As they exited the ship, Violet looked around, taking in the moon city they 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 Violet had parked, the walls around it began to close themselves off above her as several droids came to life, and they started cleaning the exterior of her ship.

A docking attendant came through a side door and approached Violet. 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.”

Violet took the pad and wrote; Name: Ford Sinn; length of stay: unknown. Then she entered a generous amount of credits into the pad’s payment options, then stopped when she saw the account and routing number needed. She turned and 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?”

Violet bit her 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 Violet, who 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.

Violet immediately turned to Haru, “You can assist me in bed! AHH!” she said and yelped as Haru flicked her forehead.

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

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

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

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

“Alright,” Violet 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!” Violet chastised.

“I need money!” Haru countered.

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

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

***

She walked around aimlessly for what seemed like hours, searching for the smell of chemicals. Then she heard a commotion in an alleyway nearby, making her way toward it, hoping she would not be too late to steal some poor victim’s wallet. When she rounded the corner, she saw a group of ragged-looking men beating a child. ‘Aww, fuck. The child won’t have any money to steal,’ she thought, disappointed. Then a gust of wind blew through the alley, carrying with it the smell of chemicals she had been searching for all this time.

Activating a few cybernetics, she traced the smell coming from… the child?! ‘Fuck, now I got to save the kid! They had better be useful!’ Violet pulled three throwing knives from a pocket within her jacket and counted four men and one woman, the woman standing back and watching the beating. Violet took one of her knives and threw it 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.

Violet didn’t let them have a chance. She 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.

Violet 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 Glock 1911 in the woman’s hands, twisting the weapon out of her hands, and sticking her throat, making her double over.

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

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

The child pushed themselves up and looked at her 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.

Violet 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 he felt ashamed, “I-I don’t have one.”

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

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

“Yep, but that’s beside the point,” Violet said and took 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 Violet had come.

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

As she reached the alley’s end, where the hustle and bustle of civilians ignored the gory scene behind her, someone grabbed her right leg before she could walk any further. Looking down, she saw the kid holding onto her knee as if his life depended on it. He looked up and blurted out, louder than 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 Violet’s lips as he knelt and looked the kid in the eyes, “I could, but why would I?”

“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!”

Violet studied the kid for a moment, considering everything from all angles. ‘Well, he’s the right age to be devoted to me and seems willing enough. Maybe a test is needed to be sure,’ she thought, then asked, “You live in an orphanage somewhere near here, right?” the kid nodded, and Violet pulled one of the Glock 1911s and a knife from her 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. I will find you and teach you. And by the time I’m done training you, the galaxy will be yours to have.”

“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?”

Violet 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!?”

Violet smiled, “Yep, now go and earn your place by my side,” she said as she stood and walked into the crowd. Disappearing into nothingness as she did so.

***