It fell out mostly as she had planned

It fell out mostly as she had planned. She ran into a few complications; namely the house had also been patrolled by mastiffs (chloroform took care of them) and Kaneda was wearing a breather mask (a very exciting and drawn out fight with a skilled swordsman that lasted until she finally managed to scratch him with one of her sleep darts before he stuck her with his poison). But on the whole the thievery of Kaneda had gone quite well. No one had really expected an attack in broad daylight, thieves and bounty hunters usually stuck to the shadows, so Midii wasn’t surprised when they didn’t see her walking lightly across the tightrope connecting the run down old mansion with the industrial building next door to it.

Once on the rooftops it had been a simple matter to hang upside down four stories above the paved ground and crack the digital code lock on the window from the outside using a scrambler (a nifty little device that could tap into the wires of a security lock and go through the number line until it found a match, then send the electric impulses into the lock itself via the electric wire that fooled the lock into thinking the number had been punched in from the inside). When she was on the inside of the house Midii had discovered a pack of snarling dogs beneath her open window, before they could bark and sound the alarm she’d already thrown them a chloroform bomb and they’d dropped off instantly. After a sigh of relief she’d slipped into the nearest vent and followed it to the main system. Her costume for the day came complete with built-in breather mask/ voice coder and handy little gadgets for any good cat burglar. In a matter of minutes the concentrated liquid form of the sleeping gas had turned to vapor and permeated the mansion via the vent system. Midii proceeded straight through the vent system to the room in which Kaneda and his henchmen had holed themselves away in. That was when she’d discovered her second unpleasant surprise. Kaneda was prepared. They’d had a long drawn out fight, his bladed weapons against hers until she’d at last managed to shoot him with a dart. As predicted, he was quite heavy. Midii usually only had to worry about the head, not the body that was attached to it. She’d lifted him onto her shoulder and strained to pick him up and carry him away. He was almost too heavy for her to bear but she managed to make it back to her window. It was times like those that she sometimes wished she really were a man, she wouldn’t have had as mush difficulty getting him out of there. The trip back was surprisingly easy, she’d taken the cord she’d used for the tightrope and slanted it from a higher point of the roof, then simply slid down suspended from a pulley to the lower rooftop of the factory (or whatever it had been, it was abandoned now too.) She’d stripped him down and checked him for weapons, then bound him securely and stuffed him into the back of the car. She’d driven off with no sign of pursuit and had him set up in her special cell before he woke up.

She had him securely bound and still unconscious now, hanging by his manacled arms in a bare cement room with a single steel-reinforced door and no light. When he woke up he would hear the sound of five or six guards stationed outside his door, complete with trading shifts. The recording could go on for days, and with no way to verify whether there actually were or were not real flesh- and-blood guards out there, with any luck he might decide to just wait around for his opportunity to strike. Since Midii didn’t plan to keep him alive very long, having him ‘wait around to strike’ was exactly what she was hoping for.

<It does look kind of harsh though,> she thought with a pang of conscience as she looked at the mostly naked form suspended from the ceiling by his wrists. His clothes had been taken as a precaution against him hiding weapons or lock picks in them. He sort of resembled a slab of beef hanging in a butcher’s refrigerator. He was much too thin, even if his ribs did stick out with his head lolled to one side and his eyes closed he looked so pathetic. What would that tall Preventor guy, Trowa Barton, think of her when he saw him hanging up there like that?

<Nothing,> she told herself. <You don’t pity your quarry, you kill them. What does it matter what it looks like if it keeps the target from escaping? You’re going to kill him anyway idiot. You can’t afford to go getting soft just because of a pair of gorgeous eyes that could put pure emeralds to shame. Oh Hell.>

She’d better not be going soft. She couldn’t afford the quality of mercy in her line of work! She needed to be able to kill people with detachment otherwise she’d never be able to make it as a bounty hunter. Soft equaled dead in her profession. If she started with the pangs of guilt every time she took out a target pretty soon she’d start worrying over the ethics of every little thing she did and then she’d freeze up at the wrong moment… and then she’d be dead. Her life might suck, but Midii did not want to die. She just couldn’t wrestle up that kind of apathy when there were people in her life that she lived and fought to protect.

<Just remember your family Midii,> she coached herself, trying to push away the crushing sense of guilt and pain that always seemed to hover nearby waiting to strike. <Everything is for them, all for them. The bounty on this guy’s head will go a long way toward alleviating the debt for good. Then you’ll all be free.>

Still…

She sighed, then picked up a thin warm blanket and wrapped it toga-style around him, tying it in a knot at his left shoulder. A blanket wouldn’t hurt, the room was quite chill.

<Che! Picking up stray Preventors instead of chasing down then killing my rightful bounty, on top of that offering to go to the enormous trouble of kidnapping and securing him just so the man can ask him a few questions… and now I’m giving blankets to my prey. What next, raffling off my gun collection to charity?>

With a final shake of her head, Midii shut the iron door and locked it. She’d bring the Preventor tomorrow so he could question Kaneda and be on his way, right now she had to grab dinner on the way home from her “errands” and go back to being Missy.

She was a little surprised by how much she was looking forward to going back to that safehaven. Usually she didn’t think anything about them, she just went back there to grab a few hours of sleep before she went back out to hunt down and kill people. She didn’t think about how lonely an existence it was, being all alone with no one there to talk to when things got rough… she was just there for a little while until she could make enough money to go back home.

Because her trips back home were few and far between she treasured every moment she got to spend with her family. Alex, at fifteen, was the confidant one. He liked to spend his free time hanging out with his friends after school; they were a rowdy bunch in to thrill-seeking and demented fun. Jason, the second youngest, was fourteen. He was a little more subdued but still spent a lot of his time hanging out with his older brother and their friends, he also liked to play baseball, however he could be counted on to help out more around the house and he got reasonably good grades in school. Michael was the baby of the family. At twelve years old he was still very much a child even though he sometimes acted very grown up. He was very intelligent, that was what all of his teachers said, but unfortunately he was also very weak, almost sickly. Midii’s mother had died a few short weeks after giving birth to him and Michael had never been very strong. He was sweet and gentle, and helped out as much as he could. He took a lot after their father, who was gentle and kind, who’d never raised a hand to any of them and who could always be depended on to be loving and supportive.

Perhaps none of them deserved all the terrible things that happened to them, but who ever said the universe was fair? Midii did the best she could to cope with an already bad situation, and if it came down to it she knew she’d probably still continue to choose the health and safety of her family over anything and everything else. She’d already been responsible directly or indirectly for the deaths of a lot of people because she needed to keep them fed and cared for, what other choice was there? If she gave it all up now then that would make all of her previous sacrifices meaningless. But Midii made certain that she would be the only one to carry that kind of guilt, she would make any sacrifice necessary to ensure that she was the only one who knew that kind of pain. Her family would never know what she went through, would never know her pain, her anguish, her guilt, not if she had anything to say about it. She wanted them all to be happy and that was worth any price to her, even her own happiness, maybe even her own life.

<But I’m getting so tired of being lonely almost all the rest of the time,> she thought wistfully. <It would be nice…>

She cut herself off.

<Don’t even go there,> she ordered herself. <Remember all those rules I learned as a spy? They will keep me alive. If I ever actually got involved with someone it could jeopardize everything if he ever found out who I really am and what I do. That’s nuts! Spies and bounty hunters work alone if they don’t want to get stabbed in the back.>

Well that young Preventor seemed decent enough. He was attractive too… incredibly attractive, with that tall lean frame and those muscled arms and-

She cut herself off again. That was even more than stupid. She couldn’t get involved with him! For one thing he worked for the Preventors, or another thing, he was entirely too observant for her comfort. From all she’d heard, Lady Une was not in the business of hiring fools. Her employee, especially if he was one of the Elites, might just be intelligent enough to add two and two together and get four. No, the sooner she was rid of him, the better. Tonight would be the last dinner she shared with him; after that they would go their separate ways and never see each other again. She was well rid of him. Then all of those odd feelings she got when he was nearby, or hell even when she was merely thinking about him, would go away. Out of sight, out of mind. Right?

* * *

Trowa rubbed eyes that had grown tired from staring at the tiny screen of his palmtop for so long. He hadn’t been able to find out anything about the bounty hunter Shadowblade aside of how much money he’d made in the course of his career. Kaneda had been relatively easy to track now that he had a better idea of what he was looking for. But as for his mysterious Missy, well it looked like she was going to remain a complete enigma.

He just couldn’t shake that oddly haunting feeling of familiarity he got every time he looked at her. If he were to be perfectly honest with himself, familiarity wasn’t the only feeling he got when he looked at her… He found her more than a little attractive, but getting intimately involved with her was out of the question. He knew nothing about her, aside of the fact that she worked for a bounty hunter. She could be an enemy… he didn’t know where she went or what she did when she went out all day on specious “errands.” Besides, she was probably already involved with that bounty hunter she worked for. He still had no idea why he was so hung up on that fact.

<Mind off the female,> he ordered himself.

It was no wonder he spent so much time mulling over the inconsequential; with absolutely no activity for the whole day, Trowa was going stir crazy. The poison had to be out of his system by now; he’d always been a fast healer. He had to at least get a little movement in his limbs, they were quite stiff from what was for him a long period of inactivity. That decided, he rolled to his feet and began stretching. As he ran through the routine of simple limbering and warm-up exercises the last effects of the poison seemed to recede from his mind and body, his reflexes kicked back in and his head felt like it was finally clear for the first time in two days.

Trowa had found that he enjoyed physical activity, he liked the feeling of his limbs moving perfectly under his command, liked the satisfaction he got as each of his sets were performed perfectly… hell, he even liked to be admired a bit; deep down he felt a certain amount of smug self-pride in the glances and sometimes outright stares sent his way when he trained or worked on his routines. Trixie, the trick pony rider, always found a way to be somewhere nearby when he was running through his warm up gymnastics and she was usually joined by two or more of the female crowd by the time he was halfway through. The tiny apartment he found himself in was way to small to do gymnastics, so Trowa had to content himself with stretches and some sustained handstands.

He was so involved in his routine that he only vaguely registered the fact that the woman sharing his temporary abode had returned and it hadn’t even occurred to him that finding him standing on one hand on top of the small coffee table while juggling three balls with his free hand while he was upside down might startle his caregiver in the least. In the place he called home, it wasn’t so unusual.

“Wow,” she said, sounding impressed. “You really do work for the circus.”

Trowa looked over at her to find her eyes shyly averted and her face flushed. He was puzzled for a second; then he remembered that he’d discarded his shirt at the beginning of his impromptu work out. So she was embarrassed by that huh? That didn’t fit the image he had of a bounty hunters mistress, perhaps they were no more than partners after all. “He’s my other half,” was a curious answer to the question of how the two of them were involved. That could mean anything from ‘they had a serious relationship/possible marriage’ to ‘they were merely tight working partners.’ And why was he thinking about that again?

“Yes,” he replied as he casually tossed all three balls up into the air then rolled off the edge of the coffee table to his feet and caught the balls without even looking.

“You certainly look and sound like your health has improved greatly,” Missy said as she pulled out another bag of take-out, deli this time.

“The last of Kaneda’s poison appears to have left my system,” he said quietly, toweling his face off then donning his shirt so the young woman could stop examining the tabletop with such fascination.

“You’re a very fast healer then,” she said as she automatically served them both. The economy of movement she had as she set their dinners up and the way she made even the most simple meal at least attempt to appear attractive told him that she served in the capacity of hostess or something along those lines regularly. That would fit in with the assumption that she was also a professional mistress, but there were too many other things that did not fit that particular scenario.

Trowa silently nodded his thanks as she passed him his plate.

“Good,” she said promptly as she quickly made her own meal. “Then you’ll be recovered enough to go and have a little chat with Kaneda tomorrow. Shadowblade caught him today. He said the sooner you get through with your questions, the sooner we can get our money. The streets between here and where he’s being kept are too dangerous for even you and I to wander at night, so he wants me to bring you to see the man early tomorrow.”

“That was certainly fast,” Trowa said softly.

“You don’t get to be known as one of the best in this business only running on luck,” said Midii. “There’s skill involved too. Shadowblade is good at what he does.”

Trowa felt another jolt of familiarity slam through him. He knew her! He’d seen her somewhere before. There was something about her voice: something in that tone that, while on the surface was casual and innocuous enough, carried deep ripples of underlying emotions; entire lifetimes of words left unsaid, unspoken anguish, unwept tears. She was hiding something from him, something big and something possibly dangerous. It was this that gave Trowa further incentive to speak with her instead of falling into silence as he usually did.

“And how long will Shadowblade continue doing what he does?” he questioned around their meal.

“I don’t know for certain,” she said. Again Trowa felt that there was more to that simple sentence than she was letting on.

“Well what happens to you when he decides he’s had enough of the fighting life? Or when he runs out of luck?”

Missy laughed at something only she knew about and said

“If you’re concerned over what happens when Shadowblade and I go our separate ways then you needn’t be. This arrangement will only last as long as it’s necessary. And even if something unfortunate were to happen to Shadowblade or me, everything would be taken care of. People like me and Shadowblade really aren’t worth anything alive.”

The vague wisp of memory or dream almost solidified right there. Trowa knew he’d heard that somewhere before. He almost had it figured out, where he knew the woman from, but the harder he tried to will it to the fore of his mind the more it slipped away. It was frustrating. He almost wanted to just get it out and ask the girl if she recognized him from anywhere. One look at her neatly and efficiently clearing her plate squashed that notion; she’d probably take it wrong. He didn’t want to set her on her guard or he’d never get to the bottom of things.

“Besides,” she continued, oblivious to his inner struggle. “I always land on my feet.”

“We have something in common then,” he said making an obvious reference to his gymnastic skills. Missy rolled her eyes playfully and smiled. She had a lovely smile, the kind that lit her face from within and made her pretty blue eyes sparkle.

“I meant that figuratively,” she clarified. Trowa looked amused. She turned the tables on him.

“So you’re a Preventor Elite and you’re how old?”

“About twenty-one at anyone’s guess,” he replied, he decided to toss her some information about himself in the hopes that candor would bring forth candor. There was something about her that made him want to trust her and made him want her trust in return. “I don’t actually know my real age or birthdate, just an approximate reckoning based on the growth of my bones when they found me.”

“I see. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pried,” said Missy apologetically.

“No, it’s a perfectly harmless question,” he said reassuringly. “Most who meet me do think I look too young to hold and elite position on a fighting force.”

“I know how that feels. No one ever expects me to be as accomplished as I am at my age either. I suppose that makes us both prodigies.” Missy smiled again, and he found that he really liked it when she did. It was odd that he should be so immediately taken with her, everything about her fascinated him. Perhaps it was her air of mystery, or even the frustrating sense of familiarity he felt whenever he looked at her; but Trowa just couldn’t stop himself from thinking about her, from covertly studying her face whenever she wasn’t paying attention. She’d been quite distracted last night, so he was almost certain that he had every curve of her face committed to memory, and then she’d smiled at him today and the whole view changed.

“So how does your family feel about your… prodigious-ness?” Trowa ventured.

“Father worries, of course, but there really aren’t any other options right now,” Missy said. “How about yours?”

“Catherine’s dislike of my being called off to fight in every major dust-up is legendary among my comrades,” Trowa said with an amused look. “They tend to give me a hard time about how protective she is, but her heart is always in the right place.”

“If one of my younger brothers ever even thought about joining the Preventors and going out to risk their lives fighting, you can bet that I’d change their minds for them real quick.”

Trowa almost chuckled. Missy, it seemed, was more inclined to sympathize with Catherine. From her statement it sounded like she took her role as the elder sister seriously.

“The way you say that makes you sound very formidable,” Trowa said. He was teasing her in his own deadpan way.

“When it comes to my family I am very formidable,” Missy replied lightly.

<Interesting,> he thought. Even though her tone was light, Trowa caught an undertone of seriousness in her voice. If he supposed that she and Shadowblade were truly no more than partners then he had a pretty good idea of where her cut of the take went to. And even if she was Shadowblade’s mistress it was still likely that she was using her position to protect her family in some way. But that would beg the question ‘what was she protecting them from?’ Was it Shadowblade himself, or some other outside party? What if she was mistress to the bounty hunter out of fear for her family?

Trowa gave a small shake o his head to clear it. All of those scenarios and presumptions based on little information would get him no where. Still, Trowa could not help wondering just what kind of work she did for Shadowblade that would have her out running errands all day and working away on he palmtop late into the night. Something just didn’t add up.

<And when did it become my business anyway?> he reminded himself. <I’m only here in Hanjok to accomplish the mission of getting information out of Kaneda. I get what I came for tomorrow, and we go our separate ways. There’s no sense in trying to unravel her mystery since I’m never going to see her again.> Trowa shoved the vague sense of disappointment he felt at that reminder far back into the corner of his mind. He shouldn’t be bothered by the thought of never again seeing a stranger he had only known for two days. But he was, and he didn’t know why.

* * *

Dinner had gone well. Midii found to her surprise that her guest was actually good company, he wasn’t overly invasive which saved her from a lot of inventive truth-shading and he was quite attractive. He was possessed of an animal magnetism that drew her to him almost against her will, maybe it was his quiet, maybe it was his easy grace and incredible physique, it could even be the way she sometimes felt that she’d met him before…

Well whatever it was it made Midii reluctant to part with him so quickly. Instead of retiring to her separate chamber immediately after she had finished her meal Midii had felt compelled by his innate allure to stay there with him. After all, she’d reasoned to herself, he had been alone all day… She could keep him company for a while. It turned out that neither of them were terribly adept at conversational skills. Midii spent most of her time alone, when she wasn’t with her family, she had no friends to speak of and her short childhood was hardly whay anyone could call normal. Ordinary things like holding pleasantries and entertaining a guest were things she’d never had the leisure time to pick up on. Still, they’d both been making a valiant effort at small talk it seemed to go better than she’d been expecting. The long silences weren’t really even uncomfortable. Midii managed to evade his infrequent attempts to find anything out about Shadowblade though Mister Barton had been surprised when she told him that he wouldn’t be meeting her “partner” tomorrow. Since there was no possible way she could be in two places at once Midii just told the Preventor that Shadowblade never met with his clients, preferring instead to let her do all of the dealing.

“Isn’t that a little dangerous?” he’d questioned. “If you work for a bounty hunter, the clients you deal with are not all going to be savory characters. What about your safety, or does he simply not care?”

“Shadowblade protects me and mine in his own way,” she’d replied. “As for the danger, it comes with the territory and I knew that when I started this business. I can take care of myself Mister Barton; but it is sweet of you to be concerned.”

He’d let that one slide into silence again, as he’d absently juggled the three hacky-sack balls with one hand and Midii had watched. He’d turned it into an impromptu show by adding in a fork, a kitchen knife, two cups and her hairbrush. Midii had been unable to refrain from applauding when he’d finished and she’d asked

“So what’s it like working in the circus?”

“It’s rewarding,” he’d replied. “I work with my sister, and she really loves to perform so I suppose the audience picks up on her enthusiasm.”

“And what about you? Do you like to perform?”

He’d looked over at her for a minute, Midii wasn’t quite sure why, but then said

“I like to work with animals, and my family is there. The circus is the place I go home to.”

Midii had nodded and silence had fallen between them again. Their conversations had been stilted at best, but Midii hadn’t even known how much she craved human contact until she’d started sharing this small flat with her patient-for-ransom. Even sitting next to him in silence was a lot more than she usually got while she was away on her hunts. She really missed her family while she was away, her life was hard and not very forgiving… Even if she couldn’t afford to tell him anything about herself it was a tremendous relief just be able to go to a safe place and see a friendly face waiting for her. It felt good just to have someone near. Perhaps when she was done here in Hanjok she’d look into finding herself a partner…

<Nah. Bad idea,> she decided after a moments thought. All the rules of espionage still applied, spies and bounty hunters worked alone for a very good reason. She had to stay alive and continue taking care of her family, and if she wanted to stay alive and keep her secrets safe, then she had better continue working alone.

<I almost feel sorry he’s leaving so soon tomorrow,> Midii thought with an unusual twinge of what could be read as regret. He’d been the closest thing to what she might remotely come calling close to a friend that she’d had in a very, very long time.

<Faugh! I really must be getting soft around the edges. This guy’s a meal ticket, nothing more.>

That was another thing that was off about tonight… Usually she’d be counting her credits and going over her accounts in order to stretch every last penny, or going over the Lists looking for a likely target for her next hunt; but instead she was lying on her back staring up at the ceiling and thinking about her unexpected (yet not at all unattractive) guest. Midii would have given herself an irritated look in the mirror if she’d had a mirror anywhere nearby. She had other things she needed to be doing than wasting her time thinking about some stranger whom she had every intention of milking for everything he was worth and then some.

<Lessee, I settled on five hundred fifty for the ransom, then there’s the sixty thousand for Kaneda’s head, but Trowa and I still haven’t worked out a price for the information he’s getting, plus there’s the capturing fee. Kaneda was an awful damned lot of trouble to capture after all, and the stern merchant-businesswoman in me cannot accept making all of that effort for free. I’d better hit him with those two after we get to the cell but before I let him in; he’ll be more likely to agree to the higher price I name if his destination is within sight,> she thought condideringly. Haggling for a better price was so habitual it was second nature to her now. All her years as a bounty hunter had honed her money-contract-negotiating skills down to a razor edge so fine it could (and often did) split hairs. She knew every last trick in the trade, and dangling the carrot before his nose was a well known yet effective tactic.

<I think I’ll shoot for a nice round one thousand as a capture fee, and as for that information access charge I’ll practically give it to him for a mere four hundred and fifty. I can afford to be generous after all since I’m getting that nice fat bounty for Kaneda’s head.> Just the thought of all of that cash made her shiver and smile with delight in the dark. One got one’s joys where one could.

<Greedy? Oh, just a little.>

With a sudden flash of inspiration, Midii sprung up from her sleeping roll and opened her palmtop. Once the screen sprang to life she called up the file in which she kept all of the accounts and opened the folder in which she kept a running tally of her Consortium debt. Usually she had the current total memorized down to the last penny, but lately she’d just been concentrating on making her payments on time as well as the other various minutiae she had to keep track of.

Midii wasn’t able to grasp it for a moment, she stared at the screen, stunned, her mind trying to work its way though the dawning hope and confirm it for her own self. It was within her grasp. It seemed like a dream! After so many long years of laboring under the yoke of Consortium debt; to finally be free! It was within her grasp… Just one more day, just one more day. Midii felt tears of happiness sting the back of her eyes; she hadn’t cried in so long but she almost did then out of sheer joy and relief.

Tomorrow she’d take Trowa Barton to meet Kaneda and ask him his questions, she and Mister Barton would go their separate ways, after which she’d behead Kaneda (she already had the cryo-box and sword standing by) and cash in the bounty. With the ten-thousand seven-hundred ninety-six point forty-seven credits in her account already, plus the sixty-thousand Kaneda was worth, added to the money she intended to gauge from the pockets of the Preventors….

<I’ll have enough! I’ll have even more than enough! I’ll… I’ll finally be free!>

She very nearly leapt to her feet and started to dance a jig around her tiny sleeping quarters. As it was, Midii couldn’t contain a little squeak of excitement. It had been well over ten years since she’d started down the path to pay off her family’s debt and she’d been working at it for so long she almost believed that she’d never pay it off. It seemed like it had just always been there, a looming specter, like the sword of Damocles it had hung over her head for so many long years that Midii had wondered from time to time if the faint memories she had of a happy and carefree childhood in which there was no debt for her to work towards were nothing more than something she’d made up.

A life in which there was no debt, in which she was free (for the most part) to make her own decisions seemed almost too incredible to believe. Compared to the life she’d been leading up until now, covering the food and bills and medical expenses for just herself and her family would be childsplay! Hell, she could do it on the salary earned by the Preventors and still have money to spare and the Preventors wasn’t as demanding a job as being a bounty hunter could be. She could do anything now! All the dazzling possibilities she’d pushed aside under the heading “after the debt is paid off” now sparkled before her eyes. Attending a university, going shopping, dancing, staying at home with her family, helping her brothers with their work, or even… opening a business of her own.

In a daze of real, true happiness Midii spent hours that night letting fantasy after fantasy of her life after her debt play out in her mind. For the first time in years filled with grief and pain, Midii fell asleep with a smile on her lips that night.