They both finished off their beers and Kenda ordered another pair, Pedro paying for these ones. They sat and drank in silence, their minds hazy with alcohol and a general uneasiness that was difficult to define. Pedro was concerned about many things; potential blowback from any surviving Nitro Mizuchi gangers. With the general ease he’d found it in himself to kill. How Migel was doing in the Charred Tigers gang war. Whether or not the shadowrunners he and Kenda had encountered would at some point see them as a loose end. If his relationship with Sophia was irreparably damaged. But above all other things, one question dominated his mind.

‘Do you think that Kay ever… cared for us at all, or was it all a lie, a game to her?’.

‘Ahh come on Wilde. Don’t, don’t do this. Don’t think ‘bout ‘er, don’t talk ‘bout ‘er. Just let ‘er disappear outta our lives… It’s what she chose. Chose over us’.

‘But I can’t! I can’t just pretend that she never existed! That I never cared for her… Still care for her’.

A hard look settled on Kenda’s rugged face. As she lowered her head to speak down to him it reminded Pedro of an animal preparing to ram an enemy thanks to her sharp, curved horns.

‘Listen t’ me Wilde. You gotta forget ‘er. Cut that part outta y’erself. We both do. ‘F we don’t it’ll turn t’ a poison that’ll kill us f’rm the inside out… Like it did t’ my ol’ man’.

Gone was the stoic warrior woman from before. The person who seemed made of metal and professionalism. Now as her shoulders sagged, and she began to slouch over the table he could see the anguish and emotional exhaustion he was feeling mirrored in her.

‘My folks, they… they had issues. Drugs mainly, BTL’s, y’know? The lil’ chips y’ slot in an’ it makes y’ feel like y’r livin’ out this whole scene, but all the emotions an’ experiences r’ amp’ed up t’ eleven? “Better Than Life” ... One day my mom, she slotted one too many an’, well she didn’t get back up’.

There was a faraway look to Kenda’s expression now, as her artificial eyes seemed more glazed than normal.

‘We all grieved f’r ‘er when she was gone. But my ol’ man… he just, he couldn’t let ‘er go. Never got over ‘er. He kinda just… sank int’ ‘imself, getting’ fragged up on whatever he could get an’ then wallowin’ in tears. He was never… never great y’know, but before my mom died, he, he could be a dad sometimes. We’d go on hikes, birdwatchin’, that kinda dreck. After though, he just turned int’ a shell’ve a person. I didn’t know if he realised I was gone from the village ‘till Chuck showed me my pickup that had his ol’ huntin’ rifle in it. Don’t even know if he meant t’ give it t’ me or if he just left it there by mistake…’.

She wiped at her watering eyes and stared into Pedro’s own with them. They were mechanical and utterly without soul, but he could see the emotion behind her eyes. The pain. The compassion.

‘My ol’ man, he can’t move on an’ its killin’ ‘im slowly. More than the drugs are. I don’t want that for me an’ I don’t want it for you. We gotta let go of ‘er. Gotta move on an forget ‘bout ‘er, ‘cause she sure as frag did the same t’ us’.

‘I, I get that. I do. But I loved her. Thought I did at least. I, I can’t just turn that off. Forget about her like everything we had never happened. I’m not a fraggin’ machine! I need to, to process this, to grieve or whatever’.

Pedro instantly regretted using the word “machine”, he didn’t intend to insult Kenda, but he was being honest with her. After all the moments shared with Kay, what they had together, or what he thought they had together, for it all to end the way it had… He’d heard the phrase “like having your heart ripped out” before, normally by drunks lamenting a failed relationship. This was the first time Pedro had actually understood what they’d meant.

‘An’ I loved ‘er too! But whatever either’ve us felt f’r ‘er she didn’t feel the same way. I mean frag, y’ even gave ‘er an out! She coulda left the megacorp life f’r real. I mean, we’re sittin’ here talkin’ ‘bout how big a haul we’re walkin’ away with, but her? I fraggin’ guarantee you that if she emptied ‘er bank account an’ grabbed some stuff from ‘er fancy dorm room or wherever the frag she really lives, she’d easily scrape together fifty grand ‘erself. An’ if she went along with your plan then we’d still be walkin’ away with our fifty too. That kinda nuyen in our pockets? We coulda set Kay up somewhere in Seattle! Frag we coulda all moved outta this fraggin’ city t’ somewhere better…’.

Despite the glum mood a crooked grin broke through on Pedro’s face.

‘All three’ve us? That’d be awkward, wouldn’t it?’.

Kenda’s head fell into her hands, propped up only due to her fingers lacing through her horns.

‘Woulda been better than this… But she didn’t wanna. Didn’t wanna even try. We gotta accept that Wilde or it’ll eat us f’r the inside out… y’ said it yourself back there; she made her choice, now we all gotta live with it’.

‘Sigh. It’s an easy thing to say at the time. A lot harder to actually do. I, I mean what happens next time I feel that way for someone? Am I always going to have this… doubt, hanging over me forever now? Wondering if what I think is real is just another lie? If I’m being played again?’.

‘I dunno what t’ tell y’ man. Maybe, maybe not? All I know is that if we keep holdin’ ont’ her… ghost? We’ll never move on an’ find out. An’ we deserve better than that. Both of us do…’.

With that statement Kenda finished off her beer and set her empty glass on the table, looking at Wilde to see his response. He picked up his glass and downed what beer was left in it before setting his much smaller glass next to hers.

‘I… You’re right, I know that. I’m goin’ to have to move on from Kay and… all this dreck that she’s left me feelin’. I know that, and I will… Just think it’s goin’ to take me some time to get there… Thanks though for… well everything. I don’t just mean about having my back today; I mean talking about this stuff as well. I appreciate it isn’t easy for you either’.

‘Na, it aint. But it does feel a lil’ bit better knowin’ somebody else… kinda gets it y’ know?’.

‘Yeah, I get what you mean’.

It felt strange to be talking to Kenda like this now. Another bizarre twist of the day. When Pedro woke up the last person on earth he would have wanted to be around was Kenda, now she was the only person he could think of who could possibly understand what he was going through. With fingers fumbling due to drunkenness he fiddled with his commlink and changed the contact details for her commlink number to “Kenda” from the original “Giant Bitch”. Pedro tried to be as surreptitious in his task as he could be, he didn’t want to alert Kenda to it or highlight how bad their relationship had been earlier on in the day. He did however want to do it as soon as he could, before he forgot about it and potentially made things awkward later.

‘Sooo… y’ wanna get some more drinks here, head somewhere else, or call it f’r the evening?’.

The thought of getting blackout drunk did appeal to Pedro on a baser level. After all that he’d been through the sweet annihilation of drinking himself unconscious sounded like a good idea, an easy escape from it all. The rational part of his brain won out though, perhaps aided from his talk with Kenda. Getting wasted in a strange bar was rarely a good idea, especially in the Redmond barrens where if you wound up mugged it would be seen as the best possible outcome. It didn’t help matters that this was supposedly a shadowrunner bar as well; the ‘runners might have been willing to let himself and Kenda go, but Pedro didn’t want to cross that group ever again if he could.

‘Sounds tempting, but I’m goin’ to pass tonight. Think I just want to collapse on my bed and sleep for about a day or so. Maybe tomorrow though if you’re up for it?’.

Her massive, callused hand engulfed Pedro’s shoulder as she looked down into his eyes with a serious expression.

‘Wilde. I hate t’ break it t’ y’, but I’m just not that in t’ y’… I’m gay’.

Pedro looked up at her in a mixture of shock and panic, fearing that his attempt at reaching out a hand in friendship had been grossly misinterpreted. The he saw her stone-faced façade start to break as her lips began to quiver until she couldn’t contain herself anymore and burst out in laughter.

‘Bwhahahaha! Y’r face y’r fraggin’ face! Oh, oh, hahaha, I needed that… sorry Wilde, sorry. Yeah, I’ll be good tomorrow, just ping m’ ‘link an’ we’ll work it out f’r there’.

She was still chuckling away to herself as she got out from the booth, and he couldn’t help but smile as well as he got up alongside her making their way to the door. Between his exhaustion and the beers he was still feeling lightheaded, but somehow, he felt better than he had when he’d first stumbled into the bar with Kenda, as if a weight that he hadn’t realised he was carrying had been lifted from him. He gave a slight nod to the bartender in thanks for the beer which he responded with an almost imperceptible nod of his own. As they walked past the pale troll with the cyberarms standing guard at the entrance Pedro gave a nod to him as well, but the troll showed no response to the gesture.

Walking into the streets of Redmond the normal smells of the polluted air melded with the mingled colognes and perfumes of the tourists looking for a night of cheap thrills along with the stalls selling foodstuffs of questionable quality. It smelt like home to Pedro. He and Kenda walked slowly towards the pickup still parked and with the SUV attached to it, enjoying the feeling of relative safety in the “nicer” part of the barrens.

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‘So Wilde, y’ think y’ll keep up at the whole Urban Brawl thing?’.

‘Probably? I mean I don’t see why not; I’m good at it and I enjoy it. Why? Looking for a career change? Or are you offering me a job?’.

‘Na, I was just wonderin’ is all… T’day, things didn’t go the way either’ve us were wantin’ it t’ go. But I think we did ok enough, didn’t we? I mean, we both walked away, an we got a good bit’ve nuyen as well, right?’.

Wilde had an inkling of what she was getting at but didn’t want to jump the gun as it were so played along with Kenda.

‘Yeah. We did alright all things considered. What’re you getting at?’.

Kenda rubbed the back of her neck and appeared to be unsure as to how to get her idea across to him. Or at the very least didn’t seem entirely sure about the concept herself.

‘I was thinkin’…’.

‘First time for everything’.

‘Ha fragging ha’.

Sarcasm dripped from her voice, but with his joke though Kenda seemed somewhat less uneasy in her manner.

‘What I’m tryin’ t’ say was that we make a good team I reckon. An if this is what we could make in a few hours with no plannin’ or anythin’… Well, maybe we could try out shadowrunnin’?’.

‘Is that why you took us to a shadowrunners bar?’.

‘Wh – No! I’m serious. I just went there cuz the booze is good an’ I knew it’d be dead at this time… But when we were sittin’ there, I started t’ figure why couldn’t we try it out? I mean, we did good back there, right? An’ we could both do with the nuyen’.

It was ridiculous.

Neither of them were hardened criminals or mercenaries. They didn’t know the first thing about how to do a real shadowrun, the closest Pedro had ever come to something like that outside of the day’s events was watching movies and tridio shows about them. Wilde and Kenda had survived the lethal danger of the day, but luck had played an uncomfortably important role in how things had gone down. If only a few things had gone slightly differently, neither of them would be breathing now.

And yet.

Wilde couldn’t find it in himself to completely rule out the idea. They were a good team. Between his magical power and her cybernetically enhanced abilities, along with good use of their contacts they had managed to find a lone kidnapping victim in the Redmond barrens and rescue her in a matter of hours. They might not have been able to keep her, but that was down to Kay’s own decision…

They could both fight but were smart enough to know not to go guns blazing (most of the time). They had connections but weren’t too tied down to any one group or organisation that would cause problems for them if they became ‘runners. And from what Pedro had experienced in his time with Kenda, their skills and abilities were complementary to each other. If they made a real effort to become shadowrunners, they might be able to make it. And if the money they were walking away with was any indication of what a ‘runner made, they could be looking at a lucrative career.

Urban Brawl had drawn Pedro to it because it let him revel in his innate talent with combat magic without being beholden to a gang boss or somebody else trying to control him. What’s more he didn’t have to worry about being forced to kill anyone. The adulation of the crowd was also a bonus. But in the end, being part of an official Urban Brawl team would leave him answerable to the team captain, the manager, the owner. If he became a runner, he could choose his own jobs, decide for himself how much force he should use for a job. He had already killed and wasn’t happy about it, but… he knew now that if he had to, he could.

He didn’t quite know how to feel about that.

‘It’s… not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Maybe we should both sleep on it and see how it sounds tomorrow. Going to be honest, I’m a little drunk right now. Probably not the best time to be making big, life changing and threatening decisions like this’.

‘Ha, yeah, y’ gotta point there. I’ll ping y’r com t’morrow an’ we can meet an’ talk a bit more. I’ll show Chuck the SUV as well t’night an’ see if he’d be lookin’ t’ buy it or if he’d know who’d be in the market for it’.

‘Alright, sounds good’.

They got to the pickup, but while Pedro was opening the door to the passenger side, he noticed that Kenda had stopped next to the SUV hitched to the back, examining it with a curious look in her black eyes. Curious himself, he walked over beside her and tried to see what it was that was bothering Kenda. However, he was unable to discern anything off about either vehicle, they both seemed fine to Wilde.

‘Something wrong?’.

‘I’m… not sure. It’s only… when I was drivin’ the SUV the handlin’ felt better than it shoulda been, what with all the extra armour. But it was still a lil’… sluggish I guess? Not much, but ‘nough t’ notice. Just wanna check somethin’ ‘fore I forget’.

Kenda opened the driver’s door of the SUV but didn’t get in. Instead, she brushed aside the hair behind her right ear to reveal what seemed to be a dull chrome stud. That was until she gave it a twist and a gentle yank, at which point it revealed itself to be one end of a neural interface. Cable spooled out from her port as Kenda plugged it into the SUV, a sight which combined with the alcohol in his system made Pedro feel somewhat queasy.

‘Is, is that a control rig?’.

‘Huh? Na, just a datajack. Don’t think m’ body could handle that kinda hardware with everythin’ else I got goin’ on. Doesn’t let me take over anythin’ like a control rig does, but this don’t have a control rig interface anyways. Does let me jack-in an’ see some’ve the details an’ features’ve it though…’.

She sounded like she was only half paying attention to Wilde, her focus split between their conversation and whatever she was seeing through her connection with the datajack. Kenda’s hands flicked away invisible floating objects that he assumed existed in the augmented reality being generated in her cybernetic eyes to help her visualise what she was seeing in the SUV’s system. She frowned and carried on like that for a few minutes.

Wilde looked about to see if they were attracting any unwanted attention from passersby, but it didn’t look like it. A couple of people, tourists judging from the condition of their cars, came to park in the lot guarded by the orc gangers, but they seemed more concerned about their night of slumming it rather than what Kenda was up to. People walking past the lot paid no mind to what happened inside of it either, caught up in their own comings and goings. The orc gangers glanced over at them occasionally but didn’t appear overly interested either. Pedro supposed to them it must have simply looked like Kenda was performing some maintenance on the vehicles.

‘Aha! Gotcha! Knew it’d be there’.

A muffled CLUNK came from within the SUV as Kenda said that and she vaguely gestured with her hand towards the back of it where the sound had originated from.

‘Check that out will y’. Turns out this’s got a smugglin’ compartment build int’ it. I’ve opened it up but can’t see what’s in it. Must be packed though if it was weighin’ this thing down’.

Shooting furtive glances around to ensure that nobody else had heard Kenda’s exclamation Pedro couldn’t see anyone growing interested in what they were doing. Regardless, he slunk over to the back and opened to door only as much as he needed to, attempting to ensure that his body hid the interior of the SUV. Inside he could see that the flooring of the back had become slightly elevated now, apparently the hidden compartment which Kenda had unlocked. Gingerly he opened it, hoping that it wouldn’t wind up being trapped in some manner; after the day he’d had it seemed reasonable for something like that to happen.

Instead, when he opened the smuggling compartment Pedro made an audible gulping sound and looked around once again to ensure nobody had seen what he had discovered. Seeing that nobody had he leaned in and gave the compartments contents a sniff. He was certain now of what it was. He’d only tried it a couple of times, but it wasn’t something anyone forgot, least of all the magically active.

Fighting the urge to slam the door, Wilde gently closed the smuggling compartment as quietly as humanly possible, then did the same to the back door. He crept back to Kenda with all the calmness he could muster in the situation, the languid haze of drunkenness fading away in the seriousness of the situation Pedro realised they were in.

‘Y’ find out what was in there?’.

‘Yeah… You ever heard about “Psyche” before?’.

‘Na. What is it?’.

‘It’s a designer drug made from magically active plants. Enhances your mind, your awareness when you take it. Makes sustaining spells easier as well. Its expensive stuff too, goes for about two hundred nuyen a dose from what I’ve seen’.

‘Tw -’. She quicklky quieted herself. ‘Two hundred a dose? Wait. How many doses were back there?’.

Realisation dawned upon her face as she looked at Pedro.

‘Round about two hundred-ish I’d say. Didn’t count them all’.

Her eyes bulged into black saucers as she did the mental mathematics.

‘Then that’s four-’ She whispered now. ‘Forty thousand nuyen worth of the stuff? That’s as much as the fraggin’ SUV is! I’ve just been drivin’ ‘bout with that in the back?!’.

‘Yeah. Looks like it… We need to move this stuff fast. I don’t know if there are any Nitro Mizuchi left in Seattle now, but you can be damn sure if any’ve them find out about us having this they’ll be after us. Frag, if anyone finds out the two’ve us have this most’ve Redmond will be after us’.

‘Yeah, yeah they will’.

Kenda looked like she was going to say something else but stopped. Her brow furrowed in thought and then faded away to an expression of concern.

‘Uh Wilde?’.

‘Yeah?’.

‘How heavy is this Psyche stuff?’.

‘How heavy? Not… not that heavy at all’.

Now it was his turn for realisation to dawn on him. The drugs in the compartment were a massive pile of large vacuum sealed pills. There were a lot of them, but they couldn’t have weighted more than a couple of pounds. Pedro doubted that it would have been enough to affect the SUV’s performance to the point where Kenda would notice. That left the glaring question of what had been weighing the SUV down enough for her to register.

Disconnecting her datajack from the SUV kenda stood upright at her full hight just shy of nine feet and looked towards the trunk of the vehicle. Without any words needing to be said the pair walked to the back of it and positioned themselves so that their bodies would block anyone else from seeing what was inside. This was achieved more through Kenda’s significant bulk more than anything else, but regardless they both felt that they could quickly examine the back without having to worry too much about bypasses observing them.

‘Frag, there better not be a body back here. I can’t deal with havin’ t’ try an’ get ridda’ one t’day. Not after all the other dreck’.

‘Well, fingers crossed’.

With that Pedro opened the trunk of the SUV as slowly as he could, his eyes flicking around to ensure that he wasn’t being monitored by anyone. He was so consumed by his search that it was Kenda’s sharp gasp that brought his attention to the contents of the trunk. Wilde’s mouth went dry and had he not been holding onto the trunk’s lid his hands would have had a noticeable tremor to them. There was no corpse within the trunk of the stolen SUV. There were however several large duffle bags that were bursting full. One of them hadn’t been fully zipped shut and its contents were half spilled across the floor of the trunk.

The contents in question being grenades that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a war film.

There was more in the trunk. Four firearms. Large bulky things, at the most casual of glances they could have been mistaken for being some advanced form of shotgun. Wilde could easily see that they weren’t though; barrels far too large even for the widest of shells, the oversized revolver-like magazine was a dead giveaway, but the small switch next to the trigger designating the settings of SS, SA and FA that made Pedro truly concerned.

They were grenade launchers. Four fully automatic grenade launchers with enough ammunition to level several blocks.

Pedro shut with trunk lid with all the gentle care that one would handle a small child with. With it locked shut he made another frantic search to see if anyone had noticed the contents of the trunk. The rest of Redmond moved along at its own pace, utterly unaware of what was within the bright blue SUV.

Kenda had her head in her hands as she made a sound similar to a wounded animal.

‘Uhhh… I’m not sober ‘nough f’r this dreck. I’m… This…’.

She waved her hands around in vague, confused gestures. Pedro placed a hand on her muscular elbow to attract her attention and nodded towards the pickup. Regaining her sense of self Kenda gave a nod in response and the two climbed back into the front of the pickup, shutting the doors with care, as if fearing that the vibrations might set off one of the countless explosives lying in the back of the SUV attached to them.