Chapter 1: Escape from Eos

Author's notes:

OK, so after having spent a considerable amount of time reading what other authors have written on this marvellous fandom and doing quite a bit of rpg-ing myself, I've decided to finally have a go at it and write my own fanfic :)

I'm not a very experienced fanfic writer, I only ever wrote one "serious" fanfic in the Stargate Atlantis fandom that apparently several people bothered to read… so I hope some people might find some satisfaction in reading this as well ;)

I should warn you that I've never written anything too overly romantic before, but here goes nothing

So basically this continues where the original novel left off: dramatic ending at Dana Burn. BUT main characters survive, no worries ;) This isn't one of those "lamenting afterwards"-fics (not that those can't be good of course) ;) I'm not really doing this in chronological order though, so probably there'll be a flash forward in this chapter and then what happened between that and Dana Burn will be explained later on.

I've only read the first two novels of the more recent series and some translated chaps from the original I've found on the Internet, so I'm mostly basing this on the animated movie and what I've read in other people's fics. But if I get any serious inaccuracies that really get on your nerves, don't hesitate to point them out to me :)

I'm not entirely sure from which area of Midas the black market is operating, it didn't appear to be explicitly mentioned anywhere in Vol. 2 Destiny, however there was a description of Riki driving along Orange Road, so I'm just gonna go with Area 5. Unless someone out there has read the entire series and found more information on this? I'm not even sure at this point whether Area 5 is called Janus or Diedo, cause in the maps that come with the novel it says Diedo is Area 5, yet in the actual text it says Janus is so… I'm at a bit of a loss here :P Diedo somehow seems more likely to me, as it's right next to Ceres.

Also I wanted to include a soundtrack consisting out of an opening and ending theme for each chapter. This is music I feel matches the mood or events at the beginning or end of the chapter, can be because the lyrics or style match the events but also because I feel the melody conveys the emotions the chapter is focussing on.

…...

opening theme: CellDweller – New Elysium

…

Keep running. Just keep running. How hard can it be? Running should be easy if you know what it is you're running towards. Or perhaps more accurately in this case: running away from.

Pain. A burning sensation that made it feel as if her shins were on fire. Her stomach burned as well. How long had it been since she'd had a decent meal? Honestly, one would think that pet food crap had been specifically engineered to make one's brain cells deteriorate. Either way this had to be better than being continuously hit by an electro-whip. Or burning alive. Not that she had any clue what that would actually feel like, but if the whips were anything to go on … unimaginably bad. And here she thought she had a vivid imagination when it came to pain.

It was truly amazing how ignorant one could be without realizing it. How blind to the ways in which this outer world of dazzling glitter and glamour truly operated, for underneath that beautiful, seductive mask was an emptiness more ugly and terrible than even those who grew up in the slums of Ceres could fathom. Blind. Until that fateful day. That day that changed the entire world, made it transform from something perfect and harmonious into something utterly despicable and incomprehensible. But no, it was not the world that had transformed. It were the eyes that perceived that world. Tanagura had always been a hell of sorts, it simply came in the guise of heaven.

Exhaustion. How long had she been running now? A couple of hours? A couple of days? It felt like it could very well be weeks. Although exhaustion was not too bad. It prevented her from thinking too much. About how her life had been one long enumeration of mistakes and lies, as much her own as other people's.

Betrayal. It was ridiculous how much it stung. By Jupiter, what had she been expecting? Those that are looked upon disapprovingly by Jupiter were unredeemable per definition. What made her think that a so-called friendship would be able to overcome that? They did not know what love was and they had no inkling of an idea of what true loyalty was. Fear, yes. Duty, most definitely. But in reality all those feelings could be reduced to motivations brought on by petty self-interest and the ever-present ambition and longing to fulfil one's own desires, whatever the nature of those desires may be.

A newfound, deep respect emerged from all these experiences, a respect for those that managed to operate within Tanagura and defy all that egocentrism that the system relied upon to control its inhabitants by keeping them in a constant state of blissful ignorance.

Daryl. By Jupiter what have I done to you?

Katze. That's right, get to Area 5, find Katze. If he's still alive. What if Jupiter knew about the black market operation and had sent over a squad to erase all trace of its existence? But no, even if she knew, she would consider such an illegal activity far beneath her notice, especially if it was being run by a rogue ex-furniture.

Don't use public transport. Try to stay off the radar as much as possible. Her wits were the only advantage she had over her enemies. Nobody had even suspected that a mere pet could know about the secret passageway out of Eos. The guards at the Sasan gates into Midas had been unsuspecting as well. It had felt way too good to shoot them. That raw, tangible energy that coursed through her veins. Adrenaline. That's what it felt like to be alive. Everything else was just a whitewashed picture, a fake imitation of the real thing. Strange how one had to get close to death in order to realise how precious life was. How one had to lose everything in order to realise what was truly important.

The blouse she'd stolen from a street vendor's stall earlier clung to her naked skin, completely soaked through by the rain that had been falling down steadily for the last half hour or so. I could lose consciousness and die from hypothermia right here in this littered gutter. It was almost funny, really. She could die now. That probably would not be such a bad thing, all other options considering. But no, she couldn't give up. Not yet, she had to know. Had to know for sure, from someone she could trust.

Surely if the Darkmen were still following her, she would have noticed by now? The pace she was running at had slowed down considerably, and she occasionally had to stop to catch her breath. But she never stopped for long, the risks of hypothermia and getting caught hanging above her head like Damocles' sword.

"Dammit, how much further is it?!" Such curses were most definitely a requirement in your vocabulary if you were getting chased all over Midas. Perhaps they'll give me a beating for good measure and then… what was it?... toss me into the nearest dumpster.

"Hey, baby, wait up! Hold it right there, cupcakes." Shit! Not this again!

A middle-aged, rather fat-bellied man dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and some cheap trousers that looked as if they'd originally been part of a suit approached her. On top of that he was also wearing a horrendous purple Mexican hat of some kind. From the way he was swaggering he was obviously in a very drunken state. Good. If he's intoxicated I might be able to outrun him. But she'd been running for almost an entire day now, without much rest and without any sleep. Her legs felt heavy, her heart was beating in her throat and her breath came out stuttering and raspy. She wasn't going anywhere. And of course she had lost her lasergun while running from the Darkmen earlier. It was incredibly stupid, but for some idiotic reason it had just fallen from her sweaty hand. Adrenaline could also have serious disadvantages. It made you act in a reflex, without thinking.

A few seconds later she felt a fat, clammy hand touch her shoulder. Her light body was effortlessly pulled towards her opponent. She felt the fingers, like disgusting spiders, crawl underneath her blouse. She was grateful she was still wearing the pet underwear underneath it. Oh, no. Of course I'm not going to die of hypothermia. I'm going to be raped to death by this disgusting off-worlder pig. There had to be some way to win this fight. The man was bigger and stronger than she was. But he was probably very dumb (definitely far less intelligent than she was) and his reflexes were slower because of the alcohol in his system. If only she could find something sharp and use it on the right body part with maximal force, she knew she could kill this bastard. Or she could talk to him and try to manipulate him into letting her go.

"I don't think you want to do that… sir", her voice sounded strange. Raspy because she was out of breath, high-pitched and unsteady because she was frightened.

"And why on Amoy not, sweetie?", the man giggled because of his own ridiculous joke. "It's what this place is for, isn't? Amusement?"

"Yes, well you've just touched someone else's amusement. Do you see this ring?" She held up her sapphire necklace into the light coming from a nearby street lantern. She was only still wearing it because she hadn't had an opportunity yet to get rid of it. Either way it had been deactivated, the only reason its presence still bugged her was the stinging sense of betrayal that went with it. "This means I am the property of Raoul Am, a very important elite and Syndicate member from Tanagura. And let me tell you that the elite do not appreciate it when others touch their property. In fact …", she took a few steps backwards and away from his putrid breath while spinning her tale, trying to keep it as close to the truth as possible because she knew that her body would give her away if she told him an outright lie. "… there are several known cases of tourists inexplicably vanishing, never to be seen again, after having put their hands on what didn't belong to them." She gazed at his face, as if trying to calculate from its expressions if he was buying it or not.

The man hesitated for several seconds. But just as she was about to move and make a run for it, he grabbed unto her wrist and pulled her back towards him. "I don't see any elite here, do you? And for a Tanaguran pet you are a long way from Tanagura, aren't you, lil' sugarcube?" Fight or flight. Which was it going to be?

"All right then, Mr. I have, out of the gracious goodness of my heart, given you ample opportunity to reconsider your most unwise decision regarding your intents at fornication with yours truly." While talking she was studying the contents of a nearby dustbin. It looked like paper trash mostly, nothing very useful, not to mention it was out of her reach as long as he had her by the wrist.

"I however regret that I will have to inform you that I will be unable to meet your expectations in this respect …" She glanced at the man himself now, and almost immediately spotted the ballpoint in his shirt pocket. "… meaning I will have to politely decline your most attractive offer." She moved her free hand at a relatively fast speed, grabbed the ballpoint out of his shirt pocket and then jabbed it into the corner of his right eye socket with as much strength as she could muster.

It wasn't a very elegant way to incapacitate him, but given the circumstances it was the most effective. While the fat man was stumbling around half-blind, screaming and attempting to remove the pointy object from his eye, she scrambled away from him and managed to right her body and run away at a relatively fast pace. She kept running for miles straight this time, you could never know if the Galarian tourist was being accompanied by more sober friends or even a trained private security corpse, as was not uncommon with filthy rich tourists who wanted to venture outside of Midas' secure areas. As she ran unto a bridge across a highway, she finally recognised the area: Orange Road. Although she usually passed under this bridge in a chauffeured hover-limo sippingRed Emperor rather than running over it half-dead and wearing nothing but a scarce pet get-up and a sticky stolen shirt while looking over her shoulder to see if a fat, lust-crazed Galarian tourist was still chasing her. Not much further now.

When she got to the other side of the bridge she did a quick scan of the area and then decided it was safe to rest there for a couple of minutes. After making a mental assessment of her current situation, she all of a sudden burst out laughing. These circumstances were simply too ridiculous for words! The entire situation she'd just sketched in her head was unlike anything she'd ever had to deal with, and being a state dignitary came with a lot of unforeseen parameters to take into account. Looks like I'm still not going to get bored anytime soon.

Just as she had quieted down a bit and straightened up in order to continue walking, she heard the sounds of a group of individuals that were up to no good. As the group of three came closer, she could derive from their ragged clothes, worn leather jackets and darker, imperfect looks that they were residents from Ceres. Great, I've escaped from a Galarian sex maniac with no sense of fashion at all only to be gangbanged and beaten to death by a Ceresian gang. I suppose I deserve it.

…

It had been nearly three years since the incident at Dana Burn. An event that had not only shaken the foundations of the century-old building but also the very foundations Riki's entire world had rested on. Iason. Guy. Although Riki's youth friend and former lover had managed to escape with his life (but without his arm), he might as well have been dead to Riki after what he did. Katze had told Riki that about half an hour after the explosion, he had seen Tanagura droids approach the scene and go through the rubble. However shortly after that there had been an announcement that Iason Mink had perished in a "terrorist attack by anarchists from Ceres" and another Blondy had been elected as the new Head of the Syndicate. And that was it for Jupiter apparently, from her perspective it was probably just a malfunction in one of her human machines that led to its destruction, case closed.

Riki supposed he had to be grateful that nobody had come after him, as he was still officially a registered Tanaguran pet. Katze had taken care of that, doing what he did best, a couple of weeks after Riki had retired from the illegal hospital not far from black market headquarters. Katze had taken care of a lot of things. He had dragged Guy out of Dana Burn and stopped the bleeding at the point where his arm had been severed from his body. He hadn't bothered to recover the arm itself though. And after that he had followed Riki into the burning building, at the risk of his own life, stunned him from behind and single-handedly dragged him out of the burning building while inhaling more smoke than even a chain-smoker like him was used to. He hadn't attempted to evacuate Iason, as he was already unconscious when Katze went back in and weighed at least a ton when unconscious. After getting Riki out of there he managed to get him to take the Black Moon antidote he kept on him at all times, just in case he accidentally smoked one of the poisonous cigarettes or changed his mind after a suicide attempt. Whatever the situation, Katze was prepared for it. Then he had taken Riki to the illegal hospital, run by the black market operation itself, and ordered an accelerator-aided reconstructive surgery as soon as possible. That operation in and of itself had seriously drained the black market bank accounts, as the kind of accelerator required for reconstructing entire body parts was extremely expensive. But it was what his Master would have wanted, and strictly speaking all the money that belonged to the black market had belonged to Iason Mink. And as far as Katze was concerned, it still did. He was just using it to keep the black market operations running smoothly, and whatever winnings the black market procured were simply added to the accounts and kept there. In all those years Katze had not used any of the money, not even once, to indulge in anything but what was strictly necessary for his and Riki's own minimal comfort (even so he spent a lot more of the money on Riki than on himself) and black market investments.

After recuperating for an entire year, both from physical illness and mental grief, Riki refused to freeload at Katze's expense any longer and demanded that Katze allow him back his old job so he could at least partially repay him for everything he had done. Not to mention a distraction from his own tormented mind was also a much needed respite. Shortly after that Riki moved out of Katze's apartment, where he had remained for several months after he left the hospital, and into an apartment of his own right on the border between Ceres and Diedo, not too far from the black market headquarters, that he had paid for himself with the wages he had saved up until then.

That first year in Diedo had been the worst: during the day Riki was plagued by the memories that would suddenly pop up in his mind unexpectedly and at night he hardly ever managed to get any sleep at all because he was tormented by the scorching flames of his nightmares. About the events at Dana Burn mostly, however also about Guy, Kyrie and even Mimea. All people he had failed to save, all people who were dead or who'd had to suffer because of him.

He had not forgiven Guy for what he did and he blamed him for what had happened to Iason obviously, however he also felt that somehow he could have avoided the entire situation if only he had talked to Guy more instead of shutting him out. The truth of the matter is that Iason Mink had very little to do with Riki shutting Guy out. When he'd started working for the black market he had made a choice based on what his youth friend Aire from long ago at Guardian had told him: hold unto what is most important. And somewhere along the line Riki had decided that investing in his own future through his work as a black market courier was more important than holding on to his friendship with Guy. But he just couldn't bear the thought of growing old and dying in Ceres without ever having managed to crawl out of that gutter. Not because it bothered him to live in those undesirable circumstances in themselves, he was tough enough to survive that and he was used to it, but because he wanted to prove to the rest of the world that they were wrong. They were wrong to judge him based solely on his origins and appearance. He was a human being just like everybody else and therefore he had rights. Hell, he had more human self-respect and dignity than most of the citizens from Midas! Truth be told, the confrontation with Iason in Sasan all those years ago in a way was what had triggered it. The realisation that there was this gaping social divide between them and how it had allowed Iason to humiliate him and treat him as if he was no better than a piece of trash or a toy you could just play with and then toss aside. So in a way, perhaps Iason was to blame for how Riki had failed Guy. Either way, how was he supposed to know things would turn out that way?

But what really bothered him most about the entire situation was of course Iason. Up to that point Riki had thought that Iason was still playing his game, same as he had from the start, tormenting him and driving the harsh reality that he was worth nothing deep into his core. He had been absolutely clueless to Iason's true feelings, could have never guessed that the artificial humanoid was even capable of experiencing such strong, human emotions. But in those final moments it had been made clear to him: Iason loved him and he loved Iason. The universe was just too cruel in the way she insisted on tormenting her inhabitants, revealing those truths only to extinguish any hope on acting upon them in the next moment. Shit Iason why didn't you say something sooner?! Who cares what bloody Jupiter thinks about it! But even if he had, what would they have done about it? Riki would have still been his pet, wouldn't he? Unless Iason had let him go again, but then they would not be together anymore. It doesn't matter. We would have found a way around the system, found a way to be together. Surely a resourceful mongrel joining forces with an elite with an IQ of over 300 could've worked something out …

Riki had never really considered Iason a lover before, not in the way he had Guy. But now he thought Iason to be his first and final true love, and the thought of ever loving anybody else struck him as impossible. Never again would he find something like that. If only they had been given the opportunity to make that physical connection a spiritual one as well. Riki felt as if he was living in the past, wondering about what if's and maybe's. What tortured his soul the most was that he would never find out, he never even had a chance to get to truly know the man he loved! That blank, pristine face had always been completely devoid of emotion, those ice blue sapphire eyes had always been cold, calculating and distanced. How was Riki supposed to know? He had always assumed that the emotions that Iason was showing him were the only ones he felt: meanness, rage, possessiveness and a sick psychopathic need to dominate him and cruelly crush his spirit. Or were those emotions Riki had derived for himself rather than truly seen in any of Iason's expressions?

Who were you really, Iason Mink?

And why did you love me when it went against everything you were ever taught, everything you ever stood for?

Dammit! Why does life have to always be so fucking cruel! Showing you a brief flicker of hope only to snatch it away from you again?!

It took several years for the pet conditioning to truly get out of his system. But Riki had reached the conclusion that no amount of time could ever make him forget about Iason Mink. Not because of the shit the blonde had pulled on him (

although that occasionally still gave him nightmares as well), not because he used to be his "Master" but because in that final moment inside the burning ruins of Dana Burn he had realised that he loved Iason. The truth was that he'd loved him all along, but the circumstances under which they'd met and the social restrictions of the system they lived in had made expressing those feelings nearly impossible.

Shit! Why did it have to end that way? Why did things have to end so badly just when they were truly beginning? Riki often wondered what would have happened if both he and Iason had made it out of there alive. Would Iason have taken him back to Eos? Would Riki have let him? How would Jupiter have reacted to these events? Would his and Iason's relationship have changed? Or would he, at least officially, have remained a pet? And what would Iason have done if he had become too old for that? …

That year had been one long, self-inflicted hell for Riki. Thinking the events of the past over and over again in his head, and then pausing and rewinding as if he were watching an old videotape. What could he have done differently? Where had he gone wrong? Could he have changed anything in the end? What if it was all his fault? Didn't he himself used to say how you make your own future? Looked like he had done a pretty good job at screwing up his own future then.

For a long time, Riki had been living in the past rather than the present, just going about his own business and doing his routine courier job on auto-pilot. It was a small miracle his lack of concentration and constant distractions had not led him to an untimely end while working on risky operations for the black market. Katze just watched it happen, unsure what to do and unsure as to what extent Riki blamed him for everything that had happened as well as himself. As far as Katze was concerned he had just been carrying out Iason's orders, more than that he had been carrying out his dying wish. For everything Iason had done for him in the past, he owed him that much. Katze had quite a few unanswered questions of his own. Iason had never struck him as the type that did anything out of the mere goodness of his heart, but he had saved his life when lawfully speaking he should've killed him. Shit, he'd done more than that, he'd practically handed Katze his own life and independence back to him again. In the beginning Katze had made several attempts to talk things over with Riki, seeing as how they were both, each in their own way, suffering from the same event. But Riki had been like a closed book and for a long time Katze feared that the trauma of what had happened had truly extinguished Riki's spirit.

After having lived in Diedo and worked for the black market for about a year, Riki ran into Sid and Norris when strolling through Ceres, just passing free time he wished he hadn't had because it made him think too much. After chatting about old times over some stout in a local pub they used to frequent often, Riki found out that Guy hadn't gone back to Bison and that nobody had seen him since the incident at Dana Burn. Not that he particularly cared what had happened to his former friend anymore at this point, some things could simply not be forgiven and castration followed by the murder of your lover was definitely one of those things. Or at least that is what Riki told himself. Then slowly but surely things started going better for Riki, thanks to his re-established contacts with members of his former gang, he had managed to find his old self again. Yet he knew he would never truly be the same ever again, not after those years in Tanagura and not after what had happened to Iason.

Not too much time later Norris and Sid moved into Riki's apartment and even insisted on paying him a monthly rent for occupying his guest room. Riki understood not wanting to owe anybody anything all too well, but that was the only reason he accepted the rent. He was actually very grateful for the company, after work it kept his mind off of things and made him feel less lonely and more like his former self.

"Hey Riki! Crap man I keep forgetting how distant you've become at times…" Sid laughed when he saw Riki's startled reaction. The other mongrel had momentarily forgotten that he was on the town with Sid and Norris, and that the whole point of that was having fun and forgetting about unpleasant memories, not spacing out and reliving them.

Sid and Norris still had no idea what had happened to Riki in Dana Burn all those years back and they were smart enough not to ask. They knew Guy had something to do with it and that nobody had heard from Guy since then. They knew Riki had been taken to the hospital afterwards and had remained there for almost a year, after which he started working for Katze again. And as far as they were concerned, that was all they needed to know. Riki was their friend, more than that he was their gang, their family, and no amount of distance in time or space could undo those bonds.

"Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking …", Riki trailed off, as he always did when his thoughts went back to his rather turbulent past.

"About what?" Norris asked. "Oh. Well, y'know, Riki, you shouldn't live in the past like that. If growing up in Ceres has taught me anything it's to live in the present, cause in the past there's nothing but shit that doesn't matter anymore, and you never know what the future may bring."

"You're probably right", Riki mused. Then he forced a smile unto his face and continued. "How about we go back to that club we went to the other time? Y'know that dress-up karaoke bar? I hear they take cash now as well."

Sid and Norris responded enthusiastically to Riki's suggestion as they approached the bridge that would take them into the area of Midas where mongrels could frequent bars in a relatively "safe" environment. Not that there truly was such a thing for them, seeing as how they had no ID cards and thus no rights, but the Darkmen usually stuck to the more popular areas of Midas that were frequented by tourists on a regular basis.

"Hey, guys… what's that over there?" Sid pointed towards a small figure standing several metres up ahead, just at the edge of the bridge into Flare. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a girl, rather small in figure and delicately framed. What was a pet doing this far from Midas' red district? She wasn't wearing much, just underwear and a light white blouse, and by the looks of it she had been running around in the rain for a pretty long time. Her petite body was shaking and both her clothes and her long light-blonde hair were completely soaked. From her fair pigmenting and youthful looks, Riki identified her as an Academy bred. Even more unusual, Academy bred pets were very rarely sold to brothels this close to Ceres. Just how far had she walked through the rain to get here? She wasn't even wearing any shoes … Having been a pet himself for so many years, Riki found that he was almost ridiculously compassionate when it came to pets. He never would have even given this girl a second glance back in the days when his gang ruled Ceres and rode their bikes at neck-breaking speeds with not a care in the world. That almost seemed like another lifetime now.

Apparently the girl had noticed their approach because she suddenly turned around and bolted. She didn't get very far however, as she suddenly tripped over an empty can on the sidewalk and fell down, straining her ankle in the process. Sid and Norris burst out laughing while taking another swig from their stout bottles. Approaching the girl Sid shouted: "Come on, Riki! Let's go have some fun, free of charge!"

…

When two of the Ceres mongrels started running towards her, she decided that, since they were still a good distance away from me, the best reaction was to just run off. Ceres residents were mostly looking for cash cards, cheap liquor and a fistfight with more worthy opponents when going to Midas, so perhaps they'd just let her go if it looked like she was going to be too much trouble. But she was tired, cold and hungry, making her movements less co-ordinated than they should have been, so she suddenly tripped over something and fell down on the pedestrian walk, face first. Auwtch! With a loid oof sound what little air remained in her lungs was being pushed out in one go and she momentarily had trouble regaining her breath. She tried to scramble back to her feet as quickly as possible but immediately fell down again when she felt a vicious pain in her ankle. Shit shit shit! She looked back and let go of all hope of getting out of there crawling, as two of the mongrels were already within 2 metres of her. Think! Think of something to say! The problem was that nice talks did not usually work on mongrels the same way they did on Midas citizens. A line that had Midas citizens kissing your ass usually ended up insulting and antagonising a mongrel from the slum. And she very much doubted she could single-handedly outmanoeuvre them with a ballpoint, used as they were to hand-to-hand combat in street fights.

But when she heard one of the mongrels' exclamations all plans of how to overcome or escape them disappeared from her mind. Did they just call that other one Riki? It could be a coincidence, Guardian wasn't known for its originality when it came to naming their newborns. Without a doubt there were hundreds of mongrels by the name of Riki in Ceres. Oh, what difference did it make! At the very least she would be killed by someone who had the same name of the man she loved. This was far more preferable than being flaunted around at soirees by Raoul and then being sold off to some brothel in Midas where she could be re-acquainted with that whore Mimea!

…

Apparently at hearing the name "Riki" the girl looked up from where she was laying, a mixture of hope and determination on her small, pretty face.

"Shi-it, isn't this quite the looker!", Sid said as he crouched down next to the fallen, angelic figure on the pavement and reached out to pet that long blonde hair. "Looks like fucking rays of sunshine … Isn't it kinda strange that one this fair and refined is just strutting around in this area? Didn't you say these were usually Academy bred, Riki?"

Riki approached them and the young girl. He had grown significantly over the last few years, not the sinewy body of a young boy anymore but the more sturdy, slightly muscular stature of a man. Also he had grown his jet black hair long and now carried it in a short ponytail.

"Just cut it out already, OK? It's cold and hurt, no need to be mean to it, God knows what those motherfuckers at Tanagura have done to it …" Riki's scornful, disapproving gaze stopped Norris in his tracks and Sid pulled his hair back from the beautiful girl's golden hair.

"Oh, come on, Riki! Don't be like that! We were just taking a look, we weren't planning on hurting it or something like that …", Sid started defending himself.

"Yeah, seriously, why are you so concerned with the well-being of pets as of late, huh? What, don't tell me you had a girlfriend or something at Tanagura back when you disappeared on us for three years?", Norris added supportively.

"It's just that… well, when you get to actually know some of them you realise that they're human beings, just like us. They just had even worse luck than we did and were born in that hell of a place …" Riki faltered, his memory going back to those dreadful days in Eos. Yes, those were definitely the worst days of his life, far worse than anything he had ever had to endure while growing up in Ceres.

"How is being pampered all day long and having to worry about nothing but your looks and sex worse than how we have to fight for our very survival on a regular basis and are scorned by all of society?"

"You don't know OK! You don't know what it's like over there! Everybody thinks that place is so nice and sparkly, but it's not! It's hell! Those kids are being played against each other and treated like things and then when their time is up they're tossed out like they're no better than garbage! If they're lucky they don't last very long in those horrible places in Midas you sometimes hear nightmarish tales about. They just never get a chance to make something of their lives. At least we get to enjoy our freedom and do whatever we feel like doing, and if we fail then we at least have ourselves to blame for it!"

"Philosophical speech much? Geez, Riki, I had no idea you cared so much man. Why didn't you ever say anything? I mean, you know you can talk about what happened during those years, right? We're your friends, Riki. Frankly I don't give a shit about what Guy did or thinks about you, if he's just abandoned you like that he's a selfish asshole and never really took Bison seriously after all!"

…

As I lay there, helpless and unable to move both because of the pain in my ankle and the cold of the rain that had seemed to have seeped into my bones as soon as I stopped moving, I caught several words of the rather loud conversation that went on not too far away. First one of the mongrels, the one called Riki, talked about pets and how they were being treated like trash and how Riki himself had apparently disappeared from Ceres for three years. Then the conversation went to an apparent "asshole" called Guy who had quit their gang, called Bison. Riki. Pets. Guy. Bison. Perhaps there really was a God watching over us and orchestrating the seemingly coincidental events in the universe. And he wasn't called Jupiter. Just as that thought struck me, my eyes became heavy and the lights went out. Hypothermia after all then.

…

"Holy shit! Dude, I think she's seriously ill or something… I can barely feel her pulse!" Norris stated as he examined the now unconscious, ice cold blonde girl.

"What do we care? We came out here tonight to have some fun, not to baby sit some stray pet", Sid objected.

"Oh, so if you were lying here you'd want us to just let you die? Don't be a selfish prick, Sid, this world's got enough of those as it is. Here, help me carry her… Or, never mind, she weighs absolutely nothing, must be seriously malnourished. Those Tanaguran bastards." Riki said as he picked up the extremely light, slim body. Even when looking pale and miserable with slightly blue-ish lips this girl was extremely attractive. It wasn't just her perfect features but there was something about her, a kind of divine aura that just drew you towards her. Strangely enough she reminded Riki of another blonde creature with such an aura, the very same creature that had him chasing after it in Midas that day all those years ago …

….

ending theme: Madonna – Heartbreak City

…

To be continued …

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Author's notes:

OK, pls tell me what you think and if it's worth my while to continue writing this fic :) I haven't got a complete storylines worked out yet, kinda just typing what comes to mind, so if you have any suggestions for how this could continue don't hesitate to state them :)

This isn't your "typical" AnK fic storyline, I know, and some people might be out of character because of that. However I'm trying to keep everybody as much in-character as I can. I'm not too sure about Sid and Norris cause they don't really feature often in a lot of fics, so I'm just kinda portraying them as I would your average slum mongrel. And perhaps my Riki is too compassionate, dunno, it just seems to me that he might identify with the pets seeing as how he used to be maltreated as one himself. Also he's more grown-up here, so possibly less worried about how he's going to come across, and the other mongrels there are his friends from childhood so probably he's less concerned about showing his true emotions to them than he would to others. The girl.. yeah, she's definitely going out of character, but that's to be expected given the circumstances. But I won't tell you anymore about that until in the next chapter, cause it would be a massive spoiler if I did ;) Personally I think she was pretty awesome when she was talking to and viciously assaulting that tourist lol :P And she can actually see the humour in her own miserable situation.

For your information I am not planning on turning Raoul into a complete asshole here. I'm just trying to be realistic about it. All of this is being described from somebody's personal perspective, so that means they're interpreting things based on what they know and how they feel at the moment they're being described ;)

OK, I'll stop now, or my notes are going to end up being longer than this chapter ;)

So pls review, let me know what you guys think and if you want a continuation!:D