Trowa looked at the thick steel-reinforced door in the thick bare cement wall of the dingy nondescript building that lay deep in the center of the bad side of town

Trowa looked at the thick steel-reinforced door in the thick bare cement wall of the dingy nondescript building that lay deep in the center of the bad side of town. There was a series of locks going up and down the door and the seven thick steel door hinges opposite the lock were welded directly to the door and cemented into the wall on the other half. It was a prison cell no one was supposed to get out of.

<It’s depressing to think that this place is the last place the Kaneda is ever going to see,> Trowa thought absently. The missie had woken him up rather early that morning and hurried him out of the flat to go finish up the rest of his mission. There had been something a little different about her this morning, almost as if she’d had a renewed sense of purpose. Her quick, decisive strides would have left him hurrying along in her wake if he hadn’t had long legs. He recalled the way the calf-length charcoal-black sleeveless long-coat that she wore over a fashionably sleek dark grey coverall that accentuated her curvy figure fluttered behind her in the early morning wind. The heels of her boots had made very soft muffled sounds as she’d moved. Her hair was pinned up onto her head in an efficient twist, even her bangs were clipped back this morning and she looked very business-like. This must be the girl Missy was the entire rest of the time.

She stopped without opening the door and Trowa looked down at her impatiently. She’d hurried him here almost at the crack of dawn barely stopping for food; why was she stopping now?

“I want one thousand five hundred as a capturing fee and seven hundred as the charge for access to Kaneda,” she said spinning on her heel to face him abruptly.

<Oh, she’s not starting this mercenary money haggling business with me again is she?> Trowa thought in dismay and irritation. Just when he thought she’d been starting to warm up to him a little she snaps back into heartless miser mode. Maybe she really did have her heart in her wallet after all.

“You want two thousand two hundred credits just to let me see him?” Trowa said in disbelief.

“No, I want seven hundred credits just to let you see him,” Missie clarified. “The other one thousand five hundred is for the immense bother and difficulty of capturing him and holding him here for you. Me and my partner went to a great deal of trouble, Kaneda is no easy man to apprehend.”

“I assume this includes my ransom in it,” Trowa said indignantly.

“Of course not,” she said, her tone matching his. “This fee is in addition to your ransom… This is where you make your counter-offer.”

“Oh, I see, you’re haggling,” Trowa said, a little relived that she didn’t really intend to make the Preventors pay that much. He was making inroads on their funds as it was. The look Missy gave him plainly said she thought that the poison must still be affecting his wits.

“Very well then,” he said. “Six hundred for the capture and two hundred for the fee.” That sounded reasonable enough.

“Don’t make me laugh,” Missy said scornfully. “It’s worth twice that. I was just going easy on you because you’re a sick man.”

“You must think I’m very sick if you think I’ll fall for that old tactic,” Trowa said firmly. Deep down he was really starting to enjoy this. Missy seemed to become more alive, her entire form sharpened with challenge (or was that avarice?) and her gaze switched to the eagle-sharp stare of a predator focused on its prey. It would have been disconcerting to see a girl he’d been spending the last two peaceful evenings with pleasantly suddenly turn off her nicer self and become all business if Trowa were not well familiar with masks. The question was, which was the mask and which the real girl? Or were they both masks?

“One thousand two hundred fifty for the capture and six hundred forty five for the fee,” Missy countered. “This includes danger pay and holding expenses.”

“Holding expenses?” trowa said incredulously, raising an eyebrow. “In an abandoned and condemned jail building? Who are you going to pay exactly?”

“There are local, shall we call them businessmen, who have prior claim on this particular piece of turf,” Missy said. “One must go through channels.”

“Protection racket,” he stated bluntly.

“Something like that,” Missy said, not at all bothered. Her offhanded callousness and careless demeanor were really beginning to irk him.

“Fine, One thousand one hundred for the capture and five hundred for the fee, that more than enough,” he said briskly, just wanting to get this over with. Missy looked surprised, for the first time all morning and nodded, extending her hand in the age old method for sealing a deal. Trowa was surprised to note how very firm her handshake was and in that brief contact as the skin of her palm met the skin of his… he felt calluses.

It was his turn to feel surprised, but as usual not a flicker of emotion played across his perfect poker face. Before he could begin to consider what the calluses on her hands might mean Missy began unlocking the door. The only light in the room was the long, wide strip that grew as she opened the door. Hanging there in the center of the room by his wrists was Kaneda. He glared over at them and said

“Can’t a fellow get any uninterrupted sleep around here?”

Trowa could tell he was using it as bravado, as a way to get them both off guard.

Missy stepped over and injected him in the neck with a syringe, then backed quickly away.

“Truth serum,” she stated bluntly. “He hasn’t eaten or drank for twelve hours so it’ll spread quickly. I’m not up to making any other kind of interrogation today. This will make things go more speedily.”

Trowa nodded his thanks, the Preventors were not technically supposed to question anyone while they were under the influence of drugs or without an attorney but Trowa felt no such problem in this case Missy had been the one who injected him and Shadowblade would be killing him later. He began with the questions. As predicted Kaneda had at first refused to answer, then, as the serum started to take effect, he’d started making replies but they’d been lies mixed with truth. Unfortunately for Kaneda, Trowa already had a pretty good idea of what was true and what was false. At the end of an hour Kaneda had been singing like a cage full of canaries and Trowa noted that his operations were more extensive than Une or the Preventors had at first predicted. They got everything they wanted and then some; this was worth the money.

Missy stood throughout the entirety of Kaneda’s interrogation without a flicker of expression on her face. Trowa hadn’t even had to threaten to touch him; the stuff she’d injected him with had been powerful indeed. As Trowa turned to walk out of the cell he heard the clink of chains. He was shoved aside by the little missie as Kaneda threw something that flashed in the sharp light offered by the doorway.

“Gotcha!” Kaneda shouted triumphantly as he sprang for the door. Trowa hadn’t felt a thing. So that meant…

Missy pulled a tiny thin blade that could be hidden in the hair from her breast. She gasped and froze, Trowa was too tangled in her limbs to do more than watch as Kaneda made for the door.

“No!” Missy suddenly screamed, moving to stop her prisoner from escaping. She disentagled herself quickly, shoved off from his chest, knocking him bodily into the ground, and used the momentum of her shove to propel her into a spring. From out of nowhere a long blade flashed into her hand as she charged at the drugged and running Kaneda. It was all over in a mere few seconds, there was a flash of light reflecting off metal, then the splatter of blood hitting the opposite wall. Kaneda’s body toppled to the floor, and so did the little missie’s.

“Poison…” She gasped. “Gotta…” Trowa watched in shock as she resolutely snatched Kaneda’s disembodied head by the hair and crawled on her hands and knees, obviously just barely hanging into consciousness as the deadly venom worked into her system with fatal surety. There was a cryogenic container such as one used to transport organs over in one corner. Missy jabbed her finger at the button to open it, there was a rolling fog of liquid nitrogen gas the hatch released. With the last of her strength, Missy stuffed the head into the cryo-box and pressed the button to seal it. She hovered over the box, her eyes closed and she held it to her chest in a death-grip.

With shaking hands, she drew a small syringe from her sleeve.

“Anti-venom…” she rasped out as the vial fell from her hands with an echoing tink-tink-tink. She slumped forward.

“This takes greed to a whole new level,” Trowa muttered as he hurried to her side, snatched up the vial and plunged it into her flesh.

<She takes a poison hit that she knows will kill her in under a minute,> Trowa thought furiously as he watched intently for any sign that the anti-venom was taking effect and that she was going to make it. <Then she chases down and kills Kaneda and then she boxes up his head and only then does she try to cure herself. Crazy greedy little pirate.>

Trowa tugged on the cryo-container in her arms… It wasn’t going anywhere. Apparently Missy took her greed very seriously. Even near death wasn’t parting her from her bounty. He tugged again, if it wasn’t so tragic, it would be funny. There was no way she was letting go of that box; he’d probably have to snap her arms off at the shoulders to get it away from her.

<I guess that means she’s going to live,> Trowa thought with just a small, grudging smidgeon of respect. It was a running joke among mercenaries that the only way one could truly be certain they were dead was if they’d stopped collecting their pay. The little missie was mercenary to the core.

<And that’s one further mystery cleared up,> Trowa thought in mild inner triumph as he calmly gathered her and her cryo container up in his arms and walked out of the jail cell, leaving the blood and body to cool on the floor.

They reached the flat quickly, Trowa laid his unconscious burden down on the pallet in her room. Their roles now appeared to be reversed. She had dragged him here and tended him when he’d been poisoned (though the fact that her tiny little form had handled his much larger and heavy body was a bit of a shocker) and now he had brought her to the little flat after she’d been poisoned.

He should just deposit her in a hospital somewhere and be done with her. But then there was the awkward question of the cryo-box and the head inside of it. How was he supposed to explain that one to the authorities?

Trowa shrugged. It was only a few more days… He’d call Une and report the information he’d gotten; then he’d just stick around here until Missy-Shadowblade got better. It wouldn’t take more than a week probably.

* * *