On Behalf

That moment…

Right before.

The one when you know you have to. I kinda liked it.

There was this weird kind of feeling where you knew something could go wrong. You could get your neck broken. Your back broken. Even if you survived, the healing would suck.

As a clone… believe me. Real healing sucks.

Tissue clinic, having your face put back together, regrown skin. Sometimes bone regrowth. It hurts.

It’s sudden if you’ve got the money.

But eventually a clone’s bill gets so high daddy warbucks gets tired of paying it.

Something newer is out. Something they can make look just like you with enough tries.

I felt all of that when I looked over at him.

Dvar.

He just sat there at the table. Leaving me to be his thing. His personification of wealth.

It felt like the arena. A smaller one of course, but the same vibe. Only this one was buttoned down. Real Miami.

I glanced up at that fake skylight on the ceiling spilling light from outside onto the floor.

The skylight that at first was a dim light, techno dreamland circus twinkling down over the grotto and those pillars. As if it was bleeding out of the stones. Then I realized it wasn’t stones at all.

Just the third eye layer artfully making us see what it wanted us to.

Kinda made you wonder about the real world. If I turned mine off…

Did I see it darkly… or…?

My amber eyes moved off of him to the table full of gangsters. Two stood up from it.

Of course. Vincent and Viggo. Now wearing their house colors like it was ninja night at Hogwarts.

God I gotta stay off ArkHiveYou. AHY dominated far too much of my feed when I had nothing better to do.

Where I spent my Stay Sane Hour.

We’ll have that conversation.

“Terms?” Dvar asked casually.

Vincent, Viggo and I cut wide circles around one another on that open conversation floor.

Big as a ball room, right out to that weak waterfall trickling that separated inside from the outside evening light of Thread.

“Well. Your clone has graciously let us go first…” Mookie said from the podium microphone. “And Lady Poison informed me earlier that she’d like a bit of sport.… Let’s say let them run,” he said with a shrug.

A hoop went up from the dignified fakery surrounding us all.

Of course the mob wanted blood. Of course the mob wanted a clone sacrifice.

Like we were performing studs at a Rodeo.

My eyebrows did that undecided thing… I was confused.

“Mm… Alright. And after we do this little dance of yours…?” He asked, turning his eyes to the Podium. Right at Mookie.

Nobunaga looked over at him as well, but he didn’t turn around from it.

He just cooly waved a hand.

Accepting the challenge.

“Then I guess it’s done. I’m a business man these days. Not a fighter. The Stillwater of Sunless will represent me in battle. Should they lose… I’ll yield my turf.”

“And the Hotpot…” Dvar said, sitting back in his seat.

Every tittering voice in the background went wild with hissed conversation.

Nobunaga shot her father a glare. Losing the hotpot meant one of her ranches.

Distribution to this side of Thread.

“He cannot give what isn’t his to give. Father.” Lakshmi cut at him.

“I can take what I please if Mookie’s men manhandled my property. That’s what I want in restitution if Pretty Boy wins.”

“Manhandled your property…?” Mookie said, genuinely puzzled.

He looked at Vincent and Viggo, who didn’t acknowledge it. They just stepped confidently closer to me, tightening our ring.

“Yeah…” Was Dvar’s only quiet response, I barely heard it as I passed his table, now circling with these two closer, my sword sheathed in hand.

Vincent smiled at me.

Viggo turned to walk backwards beside him, starting to turn his sheathed sword over in hand like a baton.

Threatening.

They’d certainly come dressed for the occasion.

Meanwhile, Nobunaga was whispering something to Two-Three, gesturing at Vincent and Viggo.

Two-Three just nodded, but her eyes stayed on me. Her lip threatening a curl.

Real hate.

Never did I feel more in the wrong place at the wrong time than right now. Every eye on me, waiting for things to go bad.

Or go good?

I wasn’t sure at this point which one anyone wanted. I just knew I wasn’t about to let my opportunity to put my foot in Vincent’s ass slip away.

Fucker stuck his god damn tongue in my mouth.

“Mookie,” Lakshmi said and he turned his attention to her.

So did I.

“It’s fine,” she said with a hand. “I trust you’ve chosen the right people to secure my property.”

She didn’t seem confident.

I wasn’t sure what to think of her, honestly.

I just knew Mookie was step one. God knows how many other lieutenants before Dvar and his daughter could stop playing this stupid game and have the fight they wanted to have.

The one for good and all.

I knew in this world of money and power, everyone liked to play a game. And what really concerned me is the larger game.

Fox Valentine was still out there. The Indo-Japan gate situation was still out there.

The fact that I had to get mixed up in this just to leap from one frying pan into another was starting to make me feel like the pawn I was.

That’s why it was just easier to turn my head off.

All I had to do was what I was told.

What I was told? Get Mookie’s territory.

And as Vincent and Viggo unsheathed their blades, I realized that getting that territory was through them.

I was halfway to them before my blade snatched from it’s sheath, leaning full forward. Committing to the run.

I didn’t need a battle cry. They already knew what time it was.

Why play games?

Viggo spun right as Vincent and I met in the middle, blades lashing, I spun round him, knowing Viggo wouldn’t be far and I was right.

My shin spun into the move with a kick into Vincent’s rib, sending him spinning into Viggo.

I knew better than to think Viggo wouldn’t be better than that so I cut I’m off, pressing in right after Vincent to swing low.

Viggo spun free of Vincent, responding with an almost perfect block.

“Fuck.”

“Gotta do better,” he snarled, and we were at it.

The three of us cut at one another, I batted furiously, keeping their blades on the defensive without being able to press the attack myself.

They worked in unison, moving around one another, orbiting my attempt at recalibrating defense.

I quickly moved into the defensive position myself, taking steps back. I hopped Viggo’s blade, planted my feet and torqued my hips to cut crossways at Vincent.

He spun off of the impact and Viggo was in my face, spinning through a kick that snapped my head back, stumbling me.

He followed it up as my arms flew wide, snapping a rapid fire series of kicks into my ribs, turning into me, pivoting from foot to foot as he turned, clocking me one, two, three times, blasting the wind out of me.

I dropped back to a knee and felt like hurling but couldn’t stop the momentum.

I knew how this was going to go. I had to find my pace.

I rolled right, avoiding a stabbing blade, popping up to clang Viggo’s right after, batting him into an off center stumble, my shoulder meeting his side to floor him.

It gave me valuable time to spin back the other way, avoiding Vincent’s swipe, mine coming in turning back on his flank.

I crashed my sword against his shoulder blade, ripping a scream from him.

He stumbled, I pushed hard.

Cutting, pressing, swinging into him, I battered his frame with blows.

He finally caught the rhythm of my swings and sent a symphony of crashes back, but weaker.

I damaged his arm. I could tell from his reduced efforts. From the pain on his face as he fought back against me.

Viggo was tagging in and I spun, spun, avoiding his blade on three fronts. Leaping atop a table, hopping again to avoid a fourth swing at my ankles, I shoved my feet out, pushing my sneakers into his face. Gravity smashed me down onto champagne glasses, feeling them crack beneath me, one or two stabbing into my back.

Adrenaline brought me up, knowing I had to ignore the pain.

Viggo and I entertained the room with a series of whirling slashes and counters, growling at one another.

Savagery exchanged between us, crashing against one another, cutting, clashing, shoving.

It turned into a shoving match that he won. He grabbed me up by the thighs and slammed my back into a pillar.

“GGUHN!” I coughed out, dropping my sword.

Both of my hands grabbed his hair, trying to rip it from his scalp, pulling back hard, forcing his head back far enough to let me…

God damnit…

Head butt the fuck out of him, “Fuck you!”

Nobody wins in a headbutt.

I felt his nose break under my forehead and he stumbled back bleeding.

My eyes tick-tocked around as I blinkity-blinked away the confusion of nearly giving myself a concussion.

Still panting for air, I reached down for my sword and spun in, bashing it down with a chop from left to right across his body while he was still reeling.

My dharma blade, smashed, smashed and smashed him a third time, spinning with each revolution, using my entire body weight to cripple his collar bone and ribs as he fell to the ground.

My arms ached from the impacts.

My hands were numb.

My lungs were starving as I fed them, panting, standing up straight over Viggo’s body, turning to check my flank as he groaned on the floor.

Golfball claps went up around the room, titters, but where was that bastard?

I heard his scuttling footsteps and whipped my head in his direction. Vincent.

There he was. Running for the… waterfall?!

“There are no rules! K.O.! Go!” Dvar yelled, pointing after him.

“Wait, what!?” I watched in a sudden panic, realizing this fight didn’t have to stay here.

My eyes tick-tocked around the space, moving to run after him but stopping when I saw him straddle his bike.

“Fuck!”

I jogged back two steps and shoved my hands into Viggo’s pocket.

“F—fuck…” he gurgled in pain.

“Sorry, bud,” I said, snatching his bike token.

I took off at a full sprint after him, leaning down to grab up my sheath after I pocketed the bike token, snapping the blade away inside of it.

With a clack of wood on wood it was back in its cage as I got to the waterfall, splashing through it as Vincent gunned that bike and took off.

“Motherf…” I growled, “come on!” Rushing over to Viggo’s bike, tossing my leg over it.

It’s console lit up with the bike token in my pocket, I shoved my sword behind the bar arm, between it and the windshield and shot off after that son of a bitch.

I felt the bike wobble a little bit as I got used to the one wheeled setup.

In the windshield it showed me it’s self-balancing mechanism.

I wasn’t sure what I was thinking but as I set my foot on the rest on the right, I felt the pedal there.

The moment I cranked the accelerator it did what I wanted so I could only assume that’s how it worked.

Very quickly as this one-wheeled rocket shot off after him I realized it turned by leaning, with very little adjustment of the handles.

The driveway of the Hotpot disappeared behind me, that one wheel trundling over the brick and out onto the street where I started to eat the distance between me and my target.

I could see him in the distance.

The thrust of his bike was car lengths ahead, skirting in and out of them. Telegraphing vehicles ahead of me, I leaned left and right, adjusting my weight back and forth to cut in and out of traffic. My French braids whipped behind me like flickering snake tongues in the wind.

I felt the harsh air over my body, down my back, the sleeves of my jacket fluttering hard against my skin.

The corner of my mouth pulled up into a smile.

This shit’s fun…