CHAPTER 4
Once Billie was dressed in her usual white and black scheme she threw on her favorite jacket: a black garment with red stitching and two short tails that fell around either side of her own tail nicely. It was a bit faded and tattered with time, she had it for many years but she wouldn't part with that particular coat; despite the fact she got a new pair of boots every year. This jacket was special.
Slinging her braid behind her she moved to the door; the embarrassing incident with Wolf five minutes ago was still fresh in her head. Slowly she placed her hand around the surface rusted doorknob. She paused for a moment looking at her black nails half wondering if he would be waiting for her out there, and half wondering why they still had doors with knobs on hinges in this place. It seemed so out of date.
With a slow flow of movements Billie cracked the door only sticking enough of her face out to survey the hallway: floors and walls, nothing more. She exhaled the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and stepped out. And this time she made sure to close the door behind her. Then she made a leisurely stroll through the dim artificial light to find herself some food.
Leon looked at the amount of food on Billie's tray in shock; his jaw lay agape in horror as she scarffed down what he assumed was some sort of meat far more quickly than she should have. In this cafeteria there weren't any real chefs, so everything under the heat lamps tended to just look like various different flavors of colored goop. But hey beggars and criminals can't afford the luxury of being picky.
"You… eat a lot, for a female." Leon finally found those words as he watched her eat like a whirlwind.
Billie took a big gulp of water from a round plastic bottle and came up for air.
"I'm just eating like this because I've been eating paste out of a tube for far too long!" She said it with happy excitement;
and then immediately went back to stuffing her face like a musket.
"I see," Leon said as he sharpened a thin curved blade with an ominous demeanor.
Billie could only assume that he practiced this ritual in lieu of eating without any evidence to support otherwise, no tray in front of Leon; and no drink. Ah yes, Leon was a skinny flush green reptilian with spindly limbs wrapped in a tight black flight suit that oddly enough; left quite a bit to the imagination.
"So you can actually stomach that grotesque artificial crap?" He inquired with the hiss of a pink tongue.
"It's cheap." She said flatly.
"Having trouble out there were you Radical Billie?"
From beneath narrowed eyes the lizard's mouth cut into a different sort of sinister, with a grin that implied the question: how well do you want to be acquainted with me?
"I could easily ask the same of you. No offense to my new employer of course but; I've been looking around this old hunk of metal and I gotta say it aint' exactly some kinda' posh hotel you guys crash in."
When her mouth stopped moving she noticed how unnerving this man's presence was, and then began second guessing the tone she had just used with him. His smile did not fade as he replied however:
"Yes well, we had some trouble rather close to home recently."
He held up his knife admiring its fresh sharpness, the curvy edge of his grin drooping a bit in the reflection that looked back at him from the blade's shiny surface.
"Honestly Wolf has really had to start from scratch with you and Panther."
"So I take it you're a senior member?"
"Yessss." The lizard hissed, the only part of him that acknowledged he was in fact addressing her was the quick dart of his eyes.
"I've known Wolf quite a long time, and I have been here since Star Wolf's creation."
"Does that make you my superior?" she shot over jokingly.
Once again she didn't know why she was being so cheeky to this guy; her mouth tended to get her in more trouble than anything else really…
"I suppose it does, I hope you don't turn out to be the bitter disappointment I think you'll be… for your sake."
Billie just couldn't stop; it was like a compulsion. She put her elbows up on the table and rested her smirking face on the backs of her hands.
"Or what?" She dared at him, narrowing her own eyes to little black slits.
"Or I'll jam this into your belly," Leon held the blades point right under his nose; a returning grin pulling his face up as he finished his sentence:
"and watch you bleed out; like a stuck pig." He snickered, almost as if he had been plotting the scenario in his mind this whole time.
The two sat motionless among the rabble of the breakfast crowd around them. Caught in some manner of psychotic staring contest; just daring the other to move, as if they were hoping a fight would ensue upon the first slip up... Just one little twitch of a muscle or dart of an eye; it would just be that easy to set this guy off wouldn't it?
"Hmm… you're kind of, off aren't you?" Billie's pose finally relaxed.
"Hehehe, oh you'll find we all are here." He looked like he had enjoyed that little nothing they just had.
"Speak for yourself reptile." Came a familiar smooth voice from behind.
"As for the lovely Billie." Panther said taking the seat next to hers.
She didn't like being in such close proximity to… well to anyone here, but there was no time to consider that before he handed her a piece of paper with some chicken scratch scribbled on it.
"What's this junk?" she said reading it as best she could.
"A list of important electronics that were damaged during the Star Fox raid. Wolf said to let our new mechanic have a look, and to be ready to ride out upon his return." Panther said raising an eyebrow at Leon who was in the cafeteria, but not eating.
"Oh, okay. So who is Star Fox? I take it we don't like them…"
"Leon could tell you more about them than I could; I only really know that my future wife works for them presently."
"Bwahaha! Oh stop it Panther you're killing me." Leon said not even looking up from this sharpening.
"But I suppose I should clue you in since you will definitely run into them working for us, sooner or later. Star Wolf, and Star Fox have had a long bitter history together after all. I know for a fact that Wolf had a little grudge with Fox's predecessor before I even met him."
"What kind of grudge?" Billie asked.
"I don't know he doesn't like to talk about it. I tried to ask once, repeatedly; Wolf nearly took my head off." He said a bit too gleefully.
"But I will tell you that from what I have seen, it is definitely a personal vendetta. I wouldn't ask if I were either of you, but we will cross paths with them soon enough: and then I once and for all will plunge this very knife into the back of a certain, blue bird!"
Billie and Panther both looked at each other, then back to Leon and his incessant sharpening.
"Riiiight… So then, where is Wolf?" She said remembering the towel incident.
"He had errands to run, contacts to meet; he's doing everything he can to try and rake in some money to fix the mess that Star Fox caused here." Panther crossed his arms seeming almost bored at the list of chores.
"Oh and he said he had to get some new toys for all of us, don't know what that was about. But he was clear when he said make sure Billie is ready to leave when I get back."
"New toys huh…" Billie scratched her chin.
"Indeed milady."
With that she got up and went to look at the items on the list she'd been given since she couldn't read it with excellent accuracy. Not to mention being around Leon was losing its charm rather abruptly.
Meanwhile Wolf was coasting his way through the asteroid field Sargasso called home; he always had to take this route in the dark of space to avoid the damned police. A hazardous thing to do with so many asteroids about, the larger ones here cast many shadows obscuring the light from the red dwarf star Solar.
Being on this side of the underground was starting to just flat out piss him off. He used to have some integrity, however short lived it had been. Now doing anything and everything had just become a hassle or a daily grind. Star Wolf was all he had these days and after the Lylat wars that wasn't saying much…
"At least I got someone who really knows their tech." He said admiring Billie's handiwork as he blasted through oncoming asteroids.
He was actually taking his time; there was something therapeutic about blowing up giant rocks, even if he couldn't hear them break; watching the pieces scatter seemingly running away from you did the trick. He could definitely see visible performance differences in the laser she had worked on, compared to the one she hadn't. It was smoother and stronger like a blaster at near full charge but, it was a bit slower than his other laser.
He wondered if that was the reason she had multiple gun turrets on her ship. He found himself smirking a bit at that: it was clever. He was going to have to really put her to work on their Wolfens next; after the base was back to its former glory. Not very glorified though, even in its prime… The shadow of an asteroid passed over his canopy, the blue glow of his e-patch and the various colors of his dash stood out brightly in this darkness. One man, one tiny organism alone in the cold and empty void of black silence. It made ones thoughts seem abnormally loud;
Everything had gone to crap after he'd joined the Venom army, once a mighty solider he now felt like some common guttersnipe; scrounging around for work where there was little to be found. With that thought he blasted through another asteroid that was not even in his path: quick fragments scattered and rolled away.
He growled in a low tone trying to banish these lingering thoughts from his head. And then a glint of orangey light flooded his cockpit, drowning out the soft glow of his left eye, he winced at Solor off in the distance of space. It was casting a bright glare off of the main Sargasso station, inviting him back to the place he hated that he had to call home.
He pulled into the port and opened his canopy; from the side of his eye he caught motion from one of the lifts. He then saw Billie coming down the frameless lift, she and Leon were surrounded by what looked like random machine parts and they seemed to be arguing.
Wolf made two leaps from the Red Fang and moved away from its large figure as they approached what looked like another of Billie's hastily put together work stations. They didn't even acknowledge his presence as they continued in their argument:
"Well Leon how many times did I ask for a socket wrench?"
"Well I handed you the only wrench that was there. Besides after that jolt I got I didn't want to help you anymore, and you're the mechanic not me!"
"I'm sorry Leon I didn't know it would give you a jump, or I would have thrown a sock monkey on it."
'Sock monkey?' Wolf thought with a slight turn of his head.
"But did you have to throw the wrench at me?" Leon fingered his holstered blaster.
"It slipped…" She said wagging her tail back and forth quickly.
Lord help her she just couldn't stop trying the lizards patience.
"Do I dare to ask?" Wolf said to Panther who had quietly joined him in watching.
"You pretty much just got the whole story." He returned.
"I must say, there were several moments I feared for her safety… but she seems to have a way with Leon."
"Wha?" Wolf grunted.
"Well as quickly as she can make him reach for a knife; she can calm him back down. It's like she is… troubleshooting his personality." Panther said not knowing how else to explain what he'd seen.
They watched their new member and their unstable one for a few moments, and then Panther turned to his boss in question;
"So how did it go?"
"Without a hitch, got the pay and spent it on some things for the uhh daredevil there. They're in the cargo bay of my ship."
"Yes speaking of her… did you find out what you wanted to?" Panther asked as they walked away from the endless debate.
"Not exactly no. I asked everyone I could find in that stupid hollow asteroid. Some black market," Wolf gruffed lifting a heavy box.
"Can't even get decent rumors."
"Anything worth mention? Anything at all?"
Wolf thought back; the first person he had asked had been some old black cat pedaling stolen ship parts…
"Radical Billie?" she said perking up her tattered ears.
"I hear the guy is like seven feet tall! With a piercing black gaze that can chill you to the bone."
"Oooookay." Wolf said un-amused with crazy survivor stories.
He then asked several other dealers in the market plaza. All he got was outrageous accounts that had obviously been blown way out of proportion;
"Oh I heard that Radical Billie can hack right into your ships weapon system, make it useless."
"Well I heard, Billie Shade can leap out of your shadow, you'll never see him coming, not until he gets yah man!"
"I hear that guy isn't even from this galaxy…"
"Oh yea that Billie guy, I hear no one's ever gotten away from him. Not unless he killed them. He's got this fancy ship, it's way beyond anything the Cornerian government has ever come up with."
Then the time roll in Wolf's memory stopped and he simply said:
"Nothing worth mentioning."
"Too bad." Panther said.
"Because I found something rather odd…"
Wolf turned his head in interest, there was one reason Wolf had hired the womanizing, smooth talking, bullshitting cat in front of him; he was one hell of a hacker.
"Well after bypassing the dimwits the Cornerian military hired to keep hackers out I went and found their database of government regulated bounty hunters…"
"So the government knows she's female right?" Wolf snorted propping his foot on a crate.
"Oh they know… and they encourage the rumors that she's a man; I am very impressed at the list of criminals she's brought down. I didn't stay and read names… but something strange did catch my eye."
"What's that?"
The velveteen words coming from Panther's mouth held Wolf's interest; he wanted to know whatever it was that Billie didn't seem to want him to know.
"Well the record of Billie's captures goes back for about eleven years…" Panther said looking over his shoulder at her.
"Is this what caught yer eye?" Wolf waited for him to get to the damn point.
"No… what caught my eye was, even though the records show her working steady at this for a decade… the actual record for Billie Shade the bounty hunter goes back to almost forty years ago."
Wolf dared a look to her back as she was fiddling with a pair of thermal gloves.
"But, it clearly must be some kind of fluke…" Panther continued looking back to Wolf.
"Well, I'd assume so…"
"Yes there was something about her achievements for assisting the military in the Mafia wars; but other than that no record of anything… not even a photograph. I think it is a file overwriting error to perhaps another bounty hunter that had been named Billie."
"Her parents?" Wolf inquired.
"Most likely; she may have been trained since the time she was small."
"Hmm…" Wolf's thoughts swam to one conclusion very fast:
"That must be why people think she's a man… her father."
"It's the only explanation." Panther shrugged.
Satisfied at what they had found they finished unloading the boxes and looked over to see how the bickering was going; they saw Billie and Leon getting along once again like they hadn't ever argued.
"So what's in the boxes?" She asked as she came their way.
"You'll worry about these later." His knuckle tapped a large metal crate.
"Right now, these are for you…" Wolf then opened one of the smaller cardboard boxes and pulled out some fancy communication lenses.
"Wow these are nice." She said taking it from his large hand.
Strapping it to the side of her head and letting the lenses flip over her right eye, she set the clock and played with the features a bit.
"I know a guy." Wolf said tapping the side of his e-patch.
"The point is if we all have these we can keep in contact even while far from our ships."
"Cool." Billie looked at him through her red lens, and then had it flip back inside the gear.
"I'll take one to Leon shall I?" Panther said grabbing the extra and strolling away.
They exchanged an understanding look about their new recruit and then Panther left his bon voyage:
"Have fun you two!"
"Oh yeah, I almost forgot, we are going somewhere?"
"Don't sound so surprised, it's nothing personal; I always take my new pilots out for a little test drive. Let's see if you impress."
Both of them jogging to their ships with anticipation. Billie grabbed her jacket that had been hung over the side of her baby's wing. The pilots both got in their vehicles and fired them up.
"Ready when you are." She said opening a chat via ship.
"Try to keep up."
"Same to you."
The engines revved with plasmid combustion and they shot out of Sargasso never breaking radius from each other, in an impressively quick yet well timed double helix pattern. They went onward into the emptiness of space, destination unknown.
