NOVEL NEXT 2.33 Get Outta Dodge
"I'm sorry Salazar, did you mean that we are leaving 'quickly'? Or are you using some newfound mercenary slang?" Tapper asked. "Hello? Mister Salazar?" Only garbled sounds answered from the radio, and Tapper angled his head all the way downwards to examine it for damage. He was so busy staring at his bowtie that Tapper didn't notice his comrades approaching until they were too late to avoid, and Ricky swept him up as the stampede slammed through the jitney's open side door.
"My friends, what is happening? Are we under attack!?" Tapper shouted, but the others weren't finished with their mad dash. Salazar landed on top of the pile and scurried over to the driver's seat, while Phanya tossed a wire box aside and climbed halfway out of the access hatch to keep a lookout. Ricky held up his shield over the door, covering his head but also blocking his view while he blindly fumbled to grasp the door handle. Bullets pinged off the car before Ricky managed to slide the door shut, proving him right and answering Tapper's question.
"Come on Green, make like the Ghost already!" Phanya shouted, ducking back down as the jitney lurched forward.
Ricky shut the door and braced himself against a counter, huffing laughter in between pants. "Hoo, that was crazy! Really hope that guard is okay… Hey, whose are these?" Ricky's braced stance in the rocking car left him leaning over the cot, and he plucked a large pair of over-ear headphones from the blankets. The cot groaned in response and a figure emerged from the folds, preceded by two massive pointed ears and followed by a spike of shocking pink hair on Makenna's head.
Tapper's bartender programming automatically snapped a picture and updated his internal customer profile for Makenna, since this was the first time he saw her face fully exposed. Amalgamated people covered a wide range of humanity, making up anyone that accumulated too many random genetic modifications over the generations to reliably count as "purely" human or any established hybrid race. The only similarity shared between nearly all amalgams is that, for whatever unknown reason, they never stood above 120 centimeters tall, but other inherited themes can trace through the generations. During the height of the genetics craze it was popular for trendy people to exaggerate their best features, so the resulting mutations for many amalgams today, including Makenna, carried a general theme of "Just a bit too much."
Her large mismatched eyes were a bit too large; her sharply upturned nose was a bit too sharp and a bit too upturned; her wide mouth was a bit too wide and filled with teeth that were a bit too sharp. All of this was relative to her head, which was already too large for her short body, and still dwarfed by her massive bat hybrid ears. The only thing that brought balance to her ears was her hair, which grew straight upwards as a bright pink spire in mocking defiance of gravity. Any one feature would place an otherwise baseline human in the uncanny valley, but all together they gave Makenna a look of unified chaos and exaggeration. She was also screaming in her new customer profile picture.
To her credit, screaming is an appropriate response when you wake up to a stranger looming over you and holding your headphones. That the stranger also wore power armor justified Makenna shooting him with a taser in self-defense, and Ricky stuttered out a pained yelp as his exosuit seized up. He fell to the side with his body locked in position, and Makenna's taser vanished underneath her hoodie. Along with the hidden third arm that still held it.
Everyone stared in stunned silence for a beat, before Ricky tried to express his discomfort but only managed to say, "Guhhh." Phanya growled at Makenna and flipped around the access hatch, leveraging her full body for a swinging counterattack.
"Wait!" Tapper shouted. He jumped in front of Makenna with his arms out, and Phanya froze her acrobatic maneuver with her heel centimeters from Tapper's forehead. "She is our passenger!"
"Our what?" Phanya and Salazar demanded at the same time.
"Uh whu?" Ricky followed shortly after.
"Our passenger on this voyage, and my guest. This is all a misunderstanding, so please do not attack her, Phanya," Tapper pleaded.
Phanya glared at Tapper for a brief moment before she harrumphed and dropped to her feet. "The one thing I told you to do is not talk to strangers, and you bring one along with us." Accusation dripped off her tone as Phanya worked to free Ricky from his frozen power armor. "So? What happened?"
Tapper stood a little straighter and explained, "This is Miss Makenna. Due to reasons I still do not understand, she was summarily dismissed as a result of the poor review I gave our recent gig."
"You left a review?" Salazar barked as he wove through the parked cars. "You never leave reviews through the system, it draws attention and screws everything up!"
"As I have learned first-hand, thank you Mister Salazar!" Tapper responded, with just a hint of bite in his voice. "Especially since she was then assigned to me in a servile role! The only way I can rehabilitate her employment is to complete a contract and drive her home, which happens to also be in Neudopolis. And then I had a very peculiar, and completely nonviolent, conversation with Jellico before he left on other business. It has been a very flimflam morning throughout!"
Phanya tried to be angry at Tapper, but she trusted that he couldn't lie to them about this, and any blame deflated from her stance. Jellico's departure was especially concerning, but if he wasn't hunting them down then that was probably good news. No one turned misunderstandings into good fortune quite like the odd robot. "Well, it isn't the strangest way you've met someone."
Tapper's eyebrows wiggled with relief. "Splendid! Now for proper introductions. Miss Makenna, these are my friends and compatriots: this is Phanya, Salazar is the gentleman driving us, and Ricky is the one that you electrocuted."
Makenna had not moved a muscle since Tapper interrupted Phanya's kick. As if she hoped everyone would forget the small woman's presence altogether, but when their attention turned on her Makenna looked like she was ready to hyperventilate. "Um, hello," she eventually managed to squeak. "I'm so sorry for sleeping in your car, but it's the first real bed I've seen in months and the contract didn't list any sleeping fees and I would never hurt an employer on purpose and — "
"Don't worry about it," Ricky said. He tried to smile at Makenna and show that he didn't blame her, but his cheeks kept twitching and she recoiled away. Ricky gently slapped the last remnants of the stunned debuff out of his face and beamed at her. "It's a comfy bed! And we're heading straight to Neudopolis, anyways, so it all works out." More bullets plinked off the jitney's armor, and everyone ducked on reflex while Salazar swore and spun the wheel. "We're heading straight to Neudopolis right now."
"Yes, that reminds me!" Tapper announced. "Why are the church security forces shooting at us?"
Phanya pressed herself against a side wall and peeked out the window. "Ah, apparently the Privateer is coming to buy out the train station, or something. Pastor thinks it's our fault, even though it isn't, and said we can't leave town. Then Salazar threw a smoke bomb. Shoot, they have a car!" Right as they neared the edge of the encampment a cop car spun into view, three generations out of date and missing most of its body panels. But the lights and siren on top worked like new, and the guards hanging out of the open doors looked a little too excited to fight. "They have a car with guns! Sal, run them off!"
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"I'm trying not to kill anyone!" Salazar snapped back. "So we don't get another bounty on our heads!"
Ricky kicked his power armor, grunted, and yanked the shield off its arm. "C'mon Tapper, we got this."
Tapper turned to the woman hiding behind him and applied his most reassuring voice. "Miss Makenna, I apologize for this kerfuffle but there is a panic room in the back with additional armor. Please wait there for your safety while we resolve the situation."
"Yeah, we don't need two walking pink targets!" Phanya joked, indicating Makenna's hair. "That's normally my thing." She meant to lighten the mood and Phanya jerked both thumbs at herself, but a look of horror dawned on Makenna's face as she reached up and felt her hair. She squeaked and darted into the panic room, leaving Phanya giving two thumbs-up to herself like a jackass. "Right. Great first impression, Phanya."
Ricky and Tapper, meanwhile, braced themselves at the side door. At Ricky's nod Tapper slid open the door and Ricky set his shield up into the opening, giving them both a low wall to duck behind. The guards focused their fire on the opening and bullets started to ping around the interior as Ricky flipped open his snapback gun, and Tapper leaned over him with his spritzer spindle.
"Aaaaannnd…" Ricky droned as he drew a bead.
"Make due until you get due! Drill Spray!"
Ricky blew the front tire out, and Tapper dug a narrow gash into the tarmac before he struck the rear tire. They intentionally avoided attacking the guards so they didn't receive any experience, but the pair still whooped as the cop car spun out. After some instruction, Ricky even got Tapper to give him a high-five.
"That was awesome! One shot!" Ricky cheered, spinning the small pistol around his finger after a second try. He pressed the recall button, and his smile faltered when the weapon buzzed instead. "Uh, Salazar? The snapback gun isn't snapping back."
"You used the snapback in a car chase?" Salazar shot back, barking a bitter laugh at Ricky. "We drove away and the bullet fell out of range, whiz kid! It's gone!"
"There there, Ricky," Tapper consoled with a stiff shoulder pat. "Easy come, meant to go."
Ricky, however, was not looking to be consoled. His fists balled, his breath seethed, and his fuming worked up to a breaking point. "First damn time I fire my only ranged weapon and I lose it! I always lose my skrat! Hand strangle this stupid…"
Ricky reared back to throw the gun, but Phanya appeared behind him and plucked it out of his hand right at the apex. He threw nothing, but instead of confusion or more anger Ricky just grabbed a wrench off his workshop to hurl that, and Phanya casually repeated the snatch. She didn't say anything, this wasn't the first time she saw Ricky's frustration at his own forgetfulness boil over. Phanya knew not to tease and just let Ricky have his moment, while making sure his moment didn't break anything else.
"...Thanks," Ricky eventually huffed after his tantrum burned out.
"Yeah-huh," Phanya calmly responded. She dumped her armful of trinkets back onto Ricky's workbench and gave him a soft slap on the arm. "Take a breath, bro. You'll figure out some way to use the snapback. Hey Sal, if we lost the cult then let's pull over and get our bearings, yeah?"
Salazar parked the jitney behind a large garbage dune, and after several assurances everyone managed to coax Makenna out of the panic bunker. The passenger had composed herself during the brief car chase and wore her hood up, drawn tight with her headphones on top to conceal her hair and ears. She had also, somehow, managed to apply a light layer of makeup that softened and minimized her more prominent facial features. Tapper could not figure why Makenna chose to lessen her distinctive features and his curiosity burned, but his social programming knew not to ask such questions about a person's choice in makeup.
Makenna stood straight and rigid, looking in the general direction of everyone's feet to avoid looking anyone in the eye. "I apologize for my appearance earlier. It won't happen again, and I'm ready for any disciplinary actions."
Phanya exchanged an uncomfortable look with Ricky and said, "Taps, what kind of contract did you pull for this gig?"
"Nothing! I have pulled nothing!" Tapper squawked. He still couldn't understand Makenna's actions, and frustration at the situation battered at his emotions. "Miss Makenna, we are not going to discipline you! You have done nothing wrong!"
"I thought the big hair and ears looked kinda cool," Ricky said, and Phanya glared at him. "What?"
He didn't notice the red spreading over Makenna's cheeks as she slowly removed her headphones. "If you want more exposure as part of my uniform then — "
"No!" Tapper snapped, and Makenna flinched back as Tapper's limbs started to randomly gesticulate. "There is no uniform! Wear however much or little as you want! It does not matter what you look like, so long as you can work!"
"Boys, chill out," Phanya said, using enough authority for them to actually notice. Once all eyes were on her, Phanya tried to lead by example and took a calming breath. "Look Makenna, we all clearly got off on the wrong foot. I'll look over the contract that Tapper accidentally made with you later, but I promise that you aren't in any trouble. We aren't going to make you do anything, we share the utilities, and you can wear whatever you want. Like seriously, just look at me!"
"Hard not to look at the neon lighthouse," Ricky chuckled, followed by a grunt when Phanya smacked him upside the head.
Salazar turned in his seat to give everyone a flat look, and cleared his throat with impolite gusto when they failed to notice him. "Are you all done scaring the new kid yet? Because we can make it to Neudopolis by nightfall if we hurry." Everyone nodded their assent. "Okay, great. Goodbye cultists! Good luck with whatever the hell the Privateer wants."
"Just a pawn in the game," Makenna murmured, keeping her voice quiet enough that no one else could hear.
Except for Tapper. "Excuse me Miss Makenna, is the Privateer playing chess with the church?"
Makenna cringed back again, but by then everyone else had noticed. "Um, no, not chess. You mentioned the Privateer before, and I looked it up while waiting in the panic room. I think the landship is involved as part of the numan's game now, that's why it's on the move."
"All the more reason to leave!" Salazar announced, and he put the car in gear.
"Wait, hold up," Phanya said. A knot started to form in her stomach as she asked, "What numan game are you talking about?"
Makenna gave her a confused look and said, "It's the game. The Game. You know, the elite numan families competing against each other behind the scenes. Corporate espionage, black ops, politics. There's whole genres of stories and fandoms for the family sects."
Tapper asked, "But what is the point? How do you win The Game?"
Makenna shrugged, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You win The Game when you own everything. Not us, of course. We don't get to see the grand plan, we aren't even supposed to think about The Game, but connecting the dots is half the fun."
"And why do you think the Privateer coming here is part of that?" Phanya asked.
"Just the rumor mill. Supposedly, something happened on the Privateer that embarrassed a member of the Fair family, and they bought out the landship's controlling stake in retaliation. Don't know why they want to take over the train station, but that's the fun of following The Game. I think it's Fairchild, sounds like their kind of move." Makenna noticed the mix of confused and worried looks from everyone else, and the glint of energy given by her gossiping snuffed out. "Seriously, do none of you have any socials?"
"They don't!" Salazar suddenly laughed. "They're trash villagers without any presence on any social platform! I checked!"
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Makenna gasped with genuine pity in her voice, but only Ricky received it and he just looked confused.
"Forget the socials, aren't you worried about your friends in the church?"
"I'm not really part of the Church of Phasic Whatever. It was just a job, and they fired me, so it's not my problem," Makenna explained with casual dismissal. Ricky looked to Phanya and Tapper for help, but once Makenna mentioned the Fair family the two had checked out of the conversation. A cold chill of realization ran between them, and Phanya asked the question she knew she'd regret.
"Tapper, what exactly did Jellico say to you?"