RavensDagger

  Interlude Ten - The Silly Killer

  She often had to remind herself that she was a cold-blooded killer. The people arouhese normies minding their normal business onboard Driftwood? They could probably name fewer people than she had killed.

  It was something that kept her up at night. She'd wake up in a cold sweat, reminded of all the lives she'd taken.

  It was not something that stopped her from pulling the trigger when her ship's lo buzzed.

  That's what she meant when she imagined herself as cold-blooded. Sure, she felt guilty about what she'd done, and sure she sometimes wished that she could offload all of that, but her fact prevented her from ung Fox O some hopped-up pirate in a juurned-corsair.

  Pixie took a breath, shook her head, then looked around herself. That was right, she was a cold-blooded killer. No reason to be afraid. She could look any one of the people around her in the eye ahem that she killed motherfuckers for a living.

  Sure, she'd have to look up into their eyes, and sure she'd never killed someone in person, but those were just details.

  There was no reason for her to be afraid because being afraid after being such a successful merary for so long was just kind of silly.

  That was the ratiohat she was running through pretty muonstop as she stayed low (something that came naturally to her) and out of sight.

  Around her were the loud bangs of gunshots, cries of victory and dismay, the rhythmic thumping of some old bass-boosted eleic music.

  The arcade was a surprisingly busy pce.

  She paused o a fighter-sim game and scoffed as a pair of kids in a very simplified cockpit tried to chase down generic pirates. Amateurs.

  But she wasn't here to be unimpressed by some old arcade maes and games meant to eain children and rob them of their cash. She was here on the lookout for her quarry.

  She slowly edged her head around a er and spied the two she was following.

  Twenty-Six was standio Evelyn, a pstic mallet in hand. Evelyn had one as well, but she was barely holding onto the toy in a limp wrist while her focus was on the board ahead of both of them.

  The tops of some Earth Alliance solider's head popped out of a hole, and Evelyn's attention turowards it. In that split sed, the head was rammed back down into the mae with enough force to shake the whole thing.

  Then another came out, and another, and they were eaocked bato pce with the kind of force that Pixie expected from the recoil on her assault on.

  One head remaiig out of the board. It was from one of the holes wenty-Six. She saw it, gasped, then swung down in a big two-handed swing that had her pstic mallet thumping against the head with a squeak.

  Pixie caught the praise Evelyn gave the smaller meic girl over the sound of a few more heads being crushed.

  After another mihe mae relutly spat out a wad of tickets and the girls moved on to try something else.

  Pinball? They each grabbed a mae, though the term 'grab' was a slight misnomer since Evelyn didn't seem willing to touch the one she chose. She was winning anyway, but that was besides the point.

  Pixie had been a merary and bounty hunter for just over a decade now, and while she was aware that part of that line of work often involved sleuthing and spying on people, it had never been her area. She was more of a hired gun than a private eye, even if she did rub shoulders with that sort on rare occasions.

  This was a whole other thing, though.

  She wasn't just... she wasn't spying oher girl for selfish reasons. She was tailing them because there was something deeply wrong about Evelyn Ville.

  Pixie had pulled up the woman's records, and they were faultless. Oh, a few bits of misbehaviour here and there, some scuffles, a few social media posts that had opinions that were more popur ten years ago than now, but there was nothing in her records that suggested that Evelyn Ville was anything more than a perfectly petent astro archaeologist.

  It had still felt off. The way she moved and talked suggested a military background, and more than just the normal mandatory service every Martian participated in. She wasn't even trying to hide her cores, her powers.

  And then, when Pixie started to dig into her ship's older records, she noticed a discrepancy.

  Evelyn Ville had teically been around for a while, as far as records went, but those records were basically bnk stes until a few weeks ago.

  Her ship had a few dozen terabytes of data stored on it. Records pulled out of various gover databases that were of questionable legality to own, but which could e in handy when chasing a pirate down.

  She didn't always have the luxury of being able to hire an information broker, so she had those records on hand. She didn't update them very often, however, which was where the discrepancy came in.

  Evelyn Ville was not Evelyn Ville.

  Pixie retty sure that no one was Evelyn Ville, in fact. The name was made up from the get-go, and it was done well enough that only someone very professional and very well ected could have pulled it off. Which suggested MINT was involved.

  The woman named Evelyn and Twenty-Six (whose records did all match up and whom Pixie suspected far less) finished pying pinball. Twenty-Six seemed to be gesturing quite a bit, and Evelyn nodded along, then she pulled a small metal sphere from somewhere and had it float up and down.

  Twenty-Six listetentively, then nodded, and when she was hahe ball she frow it in her palm for a while before shrugging.

  The taller of the two seemed to instruct Twenty-Six on how to do something as they walked on deeper into the arcade.

  Pixie followed.

  She retty sure that this was... not nefarious. In fact, it looked like a pretty bog-standard date. Sure, one of the two was obviously a core-user, but that wasn't... impossibly strange. Just because they weren't doing anything strange didn't mean that she'd give up on following them, though!

  Pixie had a deep and burning kernel of anger in her chest. Anger and... a lot of other emotions that she wasn't quite sure about.

  It was all Missy's fault.

  That woman had dohings to Pixie's heart that she was only now fully healed from, and just when Pixie was starting to open up to the idea of moving on, Missy returned. She was... nice about it, made the fact that she wasn't ied in anything pretty clear from the o, and then pushed Pixie towards Evelyn with hints so loud they might as well be self-guided missiles.

  It didn't help any that Evelyn ixie's type.

  Tall, dark and mysterious? Yes please.

  That meeting Evelyn had led her to meeting Twenty-Six was also he Saturnian was a true fan... of Pixie's ship. But she was cute, enthusiastid made Pixie smile and ugh.

  If Pixie had interpreted Twenty-Six's prattling about fleets correctly, then there was also a level of opehere that would meay of space for even a wayward bounty huhe st woman itle fleet, Aurora Sterlingworth, was a little cold, but she was also hot, so Pixie was willing tive the aloofness.

  She was tempted. Very tempted.

  But there were too many stories of good bounty hunters being led astray by a pair of long legs and a pretty smile for her to just jump i first.

  Did she want in on whatever they had going on?

  She poked her head around a er and found Evelyn smiling while holding onte plush of what looked like the Empress of Mars while Twenty-Six was ughing, her giggles carrying evehe stant flood of jingles in the room.

  Cute dates with cute girls? Pixie wahat more than almost anything else in the world.

  She looked around the er again and... no Evelyn?

  Twenty-Six was there, smiling as she looked at a small box of a... model kit? No Evelyn though. Had the woman goo the washroom? Maybe this ixie's ce to tally run into Twenty-Six? She could alretend to be here for those silly fighter-sims.

  A shadow fell over her, which wasn't too unusual, but this o particurly cold and unweling.

  Pixie swallowed and gnced up. Evelyn was smiling.

  "Would you like to join us?" she asked. "We were just about to go find a bite to eat. A little something to sna."

  Why did that sound like a lion inviting a mouse onto its pte? Pixie stood taller and worked hard to remind herself that she was a cold-blooded killer. A very silly killer.

  ***

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