"Hey, Boss," Kinzie began watching as the woman laid into the punching bag on the ship. "What's your name?"
The Boss continued throwing her punches, murdering whoever was in front of her in her imagination. "Boss," she replied, her voice blunt as she didn't miss a movement.
"No," a sigh followed as Kinzie rolled her eyes. Why was she always so difficult? "Your real name. From before the Saints."
Throwing a final punch, The Boss gave a grunt, the punching bag flying as forward as its chain would allow it - Kinzie could have sworn she'd seen the chain straining a little. The Boss grabbed a towel from the railing and dabbed at her neck, turning to give the tiny redhead a long stare. "None of your fucking business," she finally answered, her face entirely serious before walking away.
Kinzie took a minute to really accept this response. She didn't like it when there were secrets held from her, which was probably why she was so good at stealing those very secrets - and come to think of it, she'd never seen so much an information fragment that could have referenced her real name. This was… unacceptable.
Standing up and rolling her shoulders, Kinzie took a deep breath and nodded to herself. She had a superhero to unmask.
"Goddamnit!" Kinzie slammed her hands down on her keyboard out of frustration, furious. There was nothing. Not a news article, birth announcement, high school yearbook - nothing with The Boss's real name on it. She'd been searching archives all over the place for hours now. How was this even possible?
"Having a problem?" a voice asked from behind her. She rolled her eyes, slouching back forward and returning to typing with fever.
"No, Matt. Everything is fine, thank you."
Matt gave a pause. "It doesn't look alright." Kinzie quickly snapped her neck back, watching Matt as he eyes an already snapped in half keyboard. "At least for that poor keyboard, anyway."
"Do you know the Boss's real name?" She asked, turning back to return to her work.
"I uh..." Matt stopped himself. "...No." His voice had an edge of shock to it. "Now that you mention it, no. I have no idea."
"Don't you think that's weird?" She asked. "Between you and me, we have zero idea what her actual name is."
"Did you try finding a birth certificate?"
"No," Kinzie rolled her eyes, her voice soaking with sarcasm. "No, I hadn't thought to try the most basic of databases." She gave a long, exacerbated sigh as Matt took a seat at the terminal next to her, booting it up. "Babies born in Stillwater on her birthday don't match up - unless the boss was Asian at some point and didn't tell us about it."
"And that's if she was even born in Stillwater," Matt added.
"Exactly."
Matt began typing away at his own terminal. "There has to be something. Surely."
About half an hour of silence passed between them beneath the sound of frantic typing. Eventually, Kinzie gave a loud groan, lifting her hands off the keyboard and rubbing her temples, her frustration taking over. "It's useless!" She declared. "We don't know where she was born, we don't know anything about her parents, where she went to highschool… we don't know anything about her before she made a name for herself in Stillwater."
"Have you asked Shaundi?"
"I was trying to avoid it." Kinzie stood up from her seat and groaned. "But I guess I don't have much of a choice."
"You go do that, I'll stay here and try to chase something up. Surely she's run into a security camera or something in her teens."
"Yeah," Kinzie began to walk out, her eyes rolling once more. "Just throw yourself into the danger zone there, Matt. Thanks."
"The Boss's real name?" Shaundi crossed her arms, the same look of disapproval on her face that pre-empted some kind of bitchy comment - only she stopped herself this time. "...Well, shit. No fuckin' idea."
"Do you know where she was born? Went to high school? Anything?" Kinzie was starting to stress now. She didn't know something integral about someone on the ship and it was driving her crazy.
"You're asking the wrong person. When the boss met me I was… a different person. It's all hazy and shit." Shaundi dismissively waved her hand in the air. "Ask Johnny. He'll know."
With that, Shaundi turned around and went back to her self-assigned station, shaking her head and leaving Kinzie a little embarrassed that she didn't just ask him in the first place - not that Kinzie would ever admit that.
So, without another word, Kinzie made her way to the lower deck of the ship, following the laughter coming from the haphazardly-made rec room. Surely enough, there was Gat and The Boss, playing pool, smiling and laughing as though he'd never been gone.
"Kinzie," The Boss laughed, looking up as she bent over the edge of the pool table to knock forward the white ball, "I don't think I've ever actually seen you in the 'fun' part of the ship."
"Uh huh," Kinzie dismissed this comment, her eyes set on Johnnie who was chalking up his pool cue. "I have to ask Johnnie a question."
The Boss merely rolled her eyes, while Gat raised an eyebrow over the top of his sunglasses. "Go ahead."
"Do you know The Boss's real name?"
The Boss threw her head back, laughing. "Kinzie, are you seriously still going on about this?"
Kinzie's eyes flickered over to Gat, who was wearing a smile in the corner of his mouth, his arms crossed. "Sure I do." Suddenly, The Boss's laughter stopped dead.
"Johnnie," she warned.
"Why you wanna know, Kinzie?" He asked, a smirk now across his face, ignoring The Boss's protests.
"Johnnie." Her voice was incredibly low and serious now, her face not one of someone who found any of this funnie.
Gat turned to watch her, grinning ear to ear as her knuckles whitened and gripped her pool cue. "What's wrong?" He asked, visibly holding in a laugh. "I wasn't aware it was such a big secret, Mirabelle."
The silence through the room was icy, the sheer rage boiling within The Boss glowing, Gat's face radiating smugness. "Mirabelle?" Kinzie finally asked. "Really?"
Without another beat, The Boss snapped her pool cue over her knee, leaping over the pool table and grabbing Kinzie by the collar. She slammed the hacker against the wall, an easy feat considering Kinzie was half her size at the most, and held the now jagged, splintered edge of the broken pool cue against her jugular.
"If I find out that this has left this fucking room, I swear to fucking god I will kill every last person who knows." She applied a little pressure, the cue pressing in a little bit. "Is that fucking clear?"
Kinzie knew what happened when The Boss's face was like that. It wasn't a threat. I was a promise. Being the smart girl she was, Kinzie nodded, not having a death wish, and The Boss removed the cue from her neck, releasing her.
Kinzie rubbed her neck the only sound other than the music in the rec room being Gat's laughter. The Boss made her way over to him next, Gat laughing so hard he was leaning against the wall, and shoved him back into the wall with a loud thud. "And if you ever want sex again," she growled, "that was a huge fucking mistake." With that, The Boss turned and stormed out, hurling the broken cue to the ground.
"H-hey," Gat's laughter quickly stopped. "Hey, Boss, come the fuck on," he looked to Kinzie and then quickly followed The Boss, his voice audible from the stairs as he followed her up them. "I was fuckin' playing! Lighten up!"
Kinzie stayed against the wall, rubbing her throat where the cue had been pressured, and smiled a little to herself.
She wondered how hard it'd be to rename all the simulation's subroutines to 'Mirabelle.'