Song: Amadou & Maryam - Beaux Dimanches; The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Malela; The Doors - Break On Through (To The Other Side)

"Hey, girl, you alright? Did you get to Artemis? I haven't heard from you since you said you went on the shuttle."

Fuck. I had completely forgotten to let Lilith know that I was okay. I felt really bad about that, because I knew she was probably worried and wouldn't stop worrying until she heard back from me.

"You didn't send her a message?" Mordecai asked, shaking his head.

"Oh shut up, you forgot, too." I replied and started recording a message.

"Hey Lil. I'm so, so sorry. I completely forgot to send an ECHO, I feel so bad right now. There is no reason to worry, we landed, we arrived at our place, everything is fine. Artemis is amazing, we're at this little street market right now, because I just realized how much I need some new clothes. I am literally wearing rags and it's fine for Pandora, but not this place. Sorry again."

"Ah, cool. Good to know. I'll forgive you, because I almost forgot, too. Tina says hi, by the way. Bring us some souvenirs, you hear?" Lilith replied promptly. I smiled and added her to my mental list of people that wanted souvenirs.

"Will do. I'll tell Mordy that Tina misses him. Talk to you later, okay?" I answered. We were kind of busy at the moment - looking for clothes, trying not to lose Nadia and Anouk and trying to meet up with Gaige and Axton who had apparently found a place to stay not too far from here.

"Everything okay?" Mordecai asked.

"Yeah, Tina misses you and says hi. But everything is pretty much normal so far. She told me to get her a souvenir." I replied.

"Should be easy enough to find something for everyone here. Where have your two new friends gone?"

"They're looking for another Atlas espresso machine, so I can get my own personal one. They are the best coffee machines in the whole universe, I swear." I said, my mouth watering just thinking about the coffee.

"Is... is one of them Anouk?" Mordecai wanted to know next, lowering his voice a little. I sighed.

"Well, her name is Anouk. The other one is Nadia. Could be a coincidence, though, I don't know." I replied. I mean, it was kind of bullshit that it could be coincidence. It would be the wildest coincidence ever.

"You know how unlikely that is?"

"Yeah, I know, I know. It just.. They were just there, okay? I couldn't just slam the door in their faces after I opened it. And now I'm in too deep to back out again and I don't know what to do."

"Are you gonna tell her?"

"I don't know, Mordy. If you were her, would you wanna know?" I asked. He just shrugged at me.

"I don't know. Probably not? But the thing is that I am not her. She could feel completely different about this." he answered.

"I know, you're right. But... ugh. I don't know. It's a difficult one and I need some time, okay?"

"Whatever you say. Just try not to fool yourself with this, okay?" Mordecai said. He looked concerned and I couldn't even blame him. I was the queen of fooling myself.

"I'll do my best. So what's the story with Gaige and Axton? Have they found a place? Are we meeting them? What's happening?" I asked, looking around myself.

We were in the middle of some sort of plaza and there were little market stalls all over the place. The place was crowded beyond belief, there were people scurrying around everywhere. The buildings surrounding the plaza looked like they had seen their best days already. The facades were crumbling and the buildings looked old, but they undeniably used to be good places to live in - a few decades ago.

"They said they found a place around here and are going to meet us somewhere. So I guess we can go and you can buy whatever you need, while I keep an eye out for them." Mordecai replied.

"You think they'll be okay around here?"

"Yeah, it's a fairly poor area, but not dangerous. If you don't get mixed up in anything dodgy, you should be fine. They'll survive."

"That's... good I guess. Whatchu think of that?" I asked and nodded in the direction of a long and wide dress with some colourful embroidery on it. Mordecai looked over at it and shrugged.

"Yeah, looks good. Seriously, don't ask me that kinda stuff. I don't think I'm gonna be very helpful with any of that." he replied. I gave him a smile, went over to the stall and picked it up.

It looked beautiful and was made out of some light material. I held it against my body hesitantly - I hadn't really tried on a nice dress since I had left for Pandora. The last nice dress I had ended up as a provisional bandage out in the desert when I didn't have access to anything else. I looked down on myself, a little scared it would just look wrong on me, as if I just wasn't the right person to wear nice things anymore. Pandora had left its traces and while there I was happy to even have something clean to wear.

But unsurprisingly, nothing had changed. It was a little weird to see something other than cargo pants on myself, but it didn't feel too out of place for me. I smiled a little and folded the dress over my arm, so I could look for a few more things. There were a lot of baggy and wide clothes with colourful patterns around and I just grabbed a bunch of things. I really needed stuff to wear.

"How are you gonna transport all this?" Mordecai asked me after a while. I had maybe about 10 or 15 pieces piled up on my arm.

"My backpack is basically empty, Mordy." I replied.

"You know you'll have little chance to wear any of that on Pandora?"

"Yeah, I'll get some things I can wear on Pandora later, don't worry. I mean, I've literally spent 15 years without any nice stuff. I feel like I should be able to treat myself when I get the chance."

"You had nice guns."

"That doesn't really count on Pandora, I mean, it's kinda a necessity."

"Fine, fine. It won't cost a lot here anyways."

"Cool. So, tell me something about this place. Is this where you grew up? Did you buy food here? Did you live in any of those houses?" I asked while I paid for my stuff. I mean, Mordecai seemed to know a lot about all the areas around here. Chances were he even knew a lot of the people here.

"No, I never lived here. These houses were luxury for me when I grew up. We used to live in one of the slums. Not a great area, dangerous and you needed to know the right people and not get too involved in other people's business to stay alive. I sometimes went here, but not too often. For me, this was fancy." he answered.

"Would you still know any of the people back from where you lived?" I wanted to know as we moved on from the stall, just casually looking through what other things were for sale. I had a bunch of clothes now and I was happy with them at the moment. To be honest, I couldn't wait to go and wear them all.

"I'd say about half of them are dead at this stage. The rest... maybe. I dunno. It's been a good while, but I might recognize some of them, if they're still here." Mordecai said as we made our way through some stalls that sold food. One caught my attention - a young woman selling fruits.

I don't know what it was about her, she just had this aura about her, like she knew something, and she was the only one who knew it. She didn't necessarily mean bad, but it was like she had some secret she was really smug about. Like she had a secret life she'd given up to sell fruit in this place.

"You wanna get some fruit? This stuff looks pretty good." I asked, nodding at the young woman who gave me a slight smile.

"Sure, sounds good. But yeah, most of the people I'd know wouldn't be around here. There is one guy... he should be around 70 by now. He used to beg around this area, sometimes selling some small stuff, fixing shoes, fixing cars, anything he could do to get some money to get by, I suppose."

"Why would most people be dead? I mean, this isn't Pandora. And I sometimes hung around the slums on Aquator and I didn't die. Is it so much worse here?" I wanted to know. Mordecai shrugged.

"No idea, I can't compare it. But you didn't grow up in the slums, did you? You didn't know many people from there, or many people involved in all kinds of shady businesses. Most people I knew were smuggling weapons, drugs, doing contract kills - anything you can imagine, really. I've seen a lot of people die when I was young. It's different if you grow up in these places." he said.

"Makes sense, I guess. Damn. That... that sounds really rough. I mean, I knew you grew up poor and all, but I didn't really have an idea. Like we weren't rich either, but probably way better off than you. Fuck." I answered. It was weird to admit that I had no idea how rough life could be for some people. I mean, yeah, I had seen Pandora, but that was Pandora. This here wasn't a border planet.

"It's not as bad when you're used to it." he told me with a smile. I smiled back at him and shook my head a little. It sure sounded bad and I probably wouldn't have survived under circumstances like that, but I guess that was all in the past. At least for now, who knew what was going to happen with our lives.

I turned to the young woman selling the fruit. She had watched us the entire time, but not in an intrusive way. It was weird. She was leaning back against the wooden wall of her little stall, and she seemed relaxed and completely at peace with herself and everything around her, but she had her eyes on us and everything going on around the place. She was paying attention.

"Hi, I'd like to get all these, please." I said to her. Her smile widened a little as she looked at me and she held out her hands so she could weigh the fruits I had picked out. While she was doing that, she looked up at Mordecai.

"They revoked the bounty on you not too long ago, didn't they?" she asked him. Mordecai raised an eyebrow.

"What's that got to do with you?" he replied. She shrugged.

"I watch out for bounties. Like to know who's around."

"You don't look like the killing type. Or the bounty hunting type."

"Never said I was. Other people are. And they like help."

"So you rat out the poor sods with a bounty on their head?"

"That depends on them."

There was some tense silence between them and I honestly felt so out of the loop, it was weird. What was she talking about? And then, for no apparent reason, both her and Mordecai started laughing.

"Pretty smart, alright. You're out of luck, though. No bounty on my head here." Mordecai then said.

"Well, I've heard of you. Still plenty of people who wouldn't like to see you alive." the woman replied with a sly smile on her face.

"Hold up. Let's assume one of those people who wants him dead sees you talking to us. Won't that put you in danger?" I asked her.

"I have ways of disappearing if I need to. Don't you worry about me. Worry about yourself. Heard Hyperion isn't too fond of you either. Wouldn't want them to find out you're out and about in the six galaxies now."

Holy shit. What the hell were we doing still talking to that one? My hand wandered to the small pistol I had holstered to my side. I looked around. Fuck. There were so many people around, it would be almost impossible to kill her without anyone noticing. And then we'd be in deep shit.

"Alright, alright. Here's a deal. We're on your side as long as we're here or if you ever make it to Pandora. But you've never seen any of us. Deal?" Mordecai said. She shrugged.

"I dunno. How about you throw in 50 credits?" she answered.

"No. 10."

"30."

"20."

"20 plus the 7 credits for the fruit." she said, looking like that was her absolute last offer. To me, all of this was pretty wild.

"Deal." Mordecai agreed and handed over the money.

"Thanks. Good to make business with you." she answered.

"I trust you'll also be on our side? In case anyone asks about us." Mordecai replied. She nodded.

"Of course. If I can afford it."

Mordecai just nodded and turned around leading me away from her and through some other stalls.

"Okay, what just happened?" I asked, completely perplexed by what I had just seen. This was some next level gangster shit.

"Let's gather up Gaige and Axton and your two new friends. We'll talk about that later." he replied quietly.