Interlude 2: Panam

Panam Palmer was conflicted.

Well, not conflicted exactly, more... confused?

Yes, confused was the right word for it. The whole damn situation was confusing, and Panam didn't quite know what to make of it. After the whole clusterfuck involving Rogue calling her in to help someone like V out, she had assumed that things with Rogue were square. They were even, and Panam swore that she wouldn't touch the woman again with a ten-foot pole, even though V turned out to be quite a nice gal, all things considered.

And then the call came.

And Panam was pissed. After all the trouble she had gone through, after almost losing Mitch, and actually losing Scorpion, this woman had the balls to call her up on the holo like it was nothing and demand that she do another job. I mean for fuck's sake, wasn't it enough to go fucking with a Kang-Tao APC?!

But Panam was on the hook, and she knew better than to ignore a call from the Queen of the Afterlife. And that reluctance quickly became curiosity, when upon sensing her hesitancy, Rogue tripled her offer. Whoever it was that rattled Rogue's cage, clearly they were serious. When Rogue told her she would temporarily be joining their security detail, Panam envisioned it would be some mad titan who could threaten Rogue and get away with it, built like Adam Smasher, and capable of cutting through entire armies without breaking a sweat. Or perhaps some captain of industry, in the lines of the late, great, Saburo Arasaka. Someone with unfathomable wealth who knew what he wanted and knew how to get it.

What she got, however, was a big bag of disappointment.

The man she was actually protecting, was the CEO of some dinky little food company, one whose name she had never heard of. He was not much larger than her, and seemed to lack anything even approaching a bite. He wasn't terse, or rude, or even holier-than-thou. Panam thought she'd made history that day, because apparently, she had found the world's only nice corpo.

And then, over the course of a ten-minute conversation, that man convinced the leader of the 6th Street gang, a man notorious for his hatred of corpos, to come work for him, a corpo.

Needless to say, Panam saw his mild-mannered demeanour in a whole new light after that day.

What was once just manners became almost malicious in nature. In her mind, he was suddenly elevated to the likes of the late patriarch of the Arasaka family, because apparently, he was the world's best diplomat. Someone who could sell dogshit to a cat and get the cat to be appreciative that they were granted such a wonderous opportunity.

And Panam began to notice things as well. Like the fact that nearly all the food she was eating that could even remotely be described as good had the logo of his company printed on the packaging. Like the fact that his staff's faces seemed to light up like a goddamn Christmas tree when they saw him, and not in a fake, I want a promotion way either. Even his security team, who were usually the ones who tended to hate their bosses the most, on account of having to spend the most amount of time with them, seemed to appreciate his presence.

They genuinely liked him. Maybe even loved him, given the almost creepy levels of praise heaped upon the man by some of the more enthusiastic members of his staff.

And the man had a knack for money, too. Somehow, over the course of a few weeks of shadowing him, she had picked up more about money and business than she had learnt in her entire life prior. Seemingly, this man had a solution to just about every problem in the world, and he managed to line his pockets whilst solving them. And in ways that seemed almost stupid. For example, he figured out a way to make money off of paying the entirety of the 6th Street Gang to not commit crimes anymore. Panam didn't even know if that was possible, and yet apparently, it was.

At this rate, she wouldn't even be surprised if someone told her that hell was real, and that he'd figured out a way to freeze it over for profit.

Still, even with all the curveballs he was throwing her way, Panam found that the mysterious man was growing on her in the same manner, she consoled herself by saying, in which a terminal cancer grows on a patient. In spite of her reluctance, even she couldn't ignore the butterflies she felt in the depths of her stomach whenever she was around him.

Hell, when Saul had heard who she'd been working for, he'd approved. Saul, fucking Saul, approved of something she did!

Now, she just had to decide whether those butterflies were caused by fear, or by excitement. Fear, caused by the fact that such a dangerously persuasive man could exist, and excitement, over the fact that he didn't seem to want to do anything more with that ability than good. For the first time in years, Panam felt some degree of hope for humanity, because goodness did still exist in the world, and it was her job to protect it.

But none of that mattered right now, because she'd failed.

And for the first time in an even larger number of years, Panam felt heat building up behind her eyes.

No, she wasn't crying, thank you very much. Panam Palmer did not cry.

But, holy shit, she wanted to. She oh so desperately wanted her carefully constructed wall of confidence and cynicism to just shatter, all into a million pieces, if only for a moment, just so that she could release all the pent-up rage and sorrow, all at once. She imagined she would feel a thousand pounds lighter, and that for a moment, she could leave all her troubles behind. But then another call came through the holo, from some gonk named River. Apparently, he had been investigating the supposed murder of Lucius Rhyne, in spite of the objections of his superiors, and he believed it to be connected to the events of the day.

An honest member of the NCPD, and some people said miracles weren't real.

More importantly than all of that, however, was the fact that he had a lead, and all her feelings were swiftly replaced by a cold, hard, murderous fury. She organised a meet between River and herself as soon as she could, because finally, she had a problem she could deal with.

A problem she could kill.

What, exactly, is this mysterious lead? And will our protagonist's fate be avenged?

Feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

Hope you guys are enjoying the story thus far!