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inverumlibertas-blog · 7 years

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===> Nights in the past, but not many...

|Terezi Megido|

It's barely been 48 hours since your lusus returned with no letter from your dearly beloved Kanaya, and you've more than raised hell about it. After taking your motorcycle down to the collective's local dim season location and beating the hell out of their toughest bruisers for information, you proceeded to curse them with plague, throwing down a smoke bomb that scattered nanobots all around the area that would seek out trolls and cause rashes.

You only refrain from killing them because you know Kanaya's still out there. She would hate it if you killed them, she was always a softie like that. Brutalizing animals but having the naivety to trust a troll.

You hoped to glean something from those disgusting layabouts in the forest, but apparently they had all been too busy pissing on each other's unkempt beards and crying about Troll Facebook to actually pay attention to whether they had killed your closest friend, whether she had escaped, or which direction she had run off in. Your hand hovers over your left pocket, where you keep your crystal dagger, and you take a deep breath as you board your hoverbike, boots locked in and a pack strapped to your back with your walking stick.

You wanted to stay off grid as much as you could. Gamble online here, pawn some things there, pick up basic necessities now and then -- cash is king, and you always kept it handy. You wonder if information is something you need a line of credit for -- you wonder how well that information is guarded. You're prepared to do anything, but you're still hesitant about that.

Your broker agreed to deal with you, but they seemed incredibly wary about it, not having much of any information on you. Megido, maroon, 5'4. Information you could get from a sweeps old biometric scan rudimentary enough to be used as login information for an online game. Your contact is nearby -- in an alley by the flickering advertisement for Stay Neon cosmetics that always causes your scanner to fumble while parsing it. You requested no recorded surveillance, but you really have no idea if they'll honor that. You'll have to trust that the information at least won't leave the broker's husktop, though you don't want to. Even if you took your glasses off, you probably wouldn't be able to notice a surveillance device. You're a good judge of character, not cameras.

You park your hoverbike and lean it against a dingy wall that smells like dusty plaster, stepping into the alleyway. You can't see it, but you can feel the damp shadow cast over your body by the lack of moonlight when you pass through. A faint, sour odor, though you can't place it, and don't want to. "Gee, I sure hope I don't get jumped in this alleyway all by myself!"

A fantastic code phrase for identification, engineered by yours truly.

|Feferi Serket|

“I know,” you tsk mournfully, “I know it’s hard, in this night and age, to find someone to be with, who wants to be with you. And to think you had something real, only to find this? I- I know, but those are the facts.”

You’re sitting at your desk, where you’ve been stuck for the past thirty minutes with your hand heavy over your eyes, keeping a headache at bay. Thirty minutes!! Thirty whole damn minutes. You could have planned a murder and been done with this whole mess in that time, but no. No, this emotional Blueblood was clearly more interested in whining to you because his Boyfriend was seen across town with someone else. Of course you’d had them looked into, and this wasn’t the first time it’d happened, but you’ve decided to keep that to yourself. He’d only paid for last night, after all. This, however, did not assuage his sudden grief. Your hand drops against the hard exoskeleton of the desk and you roll your eyes at the communication device in your ear, glancing over at it as though it – or he – could see you.

“I can't release everything to you without proper clear- Yes. Yes, I’m aware, but I did not cause your partner's infidelity, sir. This company is not liable for that, we just found it out for you. Yes. Sir, yes, I know. Not without proper clearance, as you well know when you signed your papers, it’s in the agreement. I know you’re sad. I know it hurts, dear, I am sorry for your loss.” You keep your voice just cheerful enough to slide through the thin wall of polite empathy and non-offence. You’re just floating, now, trying to get him off the line. You weren’t a therapist if you could help it and he hadn’t paid you nearly enough to care about this for much longer.

“Well, if you do decide to follow through with that, I know an excellent crematorium. Yes! Yes, I’ll have it forwarded. It was good to speak with you too. Mhmm!! You have a good night now.”

You hear the call line end in your ear and your head drops to your desk dramatically. Ugh!! Ugh. You stand up to stretch a little after that, eyes unseeing of the bright white room that was your office, already focused on your glasses screen, sending data packets to some of your operatives and making notes to get the crematorium’s number to your now – thankfully!! – ex-client. You pause, considering just how serious he might have been about killing the jade for his indiscretion. You roll your eyes again, listing to one side and pulling a face. God, if he was willing to whine to you for that long, he’d probably go through with it. Fine, whatever, you send a message to Anisce to send the boy a warning. It was out of your hands now, better or worse.

Your wrist starts to vibrate in pulses, and you turn your wrist up to look at your watch. Ah. You’d been waiting for this. Your other wrist flicks out and you finger down the holo-display, the bright whiteness of the tile fading down to blacks and blues, dimming the whole thing. You press something else, as you sit back down, to lock the door. The display outside flickers from a light blue smiling crocodile to a red one, sunk up to its eyes in digital water, eyeing everyone who passed suspiciously. It was, frankly, one of your more favorite customizations.

A low grumbling noise vibrates the floor, and you smile softly. “Give me another hour, and ill have your food sent up.” You say to no one in particular, and you’re answered with the sound of sloshing water as she slips back under the pool.

“Eyes on.”

Your glasses display flickers, and suddenly you’re staring at a troll in an alley, under one of many Stay Neon Cosmetics signs peppering the City floor.

A short troll walks out of the shadow and into the hollow buzzlight of the sign. She’s young, probably just off of the nursery continent. She’s covered head to toe in white leather, white helmet, White mask covering the lower half of her face.

She points to her left eye, and the inner circles of its cybernetic iris bring the other troll into focus.

“The broker will see you now.”

|Terezi Megido|

Most of the aesthetic is lost on you, your scanner reading back to you simple things. Cybernetic eye, white leather, simple biometrics - height, species, things that don't matter too much to you. You give a thumbs up, you're sure there was some kind of mysterious pageantry you just missed out on, and you like to pretend to be in the loop.

"Well, let's get to it, then. You have resources, I have funds. I need someone found, and time is of the essence."

You doubt she's in any pressing danger, but she's always in possible danger. It's the price of living in this world, augmented or not. You pull a holographic card out of your wallet and hold it out in the palm of your hand. In it is a picture of Kanaya, a bit younger, cropped from a selfie you took together on the nursery continent. You tilt the card slightly and the hologram shifts, showing slight angles from 3D facial mapping.

"She usually tries to stay out of cities, but I need information on any sightings or surveillance footage possible."

Saying this much makes you uneasy. If you could track her yourself, you would, but nobody notices a grimy oliveblood slinking around in the gutters unless you offer financial incentive.

|Feferi Serket|

The Small Troll doesn’t respond, doesn’t move at all, really, until she’s presented with the holocard. Then she’s slow, deliberate, between looking at the face of this maroon, to moving forward slowly, to staring pointedly at the card in her hand.

She doesn’t move or speak, without your say so. You’ve already got colorful displays emanating from your desktop and your wrist projectors, both of the troll in front of you – er-the troll in front of the proxy - and the woman on the card. You’re running facial recognition on the card, and aging it it up and down at least five sweeps to cover your bases. You flick a finger and set it to keep the line to Vriska on hold, just in case you needed the Nursery Database files. Meanwhile, the Proxy stands there, staring at the card, awaiting your instruction.

Your fingernails tap on the edge of the chair. That’ll take a minute or two to run through and triple check itself. You refocus on the proxy visuals. You could do a lot with a few minutes.

“Look at her again. Prepare to speak.”

The Woman in White stands straight again without word or warning, staring at your client, unblinking. You take her in through your secondary set of eyes. Something doesn’t set right. Shes almost familiar, but you comb through so much on a nightly basis, that hardly tell you anything. Still…. Something beeps on your right and you glance over, and smile satisfactorily. It wasn’t a full facial match, and it was from sweeps ago, but the probability of you being right was high enough, you’d take the risk. Best case, you intimidate her, worst case, you’re wrong and you play it off, and she lets down her guard. Or, you know, spooks and knifes the proxy, but you like to stay optimistic. You open your mouth to speak, and it comes out of your proxy’s mouth.

“Hello, Miss Megido, It’s a pleasure.”

|Terezi Megido|

Panic descends on your frail little lowblooded heart, like a skeletal hand squeezing a hopbeast to death. Outwardly, though, you just take a breath. Your hand twitches slightly; you want to place your hand over your crystal dagger again, but you know better. Worthless little underling that proxy may or may not be, you can't just go around stabbing people to get what you want - or escape from what you don't. You're not well-bred enough for that.

Instead, you tilt your head slightly to one side, flip the hologram off, the card back into your pocket, and the LEDs on your sunglasses display little blinking inquiry hooks where it normally displays fake eyes.

"So can you do it or not?"

You're scared out of your mind, but you can't afford to piss yourself in an alleyway. You wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you contributed to this stench.

|Feferi Serket|

You’re sitting comfortably, legs crossed petitely under and to the side of your chair. You’re relaxed, all the displays hovering above the desk now, leaving your hands free to fold over one another just in front of your chin. You grin over them, eyes alight with the rush of near victory at the ways she tenses, the ways she challenges you. You’d been right.

Your words continue to ghost through your much less reactive operative.

“I can, and am. And you can calm down, Megido, if I turned in every Off Grid troll that asked after my help, I wouldn’t have a very interesting clientele, would I?”

Your head tilts with the question, but the Woman in White remained stoic as ever. As pleased with yourself as you generally where when even small gambles paid off, something still wasn’t in its place. Your eyebrows pinch lightly, and you send a command to re-run Megidos known features in conjunction with the name.

“And I do like interesting. Now, About payment. What exactly did you have in mind?”

|Terezi Megido|

You steel your nerves, roll your shoulders a little.

"Obviously I prefer not to pay through a credit company. I have old world gold coins that would fetch a pretty price placed in the claws of a collector or reclaimer, gems, paper money, hexes. It's a noob move, perhaps, but for such a simple operation, I'm sure you can afford to give me a reasonable price."

You have a feeling the broker is going to deny your payment capabilities and demand something stupid, but you really hope it's just a feeling. Only an idiot would turn down old world coinage -- it's worth a fortune if you can peddle it to the right old money alcoholic with their claws desperately digging at the past. Or a salvage op. Maybe it's a little radioactive, but the tumors wouldn't show up for decades!

|Feferi Serket|

“Oh I can afford it, to be sure, but I think you and I both know you don’t want to wait on me to verify the values of all that." The Woman in white hasn’t moved since she started looking at Megido.

You, however, are flipping through displays rapidly. Something had clicked, seconds ago. Some phrase or word, or. Something. Bells were ringing, and you needed desperately to shut them up. To know.

The more you pulled up, trying to trace this downright ghostly line of though, the more you were realizing that it was stirring up old memories you hadn’t really wanted to hold onto, but, apparently, weren’t willing to give up yet. You tried not to care about that. You just had to verify. Dig, and verify. You wave away your view of her, the womans eye shifting with the pause, so you could refocus.

A few moments later, you lean back against your chair heavily, disbelieving. You rub your eyes. It really was such a small fucking world, wasn’t it. The iris rings spun again in their reawakening as you look through them, trying to take this woman in. What you could see of her, anyway, as your hands now gripped the arms of your seat.

And sure enough, there it was. The memory clicked into place, flickering like a bad projector. Your bubbly exterior sweeps away with it, and you’re left bitter, and angry, but, to the benefit of her general well being, not at her.

You take a deep breath, and sit straight-backed, as your desk finally beeps a match at you. Fine. Time to end this.

“I’ve found pictures of Kanaya, Surely a little bit of cash and the promise of a favor or two would suffice?”

|Terezi Megido|

"You wanted that in modern cash or old?"

You bristle a little at the mention of Kanaya's name, but it's only natural that she'd be able to find that out if she had yours. She probably has info on the nursery island. That has to be it. Still, you slip your backpack off of one shoulder and pull it to the front -- a pair of shimmering, holographic dragonfly wings burst forth momentarily and flutter before dispersing.

Your claws hover over several different parcels, waiting for confirmation. You have no idea what kind of a favor she could ask of you -- you doubt she believes in your hexes.

"What would I need to pay you to update me if new information becomes available?"

|Feferi Serket|

You watch her impatiently, as she pulls off her dirty pack and starts to rifle through it without putting up a fight, and you pull a face of minor disgust. She didn’t want to negotiate; she wasn’t asking questions about what you’d found…For all she knows you could have photos from sweeps ago, entirely useless. She’s over eager, She’s dirty, scared…and She’s, frankly, desperate. God. You close your eyes, and allow yourself the smallest sigh. Thinking about that time in your life was usually something akin to lighting a slow burning fuse that only ever ended with a pile of rubble and regret. But, somehow, you can feel that coal in your gut start to quench itself before it ever gets to really burning, and, confused, you remind yourself that it was Eridan you hated, not her.

But this sudden calm was more than that.

She used to be kind of arrogant, in that way that people who know what they’re doing are. That is to say, not terribly boastful, but definitely accurate. Dangerous, in that way, and you’d liked that about her. She got what she wanted, dealt fair, and played her odds. It wasn’t something one was often given due credit for, as anyone could run a FVRRP guild bank, but to run Aradia Captors Guild Bank and make it dance the way she used to – That. That was a skill. That was a whole subset of skills. That Megido would have given you a run for your money, but you pull yourself from your memory. She was somebody you could have, maybe, looked up to, once.

This is not the Terezi Megido that you remember. You shake your head.

But, then, who of any of you were.

“Modern Cash will do, and two favors you owe me. I don’t know what they will be, or when I will ask them of you, so do keep in touch. The Money will be a Third of my usual asking price. You may entrust it to the woman you see before you." you pause, considering her second question.

“…On second thought, give me those coins, and I’ll add you to the mailing list. The data is streaming to you now.”

The Woman in White, reaches up behind her right ear to pull out a memory insert, blinking green to signify it’s been filled, and holds it just beyond what Terezi could reach.

“My Proxy will handle the rest. You know how to contact me. “

Your finger hovers over the display, ready to end the connection. Everyone had changed, and you were no exception. You didn’t do friends, anymore, and besides. You had a reputation to keep.

“I’m sure I’ll be seeing you, Terezi.”

You end the call, and turn the lights back up. You had a lusus to feed.

|Terezi Megido|

Again, calling you your first name. You shake your head, squinting a little -- it doesn't show up on your glasses, but your nose scrunches up a bit. You hate the idea of owing a favor to someone like this, let alone two favors. Impersonal, smug, detached. Your lusus comes to life around your neck from where she had been hanging like a limp scarf, darting out to fetch the insert, delicately between sharp teeth. She's always had a pretty good sense about playing along with you, almost like she can sense what you want. She coils back around your neck easily and drops the info right into your waiting hand, and spirits above, a part of you wants to just dart off; hop on your bike, sand your horns down and get a new anonymity schtick.

The other part of you is a cynical witch who values her life and knows not to double cross someone whose sinister aura manages to shine despite not even being physically present.

You count out what you need and hand over your payment to the proxy, along with little hex bag. "For good luck," you say, and you don't wait for a response from the Woman in White before you're back on your bike and heading away, somewhere, anywhere that isn't that alleyway.

#long post #narrative #plot #dylidae

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