Chapter Three - Strange Animals

“No one wants a career! Do you think you want to work for the same bosspunk for 30 years of your life?

Gigs are the way to go! Work for more credits, work when you want, if you want! And the day your boss steps on your toes? You’re off to the next gig!”

--Gigs-R-Us ad, 2031

***

I wasn’t sure if I liked the Barber Shop. The music was weird as hell, and while the chick with the fox tails had a killer voice, I could still pick out the synth notes when she started to croon. I suppose that was one of the downsides of having really good cybernetic ears.

Plus, the place had too many people wearing too much faux-fur for me to be comfortable.

And Rac thought I wasn’t cool? What the hell?

At least I wasn’t wearing fur.

I’m sensing that you dislike the aesthetic.

“Mhm,” I muttered. Rac glanced up at me, and I waved her concern off. “Show me to your friends, Rac. I’ll try not to be too uncool around them.”

It probably shouldn’t have bothered me so much, but it did anyway. Maybe my ego was a little more fragile than I’d like to admit. But... well, fuck it. It wasn’t cool to be so worried about what others thought about you anyway, so I made an effort to let it go.

It’s just that I thought, for some reason, that at least in Rac’s eyes I was the badass older sister she never had who could solve all of her problems by blowing them up. I guess I wasn’t quite there, though.

Sucked, but that’s what it was... at least for now. There was still time to impress the brat, even if it really, really didn’t matter.

“Don’t be weird around them,” Rac said.

“I won’t be weird,” I growled. “Have some faith in me.”

That would be misplacing her faith.

“Oh, shut up, you,” I muttered. Rac gave me another look, but I ignored it. Myalis was being extra sassy right now, probably because she knew that this was embarrassing for me, and she knew that I knew that it was silly to be embarrassed about it to begin with. She loved this kind of circular thing.

Rac led me to a booth some ways into the bar-slash-club, where the music from the dance floor wasn’t quite as loud. There was a wall cutting off some of the noise, and a row of fake plants along the other walls partially hiding some of those foam sound buffer things that cut off vibrations.

The booth Rac led me to had two people sitting at it already. One was a massive woman with a plastic half-mask on her face that made her look like a gorilla. The look was only improved by her arms and upper back. It looked like she’d had some pretty extensive cybernetic work done on her. Her shoulders were huge to compensate for the size of her arms, which were also massive. They ended in hands that looked like they could crush melons with no effort. Or a person’s head.

Those are interesting. A human design, but based on a Vanguard’s discarded prosthetics. They’re about ten years behind the current technological trend, mostly used for carrying heavy weapons.

So, she’d gotten her hands on military surplus? Or, rather, her hands were military surplus.

The guy next to her was a lot less daunting to look at. A skinny runt of a guy, maybe a year or two older than Rac and a bit younger than me. He had a skintight suit on with a leather jacket thrown over that. He was wearing a full-faced mask, with little mandibles and some hints at more ‘eyes’ on it.

Not cybernetics, just a customised piece of hightech gear that gave him a bit of a spidery look. He gave me a peace-sign with a freakish hand. Too many joints, fingers that were too long, then scooted over so that Rac and I had room to sit.

“Guys, this is Cat, she’s... sort of like my big sister, I guess,” Rac said. “Cat, this is Coco, and that’s Jerusalem.” She gestured first to the gorilla woman, who shifted to the side to raise an arm up and over the table so she could wave (she had a banana peel decal on her inner arm), then to the spider-looking guy, who gave me a thumbs up.

“Yo,” I said. “So, is this the whole crew?”

“Nah, Garter’s not here yet,” Coco said. Where is he, anyway?” That last was directed to Jerusalem, who tilted his head to the side, then he made a trio of quick gestures, ending with a ‘three.’

“Does he not talk?” I asked with a gesture to the guy.

“He’s mute,” Coco said.

Jerusalem shrugged, and I guessed that he was used to the question. Then he continued to stare at me for a while before he recoiled back, and I had the impression, from his body language alone, that he had just been shocked.

“What is it?” Coco asked.

Jerusalem made a few more complicated gestures in the air that I couldn’t understand.

But apparently Myalis could.

He’s telling her about his recent encounter with your automated cybersecurity systems.

I didn’t want to give away the game, and I was kinda shit at subvocalization, so I ended up opening a text app in my augs. ‘My what?’

Me. He tried to slip into your augmentations, and he bumped into me. Don’t worry, I didn’t do anything more than what a decently good cyber-security system might do. I didn’t even chase him, just gave him the digital equivalent of sticking your fingers in a mouse trap.

Jerusalem shook his head as he finished telling Coco what happened, and the big woman just laughed. “Well, maybe you should know your place then, huh?” she asked. “Raccoon, what’s your big sister do?”

“She, uh,” Rac said.

“I’m stealth and infiltration,” I said before she could demote me to lookout or something.

“Same as Jerusalem then, “Coco said. “You coming with us on today’s gig?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Probably, even.”

“That case, you might want to let Jerusalem connect you to our network. We use it for coms. And he uses it to send text-messages to the lot of us. I’m assuming you’re literate?” she asked.

“I can manage,” I said.

I glanced over as a guy walked over to our table. I didn’t lean that way, but even I could tell he was an objectively handsome man. He had that model chin and wavy blond hair, curled up at the front in a messy-but-not sorta way.

He was otherwise pretty nondescript, especially for a place like this. The only animal feature was maybe his jacket, which was all snakeskin.

He was carrying a metal tray which he set down on the table before us. “Banana smoothie, for the walking stereotype, bourbon on rocks for the spider, root-beers for the Raccoon and her gorgeous friend, and a little something for me,” he said as he placed down drinks in front of each of us. Mine looked like a lump of soft serve on top of some soda. Root beer, I supposed.

“You’re almost late,” Coco said as she accepted hers.

“Almost isn’t,” he replied. I took it that this was Garter. “So, Raccoon, who’s the friend?”

“This is Cat, my big sister of sorts,” Raccoon said. She smiled, and I noticed a hint of red spreading across her cheeks as she accepted the float.

I glanced between her and Garter, who sat down across from us on the other end of the booth, one leg folded up casually while he swirled something dark in a small tumbler cup. “Well, any friend of Raccoon’s a friend of mine,” he said with a wink.

Ah.

Right, I was putting two and two together here and reaching four. Was Racoon afraid I’d make her look bad in front of this guy specifically? I was glad I kept that app open. ‘M, how old is this guy?’

Garter, AKA Garfield Lebeau, twenty-seven years old, currently marked as unemployed, but clearly works as a freelance mercenary. I can dig deeper, if you want?

Way too old for Rac to have any sort of interest in. Then again... he was about the right age to be in a boy band, and plenty of girls had crushes on those.

If this was even a crush. It could be nothing, or maybe I’d need to have a very serious shotgun talk with this guy before I painted the walls with his brains and figure out a way to console Rac for the loss.

“Wow, that’s a look,” Garter said as he looked at me. “So, Millennium Animal said that you might be coming with us on our next gig?”

“Yeah,” I said. Was this the third time I’d been asked that? “If you don’t mind me coming along. I just want to see if Rac’s kept safe.”

“That’s fair,” he said with a nod as he took a sip from his glass. “Well, in that case, maybe I could go over the gig?” That had all the others sitting up straighter. “It’s a three-hour job. Some kids from a sub-level two gang discovered a corpo warehouse, and want to empty it out. Problem is, they figure they can’t do it themselves. So we’re going in to do the hard part for them. We go in, break down the security on the place, then let the kids grab anything they can. Maybe we help them load up.”

Jerusalem made some gestures that Garter seemed to get.

“Nah, we’re paid a fixed rate. Ten-k credits each. Flat.” That wasn’t all that bad of a payday for a three-hour long job, I figured. More than anyone would make working a register. The others didn’t seem to agree. “I know, it’s low, but it’s also low-risk and easy work. It’s that or we burn credits instead sitting here. So... we in?”

***