A/N: Full chapter, thank you all for your patience thus far. Also, those waiting for the final chapter of "Children of Ice and Fire", I'm working on it tonight and tomorrow, so it should be up sometime Monday, work permitting etc.
Chapter One: Fragile
Meg swiped at the last of her tears with a loud sniff, her face resuming its usual lacklustre expression, slightly distorted by red-rimed blue eyes.
She stooped, scooping up her weapon and holstering it, the proximity sensor in the clasp opening the light weight container and closing again after the gun had been deposited, meaning all Meg had to do was close the leather strap over the top.
A chill wind cut through the metal valley she found herself standing in…or perhaps shivering in would have been more apt.
As she tried to tug the coat Jo had left her all those years ago a little lower, the red head couldn't help but wonder just how her friend had put up with running around like this no matter the weather.
Attempting to walk while holding the coat as low as it would go wasn't easy, but it was better than developing frostbite in areas best not mentioned in polite conversation.
The trip home was uneventful, those on the train giving the scantily clad young woman with the rather large guns a wide berth, though it didn't stop them muttering amongst themselves, wondering aloud what she needed such monstrous weapons for, and if it had anything to do with the fact she appeared to have been crying recently.
At least Meg could rest safe in the knowledge that such observations were the very reason that even as Tokyo's top bounty hunter, she didn't need to fear being spotted by someone. When most people found out they just laughed at her like she was a small girl with an overactive imagination.
She'd once asked someone why that was, shortly before she'd killed him, and he'd told her she didn't have the eyes of a killer, confident she wouldn't pull the trigger.
She wasn't sure who had been more shocked when she had.
"Not all of us find it easy or fun", she murmured under her breath, drawing a variety of strange looks from her fellow passengers as the train pulled into her station.
Leaving the confused stares of the others behind, she disembarked, her feet carrying her on automatic as she made her way out onto the streets, weaving her way back and forth through the milling, faceless crowd as she trod the same path she had for the past year.
Taking back alleys and access-ways to save time and cut down on the number of people she had to interact with, Meg soon found herself on the last leg of her journey, climbing swiftly but surely up the rusted fire escape with practiced ease and swinging a leg over the rim of an open window.
She paced the dangerously creaking halls, mentally checking off numbers until she reached the room she was looking for.
If anyone had seen it, they might have wondered how anyone could enter this room. The handle was missing, just smooth wood in its place.
Running her hand across the top of the doorframe, Meg located the small switch she was looking for and flipped it, the door swinging inward with a tiny click.
Another security precaution that went along with her 'natural' defence. As she stepped inside, she could make out the soft glint of the inch thick reinforced steel that was concealed by the door's wooden exterior, just in case someone came to the right place looking for her, and tried to enter without invitation.
She closed the door, sliding the various locks and deadbolts that could only be opened from this side into place and turning off the power to the external switch.
The whole get up had been designed and installed by Leo about three months ago, just after she had received her latest ongoing commission, and a number of unwanted visitors had shown up.
The whole room was shielded by a thin layer of the same material used in Jango's rebuild, it would take another cybot or something of equal destructive capabilities to get in without her permission.
Considering all this impressive security, one might picture the inner sanctum of Tokyo's top bounty hunter, as some sort of high tech command centre…The dishevelled and scruffy looking apartment would disillusion many.
Whatever might have changed about Meg since Jo's death, her almost chronic inability to keep her personal living space clean, coupled with a psychological blind spot to all and any forms of dirt or mess, meant that the smallish room appeared better suited to some stereotypical male students living space than a professional gun for hire.
The small bed was unmade, there were a number of her 'everyday' clothes lying on the floor where she had dropped them while changing, and the coffee table was buried under discarded fast food containers.
It was all very similar to how things had appeared back in the days she had been working for Sei in what really had been a high tech mobile command centre…back when Jo had still been with them.
With a sigh that should have come from someone much older and more jaded than she, Meg shrugged off her jacket, taking a moment to drape it over the back of a handy chair before moving on to the twin holsters that were simply dropped, the small room echoing with a dull thud as the heavy guns impacted while Meg moved on to her other garments, oblivious to the noise.
As she kicked her boots into one corner of the room, cursing under her breath as her delicate toes managed to strike the steel caps intended to protect them; the auburn haired girl tapped the remote for the portable television she had brought to fill up some of her longer nights, and was rewarded with a near deafening scream as the overacting 'heroine' of some movie or other faced down this week's monster by seemingly attempting to rupture its eardrums and/or brain with her shrieking.
Not really paying much attention to movie itself, Meg distantly remembered when such a tactic had been amongst her repertoire of techniques for dealing with her enemies, in what almost seemed another lifetime.
Movie away from the glare of the screen she pushed open the door to her domicile's bathroom, cranking the twin knobs set into the far wall of the shower up to full spray at maximum heat, and was rewarded with the same faltering pressure as always as she stepped under the lukewarm curtain of water.
Once under the protective embrace of the tepid liquid, she stood, allowing it to flow over her, her eyes, unblinking, never leaving the wall.
Slowly, Meg allowed her head to come to rest against the wall, closing her eyes and focusing on her breathing as she replayed her memories of the past few days, going over her actions, analysing each movement, seeking error, things she needed to practice more in the future and so on.
The only thing that stood out was the time she had wasted before pulling the trigger on Donovan.
She tried to tell herself that she had merely been holding out for every scrape of information he could possibly supply her, but here, alone in her private place of retreat with nothing to distract her but the mute drone of the television, she couldn't bring herself to believe that.
She had hesitated, just like she did every time she had a chance to think about what she was doing for a living now.
It had been a lot simpler collecting bounties before she had been the one holding the gun.
Jo never lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, worrying that she was loosing a little piece of herself every time she pulled the trigger.
Why was that?
The answer was obvious. Jo hadn't been human, Meg was. Jo had been a humanoid cybot, wetware engineered to be the perfect weapon, a killing machine with all the adaptability of a human, and none of their emotional drawbacks.
Jo had died when she came to realised that the desire she felt to protect Meg, would never be realised by the very virtue of her existence.
Weapons, especially powerful or rare ones, attract violence. There would always be a need to kill, to fight as long as even one person knew what she really was. There would always be the chance that one day she wouldn't be fast enough to save Meg, and so, tired of all the death that followed in her wake, disgusted with the reason for her creation and what it had done to the others that had survived before they died, Jo had thrown herself against the head of the organisation that had created her and the others.
An Angel of Judgement informing her creators of her verdict.
All she had had to do to do this, was break the promise she had made Meg while they lay together in the woods after escaping RAPT's capture force thanks to Mario's sacrifice.
She had promised they would run away together.
It had only been a sleepy grunt, but anyone who spent a long period of time around Jo had learned to interpret her thoughts without words, and Meg had had a greater connection to the platinum haired bioweapon than anyone else.
In return for making a lie of their promise, Jo had asked her to make another. To let her leave, to carry out her wish, the only one she had ever had, to keep Meg safe and in turn for Meg to become stronger, to find someone of her own to protect.
That promise had been forced of the redhead in the end, against her wishes, but she intended to keep it.
That was why she had modelled herself so extensively on the woman she had admired and loved the most, but she had learned early on she had limits that didn't apply to her deceased companion.
Meg brushed her eyes gingerly, feeling the swelling receding.
This was the most demonstrative symbol of this weakness. She cried every time she killed, as if something inside were screaming out against the changes she was trying to make to herself. Convulsions would follow until she had effectively disarmed herself and left herself completely open to attack.
"Jo… I sorry", she whispered, a sense of failure welling up inside her, "I'm only human.
Meg stood there long after the water stopped following, shoulders bobbing softly in time with her silent sobs.
Eventually she dragged herself to her bed, neither dressing or turning off the TV as she curled up, naked and shivering amongst the scattered covers, her drenched auburn hair trailing out behind her on the bed like the set of rusted wings on a mechanical angel mourning the loss of its halo.
When sleep eventually claimed her, Meg went without a struggle, welcoming the comforting nothingness, knowing that when she awoke, her current depression would seem but a distant dream as she once more looked to the future.
Her goal, her promise…
She would find someone to protect…or die trying.
At least that way, she would see Jo again outside of her dreams.
Her peaceful slumber was broken what might have been hours or seconds later by a loud and insistent bleeping that her groggy mind couldn't readily reconcile with anything in her room that was ignorable, and that covered quite a number of items.
"Go 'way", she grumbled, one arm waving around erratically as it she could ward off the intruding noise that way.
When that didn't work she groaned and tried to bury deeper into her bed, piling pillows over her head and holding them down, sitting up with a gasp when she came closer to asphyxiating herself than blocking out the sound.
Cursing with shocking creativity, Meg glared sleepily around the room, looking for the source of her perturbation.
Slightly more awake she finally realised what was making the god-awful racket. It must be the video-fed alert on the laptop she had brought recently, because she had thought it looked cool and might help her find information (and movies) faster.
She'd only discovered what the 'live-cam' software the clerk had advised she buy and install actually did a short time ago, and she was still undecided on whether she should thank or cap the helpful assistant for doing so.
As she bumbled around the room, trying to rake her waist length locks into some semblance of order and wondering why her apartment felt so cold at the moment, she was definitely leaning in favour of the latter.
Several minutes of searching yielded no results.
Stiffling a yawn, Meg smiled as she thought up the perfect way to settle this.
Hopping over small islands of dirty clothes, she hefted her twin holsters, retrieving one of the high calibre guns and ejecting the clip, resting it on the chair her jacket was strewn over the back of.
Meg closed her eyes, focusing solely on her breathing, ears alert, tracking the noise and using it in combination with her mental map of her living space.
Inhaling deeply, Meg released her breath in one even rush, pivoting and dropping to one knee, drawing a bead on the source of the beeping and pulling the trigger.
The bounty hunter opened one eye when she heard the dry click of the empty chamber, observing where she had pointed the weapon.
She was aiming directly at the centre of the bed she had vacated only moments earlier.
"D'uh", she slapped her forehead with her free hand as she tossed the gun aside, her addling memory confirming the hiding place of her errant computer as she crawled underneath the bed, crying out in alarm as her hand brushed a few things she couldn't readily identify, and wasn't sure she wanted to before lighting upon her goal.
"Got you", she cheered, hauling the thing rectangle of steel out and setting it up on the bed before her as she kneeled on the floor, taking a while to figure out how to activate the fed before locating the right button.
The screen was immediately filled by the bored and rather annoyed fourteen-year-old face of possibly the world's greatest hacker. A young girl who went by the name of Ami, an old friend and the only other member of their little group other than Leo who still lived.
Well, technically there was one other, but he didn't really count.
She was tugging at her single thick braid, her only fashion change over the years after Meg had pointed out a child's toy that sported the twin ponytails Ami used to have, and glancing off screen at something as the sound of fingers hitting keys echoed over the link's audio pickup.
"You woke me up you know", Meg said, making her voice sound gruffer and angrier than she really felt.
"Good to see you as well", the brown haired girl responded without looking around from whatever else she was doing, "Fifty-fifty chance, I told Leo you'd either be eating or sleeping…guess I owe him a coke".
Meg stuck her tongue out at the screen.
Ami smirked without even glancing at her, "Like I'm wrong".
"Whatever", Meg sulked, pouting slightly.
"Hehe, ok, I… Why are you naked?", Ami had finally looked at the screen.
Meg had to resist the urge to blush and look down, either would have told her teenaged friend that she hadn't known about her current state of undress, and Ami was bad enough when she didn't have material to work with.
I guess that explains the draft, Meg thought, trying to put a positive spin on her embarrassing discovery.
"It's better for your skin to sleep Au Naturalle", Meg lied as smoothly as possible, hoping she hadn't left too long a pause before her response.
Ami was silent for a moment before replying, "And what if it had been someone else on the line? A Client, a guy?".
"Depends"
"On what?"
"Is he cute?", came Meg's flippant reply, a wide smile gracing her face as her friend hung her head for a moment in defeat, muttering something, Meg only occasionally picking up words like 'Shallow'.
"So what can I do for you?", Meg asked.
"Put on a bra?", Ami grinned when Meg couldn't stop herself from blushing, "Leo called a little while ago. He wants us to meet him at a restaurant a little ways from your place, he says he has news on the mods for Jango you've been bugging him about".
"Bout time", Meg nodded to herself sagely, "Good for nothing old man, what took him so long?".
"I don't know, being married perhaps", Ami fired back drolly.
"Excuses, excuses", Meg waved one hand dismissively.
Leo had married his girlfriend Takane Katsu about seven months ago, after spending nearly half a year trying to build up the courage to do so.
Katsu was much young than the mechanic, easily young enough to be mistaken for his daughter or niece rather than his wife, and though it didn't usually seem to bother him when they had just been dating, his decision to marry her had brought with it all sorts of questions about how he could in good conscience bind her to someone who would be old and grey (well, greyer), before she'd even hit her thirties.
When Meg had 'accidentally' informed her about his concerns, she had smacked him swiftly and repeatedly with her bokken to drive home the point that such things didn't matter to her, that she loved him… and then once more just on general principle.
Her father had chosen her name more appropriately than he realised.
Ami tapped a few more keys, a small map appearing on Meg's screen in the lower corner of the video window.
"This is the place, try not to get lost or kidnapped along the way, ciao", Ami was gone before Meg could think up a proper retort, but she had the whole walk to think something up.
Taking a few minutes to dress in something a little more casual than her 'work' clothes, a midriff baring, grey t-shirt with stonewash denim hot-pants, combined with her jacket and a pair of high boots, Meg made her way toward the meeting point at a leisurely pace.
She couldn't have Ami or Leo thinking all they had to do was snap their fingers and she'd appear after all. That sort of thing sent the wrong message.
She had decided against taking her guns. They were cumbersome and heavy, plus what really trouble could she get into, the restaurant wasn't that far away or anything.
Still, she slipped her revolver into the inner pocket of her jacket just to be on the safe side.
Six shots should be more than enough if she needed the firepower.
After detouring around the 'scenic' route such as it existed with this corrupt and decaying metropolis she called home, or rather, one of the safer ones, Meg arrived at her destination, strolling inside and walking straight past the automated attendant that offered to find a spare seat for her on its poorly lit schematic of the establishment's eating area.
Her two companions weren't exactly hard to locate. Just look for the plumbs of smoke or listen for a loud and slightly sarcastic voice and you had found one of them or the other.
Following such smoke signals, Meg slid into Leo and Ami's booth without so much as a whisper, receiving a nod from bored and unenergetic looking Leo while Ami continued to fiddle with a palmtop, dead to the world.
Ami hadn't changed all that much in Meg's humble opinion. Ok so maybe she was a few inches taller than when they had first met, and having finally hit puberty she was beginning to develop as girls her age did, and was as disproportionately proud of her budding 'figure' as any other.
Meg made a mental note to advise a wardrobe change at some point in the conversation. As cute as Ami's pink one piece had been when she was twelve, it was somewhat small and revealing nowadays.
Combine attention-drawing outfits with a blunt, some times abrasive young girl whose invincibility in the cyber realm occasionally made her forget she was mortal here in the real, and you had a recipe for disaster.
Even as she was congratulating herself on being such a wonderful friend, there was a small part of her that couldn't help but wonder just how the younger girl would weasel her way out the inevitable conflict, and just how funny it might be to watch…
"Hi", she said, growing tired of being ignored and waving a hand in front of the other girl's face.
Ami blinked a few times before following the extremity back to its owner.
"Oh, you decided to turn up at last", she tucked the gadget into a pocket, resting one elbow on the table and frowning at the older woman.
Meg just smiled.
"Tell her the good news Leo", Ami said, waving her hand vaguely in his direction.
The older man put out his cigarette reluctantly and leaned back in the booth, eying Meg over the circular rims of his tinned glasses.
"I found the balancer I was telling you about", he said without preamble, a small smile creeping onto his face as a much wider one graced her own.
"You mean it? No lies, you actually got it?", Meg asked, gripping the table to stop herself bouncing with excitement.
They had discovered when Leo had first rebuilt Jo's old Cybot for her, that because unlike Jango's previous pilot, Meg lacked the ability to directly interface with the machine she piloted, that no matter how good she became, her response times were always lower than the Cybot's records showed as being optimum based on combat data recorded when Jo had been in control.
In essence, Jo's unconscious capacity for directly manipulating the responses of her Cybot had meant that in any given situation, she had already set Jango onto a course of action before she gave the confirming manual commands, boosting his reaction times to her wishes beyond that of most top of the range military models of that era.
Unfortunately Meg couldn't do that, and so to compensate, Leo had been…creatively acquiring a number of pieces of rare and experimental hardware over the past eight months or so and doing a few upgrades while Ami had designed a more efficient and flexible OS and AI for Jango Mk II to run it all.
If Leo really did have the final piece, it meant that her beautiful red machine would at long last be complete.
She was practically drooling at the thought.
"Hey Leo, when can I take it out?", she said, leaning over the table separating them a little as Ami shook her head at the antics of the supposedly older and more mature girl.
"It's not a car Meg, it's a work of engineering art", Leo folded his arms, the glow of pride clear in his voice and posture.
"Leeeeeeeeeeo", she whined, "Come on, just a little test run, I won't even shoot the guns, promise".
"You have your fingers crossed", Ami pointed out helpfully, smiling sweetly when Meg gave her the stink eye.
"Not happening Red", Leo told her when she turned her attention back to him, "Mr. S was quite clear that I don't get payed if you so much as touch Jango before your sim scores are up to the standards he set".
Mr. S was the alias of her current employer/backer.
He had contacted her some six months ago and requested she take a job for him investigating a new street drug that had come onto the market, offering a jaw dropping amount of cash up front and even offering to help get Jango repaired, though how he knew about the Cybot was beyond her.
Still the money was good, and her machine was being fixed with no cost to her own rapidly dwindling savings, so she had accepted.
However, her backer had set a condition on her usage of the rebuilt robot, and that had simply put, been that she be able to properly and skilfully pilot and use it. Only he kept raising the bar on the simulations he sent Leo for her to go through.
"But those things are so boring", she complained.
Leo shrugged, "Hey, not my rules Red".
Ami sniggered as Meg flopped onto the table like a balloon with a slow puncture.
The young hacker had like wise been hired by their mutual employer a little under six months ago much to both of their surprise. After the events two years ago, neither girl had heard from the other, both having been left with the assumption that the they were the only survivor of the original four women.
It had been a happy reunion, and they had soon settled into some semblance of the relationship they had had as the youngest members of the previous group.
Of course, the fact that Sei or Jo had always unconsciously acted as a buffer between these two outgoing and energetic personalities quickly became apparent after the fallouts of some of their more spirited debates left Leo nursing headache after headache.
A ringing filled the air and Meg peeked out from behind her arms as Leo fumbled with something in his pocket, taking out a small mobile phone hand holding it up to one ear.
"Moshi moshi?", he asked.
Meg glanced at Ami, mouthing one name 'Katsu?' at her friend and receiving a knowing smirk and a nod in return.
Meg smiled a cat-like grin.
So, Leo wasn't going to help her bring a little fun into her life huh? That was just fine, she could think of plenty of ways to entertain herself.
"Ne! Leo!", something classic was in order.
The older man grimaced a little, seeing the look in her eyes as she rested her chin on her hands.
"Meg?", she heard the Osaka girl's voice echo over the line, "Leo? I thought you said you had work?"
"Calling us 'work' Leo? How cruel", Meg said, sighing mock sadly.
Leo gave her a long suffering look, turning to Ami for help, but the petite brunette only shrugged and sat back in her chair.
"Us?", Katsu's voice went up a little before she managed to bring it back under control, "No, not this time Meg, I always let you get me worked up, but I'm not falling for it this time".
"Sorry Takane, what was that? Leo had me…distracted", she practically purred the last word. You just didn't defy a master that was all there was to it.
"Not buying it!"
"Sure, that's probably for the best…so how have you been, seems I have some time now that he's 'busy' with Ami", Meg had to put a hand over her mouth when Leo almost dropped the phone as Katsu bellowed his name.
"Hey! Leave me out of this!", Ami shouted indignantly.
"Yeah Leo", Meg added, "She's just a girl you animal".
She fell back in her seat, hugging her stomach as Katsu's loud and anxious sounding voice blasted out of the phone's small speaker.
Leo eventually managed to calm his jealous wife, promising to do something to make up for everything when he returned and ending the call with a heavy sigh.
Massaging his temples he gave Meg a half-hearted glare, but it was tainted by the faint trace of a smile.
As much as Katsu's jealousy fits backfired initially, they always had interesting results in the long run, and such things helped keep him on his toes in their relationship. Things were certainly never boring.
"You're an embarrassment to yourself and everyone around you", Ami announced, not upset with the prank pulled on Leo, but with the roll she had been forced into in it.
"Whatever. I'm the embarrassing one, hey, does this ring any bells?", Meg clasped her hands together and effected her best 'little girl' expression, "I love you Oni-chan!".
Ami's face paled as Meg's voice went up several octaves and a number of customers leant out of their booths to see what all the racket was about.
"That was two years ago!", she shouted, finding it difficult to moderate the volume her voice as heat rushed to her cheeks, "And I was joking!".
"Suuuuuure", Meg drawled, taking a set of chopsticks out of the dispenser set into the table in front of her, "But you did go on a date with him in the end".
"It wasn't a date! None of you would take me to buy parts so I tricked him into doing it instead", Ami defended herself.
"You went out together, without telling any of us first, he let you ride around with him on that tiny scooter and he spent a lot of money on you…sounds like a date to me", she chuckled at the positively evil look her young friend gave her, while Leo nursed the beginnings of an new headache.
"…Anyone for lunch, Leo's treat", Ami said, hitting upon the only thing that could distract Meg right now.
The redhead's blue eyes became watery and distant, and Ami was half convinced she might start drooling at any moment, the other girl's stomach scaring the people in the next booth when it rumbled loudly.
She glanced at Leo who waved a hand toward the menu, "Go ahead, maybe it will help her concentrate on the sims, whatever helps me finish this faster".
Trying to ignore the terrible shooting pains in his wallet as Meg perused the menu, Leo let himself space a little to ease the transition, filling his mind with thoughts of his work and his wife.
When he returned, there was a small mountain of plates obscuring Meg from view, and Ami looked slightly disturbed along with several other of the gaping patrons of the small restaurant.
"Finished?", he asked, swiping his cash-card through the reader offered by a smiling waitress without looking at the bill for this one woman feast.
There are some things you just really don't need to know.
Meg nodded, sighing happily and closing her eyes.
"Good… Ami, grab her", he said, sliding out of the booth as the smaller girl nodded, latching onto Meg's arm.
Meg struggled to free herself to no avail as Leo hefted the other arm, half guiding, half dragging her out of her seat with Ami's help.
"No…too much soba…can't…break free", Meg grimaced as her bloated stomach protested her thrashing movements violently.
"Suck it up kid", Leo advised, not loosening his grip, Meg was a lot more cunning than people gave her credit for at times, "The sooner we do this, the sooner you get to pilot the real deal".
"Noooooooooooooo!".
The door closed with a soft jingle, leaving the other restaurant goers to sit and wonder just who the hell that strange young woman had been.
There was a loud crash outside, followed by a number of muffled curses.
"Damn it Meg, knock it off! You're acting like a child!"
"Am not!"
Ladies and gentlemen, Tokyo's number one bounty hunter had left the building.
---Author Notes---
Ok, chapter one down and out of the way, the basics have been set up, so on with the story I guess. Coming soon, Chapter Two: Bounty Hunter 101; Meg faces down gangsters, drug lords, overzealous delivery boys and sadistic computer simulations. No one said being the best would be easy now, did they.
Oh, and anyone wondering about the comment on Katsu's name, her name means 'Punish', so yeah…
Till next time, Betweenheavenandhell