You know, you would think that growing up in a city as crowded as Los Angeles that I would be used to crowds. And you would be totally wrong. I tried to move my way through the crowd, even using manners like my parents taught me. "Excuse me! Sorry didn't meant to step on your toes!" etc. etc. The funniest part of this all was the fact that I had to grab Jade's hand again and pretty much pull her along. She didn't look to happy about it, but after I had lost her and then spent a half an hour trying to find her, I tossed her feelings out the window and held her hand and pulled her through the crowd. I think she figured out why pretty quickly, but she still complained every now and then or made a token effort to yank her hand back. Pretty sure it was all about pride though, not being lead around or something dumb like that.

At last we came to the notice board and Jade and I had run out of patience and pretty much just forced our way to the front. Maybe the wasn't the politest thing to do, but after fighting the crowds in this squalid, nasty place with rude people, my patience was pretty much done. I almost got pushed away from the board, but Jade came forward and stomped on the rude gank's toes. I bit my lip to not laugh out loud as I swiped through the potential jobs. I found a good and easy one in a about a minute. I downloaded it onto my data pad and then pulled Jade out of the crowd.

"Got a run! We're going to Hong Kong."

"Earth or somewhere else?" Jade asked.

"Earth. Don't worry, that ganky jackhole won't find us."

Jade shrugged and again yanked her hand out of mine. What is with this girl? At least this time she's sticking close to me. Her head and eyes darted around, trying to take in everything. It was kind of cute, like a little kid at an amusement park. Though I'm not going to tell her that because she'll probably cut my hair off in my sleep or something. "We can take a moment and look around." I said after she nearly walked into a pole while staring at something else.

She shrugged and said "Sure whatever. You're the captain."

If I hadn't seen her spinning her head around like it was on a swivel, I would have thought she was as apathetic to my suggestion as she sounded. We looked through the stores and the holovids and I wondered what she was making of it all. Five hundred years is a long time. We've all heard stories about going to the future, or the past. But to actually live that? How do you process that? How do you accept that happened to you? Everything that she knew is gone and never coming back. I felt nothing but pity for her, though I didn't let her see any of it on my face. Don't think she would react to well to being pitied. Trina is the exact same way, always have to be tough in front of everyone ese.

Jade was staring at some hair decorations, nanites that change either your entire hair style or just give you highlights. "You want that?" I asked. "Ye..No. We can't afford that. I was just thinking. That's it."

I rolled my eyes and stepped past her. "How much?" I asked, pointing at highlights. "Three crowns." The seller said, who by the way was wearing some kind of sleeveless multi-colored shirt that was bright enough to make my eyes hurt. I raised an eyebrow. "You gone nane? A crown at the most."

Rainbow seller laughed. "These top of the line color-changers. Near perm too. Comes with mood options as a bonus. Three crowns."

I laughed too, though I wasn't finding it really funny. "Two crowns and five crescents." Seller opened his mouth and then closed it, thinking. "Two-eight." He said. "Two-six and not one crescent higher." I fired back. Seller grumped and then nodded. I passed him the money and he gave me the highlights. Jade and I walked off from the bazaar and slowly made our way back to our ship. "Here you go. You'll have to ask Cat how to apply them, she's the one with the changing hair."

Jade blinked. "Um thanks. What was that?"

"Haggling. Didn't they do that in the twenty-first century?" Yo. The glare she shot me should have killed me on the spot. If she ever figured out how to weaponize that look she would be the richest person in the entire Alliance. "I meant the money." She growled at me. Oh. Right we never did get around to tell her, did we? I fished through the coin purse and held up each coin. The first one up was a light gold circle with Earth imprinted on one side, and the three-headed eagle of the Alliance on the other. "This is a sovereign, also known as a crown. It's worth the most." Next up came a silver crescent. "This is a crescent, right in the middle. You'll probably use these the most. I held up a small rectangle last. "And last and the very least, the platinum credit chit, aka platinum, credit or just plain chit. No one really likes them. It's a hundred credit chits to a crescent, and ten crescents to a crown/sovereign."

"Easy to remember." Jade murmured. "Yup! You'll see prices like, two-seven-thirty-five. That means two sovereigns, seven crescents and thirty-five platinum." Jade nodded and then looked away, finding the admittedly squalid space station to be way more interesting then a discussion about money, and I couldn't really blame her.

"What's the job?" She asked suddenly.

"Just taking some cargo to some building in Hong Kong. Easy money."

Jade groaned. "We're gonna have to deal with toad-face again, aren't we?" I blinked at the nickname but shook my head. "We shouldn't have to, his job should just be dealing with arrivals, not departures. What's a toad?"

Jade nearly tripped over her feet at my question. "What? What the hell do mean what's a toad?"

I frowned. "Exactly what I asked. What's a toad? They some kind of animal?"

"Oh my god the future is just depressing." Jade answered while rolling her eyes. I gaped at her. "We're on a space station orbiting a moon, light-years from Earth! Couldn't do that in your time!" I snapped.

"At least we had toads!" Jade snapped back.

"Okay seriously what are toads?!"

Jade and I argued the whole way back. I had some great one liners that totally wrecked her self-esteem.

Okay. Okay. Maybe not. I swear she practices her insults in the mirror because everything I said was either tossed right back in my face and or one upped by something else. We argued all the way to the Nostromo were Cat nearly piledrove the both us into the ground.

"Great you're here! So, lets go do something! Something that isn't here! Becausewereallyshouldbeleavinglikenow." I blinked and looked at Jade for a translation, but she looked just as lost as I was.

"In english please." I said. "And slowly." I added the moment Cat opened her mouth. "We should leave and go do something. Something that isn't here. Like visit my brother. I think he's out of the asylum."

"I'm going to regret this, but why is your brother back in the nane-house?" I asked as we walked up the ramp to the ship.

"He tried to impersonate the First Prime-Minister of New Zealand and then tried to stab a maid with a spork."

Andre had shown up just in time to hear the last part of the sentence and we all stared at her. "The cargo arrived a little bit ago and we're clear to take off whenever." Andre said, breaking the silence.

"Right. Start up the engines and let's go. To your places people!" I said. Andre and Cat took off to the bridge and engine room while Jade just stood there. "So, what do I do?" she asked, a little nonplussed.

"Make sure everything is strapped down and then come up to the bridge." I called over my shoulder as I hurried up to the bridge. Nostromo started to hum as the engines came to life and I slid into the pilot's seat. Andre had just gotten cleared to launch and I started to guide Nostromo out of the hanger when Jade's voice came over the intercom.

"Is it normal for a crowd of people to follow a ship taking off? And start throwing things at it?"

Andre and I looked at each other. "What the hell?" He asked. "Um. No that isn't norma-CAT!" I yelled.

"What?" She whined.

"What. Did. You. Do?"

She was silent as Jade's rather concerned voice said, "I think they're shooting at us!", I growled into the intercom and she said "Okay look, if those parts were really all that important to them they shouldn't have left them out in the open! I mean if something is important to you, you should really keep it close to you, otherwise it really isn't all that important to you, you know?"

Oh. My. God.

"And because it isn't important to them then it's really important to us and we deserve to have it because it's important to us. Understand?"

"I understand that you're on dish duty for the next month!" I snapped.

Cat immediately started whining but I tuned it out. "Soooo" Andre said.

"Please don't start." I grumped.

"Okay okay." Andre started plugging away at the navigation, getting us ready to jump to Earth, all the while humming some kind of song that had lines that sounded suspiciously like "I told you so"

I groaned. What a great start to this job.

Yes I am still alive. Apologies for the lack of updates. Hope you all enjoyed.

-C.H.