天使たちが踏むを恐れるところ

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Corneria City University Campus...

The sky was bright, optimistic shade of blue, dotted with a loose smattering of clouds. One horizon stretched endlessly out over Corneria's deep blue oceans, punctuated by a sleek, ambitious urban skyline. The other horizon was dominated almost entirely by jagged, wall-like mountain range that followed the coastline; most of the flat land nearby being occupied by the metropolis of Corneria City. The university campus itself sat situated roughly between these two environments, and incorporated elements of both. The collegiate buildings stood in solemn pride, loosely spaced through the rolling mountain foothills of the campus grounds. The spaces in between were interspersed with lawns, parks, walkways and other means of access that connected all the university's structures and facilities to one another in a clean, efficient manner, and without miring the natural beauty of the surrounding landscape...

A young, cloudy gray raccoon emerged from one of the university's buildings, onto a campus alive with the busy traffic of students, teachers, employees, and many other curious visitors like himself. In his hands, Rick held a folder thick with hard documents, information by the CCU logo printed on the folder's cover. That folder, held in the hands of Richard Cooney, was quite literally at least the possibility of a new future...

The raccoon opened up the folder as he walked into the loose, constantly moving foot traffic of the university campus. To most, he appeared to simply be thumbing through the papers and leaflets within the folder – more or less oblivious to his immediate surroundings. Like it or not though, Cooney was likely more aware of his immediate surroundings than he'd care to admit. Within a few minutes of starting his walk, Rick noticed a figure trailing behind him, watching every move he made, and trying fairly successfully to stay hidden...

The raccoon stopped, interrupted by the buzzing vibration of his comm; and incoming call. Rick fished out the handset, recognizing the caller ID, and promptly answered.
"Hey Ossie." the raccoon greeted, barely shifting a muscle. He made a broad, casual movement as he spoke, scanning the crowd, looking for the elusive figure that was watching him only moments ago.

"You crossed a line..."
The voice that responded belonged to Caldwell, the same stark, black-and-white bird of prey who Cooney was recently at-odds with. By the cold, hard timbre of his voice, 'Ossie' was in no mood to strike up a friendly conversation.
"The rest of us all gotta make a living too, you know? But you just had to be a greedy little–"

"What do you want?" Rick cut him off, partly annoyed, partly worried.

"I want what's mine:" Caldwell's voice answered, "I want the money you stole from me."

"Rache and I got Scott's bounty fair and square..."
The raccoon started walking again, trying to blend back into the flow of campus foot-traffic, and sometimes glancing over his shoulder, expecting trouble to be stalking close behind.
"We didn't steal anything from you."

"Don't feed me your bullshit, okay? Just, don't..."
The unseen avian paused a second, breathing a bored sigh through Rick's handset.
"I'll make this real easy, for old time's sake. You can give me what's mine, or I'll take something away that's yours. Either way, we'll be square."

"Osprey Caldwell, what is going on here? You've never been this sore about blowing a job before. What happened?"
Cooney tried to remain calm and stoic, but even now he could catch the occasional odd glance from some of the other students, with their eyes resting on the raccoon only an instant before they moved on –uninterested, preoccupied in their own issues.

"You happened." Caldwell answered over the comm, "You and your little bitch of a sister, that's what happened."

The raccoon could feel his heart racing, pounding against the inside of his chest like an accelerating drumbeat. He tried his best to suppress the anxiety away from his voice, but he knew he wasn't convincing anyone.
"It wasn't anything personal Ossie, just business. Hell, you're the one who taught us never to bring emotion onto the job."

"This isn't personal either, just business..."
By contrast, Caldwell remained cool and level, never betraying anything more than a steady determination.
"The old apartments at 86th and Lakota, number 479. You have six hours."

"What?"

"It'll be gone in six hours, the thing that's yours, unless you bring the money you earned from your latest shenanigans –all one-fifty-thousand of it– to the location I just told you. You've just lost ten seconds."

"What will be gone?" Rick demanded, almost in a growl, "Ossie, If you're gonna extort money like this, it helps if I know just what the damn terms are."

"You're a smart little flake, I'm sure you can figure it out... Yeah... While you're thinking about that, why don't you catch up on some of the local news? It might just spark your memory."
And with that, Osprey Caldwell terminated the connection, leaving Rick all alone as he shuffled through the university campus walkways.

Local news...

Osprey Caldwell wouldn't have mentioned that so plainly if it didn't mean something. Armed with that thought, the raccoon snapped into action, scanning the immediate crowd again, this time looking for something in particular. There it was: someone sitting at a bench, the person's face obscured by a printed copy of the City Chronicle he was reading.

Rick approached the figure, who noticed the troubled raccoon approach, and lowered the newspaper. He was a smartly dressed simian man with a thoughtful, collected demeanor about him. The ape might've been an older student, or a younger professor, but Rick didn't care enough at the moment to identify him one way or another.

"Excuse me, could I borrow your paper for a second?" he asked, "I just need to check something real fast."

"Of course..."
The other nodded and handed Cooney the paper, and looked over the raccoon with a curious, analytical eye while he flipped through the newsprint.
"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Rick lied.

"If you say so." the ape replied with a polite shrug.

Within a few seconds and a few pages, Rick found what he was looking for. It was a smaller article, tucked in the middle pages. Its meager headline read: STRUGGLING SIBLINGS MAKE GOOD ON LOTTERY WINNINGS, and was accompanied by a small photograph featuring Rick and Rachelle Cooney, and James between them with a goofy grin on his face...

"Oh God..."

A cold gust of wind blew across the campus, sending the raccoon's fur on-edge

"Look, you're not fooling anyone." the ape stated, shaking his head, "What's the pr–"

"I gotta go." Rick blurted out as he dropped the paper back in the other's hands, "Thanks."

The puzzled ape could only watch as Cooney walked off on a brisk, agitated stride away into the distance.
"...You're welcome."

The expansive, cathedral-like public hangar tucked into downtown Corneria City was much as it was before. Some of the vehicles had been switched around, or swapped out for others, but the rows of slumbering spacecraft remained... Okay, so maybe now there was a crew replacing one of the main hangar doors that'd recently been blasted to shreds. And maybe there was an armed security guard hanging out in the attendant's station too. Other than those minor alterations though, not a whole lot had changed, really.

Amidst the echoing clatter of the crew's work was another, more muffled voice, coming from a tiny Mercutio model courier spacecraft. It was music: an upbeat synthesized piece that would probably be classified as a kind of drum n' bass fusion. On top of the music's energized ambiance came the occasional clank, click, or ratchet of working hand tools.

These tools, along with a few mechanical parts, many of which looked brand-new, were being swapped in and out of a toolbox that lay on the hangar floor, cycling through the skilled hands of Rachelle Cooney. The raccoon was elbows-deep in the Mercitio's exterior engine maintenance hatch, her fur and clothes ruffled from work, smudged with grease stains in places, contributing to an overall aesthetic of hard-but-good work.

Rachelle's comm buzzed in her pocket, alerting her to an incoming call. Without breaking off the flow of her work, she accepted the call, sending it into her compact headset.

"Where are you?" Rick's voice suddenly asked.

"I'm in the hangar at 42nd, giving the old Mercitio the attention she's needed for a while..."
Her brother's voice was strained, itchy, leading Rachelle to a conclusion.
"Something's wrong."

"I need an active comm trace, and I need it now..."
He spoke quickly, sometimes taking a quick breath, possibly while running.
"Hack into the provider's network if you have to, just get me some eyes and a location."

"What for?" Rachelle asked, becoming more worried, "Rick, what's going on?"

Rick didn't answer straight away. It sounded like he stopped running, and a gust of wind crackled against his mic.

"Jim's in danger."

A lanky frog with mottled blue and black skin sat behind a computing terminal inside an ordinary looking office cubicle, not unlike the dozens of other nearly identical spaces surrounding it, filling the workspace. The amphibian worker paid no heed to his bleak immediate surroundings, his attention focused entirely on the display before him and its seemingly chaotic cycle of shifting windows. Thin he paused, noticing something amiss amidst the otherwise complete digital harmony before him.

"I think we got something..."
Withing a few moments, another figure approached behind him, and waited for the worker to elaborate.
"It's an unauthorized trace, right here."

The newcomer was a strongly built black and rusty-red canid, featuring the classic pointed ears and longer muzzle of the accepted norm.
"Make the mic hot," he instructed, stepping in alongside the amphibian, "lets get an ear on this and see what they're up to."

"One remote microphone activation, coming up..."
The frog punched a series of commands into the terminal, bringing up a whole new set of windows to perform the task at hand. He stopped, skipped a beat, perplexed at the new developments.
"Huh, that's odd, the handset transceiver's been encrypted."

"Can you crack it?" the canid supervisor asked.

The blue amphibian swiveled around in his chair to face the other directly, scratching the back of his neck while he came up with an answer.
"Well, I'd either need the encryption key they're using, or a few hours to try and decode it manually which –I don't need to remind you– isn't all that reliable anyway..."
He huffed out a quick sigh and shrug, swiveling back to the terminal.
"Until then, all we can do is watch the dot."

"Hmmm..."
The rusty red canid could only stroke his chin in thought, quickly becoming more intrigued by it all.

"So, we gonna jump on this thing or what?" the frog asked over a shoulder.

The supervisor had to wait several indecisive moments, considering all the reasons for an encrypted comm channel on their network that they couldn't crack. At the end, he could only give his colleague a vague response.
"Let it play, for now."

It was an older apartment building. Many places on the floor were discolored, permanently stained from a chronic neglect from proper cleaning. The walls showed many spots where the paint began stripping away, or a scuff mark from someone's shoe, on the wall? It might've easily been something else, as the poor lighting from the flickering fixtures overhead weren't helping to make things clearer. The hallway here was quiet, but far from silent. The muffled urban whir of constant traffic penetrated even here, where the only other sounds were either building utilities, or the occasional heated argument from down the hall...

Eventually, Rick Cooney came to a stop in front of one of the doors, numbered 479. The apartment wasn't the home of Osprey "Ossie" Caldwell, but one of a few safehouses scattered around the city that the avian kept available when needed. No one knew for sure were he called home.

The raccoon reach out to the panel next to the door, and buzzed the doorbell. In a few moments, a familiar voice answered through the door panel's intercom system.

"You're early, but that's okay." the grainy voice greeted through the intercom, "Come on in."

The apartment's door slid open, revealing Osprey Caldwell on the other side, dressed in an unassuming set of street clothes that belied his cunning, ruthless nature. The apartment behind him appeared just as humdrum, with the meager living space that opened to a balcony tucked at the far side, and a couple other doors that'd be closets, a bedroom, and a bathroom somewhere.

"Where's Jim?" Rick asked.

"The kid..." Caldwell stated with an indifferent nod, "I knew you were a smart one."

The raccoon was afraid, trying so hard to conceal his fear underneath a crusty layer of bitterness.
"What did you do to him?"

"Nothing." the larger avian answered, stepping inside, "The little spaz is doped up on tranquilizers, but he's fine."

"Show me." Rick demanded, rightfully skeptical.

Osprey Caldwell beckoned the raccoon inside after him, leading his guest to one of the apartment's doors on the side.
"It's a real shame you had to drag him into all this. The kid deserves better than a couple scoundrels like you and your sister."

He opened the door and showed Rick inside. It was a cramped little bedroom, with only enough space for a bed and basic furniture. James McCloud laid sprawled on the bed, unconscious but apparently unharmed. A conspicuous backpack sat at the foot of the bed; Caldwell must've grabbed him from the school.

Rick stepped inside and knelt down, inspecting the vulpine boy's motionless form closer. His breathing looked normal enough, and he wasn't twitching; whatever he was drugged up on, it didn't look too dangerous.
"Aren't you uh... aren't you going to ask about your money?"

"No." Caldwell's voice answered from behind.

The raccoon froze, and his fur stood up on end.
"Why not?" He tried to mask the underlying fear in his voice, but his speech quavered anyway, almost on the brink of stuttering. "That's what I came here for."

"Because you didn't bring it, and you weren't going to bring it even if you could've."

"Then... What the hell am I doing here?"

* Click *

"Graaahh!"

Rick screamed out a tortured cry at the top oh his lungs as a torrent of pain shot through the raccoon's body. All other thoughts, all other sensations were swept away in a riptide of pure agony. For a few seconds, the only world Richard Cooney knew was that of complete and unbridled pain. Within moments, his limbs gave up, and the raccoon collapsed in a gasping, writhing heap on the floor next to the bed where James lay.

"This was never about money..." the black and white avian mused in such a bored, casual voice.

Amidst the latent pain hanging around, Rick felt his hands being gathered behind his back, and secured together by a thick nylon zip-tie. He was being restrained. Instinct demanded that he fight it, but his mind wasn't thinking, and his limbs weren't obeying. Instead, the raccoon's body was dragged across the apartment's rough carpeted floor by a steady, unflinching hand.

"I'm not sore about blowing the job." Caldwell's voice clarified, "It happens to everyone once in a while, and we deal with it..."

After a few moments of having his face ground against the floor, Rick felt his ringing head rise with the rest of his body, and dumped back down onto a chair, with his bound hands tossed over the back. Another couple zips and his unmoving legs confirmed the fact that he was being secured to the chair; made helpless. With his slowly returning strength, Rick lifted his head, and saw something impossible.

Standing right there in the apartment's kitchen was Richard Cooney himself, an exact copy of the young raccoon right down the hooded sweatshirt and rough jeans. This apparition gave his helpless corporeal counterpart a smug look, then rolled his eyes and shook his head in a great sweeping motion that couldn't possibly have gone unnoticed...

Rick shook his own jumbled head and took another look, but the doppelgänger was gone. Only Osprey Caldwell's calm, mocking form remained as he stepped into the raccoon's view.

"Now, what I am sore about –what I will bring emotion into the mix for– is when my twin protégés think they've earned some kind of special privileges well above and beyond their allotment."
The avian pulled another chair in front of Rick, and plopped down in it across from him.
"I mean, what got it into your messed-up head that you could cross me: your good old mentor?..."
Caldwell waited patiently but intently for his answer, leaning forward with hands on his knees, and quite a content look gracing his face.

"I... we didn't know you were going for it too. The pay from that job would've let Rache and I start fresh, without you breathing down our necks..."
Rick looked up at his avian captor, a curious strength steadying his gaze as a grim certainty accompanied his words.
"You taught us to lie, to cheat, and to steal –you taught us to rob life right out of people. I'm done with all that shit–"

Caldwell lunged forward with a small hand-held device in his hand, moving too fast to clearly see. He jammed it into the raccoon's throat, and another wave of pain swept over the raccoon, cutting him short.

"Jhyeaaagh!"

"I taught you how to survive!" Caldwell roared over the other's scream.

The enraged avian stopped the discharge, and placed the small device into a pocket as he stood high over Rick. Though his voice lowered in volume, it became infused with an intensity never heard before.
"I dragged you both from the gutters, and saved your worthless lives from an endless shit-pile of destitution. If it wasn't for me, you would've been pissing away what little money your Mom and Dad left you after their tragic little turn of events. I bent myself over backwards for you two, and look what I've got to show for my efforts now–"

Caldwell stopped himself and turned around quickly, something caught his attention. He drew a blaster handgun and scanned the room, looking for anything suspect. He saw something, and instantly brought the weapon up, sighting his aim into the apartment's kitchen.

"Come out from behind there, you tramp-whore coon!" Osprey ordered as he wheeled around behind Rick, and planted his hangun's muzzle against the raccoon's spine at the base of his skull.
"You have until the count of three! Come out nice and slow, or the flake dies!"

"Well, there goes the element of surprise."
Rick recognized the voice: it was his own, in a sarcastic mocking tone, but he wasn't speaking.

"One..."
One click: the safety of Caldwell's handgun had been disengaged, and the weapon was now active.

"There's only two ways this'll end now," the raccoon's disembodied voice mocked, "and neither is pretty."

"Two..."
A second click: the pistol was primed manually, opening the magazine feed valve and flooding the weapon's firing chamber with a volatile gaseous compound stored in the ammunition cartridge.

"So which is it gonna be? Quick death now, or quick death later? Oh, the tension is just killing me."

"Three..."
One last click: the trigger. The primed charge was ionized and excited into a plasma state, then flung through an electromagnetic solenoid coil down the barrel, and into Rick's head at the other end end. The bolt of superheated plasma burned straight through the skin, skull, and flash-fried most of the brain-matter that got in its way before emerging from the opposite side...

The final click, and the entire gruesome sequence of events that would've followed, never came.

"Fine." Rachelle's bitter voice called out, muffled by some obstacle. "I'm coming out..."

She stood up from behind a kitchen counter, trading vicious glares with Osprey Caldwell as she did. The raccoon stepped into the open, revealing a pistol of her own in one hand, and her favored messenger-style bag slung across a shoulder.

Caldwell directed the muzzle of his handgun at Rachelle, and instructed her on her next actions.
"Drop the weapon, lose the luggage, and step forward."

Reluctantly, Rachelle complied with the avian's demands, setting her pistol and bag down on the floor before moving into the open center of the room. The avian stepped away from Rick, and began walking a tight circle around a disarmed and completely exposed Rachelle.

"It's your usual tag-team setup, isn't it?" Osprey deduced, "Rick here distracted me, while you snuk in through the balcony."

"Actually, I teleported in using fancy-pants new technologies nobody else knows about..."
Caldwell stopped a few paces in front of her, and the two of them swapped glares again for a few moments, until Rachelle finally moved on.
"Yes, I came via the balcony back there."

"How'd you get in without making a sound?"

"Plasma torch tuned to ultrasonic frequencies for a silent cut." she answered, "Made a hole in the glass and released the latch manually from inside."

"Not bad, not bad at all. I ought to commend you for your ingenuity in this situation..."
Caldwell heaved out a weary sigh, and slowly shook his head.
"I tell you, it's a damn shame that you've both outlived your usefulness."

Rachelle stood still, tried very hard to remain calm in light of what she'd heard and what she'd been through, but she wasn't fooling anyone. Her breaths came in short, labored gasps; her hands began fidgeting with themselves. She dared not move though, not while the business end of Caldwell's blaster remained fixed on her, and too far away to attempt a snatch; she was pinned...

"Whoa, hold on a second here." Rick butted in from his restrained position, regaining some coherence at last. "Don't you think maybe you're overreacting?"

"No." He didn't even turn around, and kept his focus on Rachelle.

"Oh come on!..."
Rick's words were still hoarse from the latest brutal throat treatment, and halted amidst a fit of coughs when he raised his voice.
"Who else are you going to find with our skills and abilities? Who else can work together as fluidly as we do? You're only doing yourself a disservice by killing us."
The raccoon was desperate; he tried not to sound it, but he was grasping for straws, anything to try in-vain to squeeze out.

In response, the black-and-white plumed avian simply threw his head back and laughed, but only for a second.
"So, you think you're invaluable, do you? You think you're not expendable? You think you're somehow 'special' down here in the dumps? Well think again, because that's where you've got it all wrong. There will always be someone down on their luck; someone so desperate to scrape by that they will do anything to grab a few creds, even if it means lying, cheating, stealing, or taking another's life..."
Osprey Caldwell raised his blaster handgun in a smooth rising arc, and trained his sights squarely at the petrified face of Rachelle Cooney.
"No, tramps like you two are easy to replace."

"Rick..."

She looked past Caldwell's firm form to her brother sat, strapped into the chair and helpless to change anything about it. He looked back to his sister, who was gripped by a frozen terror that was never apart of her before. There weren't any angles left to play here, no more aces hidden up sleeves, no bluffs, no sleight-of-hand tricks. They'd bet all-in on their hand, only to find the deck had been stacked against them from the start...

"I'm sorry..."
Rick dropped his defeated head, closing his eyes. He knew exactly what was coming next.
"Shit, I... I am so sorry."

* Blam! *

It was the most painful sound he'd ever heard. He flinched at the noise with such force that the zip-ties behind his back began to cut into his wrists, but he didn't feel it; he didn't feel anything. There was no comparable physical pain, not even the electrically induced agony he was victim to earlier, that could match the anguish he felt now...

The dull thump of a collapsing body: it's the sound that came naturally after a gunshot. It happened, but it came from somewhere it shouldn't have. Rick knew what was there, but opened his eyes anyway, and had to look to be certain...

Rachelle was in-fact not dead. She was standing in the exact same spot that she'd been put before. However, the petrified terror in her eyes had shifted slightly to a petrified astonishment. The looming figure of Osprey Caldwell was no longer looming, but laying down on his back, with a blaster wound between his eyes, dead...

"You... leave her... alone..."

No. That was impossible. James was passed out in the bedroom. That couldn't possibly have been his voice. It must've been another hallucination. But there he was.

The cinnamon brown vulpine child was standing, barely, swaying on the brink of collapse. His steel blue eyes, determined as they were, weren't holding focus onto anything, just wandering in a general direction. In his hand, James McCloud held Rachelle's discarded blaster, and pointed it roughly at where Caldwell should've been...

He crumpled to the floor.

Rachelle knelt down next to Jame, almost out of reflex, and broke down; it was another unnatural moment of emotion for her. There were tears, there were quiet sobs as she wrapped her arms around the boy, but she wasn't used to it. Even as the rest of her vented all of the pent-up passion, her hands found the blaster in Jame's hand, and gently retrieved it...

"Goddammit! Get your asses in there now!" Another voice shouted. It was muffled...

The apartment's hallway door burst open, and a flurry of activity ensued. A group of armed and armored armored CCPD SWAT officers charged through and took positions inside, each prepared to face the worst. They were quickly followed by another figure: Saul, with his own handgun drawn and a raging fire in his eyes. The equine agent scanned the apartment, looking for threats, and only found Osprey Caldwell's corpse, with Rachelle's hand on the weapon...

Saul exhaled a sigh of relief and spoke into his miniature earpiece comm.
"We're all clear in here. The sister took him down."

The soldier-like SWAT officers eased their tension, put their weapons away, and went about a much calmer flurry of activity. One of them cut Rick free of his bindings, someone else examined James, another tended to Caldwell's dead body. Somewhere within the sudden hustle, another person slipped in and managed to find his way to Rick...

"Ricky..."
That was Peter Cotton. He'd come up alongside the raccoon just as he was being cut loose.
"Rick I need you to come with me. There's something you and I have to discuss, it's about your–"

Rick didn't look over to the hare, and instead went forward to his wrecked sister, who was still huddled over Jame's unconscious body. He knelt down by her side, draping a weary arm across her shoulders. Rachelle leaned in closer against him, still venting an awkward emotional turmoil, and completely uncertain...

Rick heard Pete approach behind him, and questioned the hare without turning back to face him.
"Does it have to be now?"

Pete simply stood by and watched. The rest of the apartment was still caught in the SWAT team's methodical bustling, with Saul barking orders at them every once in a while. The twins on the other hand remained motionless, broken down to nothing by the prior events, and utterly oblivious to the whirlwind of activity surrounding them. The older hare crossed on the other side of James, and knelt down to Rick and Rachelle's level so he could look them in the eyes. They may have been devastated, but they looked like they'd pull through it alright...

The officer examining James had unpacked a small first aid kit. From the kit, he'd produced a small paper packet and held it under the boy's nose; smelling salts. After a few seconds, Jame's nose and eyes started twitching, and the child ultimately awoke from his unconscious state.

"What?... What happened?" his speech was slurred, "What's going on?"

Rachelle didn't say anything, but held the young fox closer, crushing the boy in her embrace...

"You're... choking me." James squeaked, suddenly a bit frightened.

"Sorry..." Rachelle replied as she loosened her grip, "I'll tell you about it later."

"This is all a little weird right now..."
Pete stood up, and directed the SWAT officer next to James to move off.
"Look, take the kid home, get him some rest, Saul and I can clean things up here. Then meet me at Roasty's in an hour. Can you do that for me? For you?"

Rick had to stop and think for a minute; a difficult feat under the convoluted circumstances, with the SWAT officers still hurrying all over the place.
"Yeah..." he finally confirmed with a nod, "I can do that."

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

-John Steinbeck-

Roasty's was a fairly typical urban coffeehouse, during a fairly typical weekend afternoon. The hustle and bustle of the busy streets outside intermingled with quiet music and idle chatter inside, where a number of patrons of varying species went about their business. Some didn't stay, some brought notebook computers with them, and some simply sat alone with their beverage of choice. But at least two individuals shared one of the coffeehouse's modest tables, each with a steaming cup of coffee in front of them.

One was a rugged mid-aged hare with a dull brown fur tone, dressed in a heavy plaid patterned flannel shirt: Peter Cotton.
"I thought Rachelle was gonna join you here."

The other directly across the table was a raccoon, wearing an unremarkable outfit of denim jeans and hoodie sweatshirt. He was young, but well past the fledgling age of youth: Richard Cooney.
"She wanted to stay with Jim. She needs time; today took a lot out of her, and me too."

An awkward silence began to settle in for a moment. But Pete butted in before it swelled any larger.
"I see you've applied to the University here; that's an excellent use of the payment. Most folks would've gone and spent it all on frivolous things, but you: you invested it in an education for yourself. Mind if I ask why?"

"I'm sick and tired of being a renegade lackey, I want to live a real life." Rick answered, fueled by and honest conviction, "I don't know what I'll end up majoring in yet, but going back to school is what I need. I need to learn what needs learning, so I go on to live a life like everyone else."

"I see..."
The older hare nodded slowly, a deep thought or two swirling through his mind.
"So, why did you go through so much trouble to get the kid, James? Why didn't you call the police like 'everyone else' would have?"

"I did what I did because I had to..."
The raccoon answered a little more firmly this time, almost like he'd taken offense at the question.
"Jim was in serious trouble, and I knew exactly what I needed to do to get him out of that trouble. I knew all the angles, all the plays, all the options Ossie could've pulled for a ransom situation; and I knew how to undermine them all. I could put a stop to a god-awful situation where the police –hell, not even the military would've had options."

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Pete added in on the side.

"Yeah..." Rick responded, more grim now, "Ossie also knew what I'd do, and he conned me. I fucked up; I should've seen it coming; I should've gotten us killed. He played my instincts like a fiddle, and I danced to his tune. The only reason Rache and I are alive right now is because Jim somehow got it into him that he could fight, and then caught Ossie with his pants down..."
He dropped his head into his hands, ashamed.
"The whole thing is just fucked, and I don't want anything to do with it ever again."

"Well, funny things happen that way sometimes. You just can't plan stuff like that." Pete let out a small chuckle, then cut it short before moving on; it seemed a little out of place there.
"This drive of yours you told me about –this impulse to go out and fix what's fucked– I hope you're aware that those instincts will never go away."

"What're you saying?" Rick asked, not looking up.

"Look, all I'm saying that you can go to the university; you can go ahead and live your 'real life', but you will always carry that instinct around with you like extra baggage. You will go through life seeing all the 'angles', all the 'plays', all the wrongs that you know how right, but there won't be anything you could do about it... Hey, look at me, this is important..."
The older hare nudged at Rick's arm until he complied, staring toward Pete with a vague, uninterested glaze.
"Now, what if I told you that your instincts could be put to use? That you could do some real good in this fucked-up world of ours?"

There was a change in Rick's eye; not an instant change, but it was there. Pete's words had set of a spark in the younger raccoon's mind, and there was enough mental kindling in there to start a little flame.
"You want to train me to be a spy, to do your job."
It was a statement of fact, not a question.

"Yep."

"And you think I'm cut out for that."

"If I thought you weren't, we wouldn't be talking."

"Right..."
The little flame in Rick's mind had swelled, catching onto an entire new possibility and burning it hot.
"So that means I'd be working for Lylat Central Intelligence, a covert system-wide Intelligence agency, doing what exactly?"

"Whatever needs doing."

"I was hoping for something a little more specific."

"Then let me break it down for you, Ricky." the older hare began, "Lylat is full of people: thinking people, passionate people, clever people, quiet people, ambitious people, downright brilliant people, and butt-fuck stupid people. Our job in Central Intelligence, our main overarching mission, is to protect them."

"Even the stupid people?" Rick asked.

"Especially the stupid people." The hare replied flatly.

The raccoon paused next to a curious thought, then moved on.
"Well, what are they being protecting from?"

"What's the biggest problems folks have these days?"

"Hell I don't know Pete, the economy? Crime? War? Petty politics?" Rick supplied, grasping for straws.

"No, those are mostly symptoms, the end results." Pete responded with a shaking head, "What's the underlying cause of all that public angst?"

"Fear, ignorance, greed, anger–"

The hare stopped Rick's response before he could list off anymore.
"Those are all emotions, but you're on the right track. What is it that emotions require? Think hard about this one now."

The raccoon released a sigh and leaned his head against a hand, glaring into coffee drink for several seconds, until an answer clicked into place.
"Emotions require someone to feel them: people."

"Now you're seeing the vicious cycle we live in." Pete replied with an approving smile, "The biggest threat to the peoples of Lylat isn't an abstract concept like war, or the economy, or the wrath of some angry deity, or some outlandish plot device dreamed-up for a story. No, the biggest threat by far is the decisions and actions of other people, because people and the circumstances they find themselves in are never perfect. This goes for everyone, from the nice young lady over there who served us coffee, to you and me, and all the way up to the President of the Lylat Union."

"So what're you doing here? Ridding the Lylat System of all things evil?" Rick asked, half-joking.

The older hare's reaction was far less amused. His demeanor became cold and stony at the table, reflected by the grim inflection in his words.
"There are many necessary evils that have to be endured, and many well-meaning goods that get thrown wildly out of hand. A governing body, or any organization really, is supposed to sort out which is which and then make decisions accordingly. Our politicians, while potentially very powerful in this respect, are often in an awkward position to make the more grisly decisions. Sometimes they and the people they're supposed to represent are better off not knowing about some of these decisions at all."

"And that's where you come in."

"That's where we come in."

Rick nodded in understanding, taking a moment before moving on.
"Okay, but that still doesn't tell me what my duties as an agent would be."

"I said you'd do whatever needs doing, and there's a reason the public and public servants are better off not knowing exactly what that means."

"Well if I'm going to be an agent, that means I'm neither politician nor public, so exactly what does it mean?" The raccoon asked, just beginning to lose his patience.

Pete took a long, preparatory drink of his own coffee before beginning his elaborate answer.
"Agencies like LCI exist because someone has to know the horrible ugly truths, and make the horrible ugly choices that others just don't have the stomach for. As a part of this agency, if you have to lie, cheat, steal, or otherwise disregard the established laws and morals for an operation, you're expected to do so. If you have to liaise and cooperate with individuals or institutions known to be corrupt, malevolent or otherwise twisted, you're expected to do so. If you have to completely destroy another person's life in order to keep a vital operation active, you are expected to do exactly that."

Rick glanced anxiously around the coffeehouse, massaging the back of his neck as he did.
"Does that mean I'd be expected to lay down my life for this hazy 'greater cause' thing?"

"Worse" The hare answered with a quick shake of his head, "You'll have to decide what is and what isn't worth laying down the lives of others for, and who's life to lay down when that moment finally comes..."
Pete stopped a moment, taking a swill from his gradually cooling coffee.
"We're not soldiers, and don't you go pretending to be one either. Soldiers are relatively expendable –another grunt is easy enough to come by– but a successful agent, with solid connections throughout Lylat's major power-players and trusted contacts that can act on his or her behalf, is irreplaceable. There are virtually no circumstances under which you'd sacrifice the queen where a pawn or another piece on the board can do the job instead."

"Pieces, pawns, major power-players?" the younger raccoon asked with some surprise, "You make it sound like this whole spy deal is some sort of a game."

"For all intents and purposes, that's exactly what it is." Pete replied with a shrug, "Imagine for a second, a game of chess mashed-up with a game of poker. You can't see the whole game board most of the time, or all the players at the table. It's not always clear who's side some of the pieces are on, and they'll even switch sides on you if you're not careful..."
A knowing gleam flashed across the older hare's eyes, accompanied by sharp smirk.
"Thing is, Lylat Central Intelligence is just one of several players in this great big deadly game of secrets."

"Then who else is at the table?" Rick asked, leaning in with interest.

"There's a whole bunch of them, but off the top of my head: you've got a whole network of organized crime shticks; there's narcotics, arms, and other cartels for assorted contraband; various Intelligence/Counterintelligence components of planetary governments and militaries; many politically motivated militias, freedom fighters, terrorists and similar groups; as well as several business tycoons and prominent industrialists who can afford to do things their own way. All around them are pools of thieves, pirates, smugglers, mercenaries, bounty hunters and other disposable forms of help-for-hire, each with varying levels of skill, quality, and discretion. Sometimes elements of 'the help' will even form loose factions of their own and sit-in alongside the big players –highly skilled thieves for example are notorious for grouping together like that..."
Pete puffed out a sigh of relief, and finished off the last his coffee before continuing on.
"Other players come and go with the times, but something like what I just rambled at you is the usual lineup we see."

Rick had been nursing his own coffee drink, and was almost to the bottom by the time Pete was done.
"I guess that means I'd be dealing with these other 'players' as an agent, right?"

The older hare supplied his answer with a nod, and further elaborated on the subject.
"One of the many duties of an agent is to meet, greet, and schmooze with these players under the table in order to gain access to their information, resources, personnel, and even turn them against other opponents. Another related duty is to root out opposing players who try to take advantage of the agency in similar ways. Clearly there's going to be a bit of creativity involved in this line of work."

"So lying cheating and stealing then?" The raccoon asked, a worried look coming across his face.

"If that's what you gotta do..." Pete shrugged, trailing off. "Like I said, you'd be doing whatever needs doing."

"Or find someone else to do it who can..." the raccoon responded, understanding the dynamics described.
"This is a hell of a lot to take in."

"I know..."

"But, what if I'd rather not do any of this?" Rick asked, "What if I just want to go on to the University and live that boring regular life?"

"That's fine, take your time." Pete assured, "I'm not forcing you to do anything, and there's nothing wrong with going to that university for a while. In fact, there are certain... 'academic programs' that the agency takes advantage of specifically for recruiting purposes."

"I'm sorry, what?" Rick asked, baffled.

"In a few days, Saul is gonna shift into sleeper-agent mode for a while, the poor guy's needing a break. You'll find him hanging around the old CCU campus once your mind is made up..."
The older hare stood up and prepared to leave, giving his companion a few last words.
"I've shown you the door and what's behind it, it's all down to you whether you're gonna step through it or not."

And with that, Pete turned and strolled casually out of the coffeehouse, leaving Rick alone at their table to think the largest and longest thoughts for himself...

Author Note:
Finally got this out! You would not believe how many times I had to sit and think how this was all going to play out; I must've had about a dozen or so different directions I could've gone with this. But, it's out now, and I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. Now I can finally start moving on.

As always, your feedback is most welcome.