Jojoken
Andurien, Free Worlds League
22 June, 3028

The girl was surprisingly short, standing mostly-even with the trash bins that were scattered about the alleyway even with the aid of heels that added almost ten centimeters to her height. Unlike the dull plastic lids that covered the garbage cans, she was topped by a thick sheaf of golden-wheat hair that ran almost down to her knees. The hair swayed in time with every meandering, drunken step she took, peeking out from one side of the cherry-red cocktail-dress she wore and then the other as she overcorrected to try and keep her balance.

"Rolling down the street, smoking indo, sipping on gin and juice!" She sang.

The words were obviously and horribly off-key, with heavy slurring throughout that made them almost indecipherable. But sometimes being off-key and blatantly drunk was part of the fun.

"Like, what in the world is 'indo', anyways? They don't have it in the Magistrate? And if they, like, don't have it in the Magistrasse-Magocracy-Magistratacy, it doesn't get you wasted!" Mina 'Centrella' half-slurred, half-yelled into the darkness of the alley.

Someone from inside one of the nearby apartments yelled at her to shutup. She began to scream back an irate reply about the man's mother, but stopped halfway through so she could bend-over beside a waste-bin and make puking noises that were about as loud as what she had been about to yell.

"Eughh, no more for Me-nah. Uh-uh. Nope. Nuh-uh. No more. Me-nah is done. I am never drinking again. Not even water." She mumbled to the ground below her, resting one hand against the ferrocrete wall of the alleyway she was in. Her other hand joined the first a moment later as she stared at the patterns in the ferrocrete of the wall.

The crisscrossing lines tickled at something in the back of her mind. Something she couldn't quite track down but that seemed to scream to her in importance from them. They were cut into the surface in the regular and even way that canals might be somewhere that water was rare. As if they were the lines a river made in a desert. Or the chiseled passageways water would make on a moon.

She blinked a few times and shook her head, trying to run-down the feeling of familiarity that thought provided but instantly blocked from it. Gritting her teeth, she tried not to think about how frustrating the phenomenon was. Instead, she focused on her surroundings.

There was nobody else in the alley. At least not yet there wasn't. The thumping bass-and-synth rhythm from the club she'd just exited echoed slightly from behind her, but it was muffled to a mere background detail by soundproofing and the other natural sounds of the night. There was an occasional whine from vehicles on the main thoroughfare a few blocks over. Her own confused thoughts were loud in their own right, but she didn't seem to be speaking the same language as them at the moment!

Mina leaned forward slightly, and let her forehead rest against the cool wall. A handful of blonde locks were caught in-between, but they weren't enough to keep the cold from penetrating to her skin. She enjoyed the sensation for a few long breaths, clearing her head of the madcap confusion it had chased itself into. It would look just like she was recovering from the spins or something else equally hedonistic, so it even served two purposes at once!

For probably the first time, she missed the easy days of laziness in the Palace back on Canopus. There, before she'd known what she was she'd never had these flashes of half-remembrance. She hadn't been bothered by the tickling mutter in the back of her mind that told her when she was missing something. Or if she had, it had been much easier to ignore it.

She took a long breath, letting her head loll back-and-forth against the wall. No matter how much she tried, she had yet to succeed in remembering what it was that bothered her. Undoubtedly it was connected to her status as a 'Guardian', but knowing that did nothing but make it useless to try and investigate. The only place it seemed to exist in the proper context was the orders Kyalla had shown to her when she told Mina what little she knew.

Mina forced herself off the wall and put the unimportant distractions behind her. Certain to stumble and over-correct every few steps, she passed through the alleyway without any trouble but that from her own mind.

Supposedly, the evening of clubbing by the Magestrix's bastard daughter was in celebration of 'continued good relations between the Duchy of Andurien and the Magistracy' as well as the coming marriage between Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner. But Mina was astute enough to know when public perception was being manipulated. Winning support through free drinks was a very Canopian way of going about things. On the bright side, it seemed to be working.

It had all seemed so much more important the previous day. It had seemed much more fun the previous day. Mina couldn't explain it, but she was suddenly looking forward to being off the planet. What she wouldn't give for a nice, relaxing deployment against pirates or the like back in the Magistracy. She didn't much like this skulking about and masquerading silliness that had been shoved on her. But she owed the Centrellas for caring for her over the years. Going after some Andurien ne'er-do-wells for them was, in a real sense, small compensation.

She played-up the difficulty of opening the passenger door of her car when she finally reached it. She still couldn't be sure if someone was watching, but she had that feeling. The odd buzz in the lower part of her stomach that always started when she was on the verge of action of some kind had come along only a few minutes before inside the club, and had been the reason she'd left a party that looked like it would be going long into the morning. But such a public venue wasn't a great place for a confrontation.

Mina paused before entering the vehicle, disguising a quick scan up and down the road as resting on the roof of the vehicle. There were a handful of people on the streets. Most were obviously waiting for rides of their own and those few who weren't were walking—stumbling usually—in one direction with the single-mindedness of the extremely intoxicated.

Mentally shrugging, Mina slid into the passenger's seat. Someone in her condition was in no position to drive, and the tint on the windows of the car would let her observe the street without concern of being noticed. The only question in the back of her mind was whether or not whoever she was supposed to be waiting for wouldn't take the easy route and try to assassinate Kyalla Centralla's bastard daughter the quick and dirty way. She had survived explosions that should have killed her before, if she believed Kyalla she had survived them numerous times before, but she didn't know how. Not knowing how, she definitely didn't want to put it to the test.

Frowning, Mina slid the seat back slightly and used one hand to pull a coat she kept curled up on the rear seat over her chest. The heels she had been in all evening came off in the next moment, and she couldn't help but groan in relief at the way the pressure finally let up. She hated heels.

Now, all she had to do was wait and watch.

"Why isn't it going off? Shouldn't it be going off by now? What's she doing?"

Cooper sighed at the incessant whispered questions from his apprentice and handed the spotting scope in his hands over. The young man was commendable in many ways. He had a good head on his shoulders for prep-work, and a natural skill at blending in. He'd gotten close enough to identify Mina Centrella as the real-deal inside The Silver Slipper without alerting the handful of local security that had been assigned to her. But the boy suffered from a decided lack of patience during these portions of operations. If he was ever to be initiated, he would have to improve.

Though, to be fair, such impatience was also a failing Cooper had as well. He'd just had many more years to learn how to fake it.

"She just got inside. It won't go off unless she actually turns the key." Cooper explained unnecessarily, rubbing at his face and idly scratching at hid beard. He hated rushed operations like this. If they'd had just another day or two they could have rigged up a real, remote-detonated bomb rather than relying on connections to the ignition forcing a containment failure. But for a bomb to get through security-checks, he'd have needed a much more sophisticated jamming device than existed anywhere in the Free Worlds League or a lot more connections with the mechanics who'd been in charge of the car. Overriding the fusion engine's limiters from across the street had been a much easier course of action.

His apprentice harrumphed and almost threw the spotting scope down. Cooper could sympathize with the feeling, but turned a critical eye on the boy anyways as he snatched back the tool.

They had two options. Kill time and hope that she got moving before sunrise or go to the secondary plan. Waiting was more appealing in many ways. Much as it strained at his desire to make something happen, it posed the least risk of Murphy interfering. But they were on a time-limit. They only had an hour or two before sunup brought many more people to the street.

In the end, that made the choice for him. Botched robbery was much more blatant than a containment failure on a GM-40 engine, and would probably inspire all kinds of investigation into potential assassination, but he wouldn't have to worry about that once he left the League.

A whip? Why was she using a whip? That was a really odd day-dream to have. It said some really awkward things about her subconscious if it was steering her in that direction...

No. It wasn't like that. It wasn't a toy. It was a weapon. A weapon she needed to fight…What? It was right there. She could practically feel it.

The car rocked slightly as the door opened and snapped her out of the thoughts. She turned, eyes momentarily dazzled by the slightly-brighter glare from the streetlight without the windows to reduce it. She could imagine a police officer doing such a thing if it were early morning, but it was still nighttime. Unsure what else to do, she threw the coat up-and-off in preparation for what she could only assume would be a lecture by a newly-minted officer who hadn't yet learned what could best be left alone.

The brilliant-white section of blade that stabbed its way into the coat only to be caught in the faux-fur of its neckline made her reconsider that assumption. An officer's first-move would not be to stab a loiterer. Had someone really just tried to stab her?

She almost grinned. Found 'em!

Instinctively, she took a firmer hold on the coat and gave it a fierce twist. The knife flew from its wielder's hand and into the ceiling. Her attacker, still moving forward from his thrust, grunted in pain as his wrist rolled into an awkward position on the other side of the coat. Now, Mina did grin.

As she did, her left leg kicked out. It arced across her waist and into the man's abdomen in a contortion she wouldn't have thought herself capable of normally. His grunt of pain turned into a muffled yell, stopped-short only by the lack of air he actually had to really yell. He was temporarily impaired, but to really take him out of the fight, she would have to follow through.

Mina grabbed the edge of the doorframe with her right hand and pulled. She forced the rest of her body up-and-around in the seat, sending her other leg back to join its sister in the process. Mina felt as much as heard the sharp crunch underneath the heel of her foot as it connected with the man's chest. His gasping pain came to a sudden and satisfying halt.

The urge to secure the area battled with the ocean wave of relief that crashed over her at the danger being over.

It was then that she caught sight of the second attacker.

Unlike his younger companion, he'd kept his distance. Instead of closing in on the car, he'd taken up a position at the edge of the alleyway nearby. Half concealing himself behind the elaborately-inscribed ferrocrete, he was drawing on her with a small, black shape that had to be a projectile weapon or a laser of some kind. The dark made it difficult to tell for sure. It was very…professional of him.

No time to think about it.

Mina stretched one arm to the ceiling and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of the knife. In one motion she jerked it free of the roof, flung her entire arm forwards, and snapped it to a stop at full extension only a few centimeters clear of the open door into the cab of the car. Her fingers all pointed at the second man's chest—as if driven by some unconscious force on their own—and the knife slid out of her palm in the same direction.

The second assassin spun almost entirely around when the knife connected with the right side of his torso. He collapsed to the ground with a very quiet huff and the jangle of whatever clothing and material he had on underneath the dark overcoat that had concealed him. His weapon clattered against the sidewalk, sliding about a meter away from the body where he'd be hard-pressed to reach it.

She jerked out of the car anyways, half-stumbling over the first assassin's body as she did. The ferrocrete of the sidewalk instantly bit into her feet, the stockings she wore useless as insulation. But it was much easier to move without the heels on, and she certainly wasn't going to waste time putting them on just because of a little cold!

She stalked the short distance to the second assassin's body, diverting briefly only to scoop up the auto-pistol that had clattered out of his hands. Reaching him, she smashed the wrist on his uninjured side down with one leg, and used her other to carefully prod at the knife's hilt. She began to line the pistol up with her attacker's head, only to stop midway through the motion and leave it pointed at the waistline of his overcoat. He might not be the Periphery pirate she was used to using the threat on, but men tended to have very similar reactions to the gesture whatever their background.

"Knife to meet you." She tried not to grin. She failed. Despite the beard, she could tell the man paled slightly.

The groan her words inspired may have come from the physical pain. But it just as well may have come from mental pain. She tapped the ball of her foot against the hilt of the knife to draw another groan and be certain. Since it sounded just like the previous one, she could be reasonably certain the assassin was just in a great deal of pain rather than unappreciative of her wit.

"I assume you know how this works? I ask, you answer? Since we're short on time, let's start with the obvious one. Who hired you?"

She had to give him credit, he met her eyes. When she wasn't playing the dumb slut of the Centrella family—which had plenty of competition from the Magestrix herself—people always found it difficult to meet her eyes. She hadn't yet met a pirate who could do it. At least that she remembered.

He had the gall to smile back at her instead of saying anything.

Before she could escalate her threats, his entire body began to twitch and shake. She kept his arm pinned down, but the rest of his body flopped around on the ferrocrete like a fish out of water. He took a final gurgling breath a moment later and went limp.

Well that was just great. How was she supposed to get any answers from a dead man? She hated professionals. They were so much more frustrating to interrogate!

There were not enough curses in existence to make her feel better, so she distracted herself as best she could. Rearranging a crime scene required a good deal of concentration, and she couldn't be too obvious about it just in case someone was watching. But before she started shrieking the pistol needed to be wiped at the very least, and she needed to come up with a more plausible explanation, one that suited her cover.

Mina's actions hiccupped at that thought. She wasn't completely certain when she'd begun to think of 'Mina Centrella' as a cover rather than who she was. But she couldn't deny how true the feeling was. She wasn't Mina Centrella. Mina Centrella was, perhaps, who she wanted to be but couldn't be. Because…Because she couldn't remember who she really was.

She glanced at the two dead men. What quirk of fate had given her an unnatural lifespan but a memory that only lasted a handful of years? Beyond that, why was she so good at killing people and why did it never bother her?

Instead of letting her thoughts run down that dead-end for the thousandth time, Mina shrieked and rushed over to the car so she could use its communications system to contact the Jojoken Internal Security Forces.

"Hello? You have to help me! They came out of nowhere! And they had a gun and a knife and they were so much bigger than me and your good-for-nothing officers were nowhere around and these thugs were about to—well—but they started arguing over me and then—now, I guess—they're both dead!" Mina screamed into the receiver as soon as the other end had been picked up, certain to make every third or fourth word so garbled by drunken mumbles as to be practically impossible to pick up on.

She forced herself to start shaking as the emergency-worker on the other end tried to calm her down and get her to provide more useful details. She shuddered with muscle spasms as random as she could force on herself making her calves stutter in pain and her hands shake.

The shaking made it difficult to rip the cocktail dress across the front in a suitably provocative manner, but both the shakes and the rip would do wonders for her story when the constables arrived. She could only hope that the two mysterious assassins would be more well-known to the planetary authorities and they'd let something slip about them around her.

**********************************************

"Lady Centrella-" Lieutenant Cash began, only for the still half-drunk and far too handsy Canopian to make those eyes at him.

"Just Mina will do. Only my half-sis is 'Lady Centrella'."

He sighed at the half-veiled flirtation. He really should have let one of the rookies handle this one. Whatever gene-altering magic the Centrella's had used to produce a daughter that was blue-eyed and blonde-haired, it had apparently also affected other parts of the girl. Until this morning, he could honestly say he'd never been groped.

"Miss Centrella, then." He corrected, refusing to give any indication he'd noticed her attentions. "Are you certain that one of your attackers kicked the other?"

"Yes? Does that matter?" Mina nodded, and blushed much more than was really necessary.

"It could." He allowed, formally writing down 'high-gravity world' under his list of suspicions about attacker number one. It took a rather powerful man to break multiple ribs with one blow and shoot them back into the vital organs. He'd only ever seen similar things in high-speed hovercar collisions.

"How much longer am I gonna be here? I want to go home. Or maybe out to breakfast. Do you get off anytime soon? Or I guess I should ask do you want to? Tee-hee."

Had she really just gone 'tee-hee'? There was no way Canopians actually used that kind of stereotyped language, was there?

He looked up, sensing somehow she might not be serious. She was staring at him with her lower-lip pursed outward and a frown that, contrary to his thoughts and her words, looked very serious indeed. For an instant, he might have sworn she was frustrated. But then the regular distance of the inebriated fell over her eyes, and he was certain it had just been his imagination.

He really should have passed this one off to someone else.

"I have work to do, sorry. Now, if you wouldn't mind, would you mind repeating how the knife—"

Before he could finish his question there was a very loud crash from just outside the interrogation room. The door flew open on its hinges, propelled by a very large man in a very large suit. The man scanned Cash up-and-down from behind midnight-black glasses, then stepped aside. Cash wasn't sure if he was supposed to be grateful or insulted that he apparently didn't look like some kind of threat to the bodyguard.

The thought crossed his mind at the same time as he saw the woman behind the bodyguard and knew that any prospect of actually getting to the bottom of what had happened was going to disappear. The Magestrix of Canopus had arrived. Which meant his time with the Magestrix's bastard daughter was at an end.

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit! He knew there was more going on here than she was letting on—Probably some Canopian intrigue of some kind or another. But he needed more time to draw it out of her! Time he wouldn't be getting now because the Canopian would undoubtedly invoke their diplomatic privileges.

He had been willing to bend the rules before, no matter how much it angered the mayor or his chief. But trying to put a criminal hold on not just a member of the Canopian diplomatic corps but on a member of the Centrella household? That would get him not only on the shitlist of the chief and the mayor, but on the personal shitlist of Dame Humphreys herself.

Cash was proud to consider himself a loose autocannon, but he wasn't stupid. There would be no winning for anyone if he went up against the head of Andurien itself. It was politics, and it sucked, but he couldn't change it.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Kyalla Centrella's voice was deceptively calm. But he could hear the undercurrent of absolute, livid rage that was waiting underneath it. He'd pushed his luck as far as he could interviewing the girl again. Now it was time for détente and deescalation. Before his department got hit with a WMD of political ill-will and he got chosen as the fall-guy to absorb as much of the fallout as he could.

"Magestrix! This is truly an honor." Cash stood and began to offer the dark-skinned woman a salute before hesitating, smiling an apology at her, and settling on a half-bow.

His immediate, if awkward, compliance seemed to shake the dark-skinned noblewoman out of her barely-contained rage. She blinked, seemingly lost without a clear target to focus her ire on, and her head tilted towards her bastard daughter, as if for directions.

"Gabriel was keeping me company while I waited, momma. I offered him breakfast, but he said he has to work."

The Magestrix' temporary confusion seemed to disappear with her daughter's words, and Cash was relieved to see a more familiar look of parental consternation cross her face. The woman even gave him an eyelid-fluttering look of exasperation that he assumed was directed at her daughter. Though the way the woman's eyes drifted down his chest, he could tell they were related.

"Officer Cash, far be it from me to accuse Andurien's Internal Security Forces of harassing a diplomatic mission." The much higher-ranking woman said after very slowly and deliberately looking at the name-badge on his chest, "As such, would you be kind enough to get my daughter and I a cup of something hot while she and I have some words in private before we iron this whole situation out?"

Cash could tell it was a command rather than a question. But it gave him a chance to step out of the room that was rapidly becoming way too stuffy and political for his taste. He didn't know just how much shit he'd stepped in by not immediately informing the Canopians of Mina's situation, but he was sure it was a quite large amount. He wasn't about to turn down the opportunity to bow out. Not when the camera would capture whatever the two women said to each other, anyways.

In his considered opinion, criminal conspiracies needed to be investigated regardless of where they originated or who they targeted. His gut told him that the attack on Mina Centrella had been a conspiracy of some kind, but trying to iron out what it was had proven nearly impossible. None of the facts fit together, they had no leads on who the men even were, and as far as he could tell there was no motive. He had investigated murder in the Free Worlds League long enough to know that combination meant some kind of political conspiracy not 'random attack'.

"Certainly, your grace." Cash said with another half-bow.

It took him a moment after he had left the room to realize that the Magestrix had pinched his butt on the way out.

"Canopians." Cash sighed.