1. Sushi Bar.
There is nothing left to do, really, and by God it is a terrible thing when the only thing left to do involves violence.
Fara ducks, because she has to do, and the lizard bouncer's swing goes straight over her head. She doesn't want to hurt him, but she is not going to die here, and not by the hand of a guy paid maybe two hundred credits a month. Her hand impacts against his throat and the noise he makes as he tumbles down the straw stairs into the yellow of the sushi bar is decidedly musical.
Minimalism, Fara thinks; it is the true aesthetic of a place like this.
"Stay," the voice from the yellow light says. "I want to see her with my own eyes."
Fara approaches and enters the yellow, cool light falling over her fur. Well now, here we are. Black lines along the yellow wallpaper. Straw-paper walls. A sushi bar-counter. A woman, a brown lab, seated at the table, dreadlocks falling around her muzzle. Black sweater.
The gun is in Fara's hand before she realizes it; aiming up instantly at the woman. "Where is he?" Fara says, voice shaky.
"Darling dearest Fara," the brown lab says. "Where is who?"
And outside the sushi bar is space, and the meteorites tumbling endlessly into the void, just missing the atmosphere bubble around this particular asteroid. To be an ex-pilot in the post-war period meant a mercenary or a miner, and Fara couldn't do both.
"I've heard of you, Fara Phoenix," Mister Hakamoto said, the Alsatian leaning across the table and allowing the tea cup to float into Fara's hand. Through the glass behind him, Corneria gleamed in the sunlight, and the rest of the space station coiled into view. "I hear you were a good pilot."
"Not good enough, it seems," Fara said, shrugging. "I don't know. You take what you can, right?"
"A job, then?" Mister Hakamoto said. "You will take it, yes? You will be, yes, chauffeur. A good job for a good pilot. My daughter will love you."
Too long away from the ship; Miss Hakamoto will soon wonder where the hell Fara was, and Fara will catch hell for it. Still—
"Where is he?" Fara says again, pistol shaking, her eyes darting from the brown lab to the worried Alsatian standing behind the sushi counter.
Tea-cup to lips. The brown lab smiles, eyes twinkling. "Goodness gracious me," she says. "Aren't we upset?"
1.
And somewhere, possibly here, lies Fox McCloud, dead or alive.
Don't think that way, Krystal tells herself, standing outside of the sushi bar, her blue fur drenched in the neon letters above the door. She tightens her black coat around her. In the right pocket is a small laser pistol, and she hopes she doesn't have to use it.
Scratch that: if it means Fox, she'll kill anyone who gets in her way. Old habits dies hard, it seems, but the horror of murder falls away against the darkness of her lover's danger.
She approaches the steps of the sushi bar. She hears a fight.
2.
Good god, the brown lab is fast.
I slip to the side, skidding across the straw floor, flight boots against the grain. In her hand is a knife – where she got it I have no idea; did she grab it from that fucking Beatnik sweater she's wearing.
The knife sweeps against the counter, glances off it, swings up and against my pistol. She's too strong and I'm too late in moving: the pistol skitters across the ground, where it's doing no one good.
Off the chair, then, into the air, grab the light fixture and swing-!
Land on the table; I take a step back, and she's right there on the table with me, impossibly fast – no wonder she's an assassin – and I realize that I'm really, really not equipped for this.
The worst part is the sushi bar attendant is getting into it – out of the corner of my eye, I see him draw a gun. I duck, get a punch into the brown lab's side – she barely registers it – and throw myself to the side.
Good god, that gun is loud. Green light flickers overhead, supercharged death. I grab the tea-cup from the table and hurl it into his general direction. He cried out – a good sign.
She's after me, swinging the knife. I slid over the counter, grabbing the sushi knife and land beside the attendant, already trying to bring the gun to bear on me.
Shit, shit, shit-! I knock the barrel of the gun away, turn, manage to get the knife up in time to parry her swing. She's laughing, the bitch is laughing. I skid back, grab a hunk of rice from the barrel and cram it into the attendant's face. He cries out and I hack at his shoulder. The knife mainly bounces off his clothes, not cutting him anything, but he yelps and drops the gun. Not a warrior, this.
The assassin swings and I feel it hack a bit of my hair off. I leap, slide along the counter, turn, throw the knife.
She catches it. Very bad sign.
Was Fox ever actually worth all this trouble?
3.
Descending the steps, one at a time.
Fox. Kidnapped. By Leon, of all people, one of the worst people to be kidnapped by in the system.
And into the sushi bar, the yellow light draping over her black coat. A fight in progress: Fara, of all people, sliding back in her flight boots; a brown lab acrobating through the air with more ease than anyone should have any right to.
"Huh," Krystal says.
4.
Leon. Krystal remembers him best as an undefined figure, sitting in the corner of a cell, drenched in shadow.
Fox and Falco, still in their duty as military officers, approaching his cell, asking him questions.
"Tell me, Krystal," he said, looking up. "Does it feel wonderful to have the person you prize most in the world right here, right next to you?"
"I think the thing that bothers me," she said, leaning next to the bars and watching him, as she had been asked to do, "is your lack of conscience. Would you consider yourself a psychopath, Leon?"
Leon cocked his head, watching her intently. "I wouldn't call myself a psychopath, Krystal. I have a conscience. I'm no sadist, either, really. I don't like hurting people. In fact, I hate hurting people. I do, however, like hurting you. You and the others."
5.
Sunlight on a Cornerian city market, butterflies fluttering up from the red streams of fabric covering the tents of merchants. The sunlight then, as it neared the afternoon, golden, touching everything in its sheen, draping Fox and Krystal in heat. She laughed, turning and watching him. At a nearby stall, she picked up a piece of jewelry, inspected it.
"Pretty, you think?" she said, turning to watch him. She knew he sometimes got uncomfortable if she watched him too much; sometimes he said he felt she was constantly analyzing him, like she was analyzing everything. In a way, she did analyze him, but not in the way he thought. She just like watching him, watching his eyes, the way he moved.
"Bit of a hunk of junk, really," he said, showing teeth, smiling. "Costume jewelry. Besides, gold looks better on you, doesn't it?"
"Certain shades, I guess," she said, shrugging. "Like that, maybe."
A leaf brooch, golden, although slightly tarnished. She picked it up, held it against her fur.
"This weather," he said, grinning up at the sun.
"Too hot?" She turned the leaf in the sun, watching the light play off its folds.
"Love it," Fox said. He touched her waist, kissed her neck. "Love you."
"Off," she said, smiling and shrugging him away. "Gets any hotter and we'll be panting everywhere. My palms are already sweating. What do you think?"
But he had turned and was picking a ring out of the market place. At the sight of it, she felt her heart start to beat faster, and her mouth open, threatening to embarrass herself by panting out everywhere. She told her tail to stay where it was, but she felt it twitching.
He put the ring back down in the stall and looked at her. Then, sliding in, his muzzle close to her ear: "I want to marry you someday."
"Ouch."
"Huh?"
She looked down. She had grabbed the leaf brooch too tightly and it had cut her. "Ow," she said, but she just looked back up at him.
5.
The fight stops, almost immediately, the two women turning and looking at Krystal, who takes the pistol out of her pocket and aims it at the brown lab.
"Fara," Krystal says. "What are you doing here?"
"She knows where Fox is," Fara says, breathing hard and panting. "She—shit, she knows where he is."
"Right, then," Krystal says. "Tellme where Fox McCloud is or I'll shoot through the heart."
The brown lab smiles, eyes twinkling. "Shoot me," she says, "and, hell, guess you'll never know where he is."
"Miss, listen to me." Krystal steps towards her, watching her, watching her move, watching her like she watches everyone. "Listen to me, please. Listen to me carefully. I want you to pay close attention to my words, to what I'm saying. Tell me where Fox McCloud is – or I'll shoot through the heart."
The brown lab says nothing.
Krystal almost laughs, but she doesn't because it might turn into a sob, and she's not about to break down in front of her lover's ex-girlfriend. "Miss," she says. "You've got twenty seconds."
The brown lab swallows. She doesn't know what to do. She looks back at Fara, and then at Krystal.
She turns and sets the two knives down.