Talk was easy.

Let’s see, I receive half a Benevolence per hour worked… I calculated, opening one of the boxes I had previously positioned and taking the plates for weld, the tools for the work already in hand. I work 19 hours per day, but I’ll do 2 extra hours until I get what I need, this gives me 8,5 Benevolences per day. Every 30 days I have to pay 71- no, 142,5 Benevolences of the renting. And the necessary pills and taxes cost me more now too, plus the monthly Benevolences that I’ll have to pay for the next five years of the hospital bills... This let me with… 12,5 Benevolences per month.

While the price of the prosthesis for her leg plus her hand is around 4500 Benevolences each…

Shivers went down my spine and I froze, but it wasn’t because the place I was standing into was freezing, it had no light nor air and, even though I head a blowtorch to open the door if Asshole and Douchebag tried to trap me there again, I probably wouldn’t be able to fight two guys at the same time if they came back. But because, in the back of my head, I could clearly hear the awful voice.

Shaking my head from one side to another, I focused on my work, the bits of melted metal jumping all around from the wall I was repairing and bouncing on my bare skin.

It would be hard and, sure, take a long time, but it wasn’t impossible. And, our jobs being a little dangerous aside, we were made to last for, at last, tree hundred years! So, yeah, sixty years wasn’t even a time to get worried about! And-!

There’s no way I will see she smiling ever again

...And, if I sell, somehow, my apps and the other trash I have, I’ll get the money even faster!

Fifteen minutes had passed when I decided to go back and have some air, when, once again, I noted the door was locked.

“Oh, fuck, not again”, I swore, the Angel interpreting my brain activity and transferring the information I a way that, if there was someone around, he/she would have heard me just as if there still were gases in that room.

Lighting up the blowtorch one more time, I started to cut thru the metal, thinking: I don’t care anymore. If I have to repair this latter, good, this only means just more work and money for me!

The door opened and again closed behind me, my lugs feeling the fresh air, I turned, my heart beating fast, to the two one-eared Workers who, of course, were waiting there. Each one was resting on one side of the wall and also carrying tools; Asshole having a hammer-glove and Douchebag a chainsaw-arm tied to his right shoulder by tight belts.

Why am I the only one with a so anachronistic tool? And why their tools are so threatening?!

“What, hu?”, asked Asshole.

Fuck, why are you acting like I was the guilty one here? I thought, almost challenging, clenching my fists. Right before diverting my eyes from his angry look.

“I asked you ‘what’, don’t you listened me?!”, Asshole insisted, taking his back out of the wall and walking to me. I could resist the heat of hundreds of Celsius degrees for hours without dropping a single drop of sweat, yet, the blowtorch was already slipping from my wet hands and I could feel my forehead drenched when he insisted: “Won’t you answer me?”

“…Wha- What do you want?”, I finally answered, supporting myself in one leg at a time.

“Look! ‘wa wa wa wa waryuwan?’ Hahaha!”, pointed Asshole, laughing stupidly loud.

“And why are you surprised? Did you discovered just now that he was this pathetic?”, replied Douchebag, shrugging. “Now, hurry up, man, we can’t wait here forever”, pointed, tapping the back of his head and where should be the Guardian Angel.

At least… It’ll be faster this time, apparently, I tried to comfort myself, pretending disinterest and sighing. Yet, without enough courage to walk away.

“Tch, yeah, apparently the hasty boy here couldn’t wait twenty or thirty minutes this time”, Asshole said, indicating me with his thumb. Just before throw his hand into my hair and hold it. “And what are you so bored about hu? Sighing and looking like you don’t give a shit, hu?!” screamed into my ears, one at a time, as if envious of me having two of them.

Finally laughing too, Douchebag answered for a version of myself that couldn’t do anything more than fixing its vision on the ground, shivering and gasping:

“You know pretty well why he is in this good mood, 89: he just won the lottery”

What are they talking about?! I couldn’t, once again, bring myself to answer, too terrified to do anything but wait the unavoidable beat.

“Oh, yeah! That’s why! Hey, hey, 46! Now that your sister just died, why don’t you lend us some money?”

“Wha-?! SHE ISN’T DEAD!”, I replied, slapping Assholes’ hand away from my hair.

Then, “BAM!”, and I was against the grid that made the floor, knocked out by a kick between my legs.

“WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!” shouted Douchebag, kicking me again, this time in the ribs.

“Wa~ and you were the one playing the reasonable”, played Asshole, mounting in my back and holding my right hand. “Well, now, 46, can you be a good boy and give us a bit of the money you received from your sister? Like, it was only yesterday, so the margin of 24 hours to the money to be secure in your bank account wasn’t reached yet right?” Containing the laugh, obviously being sarcastic, Asshole corrected himself: “...Unless you had a VIP bank account and don’t need to wait”

“...She isn’t de- GAH!”, pressing his index finger; all the pistons in his metallic glove moving in sync, numbers changing in a type of measurer around his pulse, his equipment looking more like some kind of weapon-gauntlet then a Worker tool; against my little finger, Asshole broke it.

Activating his chainsaw and stepping on my hurt bone, Douchbag added:

“You better hurry, I’m don’t have any more patience for you”

“O- O- Okay, okay! I- I- I’ll do it, I’ll do it!” I replied, drooling, and crying out of pain. When Asshole broke my ring finger, saying:

“You’re taking too long! Better hurry, when my friend here gets serious, he do some crazy stuff, my dude”

Even though my mind was confused by the excruciating pain, and my body afflicted with spasms, the Angel had no problem in reading my intentions and access my bank account, localize the nearest persons, open a transaction, and...

133 Benevolences. That was all I had. Not even near to my objective, but each fraction of it let me closer to Gear’s recuperation. To, once again, be able to listen hear the noisy alarm, to laugh when she falls out of the bed, wait for her too long breakfasts, chat with her.

To have something to care about, and someone that cared about me.

“I don’t want to...” I… said?!

“Uh?”, Douchebag got surprised.

“I don’t want to give you any money!”, I screamed, closing my eyes and clenching my teeth.

Oh, God, now I did it, I thought.

Yet, I couldn’t feel more proud.

I never took so bad of a beating before.

After the first nail be tossed off of one of my fingers, time stopped for me and the universe itself turned in nothing but my conscience floating in an endless sea of torment and horrors; I lost three nails, two teeth, had a toe broken, an ear split almost in half and, at the and of it all, I was coughing blood, shrunken into fetal position and shivering long after Asshole and Douchebag had gone.

Covered in sweat, blood, and vomit, I stretched my hands, but, too weak, couldn’t put myself upright at once, and had to support my weight in my elbows and forearm. Staring the dusty ground bellow the grid I was upon, I say drips of blood and sweat fell from my broke and cut open nose and add to the already big enough disgusting pound down there.

When I heard the steps approaching.

This is bad: if this continues, maybe I will really die! I thought, leaning my back against the wall and sitting, facing the end of the corridor and the man who was coming in my direction: he was tall, bald, had dozens of scars in his head, and a wild beard. It was my father.

Great: the situation didn’t alleviate a bit...

“...I heard about your sister”, dad ignored my deplorable state. “And that you that you will be paying her hospital bills besides the house expanses”

“Yeah… She can-” I was forced to spit a bunch of blood and saliva; and found out that I lost a third tooth; before continue: “she can’t work after all”

“Give up”

“‘Give up’, you say… Give up about wha-”

“Don’t play the dumb, you know pretty well that I’m talking about your sister. A fever is something, the loss of entire limbs is another completely different: she will be a burden that will drag every one of us deep down, and condemn our family”

“How… How can you just say something like this...? HOW CAN YOU EVEN TALK ABOUT FAMILY?!”

“...I will be selling the house you two had been using: there’s no reason to keep this just to, when you come to don’t be able to pay for it anymore, get me indebted”

“We’re the ones paying for it! I’m the one paying for that house!”

“Yet, I was the one who gathered the money to the papers, and the property is in my name”, he said, untouched, in an icy tone. Giving me his back and returning to God knows where, he continued: “but it’s a good thing you can pay for your sister’s debts: it means you can, then, already pay for your own house. I have more children now, so don’t come back”, right beyond the door at the end of the corridor, the opposite side where I was working, looking above his shoulders, father concluded: “how much was it again? 1000 Benevolences for your lair? Listen to me; a tip: let her die, then share your inheritance with me. You can, then, spend three months at my house and with your new family and siblings, six, if you don’t consume too many resources”, then the door closed and separated us.

No place to go back, dozens of years of debt, a work that could take my life at any moment and was only worsened by my colleagues...

There’s no way I will see she smiling ever again, once again, I heard the voice. My own internal thoughts.

“SHUT UP!”, I shouted, hitting the wall with the side of my hand, disciplining myself.

Biting my lower lip and swallowing my cries, I didn’t notice the young-looking, orange-haired guy who approached me, all smiling and caring a first aid kit:

“A- Are you okay? Oh, what am I saying, of course you aren’t, haha! Here, let me clean your wounds before take you to the hospital”

“...No, no hospital, please. I don’t have money for this and, by your young look, I think you don’t too, right?”, I said, feeling strangely ashamed: like if I had any pride left after all of this...

“...Sorry, man...”

Getting up and finding balance with one hand in the wall, I replied:

“No, you don’t need to sorry. Actually, thank you: for carrying about me”.

“Well, I did nothing yet, though? You should sit again and let me treat you”

Doing like my father and the fucking pair of criminals before him, I gave the orange-haired guy my back and concluded:

“But, you know, these first aid kits are paid too: you shouldn’t just go around using them. If you put them back now, I think, at last, you won’t be charged too much”.

He stopped me by grabbing my ripped shirt:

“I don’t have enough money to pay for your hospital bills, but I can, at last, pay for a first aid kit”

At first, I thought that the orange-haired guy would be, soon, only one more face in the crowd, that he would, in a second, disappear from my life and his memory forgotten. That, rapidly, showed itself to be an extremely wrong supposition:

“...So: after the beating, your dad showed up and just said to you to leave your sister die so he could have part of the inheritance?”, the woman with eye patch recapped. “Now, that’s fucked up”, continued, tasting from her smoking pipe immediately after. “How are you feeling?”

“Ah, better, thank you”, I answered, all my muscles stiffed while I seated, straight, on the chair.

“Wow, if I was in your situation, I wouldn’t know what to do! That really sucks, hu?” added the orange-haired guy, who revealed himself to be “225932579”, or “Star”, how the woman with an eye patch, “Aim”, called him.

“Idiot!” Aim hit Star with her smoking pipe, ashes and embers falling all around in his messy hair and making him struggle, almost despaired, to take them off. “What will this kind of comment help with?”. Turning to me again, she analyzed the curative and bandages she had redone (the ones made by Star being crap as hell in the end, motive why he brought me his friend’s shop in the first place; a process that revealed itself an adventure in it’s all way just to get permission to leave the job earlier: how many money had I lost?).

You just did basically the same thing… I thought. With my mouth well-closed, though: even if Aim was a sight for the eyes with her mature look, long red hair, and mesmerizing red eye, she was scary in her military position; after all, bloody eyes like her, like the ones Soldiers have, are directly connected to a special network that allowed instantaneous identification of micro expressions that left clear the intentions of the target, and heartbeats besides heat vision, night vision, and a bunch of things that I didn’t even know.

Oh, yea, and she is the owner of the weapons shop that we’re literally inside right now!, I added, forcing myself to not look around too much; to all the machine guns, pistols, hand grenades, revolvers, rocket launchers, mines, armors, keys (for God only knows what vehicles) and a bunch of things I had no idea what was used for.

“But you just did the same thing!” He said it! “Ouch!” He got hit again...

“Well…?”

“You can call me ‘Heavy’”

“Heavy, then.”, Aim, had dumped away almost all the fume, let aside the smoking pipe, and started to put back her personal first aid, that, apparently, was used pretty frequently. “I understand your situation, and I truly admire your determination to save your sister. This world needs more empathy, you were right back then! I will help you in any way I can...” My hopes went up. “...But...” Just to fall to the ground the next instant. “I can’t help you with money. I’m sorry”

I smiled, but it wasn’t out of consideration for Aim’s kindness. But out of despair; as if the voice inside my head, the one who told me that I was fighting a lost battle was heaving a great time.

“Don’t worry. Thank you, anyway”, I got up, gave my goodbyes and went out off the weapons store.

I, short in money and needing every half Benevolence I had, walked all the way back, without calling a taxi or any other means of transport.

For hours I went against the crowd, bumping into Workers, step into the chessboard of neon lights and the complete darkness between the innumerable stores and shops; stairs and elevators up and down, their access to the richer parts of the City blocked by automatized systems that required identification or armed guards; bombed by advertisements, crime and indifference in each and every corner of a tremendous metallic monster that encircled and confined the last star in a Universe where even the black holes had long died out, a so crowded and cramped and huge place, yet filled with the same nothingness that isolated it in eternal darkness.

I went alone and in silence.

And, then, finally, there I got: a nice building with lively mascots in its faxed, a board with (great disparity in it’s) prices of selling and buying and a door filled with flyers and adverts.

The human organs shop.

If a prosthesis is expansive, then an entirely new organ is just a dream; actually, the only point to this company has a shop here, is to buy, not to sell; but, this way, maybe, I can pay, at least, for Gear’s hand treatment, I thought, biting my lower lip, pretty aware of my deplorable state and how this would affect my price. Taking a deep breath, I advanced.

I gave a first, second, and third step, but, then, I stopped. Not because I was afraid, but because, right before my eyes, a second chance, I hope ended with eight zeros and topped by a bunch of weirdos, explosions, and weapons: the Last Man Tournament flyer.