NOVEL NEXT 2.29 Paid in Peanuts and Popcorn
One by one the other voices quieted as Phanya and the mercenaries followed Ricky's stare. Backlighting from the train station cast the floating thing in shadows and obscured any details, but it listed heavily to the side and glistening fluid dripped off the edge. Its floating angle wobbled and Ricky recognized the damaged gravrails, right as Fairbanks' hovercar slowly traveled under a floodlight to illuminate the wretched scene. The vehicle had been through hell, barely lurching along and every exposed panel showed heavy signs of damage. Smashed bug carcasses covered everything else, obscuring the hovercar's interior and dripping a trail of juices behind. It stopped directly in front of the jitney, some electronic component shorted out with an audible pop, and the hovercar crashed to the ground.
[Bounty Hunter level 2 defeated! +2 XP for participation]
Or rather, crashed into the buggy. The collision threw up a large cloud of dust and blanketed the area in stunned silence, save for a quiet shuffling as two figures limped into view. At first Ricky's frayed nerves thought that Jenakite and Jellico had been zombified somehow, but in the light he saw that the two were really just covered head to toe in bug ichor. The former's wild mane of hair had not escaped the bugs and dragged along behind her, wet with ichor and held down by a snoring gremlin. The rotund monster looked like it was sleeping off the biggest feast of its life, but Jenakite didn't seem to notice it weighing her down.
Actually, neither one seemed to notice anything. They blankly stared into the middle distance as they slowly marched forward, until the two mercenaries started making noise again. The gunman finally realized that his driver was very possibly dead, and his large rifle started swinging between them as he demanded answers. The Ratfink never let go of Ricky's chokehold, but he projected the bounty notice into the air between them and started shouting demands. Ricky winced every time the gas pistol's muzzle knocked against his temple, Phanya growled whenever the gunman's aim snapped back to her, and the hunter duo stopped walking in the middle of the standoff.
Jenakite and Jellico shared one long, pointed look, and without speaking a word they twitched with synchronized timing. Jena pulled her shotgun from her back holster faster than Phanya could follow and hip-fired at the gunman merc without any warning. The merc had barely started to lift his gun, but the relic shotgun blew out nearly half of the stout man's torso and he fell in a wet heap. Jelly twisted his body in an odd contortion where he leaned back and threw one arm out, and a thin lance of liquid silver shot out from his hand. It extended past Ricky's ear fast enough for him to hear the whoosh of air, followed by a wet gurgling sound. The Ratfink's grip slackened, then dropped, and the silver lance snapped back into the gem on the back of Jelly's hand.
[Bounty Gunner level 2 defeated! +2 XP for participation]
[Ratfink Weasel level 3 defeated! +3 XP for participation]
[Decisive victory against rival party! +10 XP bonus]
DING!
Despite everything, Ricky had been most preoccupied with wondering why the system called the dead Ratfink a weasel when he wasn't a hybri, but no musings could ignore the level-up gong and his eyes snapped up to Phanya. She froze in place, as if she had nearly been caught sneaking out, but the two hunters didn't comprehend the resounding noise. Jena blinked heavily while Jelly slowly reached up, slapping the side of his head to knock some bug guts out of his ear, and the two holstered their weapons.
"I'm here! We're here to help! ...Oh." Tapper careened around the corner, running as fast as he could manage while dragging the wagon, and his metal feet skidded to a halt on the tarmac. "Oh my. Is everyone, um… Is everyone alright?" Salazar sat in the wagon, still groggy from passing out, but he had recovered enough to lean around Tapper and grimace at the grisly scene.
"You."
The single word from Jenakite sent a chill through the collective party. Everyone froze, save for Salazar, who instantly started to panic when he recognized the two hunters under the layer of bug slime. The rest watched Salazar fall out of the wagon and stumble towards the jitney, tugging at the door several times before he gave up and scrambled underneath the vehicle instead. Jena ignored him as she limped up to Tapper and pointed a finger that wavered slightly off target.
"You… I'll deal with you later," Jena said, slowly pivoting as she continued talking to herself. "Shower first. Deep, deep shower. Bug guts got… everywhere."
"Drowning in goop… just like the v-vats," Jelly added with a full-body shudder. The gremlin smacked its lips as it turned over in its sleep, and the duo started to limp away.
"Excuse me, Miss Jenakite!" His pursuers and his friends all stopped and glared at Tapper for wildly different reasons, but he calmly pointed in the opposite direction of their walking. "The nearest inn that advertises hygiene services is that way."
Jena stared at Tapper in thought for an agonizing moment, until she simply grunted and turned to follow where he indicated. Their new trajectory brought them closer to Ricky, and Jelly noticed the hologram still floating above the dead Ratfink's wrist for the first time. Recognition dawned, his posture straightened slightly, and he started to fiddle with his own holographic interface as the pair walked away. The last thing that the party heard was Jellico apologizing to Fairbanks for waking him at this ungodly hour, but they rounded a corner and the rest of his conversation died out.
"You, uh, think those two will be alright?" Phanya eventually asked.
"Why do you care?" Salazar snapped back from underneath the jitney.
"I think we should leave. Like, before they finish and come back," Ricky clarified.
"A pragmatic idea," Tapper agreed, before he thrust a finger in the air. "But first! We have a job to complete and bounties to resolve. We did the deed, and deserve to feed!"
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"What do you mean you won't pay us?" Tapper asked, despondent. The party had all gathered in the train station to turn in the job, after Salazar dissolved the cement-like sealant on the car with a solvent and Ricky retrieved his gear. But the middle-aged monk currently manning the help desk was less interested in being helpful, and more concerned about staring at a small bowl of dried corn.
"Told you, job says to turn the harvest in to Brother Hadder, not the job board," he said, before he looked up for the first time. "Where is that bobblehead, anyways? He knows how the job works."
Tapper hesitated for a beat and answered, "Brother Hadder… abandoned his station." Technically Tapper told no lie; in his haste to assist his friends Tapper had left Hadder behind, and when they returned to gather all the felled cobwood the psychotic psychic was nowhere to be found.
Instead of asking questions, the monk just scoffed and said, "Not the first time, he probably wandered off because of 'the voices' again. Some initiates never get a good hold on their gifts…" He trailed off when a single corn kernel popped, and the monk gleefully tossed it into his mouth using his mind.
"So if you know he's a shit manager, then someone else needs to pay us," Salazar growled through his gas mask.
"Not my problem," the monk shrugged, and before any emotions could flare Phanya placed a placating hand on Salazar's shoulder.
"Look sir, you are currently the local rep for Get-a-Gig," Phanya explained in calm and even tones. "That means you do have the power to turn in the job. I understand that isn't normally your duty, but we're going to turn around and spend the money here anyways, so if you don't then you're just depriving the Church of our commerce. In fact, if you apply the payment directly to our bounties, then you can skip the transference fees and keep the difference as a tithing to the Church." Phanya flashed a dazzling smile, and after both hemming and hawing the monk finally agreed to do his actual job.
[You have discovered and upheld a new law for the first time! +1 XP]
"Excellent diplomacy prowess, Phanya!" Tapper whispered.
"Deputy background means I can lay down the law," Phanya answered with a conspiratorial wink.
Their haul amounted to 130 meters of cobwood in neat ten-meter segments and 23 ears of corn, for a total value of §765. That much money would have made Phanya and Ricky jump with joy a few months ago, but now it just made them grumble among themselves for further solutions. Easily twice that much cobwood was left behind inside the cornfield, but no one wanted to venture inside to retrieve it. And didn't Salazar find that rare jeweled corn? How much was that worth?
"Not to worry, I can pay the difference!" Tapper happily chimed.
"The bot is carrying money? Why does the bot have its own money?" Salazar asked, before he shook his head. "Wait, I don't care. How much money does the bot have?"
"Just barely enough!" Tapper unhelpfully supplied. The monk brought up their bounty listings, and Tapper paused when he saw the entries for Jenakite and Jellico were crossed out. "Oh, did our pursuers already pay off their bounties?"
Salazar examined something in his own readout and explained, "Looks like their bounties were revoked, not paid. Must've pulled some strings with the Privateer, somehow."
"Well, jolly serendipity then. Saves us over 42% of the bounty costs!" Tapper hummed slightly as he started paying the bounties, and didn't notice the tense silence that fell over the rest of his party.
Ricky ran through the math first. "Tapper… exactly how much money did you have when we walked in here?"
"19 silver and 34 copper, which translates to 1,934 federal work-hour credits. I appreciate that the currency exchange is so neat, though I wonder why — Mister Salazar, are you still experiencing trouble breathing?"
Salazar's gas mask puffed in and out slightly as he seethed. "The whole time… You had enough money to pay our bounties the whole time but still put us through that bullshit job to help out those two assholes? Why?"
"Only paying the bare minimum of a shared tab is a telltale sign of poor customer relations." Tapper kept facing towards the kiosk as he talked, but turned when he sensed movement behind him. Salazar was leaning forward with his arms outstretched, reaching for Tapper's neck and snarling while Phanya held him back.
"Whoa-kay buddy, let's get you a breather. Ricky?" At Phanya's suggestion Ricky picked Salazar up and threw him over his shoulder, who was too busy trying to strangle Tapper to resist.
"Fucking bot… we didn't need to do this! We didn't need to do ANY of this!"
"What's your problem? I'm the only one here who actually got shot at," Ricky grumbled as he carried Salazar away.
Phanya watched them depart and sucked her teeth. "I should probably go keep an eye on them. Are you almost done, Tapper?"
"Very nearly! But before we depart, I insist upon leaving a scathing review of the job's failure to communicate its dangers."
"Yeah yeah, that's fine," Phanya said, only half listening as she craned her neck to track Ricky. "Just come straight back after you're done and, uh, don't talk to strangers." Salazar's swearing started to draw attention from the late night crowd and Phanya hopped after them before Tapper could respond. Tapper didn't mind, and the monk behind the help desk had already gone back to mentally popping his corn.
Salazar's ire had cooled to a simmer by the time the trio reached the jitney, and he shut himself away in his personal virtual reality to blow off some steam. Ricky stomped around the perimeter, bemoaning that someone had shown up and removed the mercenaries before he had a chance to loot anyone. Phanya found him standing in front of the crashed buggy and hovercar, rooting around the pancaked remains.
"What's eating you, Rickster?" Phanya asked, gently nudging him with her elbow. "We all made it out of that more or less unscathed."
"Yeah, mostly by luck," Ricky answered with a flat tone. He picked up the mounted gun, damaged beyond repair from Jena's shotgun blast, and threw it over his shoulder in annoyance. "I was caught with my pants down, and the only reason I stood a chance is because these mercs didn't take me seriously. I never realized until now that both of my classes are completely dependent on my gear, unlike you and Tapper I need weapons and I couldn't even loot these guys!" Ricky found his gizmo, but he didn't look happy as he wound the key. "I think I made the wrong choice in my class," he sighed, and slumped slightly.
"Dude, you took out three people in one hit. I can't do that!" A grin tugged at Ricky's lips, but not enough to fully lift his mood. Phanya wished Tapper would hurry up so he could handle the emotional labor, but she still knew the trick to distracting Ricky. "Hey. Want to see what I got for leveling up?"