she could sense was growing.
The offer for a health spell sustaining focus had come at a pivotal time for Sophia. Although she hated the idea of Pedro having to sell off one of the few remaining things of his mother, but it would be for the greater good in her mind. With the kind of money Sophia had been able to negotiate from the potential buyer Pedro could have gotten enough nuyen to move to a better part of the barrens, though admittedly “better” was a relative term when talking about Redmond. Even still, if he moved closer to Touristville Sophia would have been able to keep a better eye on him, get him some work that wasn’t dependant on him running headfirst into violent fights, maybe even slowly ease his feelings of betrayal from the movement. She was sure that Maria would have wanted things that way.
Of course, things had fallen apart as soon as she had broached the subject to him. Their discussion had devolved into a shouting match, much the same as what had just happened. She had hoped that Pedro’s arrival was the start of a reconciliation between them but once again she had been mistaken.
Sophia hadn’t spent years of effort attempting to keep Pedro safe only to have him go and risk his life to rescue a girl he’d known for little more than nine months. It was cruel, callous even, she could admit that to herself, if not to him. But if she had to choose between a stranger being enslaved to MCT or Pedro being gunned down by one of their strike teams she would choose to protect Pedro, even if he hated her for it. Even if he could never bring himself to forgive her for it. That wasn’t important to Sophia, Pedro could never hate her as much as she did herself sometimes when her thoughts drifted to her best friend’s cold corpse.
Tinkling windchimes snapped her out of the black tarpit of sorrow she was wallowing in, and Sophia quickly checked that her makeup was perfect once more. She would try to reach out to Pedro once again after some time had passed to sooth their mutually wounded egos. No matter how hard he tried Pedro wouldn’t be able to find his latest paramour and after a couple of months he would move on, Sophia was sure of it. She painted a practiced mysterious smile on her face that always did well with the tourists who came from the better parts of the Seattle metroplex, the ones uninitiated in magic at least. Working in her store always made her feel better and she was certain that as much as Pedro may have hated her for it, she’d helped keep him safe another day.