Escape from the UPR had been easy. A few well-placed shots into the backs of some guards, and he'd had no problems getting out. Finding a shuttle, on the other hand, had been a little more difficult, especially with those stupid biometrics they used just to get the door open. An unconscious body did the trick there too, and he was out on the bird, leaving his captors behind in his dust. He cackled all the way out of the bay doors and into space with a middle finger pointed back in their direction.

"So long, motherf**kers."

He could go anywhere, do anything. Make a name for himself, if he wanted. Anything was better than the numbers and letters he'd been designated with. And this Detritus Ring he'd heard so much about might be the perfect place for him to start.

A ring of asteroids should have been easy to find, but with his years of being locked up, the place wasn't exactly advertised. He had to go through a man who knew a man who knew a man before he was even close to finding the place, and he was running dangerously low on both credits and fuel. He ditched the shuttle for another, stolen from a merchant who hadn't been paying close enough attention to his belongings. Another stroke of luck as he peered into one storage unit and found several months worth of food.

A week and a half passed as he continued his drift, conserving as much of the fuel as he can before the auto-pilot crawled to a stop. The asteroid field was going to require a more dextrous hand at the helm. The clone grumbled in frustration, some part of him wishing he'd stayed at the facility long enough to learn how to pilot one of the damn things. A firefight was easy enough. This was like threading a constantly-moving needle, and the needle didn't care about crushing you into meat and a hunk of metal.

Proximity alerts blared every now and again, forcing him to constantly adjust his trajectory and speed, until he'd finally gotten through it to the other side. To find...

... what the hell was this piece of crap? A derelict at best, this wasn't what he'd expected from the infamous Detritus Ring. Bands of mercenaries with ships flying and out of every bay door, festive lights, excitement... Not a piece of crap that didn't even have the lights on.

He should've cast his lot aside and head somewhere else, forget about this place and try his luck at one of the colonies he'd left behind. But he had come all the way here, and maybe the ship still had some stacks of loot he could take for himself. Guns, maybe. Beer, if he was lucky.

He shut off comms as he pulled the ship closer and locked onto one of the small airlocks. There'd been no warning not to approach, and spied no turret ready to take aim on him. His best guess were that the automatic weapon systems were offline too, and that meant the ship was ripe for his taking.

He took his knife and rifle just in case his assumption proved to be wrong, and climbed into the cool, slightly-musty air of the large ship. He was going to have a long walk ahead of him to find what he was looking for if he didn't find a map soon.

...?

He wheeled his head around, only to find nothing there. He'd grown familiar with the sound of his own footsteps, and there was something else underneath it all, much quieter and smaller. It was almost a trick of the mind, but he knew better. All those years of having intel and war tactics pumped into his brain had forced him to.

He took off on a run and ducked down one of the corridors to throw off his pursuer. He was rewarded with a light gasp and the sound of smaller and much lighter footsteps. This person was short, likely a kid or one of the varimorphs he'd heard so much about. A muttered swear told him it was female, and he made a grab from his hiding place once she was near enough.

A scream brought a grimace to his face, while the flustered flailing of limbs stole his anger and replaced it with surprise. How could something so small be so vicious? He didn't get to answer that question himself before he felt teeth sinking into the meat of his wrist, and he threw his quarry back against the wall opposite. She grunted and slid to the floor, a little dazed, but there was still fire in her stare.

"Get the hell off my ship," she spat, and drew out a tiny pocket knife from her belt.

He chortled in her face, and pointed at the offending weapon.

"What're you planning on doing with that, kid? Giving me a shave?" She was brazen enough to take him on? Even with the way he looked? She was either stupid or... nah, stupid pretty much covered it.

"I'll gut you like a fish if I gotta. Now get off my ship." She quickly pressed a hand to the back of her head to check for blood, and brought it back clean. Good. That meant he wouldn't have to feel guilty for killing a stupid kid.

"And I should do that cuz you're asking so nicely?" He hefted his rifle squarely at her chest, his finger resting idly on the trigger. Maybe that would be enough to make her back down.

He saw her gaze shift down to the barrel, and there was a small glimmer of fear in her eyes before it was gone again. Seemed she was determined to keep this place. Or she wasn't afraid of dying.

"Cuz I'm the captain of this ship. Reyna Valeria, and don't you forget it." The playful smirk as she tossed her knife into her other hand was a nice touch... if she were in a pantomime.
"Ha! You're not captain. Captains would have this thing up and running by now, have a crew, making money. You're just sitting here in the dark, being scared." He bared his teeth and lunged at her mockingly. She cringed in response, and pouted that she'd fallen for his trick.

"I'm captain cuz my parents were! And since they're gone it's passed to me. They told me to shut it all down and hide the ship 'til they got back." She thumbed at her nose and sniffed, likely to chase away the impending drip of emotions.

Great. Not only was she stupid, she was emotional too. He'd rather jump into a cave of varelsi barehanded and duke it out to the death.

"Tell you what. You let me take some stuff you're not using, and I'll get out of your hair. Fair enough?" That was a small price to pay, right? From the looks of the ship, there was probably food to last years for just one person. A couple months would be a small price to pay for not filling her gut with shrapnel.

He watched as she debated with herself, her finger twirling her curly hair into even larger curls. It suddenly hit his nostrils that she hadn't bathed in a while, but he buried the thought quickly. Now wasn't the time to start taking pity on her.

"... you say captains got crew, right?" There was a dangerous twinkle in her eye that accompanied a light half-smirk. "I conscript you to be my first crewman. Lieutenant, even."

"You can't just conscript me, kid."

"Sure, I can. I'm the captain, and this ship's under my rules. You step onboard, you gotta do what I say."

"No, I really don't." Why he was still arguing, he didn't know. He could just push his way past her and take what he wanted anyway.

"Then I throw you overboard. That's how this works."

Rolling his eyes, he tried to push his way past her back into the hallway, and was met with a sting to his arm. There, he found a trickle of blood oozing from an open wound, and the blood-covered blade in her hand. Her expression was pinched, with a hint of fear.

"Why you little-!"

He was about to make a grab for her when there was a dull rumbling beneath his feet. She must have noticed it too, as she ducked down and crawled towards the nearest porthole. He saw her eyes widen in surprise and she hid once more.

"You led them here!" she whispered loudly.

"Led who here?"

Through the window, he spotted a small handful of ships floating around his attached ship. None he recognized, but they didn't look friendly either. That merchant must have reported the ship stolen and put out a bounty to have it returned.

"S**t. ... stay here." He smeared a palm across his tiny wound and flicked the blood away.

"Hey. Hey, wait! This is my ship!" She gave chase, but he wheeled on her and shoved her back to the wall.

"Listen, kid. You don't know the first thing about a fight, so it's best you stay here and let me take care of the hard stuff, okay? You follow me, you're only gonna get hurt."

"But-"

"No buts. These guys aren't gonna be as nice as me when they come onboard and you aren't equipped to deal with that."

She crossed her arms over her chest and sulked as she watched him go. Which was fine with him. She could use that anger for something more useful later, other than making unreasonable requests of him.

Glad for the darkness of the ship, he lay in wait until he heard them all enter. By his count, there were about seven men. Not bad odds as far as he was concerned.

He waited until the group had passed before sinking his knife deep into the back of the man who was last in line. Any cry for help was stolen with the blade puncturing his lung clean through, and he lowered his body to the ground to save himself from being caught. The next man received the large knife in the side of his neck, while the next was less fortunate: large talons skewered his eyeballs and perforated the backs of his sockets in a sickening crunch that made even the clone's stomach clench. He couldn't waste a single second more as their bodies hit the floor, and opened fire on the rest within the small corridor. Two were lucky enough to dodge into the small doorways on either side for cover, and returned a spray of bullets to take out their adversary. He managed to duck back into his hiding place and wait it out until they needed to reload.

"Here's the deal. You idiots can leave with your heads still attached to your shoulders or we do this the ugly way."

"And how do we know you won't shoot us anyway?!" one of the men called back.

"You don't. But that's better odds than I've given anyone else. So what'll it be, moron?"

He was smiling proudly to himself until he heard a scream from the other end of the corridor, and remembered the child. He thought she would have hidden once she'd heard the gunfire start.

"Counteroffer. We let the girl go if you come with us. Won't hurt a hair on her pretty little head."

He peeked around the corner and saw her struggling in the man's grip, his beefy arm locked around her neck.

Great. Now he was going to have to save her ass too. There was no guarantee that they wouldn't just shoot him dead onsite either.

"... alright, alright. Don't hurt the girl." He stepped out of his hiding spot with his hands in the air, his rifle still in hand. This was all going to go very poorly.

"You attached to her, are ya?"

"... something like that." An easy lie, and maybe it would keep her safe.

Reyna gave him a quizzical look, and winced as her captor drew her up higher to use her as a meat shield. Not a wise choice, given how small her body was.

"Then why not two birds with one stone. We take you back, and we keep the girl for some extra cash. She'll definitely do some good for someone with the right pricetag."

Bang!

He hadn't expected him to keep his word, not by a long shot, but he hadn't foreseen that they'd actually take her. He didn't want to think of all the horrible things that could be done with a girl her age, and despite none of this being his fault, he knew he would shoulder some of the blame in the afterlife for making her life more miserable.

The man dropped dead where he was, a single bullet clear through the middle of his skull. Four inches to the left of Reyna's face. She dropped to her knees without the man's grip keeping her up, and coughed against the pain of her throat. The last man wanted nothing more to do with this, having seen his boss taken out so easily. He threw his twin pistols to the ground and also fell to his knees as he quickly muttered something under his breath about mercy.

The clone snorted as he strolled down the hallway over the corpses and kicked at the boots of her dead captor. Yup. Not moving.

"I told you not to get too close to me." He dragged her up to her feet and shoved her away from him. "I ain't someone you want on your crew."

She glowered up at him with tears in her eyes and continued to rub at her throat. He liked what he saw there; she hadn't survived on her own just by hiding. She was a fighter, a warrior down to her core, and he could see that with the right training, she could be a force to be reckoned with.

He didn't have long to admire that, however, as the man's continued prattling started to get on his nerves. Cold steel met his scalp and he was ready to put an end to the chatter when the full weight of the girl knocked his aim off. Her arms were wrapped around his wrist and drawing him away, that same passion still in her eyes. Why would she want to save a man who'd had no problem in ending her life only a few seconds ago? He stared down at her with a questioning tilt of his head, but didn't try to pry her grip off.

"We can use him."

"Kid, there's no we."

"Nuh uh, you started this mess, you're gonna stay here and more sure nothing else happens to me. Where there's one, more will come, and I'm not dealing with your bulls**t after you're gone."

Hearing the swear from her mouth squeezed a chuckle out of his chest and brought some levity to the situation. He wasn't going to correct her; she was her own damn boss, from the looks of things.

"Alright. Let's say we play with little game of pirates you got going. What's in it for me?" He clicked the safety on and reholstered his weapon across his back. "And what's this guy supposed to do?"

"... well, whatever he knows, we put to good use. He found you somehow, didn't he?"

"... okay, that's one thing."

"And what's in it for you is a place to sleep and eat and keep that gun clean instead of... whatever you were running away from."

He blinked and averted his gaze with a snarl. She was observant too, but he didn't have ot let her know how right she was.

"We got gear here too. Loads of stuff you can add to it. Like... we got these." She dug around in her back pocket and pulled out what looked like a simple metal disc.

"And what the fuck's that supposed to be?"

"A grenade," she responded with a smile.

"Holy f**k, you just walk around with that in your pocket?!" He backed away, and the unnamed man followed.

"It's not armed, you dumbass." She even gave it a shake for good measure, and the entirety of the clone's short life flashed before his very eyes. "I have to throw it first, and it finds the nearest source of heat to latch onto. You get the rest."

The fact that she was flipping it around between her fingers without a care in the world left him feeling uneasy, but he had to admit that that kind of technology would be useful in keeping his enemies at bay. And no one in the UPR had such a thing in the repertoire.

"... alright, kid. Maybe you've caught my interest. But this is only temporary until I get bored of you, understand?"

"You won't. I can promise you that." She spat into her palm and held out her hand.

Such a promise from a young girl... He shouldn't have taken it at face value, but there'd been something in the way she spoke that made him believe she had every intention of keeping.
He returned the favour, and their palms slapped together in a wet smack.

"So what's your name, second-in-command?" She smeared her hand on her pants and returned the grenade to her pocket.

A name, huh? All he had was his designation, and not only was it too long for anyone to remember, it made him feel like a bar coded item on the shelf of a grocery store. Still, it was the only thing he want by.

"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, zero two dash one two-"

She held up her hands and shook her head, looking a little frustrated.

"How about we just call you Whiskey for now until we get you a real name?"

Like he was some wooden boy who would gain a soul with the receipt of a given name? It was unlikely... but a nice allegory, nonetheless.

"Heh, yeah. Sure, kid."