Don't be sad for me
I'm a cartoon G
And my intent is to breathe in a new world
Don't be sad for me
- Gorillaz, Skinny Ape
~The Teapot, Now Semi Repaired And Located Near The Pearl, Earth ZF-001~
"I have a present for you, Kaydence," was how Dawn opened up the conversation.
It had been some time since Kaydence Roberts had agreed to work for Dawn Cosineau and leave the confines of Neo Manhattan. And quite a lot had happened in the interim between then and now. Among them was Dawn acquiring a flat for her new employee to live in on Earth, introducing her to the rest of her family and other employees, ensuring that she had her necessities - laptop, workbench and so on - and various other sundries.
Some of said sundries, however, required Kaydence to personally come to the Teapot to collect. And so, here she was, earbuds in and one hand flicking through social media already.
Kaydence, upon hearing Dawn's words, couldn't restrain a smirk. "C'mon, boss, you've done enough for me already. The flat, the rig, the workbench? Real preem stuff. No need to keep butterin' me up." Once more, the streetslang of Neo Manhattan leaked into her dialogue - old habits died hard, and Kaydence's linguistic quirks seemed determined to cling to life with the stubbornness of a limpet on shoreline rocks. And that was before you got to the livestreaming, the social media scrolling, the trashy music and the near-constant tinkering.
It was the latter that always made trips to the Teapot a little... difficult. Her technopathy was singing a full orchestra in her head - everything about Dawn's base was a symphony of calls, responses, packets and processes, rushing back and forth and layered over each other. It was like being caught in a swarm of particularly upbeat dragonflies. And the urge to just touch things, to fiddle and see how something ticked, or to try and make it tick that bit faster or louder... it was a childhood instinct that, much like everything else about Kaydence, refused to let go.
"Never been accused of that before," was the reply from Dawn, who was sitting in a chair opposite Kaydence at that moment. "Usually my, ah... employees have been a little less flattering with their comments about me. Though not always through any fault of my own."
"Yeah, I getcha." The youth's thumb casually reposted a hilarious meme without her eyes even glancing at her screen. "First casualty of any battle is the plan."
"Something you find out once you've worked long enough." Dawn turned back to her desk. "But that's something we need to discuss more. Specifically, the fact that a lot of the work I'll send you on... it can be very dangerous. Lethal dangerous, I might add. Dangerous on the level of 'I have a professional on standby, who is not only superpowered but also extensively trained, in case things go south'. That sort of dangerous."
A cackle from Kaydence. "Have a little faith, boss! You miss the part where I took a punch from Mallus and lived?"
"That, as we have established, was mostly down to your powers." Dawn was typing away at her desk as she spoke. "You were fortunate enough to have absorbed enough power, and that you were quick enough, to raise a protective barrier to dull the impact of Mallus' attack. Not to mention your subsequent impact with the street below. You might not always have that luxury. Especially in a sudden moment of crisis."
"Never underestimate a girl with an entire library of martial arts BD's on her shelf!" Kaydence struck a pose that might have been accurate to one of ten fighting styles in the known omniverse, if you squinted and let your sense of disbelief go out of focus. "A proper solo's never defenceless! I eat sudden moments of crisis and shit danger!"
That was another quirk of Kaydence's - the way the younger woman viewed their working relationship. In the mind of the technopath, it wasn't so much 'employer' and 'employee' as it was 'fixer' and 'solo'. Terms, she'd explained, that referred to a sort of well-connected problem solver-come-information broker and their network of paid agents-come-thugs. Except, as the android pointed out, fixers apparently didn't take the trouble to have their solos sign an official work contract, which implied some rather nasty things about the profession.
Not that it was a bad way to look at it. Just one that needed a few codas on the end.
"We can only find that out," said Dawn, referring to Kaydence's boast, "by trying. And this present I was talking about, I made specifically to ensure that, worst comes to worst, you can actually back that claim up."
She hit a button. A panel opened up, and something slid out on the end of a rack that extended outwards like a curious stick insect.
It took a moment, as well as turning off the awful eurodance track playing on her phone, for Kaydence to properly absorb what she was seeing. And when she did, her jaw dropped.
"Holy fuck," she breathed.
On first glance, the thing hanging up on the rack didn't immediately warrant such a comment. It resembled nothing fancier than a dark black jacket or trench coat, ankle length and made of a material that might have been leather. Yet it took an eye for detail as keen as Kaydence's to note that the leather... wasn't leather. Leather wasn't covered in minute, smooth hexagons that interlaced like the scales of some ancient reptile, nor did it shimmer in a vaguely metallic fashion. It also looked to be oddly padded in places - the shoulders, arms and chest especially.
Kaydence looked over at Dawn. For the first time since she'd seen her, the android was... well, smiling wasn't quite right. A satisfied smirk of a job well done was perhaps more appropriate to describe the expression on her face.
"I'm not going to go into detail about how this thing works," said Dawn. "All you need to know is that it's a lot tougher than what you're wearing right now. Try it on for size, at least."
She'd barely finished speaking when the bright yellow jacket, which fit in nicely with the eye-searing "CYMK" theme Kaydence carried like a neon sign, hit the floor. A mere few seconds after that, the technopath had yanked the new jacket from the hanger and thrown it over herself. The tails of it swished through the air in a manner that, had it been filmed at the right angle, would made for a dramatic moment in cinema. As there wasn't, and only Dawn was present to witness it, it just made Kaydence look like she was trying too hard to impress.
She definitely seemed to be impressed with herself, however. A mirror had unfolded alongside the clothes rack, and the young hacker took the time to admire herself in it, turning this way and that to get the full effect of what she was wearing. She couldn't help bot notice that the chest padding seemed especially prominent - although part of her wondered if that was just her natural endowments at work.
"Nice," she announced at last, smirking. "Pretty nova stuff, boss. Now I feel like a proper punk!"
"Wherever or not it passes your rigorous fashion standards isn't really the point," was her employer's reply. "I designed this thing specifically to provide you with a modicum of extra protection against things your abilities wouldn't cover. The material is meant to dull the impact of whatever hits you and spread it over the surface, minimizing the damage. The last thing I want is for you to come home riddled with bullets or broken bones because you got it into your head to practice your half-learned movie martial arts at the wrong moment."
Kaydence gave another cackle. "Boss, all you're doin' right now is threatenin' me with a good time. Any job you give me's better than bein' cooped up in your own conapt with an ankle monitor on." She turned to face her employer, and her coat swished in just the right way to match the level of badass she'd reached in her own head.
"And speaking of jobs... when do I get to work?"
Dawn seemingly permitted herself another rare smirk.
"Right now, if you're ready."
"Bitch, when am I not?"
"I didn't know you were, until you just said. But, as you're new, let's start simple, shall we?"
--------
~Illbleed Park, Japan~
"This is simple?!"
Kaydence was saying this to herself as she wrapped a bandage around her leg. This was the third or fourth time she'd had to do this - she'd lost count. And, frankly, she didn't want to count.
As she worked, she looked up and examined her surroundings. Yep. Still a dingy, burnt-out remnant of a Minnesota hotel. Or at least a good approximation of one. She had barely been able to absorb Dawn's explanation for how this place worked. Some sort of... interdimensional theme park? And this place was either part of many parasite dimensions hanging off it like remoras on a shark or just a good illusion conjured by whatever psycho had made it to begin with. All Kaydence could remember was going into the first movie theatre-like building she'd laid eyes on, and then... she was here.
It hadn't taken long for her to realize that she did not want to be here. Of course, the people who had ended up trapped in here hadn't wanted to be here, either. As Dawn had explained, people were getting lured here - stumbling through the cracks in reality, or perhaps lured through them. And few could resist the ludicrous offer of... what was it, now? One hundred million dollars, to get through this place and get out of here? Oh, absolutely! People offered that kind of money, catch free, all the time! No way was that suspicious in any way whatsoever!
Something creaked, in the distance. Kaydence ignored it. Probably another one of those weird inside-out meat men again.
But the people that came in here... well, they weren't Kaydence. In many respects. And while this was a good thing in some areas, it wasn't so when it came to not being horribly maimed or killed by monsters or traps. Which was why Dawn had asked her to go check this place out. Find the cause of it, rescue as many people as she could, bring it all down. Oh, and try not to die in the process.
Speaking of... Kaydence bent down and got back to bandaging her leg. It was oozing blood from multiple tooth-like perforations that ran around its circumference, as if some giant leech had tried to swallow her leg. Pain twanged up it as the gauze touched the raw flesh at the edges, making her wince.
"Dio malbenita," she muttered under her breath. And followed it up with "fika peco da merdo" as the antiseptic in the cotton pads sent fiery tingles through her skin.
Bear traps. She'd also learned that she really hated those. Luckily, each one she'd encountered had been so old and rusty that there was no power in the spring, no bite to the jaws. It was a miracle she had no broken bones yet. But they were what Kaydence called "dumbware" - no computers or circuitry to interface with. Which meant disarming them took forever and getting out of them even longer. And then there was the risk of tetanus-
A heavily disfigured man burst into the room, screaming and brandishing a blowtorch.
To anyone else, this would have been horrifying and a cause to start running away. But Kaydence, whose emotions had been dulled by years of internet access and corporate-controlled routine, sighed in irritation.
"Look, choom," she said, "we can do this two ways. Either we-"
Gale Banbollow was not interested. Gale Banbollow, many years dead and animated by sheer rage from beyond the grave, was still wracked with the torment of losing both his livelihood and his only son in the fire that had consumed both and had nearly taken himself for good measure. And so, Gale Banbollow, who's rheumy and dead eyes saw only yet another vandalism-loving delinquent deserving to die, charged forward, aiming the blowtorch for her-
"No."
There was a flash of cyan, the impression of something flying through the air and a noise like a watermelon being cracked open.
Gale Banbollow, missing the vast majority of his head and spraying blood and bone everywhere, pitched backwards and slumped over onto the wooden floor. Kaydence glared at him, silently daring him to try getting back up so she could do it again.
When he didn't, she calmly went back to bandaging her leg.
Okay, 'calmly' might have been a lie.
"Simple, my fat ass, God, I hate bear traps so fucking much..."
And to think, she only had to do this five more times.
--------
~Whalestrand~
This next job, on the surface, had seemed easy enough. Except...
"Simmer down!" she hissed as she paused for what felt like the
umpteenth time in the middle of the street. The thing in her arms wriggled and whined, but she managed - although barely - to get one arm around its midsection and another underneath its rump to hold it up. Said arms were already aching, as were her shoulders, and she was starting to get a twinge in the small of her back. But she gritted her teeth and kept on walking, trying to ignore the stares and the frantic efforts of her cargo to escape.
It was one of those cosmic laws that tended to rear their ugly heads when you. Anything that seems easy on the surface tends to quickly show itself to not be nearly as easy, often for hilarious effect. As was the case when, apropos of nothing, Dawn had commissioned Kaydence with what the technopath had assumed would be a mind-bogglingly simple enough task. And that task was to carry a puppy down a dozen blocks of the city.
The twist was revealed when said puppy turned out to be a Newfoundland. A breed that, even at birth, was the size of a small child and grew to be as big as a man.
Said twist twisted even further when Dawn stipulated that Kaydence had to carry said puppy in her arms. No leash, no cage. Just herself. Which would have been tricky enough when it came to any puppy, excitable and squirmy and just wanting to play without regards to surroundings or context. The puppy itself being almost as big as Kaydence, about two feet tall at the shoulder, turned what might have been a fairly managable task into...
Well, Kaydence was using a lot of words in her head as she walked down the street, carrying the wriggling bundle of fluff in her arms. Few of them she could say out loud. But the word "hassle" seemed most appropriate.
The puppy barked, close enough to her ear that she winced. She'd barely made it four blocks down the street and already she felt like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the slope. Except replace the boulder with a wriggling, barking pile of fluff and muscle and you had what Kaydence had to deal with. At least boulders weren't constantly trying to escape from you and chase after... everything.
A back paw kicked against her thigh. She felt the claws scrape on the denim and winced.
That was a further problem. The puppy writhing and yapping like this would be a problem anywhere else. But now they were in the city, full of strange sights and sounds and smells that, to a young dog, would be utterly irresistable. Kaydence didn't know wherever, if it escaped her grasp, the puppy would either want to play or to run off after something, but either option would mean failing the task - and, quite possibly, disaster. So it was all she could do to keep a grip on what felt like a fluffy bean bag on a sugar high.
But she couldn't be mad at it. It was only a puppy, and wasn't even really aware of what it was doing and why it was a bad idea to do that. And it was unreasonably adorable. Even Kaydence, not the biggest fan of dogs, had to admit to that.
The puppy, smelling something else, twisted in it's direction and yapped excitedly. The motion made Kaydence stumble forwards with a yelp, barely catching her balance.
"Will you stop?" she cried out, fur tickling her chin. "I'm trying to-"
Rather than stopping, the puppy twisted again, and that shifting of weight against her finally did the trick. Overbalanced in the other direction, Kaydence teetered backwards, struggling to stay upright - but the wriggling ball of fluff in her arms kept her from regaining balance, and in an instant she was over. She flopped backwards onto the floor with the puppy on top, exhaling sharply as the combined impact of her back weight pressing down on her and impact upon the pavement knocked the air from her lungs.
And then the puppy started licking her face, reducing her to a spluttering, giggling mess.
Well... at least it was a fun hassle.
--------
~The Cosine Household~
It was only fairly recently that Kaydence had learned about the large extended family that Dawn Cosineau had. It had been hard to keep track of all the names. Sine, Dawn's mother/creator; Zephyrus, the father; the Light family and their insanely complicated web of relations and alliances; Vent Light, from another dimension; Beck, prototype for the Mighty Number series...
Family tree, nothing. The Cosine family tree was a briar patch, so tangled with itself that the Gordian knot would have shrivelled pathetically in front of it.
Oh, yes, and Carol. That had been a trip and a half, meeting a fellow technopath. And one so alike her, too. In fact, the Dixie woman had point-blank asked Kaydence if she wasn't some estranged daughter of hers, the end result of some drunken fling on another planet. Thankfully, the Spero native was able to curb any potential embarrassment with a family photo she kept on her phone. But still, it was freaky - the only word she could think to describe it as her Neo Manhattan street slang failed her.
But that was nothing compared to Dawn's four children.
"So you want me to do what now?" Kaydence asked as she stared with no small amount of befuddlement at the four children standing in front of her. They were androids - she could hear that well enough. But she was still trying to comprehend how on earth Freddy, Veronica, Emma and Renard could be descended from Dawn in any way. Did they have some of her programming in her? If it was there, she could barely hear it. Did Dawn use some parts from herself in their construction? Or was it just because they were the same kind of android...?
Man, robot ethics were hard.
"We've been working on a new video game!" chirped up Freddy. "And mom said we should ask you to test it! She said you had techno..." He frowned as he tried to remember what the word was. "Technopho... no, Technopoli..."
"Technopathy?" Kaydence ventured.
"That's it!" Freddy brightened up immediately. "It means you can hear machines, right?"
"So you can listen to the game while you play and see what's wrong with it!" said Veronica.
Several things occured to Kaydence at that moment. Firstly, if they were androids, they ought to have been super-smart from the get-go. Which meant that they probably should have already known what the word 'technopath' was and what it meant. And also that, if they were designing a video game, then they would automatically have some knowledge of the conventions and practices. Which begged an extremely awkard question - why did she even need to be here to begin with? Couldn't they just hammer out a perfect game right from the start, without needing any help?
But then again... Dawn wasn't like that.
Not from what she'd seen, anyway. It seemed as though, despite having as much power and ability as she did, her boss wouldn't just immediately use it to solve every problem. The old adage 'with great power comes great responsibility' seemed to be a thing hard-coded into her way of thinking - for all her resources and intelligence, the Cosine android never really considered leveraging it all the way. Perhaps because it would be too easy to just do so, and also a slipepry slope into using those resources in other, nastier ways.
So that meant she probably wouldn't want her 'children' to be super-smart. Them being her 'children' meant she probably built them to be just like actual children, and to learn and grow in the same way. Because otherwise, what was the point?
She shrugged. "Alright. Show me."
"Over there, Miss Roberts." Renard - Rennie, she'd later learn to call him - pointed at the computer that was set up on the other side of the room. Kaydence approached and sat down in the chair, already confronted by the title screen in front of her. From the scrolling background of stars and meteors, she guessed it was some kind of space shooter - and, given the polygonal look of the ship, something akin to the old 64-bit games on older consoles. The Sperian had played enough of them in her time where she could recognize the look.
She sat down and picked up the controller. And then immediately grimaced as a loud, confused hissing like snakes arguing in a mosh pit hit the metaphorical eardrum of her technopathy.
"Ugh," she groaned. "I can hear it already. Code's more tangled than spaghetti in a quick-wash. You gotta optimize that, sh- er, stuff." She had to correct herself very quickly - Dawn might have tolerated that kind of language around herself, but around the kids? Far less likely.
They didn't speak. She glanced back at their faces and saw them to be quiet keenly observant, eyes already flitting between herself and the screen.
Just like the real thing.
The game started, and for a while there was silence. Any and all noise was confined to the sounds of the video game coming from the computer speakers - the music, the harsh electronic sounds of lasers firing, the occasional thump of a missile. Very rarely, one of the Dawnlings would speak up, giving advice or pointing something out.
"Turn right, turn right! There's a shortcut!"
"Aim for the thing in the centre!"
"Watch out, that takes off half your shields!"
And, through it all, the sounds of technopathy. The loud zips of inputs and outputs flying between controller, CPU and the screen. The hum of processes at work. The ping and chime and babble of data streaming back and forth. She'd lived in this world for as long as she could remember, the world of technology talking to itself - Neo Manhattan or here, it made no difference. She slipped back into it as easily as a comfortable pair of slacks.
She could also hear other things. The occasional dull buzz when an error occured. Slight differences in tone when code that should have worked the same way as it's neighbour didn't. Something akin to a screech when too much went on at any one time. And she was making mental notes even as she played, knowing exactly what was going wrong
It took about seven or eight minutes to beat the level. Most of it was spent on a boss, a towering robotic thing with disembodied hands that swiped at her ship. That fight passed by in a frantic blur of dodge-rolls, charged laser blasts and screamed advice from the Dawnlings, ending only when the monster detonated in a shower of polygonal spheres and spark effects.
As the scoreboard for the level scrolled by, Kaydence put the controller down and turned to the children.
"Right," she said. "Let's break it down from the top, chooms. First, optimize that code. Cut down on all the redundant stuff - exzemple, don't make every enemy its own instance, just create one enemy object and call it when you need it. Second, tighten up those controls, the ship feels faster going to the left than to the right and backing up is too sluggish. Third, missiles do too little damage for how few you can carry. Fourth, whoever decided the boss needed that much health needs a smack, because that fight was an absolute svoluch - and don't ask me what that means, you're too young."
She looked at their faces, one by one. Freddy seemed to be taking it in, nodding eagerly. Renard was oddly impassive. Veronica looked... disappointed? Sad? Hard to really tell. Emma had her head tilted curiously, as if waiting for something else to happen.
She grinned.
"And having said all that," she said, "great job so far. Who wants ice cream?"
The cheers that came from the kids were loud enough to blot out the hissing of bad coding. At least until she managed to quieten them down.
--------
~Kuwahawi~
The room was a scene of chaos. Curtains pulled down, a broken chair littering the floor, pictures askew. And the bed, especially, was a tangled mess that looked as though it would collapse in on itself. But everyone's eyes were on the glass container that Kaydence was clutching, as well as the pink, smoky cloud that roiled and churned inside it. They had to be - the alternative was looking at, if not the state the room was in, than at various other details that couldn't be repeated in polite conversation.
Kaydence took a huge breath through her nose, and tried to ignore the faint tang of very pleasant things - strawberries, cherry blossom, jasmine - still lingering in the air. As well as the fact that her top was missing and she couldn't remember where it was. Then she turned to the crowd that shared the chaotic space with her in that moment. The young woman, also topless and looking very confused and frightened. Vent, both relieved and yet disturbed by the preceding events. And, somehow, Phillip/Springtrap, who was half-in and half-out of the ceiling, gently shedding bits of plaster as he hung like a particularly macabre Christmas ornament.
Kaydence knew for a fact that she did not have enough Nebula in the fridge to forget this. So she tried something else.
"Okay," she said. "Let's all agree, right now, to never speak of this again. And if anyone does, you're gettin' a boot up your ass."
The mutterings that came in reply seemed to indicate the kind of mutual, unspoken agreement that was completely irrefutable. It was clear that this was going to be one of those things that, even without the threat of boot-based reprisal, nobody would even have wanted to speak of again if they could help it.
"can i please come down now," droned Phillip from above. "i think i've cracked my artex"
--------
~Outside Kaydence's Apartment~
"She's still yelling?"
"Yes."
The day had started thusly. Phillip had asked Kaydence to watch what was considered one of the worst and most confusing films of all time, Monster A Go Go. He had, apparently, also added that Dawn had asked her to do this, but her employer would later state she said no such thing. And yet, unable to resist any kind of challenge, had agreed, perhaps thinking it would add to whatever imaginary street cred she was building up for herself.
It was some time later. Phillip, coming to check on Kaydence to see how she was getting on with the movie, had discovered the scene first. And then, at a complete loss what to do, he'd called Dawn, Evolto and Vent. But all that meant was that four people instead of one were standing outside of the door to Kaydence's apartment. All of them were bearing mixed expressions of concern and amazement. And well they might, as a torrent of full-volume yells and curses came from the other side of the door, accompanied by the occasional sound of something being kicked.
Mercifully, it was all in Esperanto. Not so mercifully, the three androids had to switch off their automatic translators - some things, they'd decided, should remain a mystery.
"Why the fuck," said Evolto, turning to Phillip, "did you even make her do this? What possessed you to think that shit was a good idea?"
"i just wanted to see if she would," said Phillip, shrugging.
"She's been yelling for three consecutive hours," muttered Vent, pale in the face. "The average human would pass out from oxygen deprivation long before then."
"I think we've safely established she's not exactly the average human," replied Dawn.
Another yell, another crash. It sounded expensive.
"...are you sure this isn't revenge for what happened in Kuwahawi?" asked Evolto.
"absolutely not," Phillip replied.
"Because it looks suspiciously like-"
"i swear i am not still picking ceiling plaster out of my ears"
"Maybe somebody should stop her," ventured Vent, nervously, "before she-"
There was an almighty BANG and a flash of cyan light. Everyone except Dawn jerked backwards and away from the door as a sizzling sound became audible from behind it. It faded quickly, replaced by an acrid smell like melted plastic and burn bacon. There was a brief moment of silence as faint curls of white smoke came out from under the dawn.
And then the ranting started again.
"...let's just let her ride this out," said Dawn.
--------
It was some time after all of this. And Kaydence was sitting in her apartment, in her office, making a phone call to Dawn.
Well... not so much of call as a shout. But not because of heightened tensions. It was due, mostly, to the music blaring over her laptop speakers.
"Look, boss, I don't mean to sound ungrateful or anythin'. You got me out of that corpo showroom that was Neo Manhattan, you've put me in a real nice place and I'm eatin' real food now. I couldn't go back to that iron box even if I wanted to! But when am I gonna get some real work, huh?"
Kaydence took a swig from her carton of Nebula - cherry, as usual. She reclined in her gaming chair, a bright blue thing that rose like an island from admist a small carpet of discarded clothes, loose computer parts and half-finished gadgets. Even as she spoke into her earpiece, her hands were busy. One scrolled through social media on her phone, the other clicked her through a Frankensteinian playlist of headache-incuding speedcore, pounding eurobeat and cheesy europop.
Also, she was completely nude. But that was barely a footnote at this point. It would have been more startling if she'd been wearing anything, especially in the privacy of her own home.
She frowned. Dawn's response on the other end had clearly not been what she'd wanted to hear.
"Seriously? Nothing? Not even, like... a giant monster to punch? Because lemme tell ya, boss, I've been achin' to lay a fist into that Gojira thing. Fuckin' crusty old dinosaur's got it coming, swaggerin' around, being all 'Alpha Predator' and shit. Had enough of that shit from UES, thank you."
You could take the
overstimulated technopath out of the tech-laden city. But you could only
do so much. Even the special mufflers she now wore, dampening her
technopathy to an extent, couldn't stop her from being almost constantly
online by her own volition. Already she was growing bored of the music and was typing in the name of a YouTube Poop she'd seen earlier. She'd latched onto those as being on her wavelength of terrible humour and consumed them as ravenously as she ate ranch-flavoured Doritos.
Another pause as Dawn's reply came through on her bluetooth speaker. Something about it made Kaydence sigh.
"...okay, lemme spit truth for a minute. What have you had me runnin'? Carryin' a puppy round a city. Testing your kid's video game. Watchin' a really, really awful film - which Phillip tells me you're plannin' to remake? Choombatta, hate to break it to ya, but there needs to be a film first! And out of all of that, the biggest threats to my life were the haunted theme park and the alien sex gas.
"...look, don't ask me about that one again." A swig of Nebula was taken again, presumably to dull the memory. "Evolto did, and he's still spitting shoe leather last I saw him. Fucking gonk."
Dawn's reply was curt and to the point. You didn't need to listen in, you just needed to see the way Kaydence's frown deepened and her mouth drew into a thin line of annoyance. That was all you needed to see to know that the question had been: where is this going?
"Where it's going, choom, is that I ain't sure you haven't sold me a dud bill. 'The kind of work where your talents won't go to waste', you said. But so far, all I've done's a bit of weeding here and a bit of moppin' up there. And in between, I feel like I'm runnin' chores. Hardly feel like my talents aren't going to waste, you dig? I thought I signed up for proper solo work, not to be a maid service or anythin'! Could have stayed on Spero and been a secretary to some rich older suit, if I wanted that!"
There was a long pause. In between, Kaydence found the time to repost three different memes, finish watching her video and move onto the other one, and then polish off her drink. She blew a raspberry of irritation through her lips and slumped into her chair, total boredom settling in for a brief moment.
When Dawn did reply, it was accompanied by a bleeping notification sound from Kaydence's phone. And it was enough to make the technopath perk up.
This was an act that contained a lot of motion. Her eyes widened. Her posture straightened in her chair, causing her hair to swish across her face. Her breathing quickened into miniscule pants of excitement. Her eyeballs swivelled to look down at the phone on her desk. Nervous anticipation visibly crept into the corners of her expression, the same way a spider prowls along a skirting board towards an unsuspecting cockroach.
Her eyes scanned the screen with startling quickness. So much so that she had to read it again, just to be sure she hadn't missed anything.
"...only just now?" she asked.
A reply.
"...and there's others coming?"
Another reply.
And then Kaydence Roberts leaped out of her chair, which would have been quite a sight for anyone watching, and began to snatch clothes up from the floor.
"On my way, boss," was all she managed to breathe out.
~TO BE CONTINUED~
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