Boss King and the Blade

Wednesday

Central Markets, The Hole, Spitfield City

Melody-Six

Melody rubbed at her neck, feeling the unfamiliar weight of the magnet strapped to the back of her head once more. It was like a small child was taking a piggy-back ride without permission, forcing her to lift her head higher than usual and making her shoulders ache in sympathy with her neck muscles.

“Is it safe to come back to the Markets?” she asked Boss King, the young boy striding confidently ahead of her, the backpack containing the robot hound head bouncing on his shoulders. The afternoon sun was beating down on the pair of them, baking the dusty streets and sending a funky odour from the trash bins they passed.

“Yeah, as safe as it can be” he assured her. He gave her a grin over his shoulder and tapped the sheathed machete at his hip. “I’m here so you’ll be perfectly fine so long as you keep the hood up and the mask on”

Melody wished she was rid of the magnet, but if there really was a tracking chip on her spine then she had to endure it for now. Boss King had promised to take her to Foreign Jay, right after stopping at the Markets, to get the device disabled.

Sweat ran down her neck, soaking the bandanna tied there and running under her shirt. Samantha-Two, Boss King’s mother, had gifted her with a new hooded jacket. It was a heavy padded coat, lined for winter warmth but it had a large hood and concealed her quite well. There were only two downsides to the gift.

One, it was totally way too hot to be wearing a winter jacket. Melody felt like she was being boiled alive in her own juices as she trudged behind the boy.

The second downside was the jacket was bright pink with an embroidered unicorn on the back. On the upside, the unicorn was vomiting a technicolour rainbow over its hooves with a motto beneath that read: Beware the Splash Zone!

Boss King had claimed the jacket belonged to his mother, yet she noted the size was too small for the older woman. It was also too big for Boss King, not that she could imagine the surly boy wearing such a piece of clothing.

He had taken them on a more direct route today, bringing them to the edge of the parking lot in under ten minutes. Cars and vans could be seen clustered near the main entrance to the Markets, the outer bays barren of any vehicles.

Boss King cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a series of long whistles, then paused with his right ear cocked forwards. Shrill notes answered from the southern end of the lot, earning a nod from the boy.

“Mighty Princess says there are no outsiders around at the moment” he explained to her. The boy set off at a brisk pace, his machete slapping against his left hip as he walked. Melody jogged to catch up to him, casting nervous glances around them.

They crossed the lot without incident, arriving at the shaded sides of the Market walls. Melody saw the young girl that partnered Boss King watching them alertly from atop a low wall that bounded some dumpsters, her eyes locked liked laser beams onto Melody’s face.

“Hi, Boss King” the girl announced. “I thought you were going to dump the lost puppy?”

“She needs my help, Princess” he replied flatly. “Anyway, she’s not a puppy”

“And I’m not lost” Melody added, meeting the younger girl’s eyes with a challenge.

“Yeah, sure” Mighty Princess scoffed. “Nice jacket by the way. Did you pick that out yourself?”

“No, Boss King gave it to me”

It somehow felt a lot colder in the shadows of the Markets. Melody could hear traders shouting their wares from inside, and the roar of people haggling over prices, yet it suddenly seemed deathly quiet right where they were.

Mighty Princess jumped off the wall, landing easily on her runners, and glared at Boss King. Melody noticed for some reason that although younger, Princess was taller than her business partner. Almost the right size for the jacket that Melody was currently wearing.

The younger girl circled behind Melody and gasped.

“Is that Spewnicorn?” Princess demanded. “You found an actual Spewnicorn jacket and gave it to this girl!” Her fists were clenched and her eyes were shooting all kinds of death beams at Boss King.

“Who’s Spewnicorn?” Melody asked innocently.

Mighty Princess rounded on her, standing far too close to Melody. Her first instinct was to run, but for some reason she stood her ground.

“Only the best character ever from Super Heroes Infinity Trance!” the young girl insisted. “Spewnicorn can use her special Projectile Vomit powers to dissolve bad guys at over one hundred meters!”

“Oh, is that some kind of Anime?” Melody enquired. “I am not familiar with that series”

Mighty Princess eyed her speculatively. “You’ve never heard of S.H.I.T.? Where exactly are you from, thief girl?”

“She’s from Pan City and her name is Melody” Boss King interjected. “Her upbringing was kind of different, so she didn’t see the same shows we did” He laid a hand on his young partner’s arm, tenderly rather than forcefully. “There are some a-holes from the City chasing her, so I need you to get today’s location for Foreign Jay. Can you do that for me, Princess?”

“Is she an Enhanced of some kind?” Princess asked, her bluster transformed by King’s touch into curiosity. “She looks normal to me”

“I just need Foreign Jay to check her out” Boss King told the girl. “Can you go ask Dami or Zeke where his shop is today? We are in a hurry”

“Fine” the girl muttered and with one renewed glare at Melody she hurried away to the closest Market entrance. Boss King watched her leave with a crooked smile on his face, then jumped up onto the low wall.

“Come on, take a seat” he told Melody. “Princess will be back shortly”.

Melody lifted herself onto the low wall, her legs dangling clear of the ground once she settled her butt on the hard concrete cinder blocks. The dumpsters to their rear sent tendrils of stink in their direction as a faint breeze eddied and swirled around the Market’s sides.

“She likes you a lot, you know” Melody said casually to the boy at her side.

“I know” he admitted. “She’s still too young to have a boyfriend though”

“Have you checked with her about that?” Melody snickered.

“Nope” he replied. “And I’ll be grateful if you don’t say anything on that topic to her”

“Sure, Boss King” she responded. Melody kicked her shoes against the stained wall, idly watching the people head to and from the Markets. “By the way, did you buy this jacket for Princess?”

“Um, yeah” he confessed. “It was going to be a present for her birthday. But you needed it more right now, so I think she’ll understand. I’ll get it back from you later on”

Melody laughed at that, giving a knowing smile to the boy.

“I might have been raised in a Nest, but I know a lot more about girls than you do. Never ever tell Mighty Princess this jacket was meant for her”

“What do you mean? She loves that Spewnicorn character!”

“Trust me on this, Boss King” Melody assured him. “Get her something else”

“But it cost me fifty Pandas!” he moaned. “It was the only one they had”

Melody sighed and shook her head with despair at his ignorance.

“Just add it to my bill” she said.

=====

Violent Surrender Gang – Chalky Hammer

Chalky Hammer sat in the food court of the Markets, pushing the soggy noodles and textured vat protein around in his paper bowl. His wooden chopsticks skewered a piece of simulated chicken coated in spicy sauce and popped it into his mouth with deft speed. The right arm froze at that moment, a diagnostic alert flashing in the corner of his metal eye.

“You Okay there Boss?” asked his companion, a swarthy Freelancer that went by the street alias of Irongrim. The man’s own plastic and metal eyes focussed on the rigid right arm, noticing how it was poised next to Hammer’s mouth like a question mark. “Looks like your arm has glitched again”

Hammer, or Chalky to his few friends, grimaced and pushed the frozen arm down to the table using his left arm. That one was all meat, a lot weaker and flabbier than his Enhanced right arm but these days a lot more reliable.

“Yeah, I really need to get it serviced, Grim” he replied. “If we can find this kid for the Mister, we can get all our tech repaired and maybe buy a few upgrades”

“Cool!” Irongrim nodded eagerly. “I could do with a tune up too because my legs have been glitching all week. The software keeps switching to Dance mode at unexpected moments. I was chasing down a Loan defaulter on the weekend and I started doing a Waltz!”

Hammer laughed at the thought of the tall Greek dancing after his target.

“How did that end up?” he asked curiously. “Did the defaulter get away?”

“Nah” grinned Irongrim. “I was able to switch to Tango and nailed him on the turn”

Both men laughed and Hammer’s arm jerked back into life, spilling the bowl of ramen over his lap.

“Ah, crap!” Hammer wailed. “I hadn’t finished eating that!”

“Lunch will have to wait, Boss” said a female voice. Hammer and Irongrim looked up at the new arrival to their table. She was a slender girl of eighteen, whip thin with corded muscles visible on her arms and legs, dressed in a black shirt and matching shorts. Her dark skin gleamed, bright white teeth standing out as she grinned at the pair of men.

“Sunset, did you find the girl?” Hammer asked the third member of his gang. Her full street name was Bloody Sunset, and the trio formed the Violent Surrender Gang. They had been working together as Freelancers for close to a year now, with Hammer as their leader and Grim the shooter.

Sunset was their scout, adept at finding whomever they had been hired to find or kill. She wasn’t Enhanced like her male partners. Rather she was one of the Awakened, in her case blessed with Grade Two Aeromancy.

“Yup” Sunset confirmed. “I spotted that punk from the parking lot, Mighty Princess. She had been talking to the Security Chief, so I listened in using my Aeromancy. She was asking where Foreign Jay was today, something about needing to take a thief girl there for treatment”

“Did you follow the kid to wherever the girl was?” Hammer demanded.

“Nope. Too risky Boss. But I’ve been talking to folks around the Markets and listening in to other conversations. Boss King was chasing a girl all round the Markets the other day, right before some outside Suits turned up yesterday. They caused a bit of trouble and I think they were after the same girl. Word is Boss King helped her to escape”

Hammer sat back thoughtfully, the cheap plastic bench he was seated on creaking alarmingly.

“The Mister who hired us, he’s probably one of the Suits that tried to grab the girl. Since everyone here is looking out for them now, that’s why they sent us in. Nobody takes notice of a local face”

“That’s pretty obvious, Boss” Sunset agreed. “So do we go chase this Boss King to find the girl?”

Hammer smiled expansively at his two companions.

“No need to chase them. We know exactly where they are going to be”

“Foreign Jay’s?” queried Grim. “If we tackle them at his place, who are we going to ask about repairs and upgrades?”

“You misunderstand, my simple Irongrim” Hammer laughingly answered. “We let them reach his workshop in peace. After they are done, we hit them once they leave”

Irongrim added his own smile to the table, nodding happily.

“I love a good ambush!” the shooter declared. “Can I bring my best gun?”

“Bring all of them” Hammer told him. “You can never have too many guns at an ambush!”

=====

Boss King

“I need you to stay here and run the business!” Boss King told his partner angrily. “If we don’t collect our fees today, it will be twice as hard tomorrow!”

Mighty Princess folded her arms over her chest and regarded him from beneath heavy lidded eyes.

“We can let it slide for one day, King” she insisted. “This thief girl is dragging you into a whole heap of trouble and you need my help”

“I’m not a thief!” Melody added into the heated conversation. She got a glare from both Boss King and the Princess so she clammed up with an audible snap of her jaw.

“Not much of a girl either” Princess responded tartly, which Boss King had to laugh at. The pair of girls unconsciously joined forces and directed equally angry glances at the solitary male. He quietened down immediately, his innate sense of survival warning him of the danger he was facing.

“Look, I don’t want to stand around in the open having this argument” he said placatingly. “Let’s all go and see Foreign Jay, then we can decide what to do from there”

“Sounds fine to me” Mighty Princess conceded. “I’ll go and get us a ride”

She trotted off towards the taxi stand at the east side of the Markets, letting Boss King follow with Melody. They walked in silence, savouring the cool shadows thrown by the Market walls as they rounded one long side.

“Are you like me?” Melody suddenly asked him out of the blue.

“Huh?” he replied. “Of course not, I’m a boy”

“Don’t be stupid” she told him. “I mean, are you one of the Blades? Your mom was a Nursemother wasn’t she?”

“Yeah, but it was different for her” he finally answered Melody. “She fell in love with a Guardfather at the Nest. They never got a chance to implant her with a Blade embryo because she had already fallen pregnant with me”

He could tell Melody was unsure how to respond to his revelation.

“It’s Okay, mom told me how Freeborn are viewed in the Nests” he continued. “That’s why she decided to flee her Nest and ended up here, hidden from the Hive”

“What happened to the Guardfather?” Melody asked.

“Mom never knew for sure. His name was Guardfather Lionel-Three and the last she saw of him, he was fighting off the other Guardfathers from their Nest. He stayed behind so that my mother could escape with me”

Boss King had never told this story to anyone, not even Mighty Princess, yet somehow it felt right to talk to Melody about his past.

“Do you know if her Nest still remains in service to the Hive?”

“Nope” he admitted. “Mom doesn’t talk about that, but sometimes I hear her talking to my father when she thinks I am asleep. Not a proper conversation, you know, more like she is talking to someone who is gone”

“So your father is dead?” Melody asked gently.

“Yeah, it seems that way” he agreed.

They reached the eastern side of the Markets, sunlight streaming along its face with brilliant intensity. Mighty Princess was standing beside a brightly painted electric tricycle, chatting with the driver seated in front.

“You two sure took long enough!” the girl called out sharply. “Come on, hurry up. Juan here is on the meter!”

Boss King grabbed Melody’s hand and dragged her to the softly whining vehicle, the electric engine grumbling away beneath the driver’s seat. They clambered into the rear passenger cab, an open sided affair with a single backwards facing bench. Melody sat on the left, Boss King on the right and Mighty Princess wedged her slim form between the two, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“All set?” she called out. “Okay, Juan, let it rip!”

“You got it, Princess!” Juan replied and twisted the throttle on his handlebars. The tricycle shot forwards with a lurch then they built up speed, taking the first corner on two wheels.

Melody let out an involuntary scream and Mighty Princess yelled in delight. Boss King just held on grimly to a handy grab bar and fervently hoped they made it to Foreign Jay in one piece.