Wrath's Contractor 5 (Patreon)

I rolled my neck as Max gulped down water from his bottle. At this point, he was just barely starting to reach the point I’d consider entering him into Imperial Military Basic Training. Well, the version used for teens while they were still undergoing mandatory schooling. Considering where he had been at when we started, he had made considerable progress for a mere three weeks.

The sound of feminine grunting behind and below me told me that the green haired girl was making her way up the stairs with another piece of garbage. I could feel strange eddies around her in the Force, but not the kind that would indicate Force sensitivity. I looked her way through the corner of my vision as she finished climbing the stairs and made her way to the vehicle that had a partial load of refuse already in the back.

Max, meanwhile, was doing his best not to stare at the girl. Interesting. I’d question him about it later. In the meantime, I stood from where I’d been leaning against the railing, the movement getting his attention.

“Another two laps, then we’ll move onto strength training,” I told him. He opened his mouth, probably to make a smart remark, but with a smirk on my face, I made use of a subtle bit of telekinesis to get him going.

Doing so wasn’t as fun or satisfying as pinching his ass with my actual hand, but his reaction was just as amusing. As was the view of said ass as he started jogging. I turned back towards the girl who was taking a drink of her own while catching her breath.

“Community service?” I asked her, making her give a start.

“Oh, ah,” she stammered, before pausing as she looked at me. Her eyes ran up my legs, over my abs on display in my workout clothes, along my bare arms, up to my face. After a brief moment, her eyes widened and words began to flow from her in a rush, “Oh my god, you’re Anzû! It’s so hard to find anything about your work online! Where’s my notebook, wait, I should ask first, can I have an autograph?”

I chuckled as the previously tired girl gained a surge of energy, holding a notebook and pen in a deathgrip while staring hopefully up at me. From the memories provided of the Company created backstory, Anzû didn’t do autographs, and not just because of the Underground Hero thing. Still, she was cute, and with how the Force moved about her, I wanted to keep a close eye on her.

In the interest of ensuring that future carnal relation if nothing else, I let out a sigh and held out a hand. Almost before my hand had stopped moving, the notebook was placed in it, open to a blank page. Taking the notebook in hand, I quickly signed an autograph, doing my best to ignore the surrealness of having physical paper in my hand, before handing it back.

“If I see or hear that appearing on the secondary market, I know where your community service is,” I half teased, half warned her.

“What? Oh! No, I-I wouldn’t, that is,” she stammered nervously, her face turning nearly as red as I was. Considering the fact that the majority of my genetics were nonhuman, that was quite an impressive shade on her.

“Midoriya-shonen!” a man’s voice called out from the beach, making the girl jump.

“Ah, right, I need to-” she began, and I waved her off. She ran back down, and soon after, a skinny, almost emaciated man with blonde hair came up.

I had to hold back my reaction as I took him in, both with my eyes and through the Force. The sheer amount of pain that he was feeling, I’d had hardened soldiers, mandalorians, even Jedi crack and break under less pain. Despite that, there was a look in his eyes, showing a will of mandalorian iron within that feeble and battered husk of a body.

After everything I’d seen, both since arriving here and from the memories I had of war, I had believed that the population of this world would be good for little more than stress relief and the odd challenge. I certainly hadn’t expected to find a random man I would feel a begrudging respect for immediately upon meeting him.

“Your charge or your pupil?” I asked as the man finished examining me. There was a hardwon gleam of experience in his eyes, and I knew that despite anything he may project to the world, this man was neither foolish nor stupid.

“Pupil,” he answered, giving me a nod. “I see potential in her, and couldn’t resist the desire to see it grow.”

I gave a chuckle and a nod, “I know the feeling.”

Not with Max, not yet anyway. But I had felt it with Jaesa, from that first holotransmission. Something about her, both how she carried herself and her presence in the Force… I had to see where she went.

“If I may ask,” he began, pulling me from my thoughts. “What brings you here?”

“Training a pupil of my own, I sent him on ahead for some more laps,” I answered with a shrug.

“Oh? Apprenticeship or in preparation for a particular school?” he asked, seeming interested.

I gave an amused chuff, “He has his eyes on UA, but at the moment is nowhere near ready.”

“Really? Perhaps our pupils will be classmates,” he said with a smile and chuckle. “If you’d like, I do have a degree in Nutritional Health, I could put together a supplemental plan for your own training.”

“You would do that for me?” I asked, surprised.

“It would be my pleasure,” he replied with a smile.

“And I'd appreciate it, thank you,” I said, bowing my head respectfully to him.

[hr][/hr]

The man, Yagi, spent a little bit of time with Max when he finished his run, and later that day I was making my way to a particular bar a few provinces over. The points from Sacrolash and Alythess had cleared, and after discussing it with Max, the two were promptly sold to the Company. Sure, they had raw power, but we didn’t need that in our situation. The extra skills they had also fell under the list of things that we were in no need of.

End result saw us with a total of forty one Company Credits. The majority were spent on Talents, specifically Soul, Martial, and Talent Sharing for the latter. Ten more points were spent making sure that any of us could open a portal to the apartment. I shook my head, clearing my thoughts as I got off the tram. It wasn’t important right now. I had a meeting to get to.

This was the first time I’d arrived in person, but the Company was very thorough in creating their Agents’ backgrounds. Once every month or so, there was a meeting of various Underground Heroes to share information, contacts, potential cases, networking, and the like. Anzû hadn’t been to one, even if invitations had been sent.

But, I wouldn’t pass up the chance to get information on or lay the groundwork on potential captures. So long as I didn’t have to deal with Anzû’s creepiest fan.

“Anzû! I’m surprised to see you here!” a voice called as I entered the bar. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Apparently the Force decided to have some fun at my expense.

Opening my eyes, I pinned the speaker with a stare and cooly said, “Deadlock.”

The annoyance wrapped an arm around my shoulder and dragged me inside. As irritating and aggravating as he was, he was on the mental list of individuals to capture. While his quirk was potent and would make him a terrifying assassin, it was more his blade skills that I was interested in. That, and the fact that he was a teacher at UA.

“So what brings the most bad tempered hero to visit us, after refusing for years?” he asked, guiding me to a table. I glanced around before I answered. There were several people looking in my direction curiously, but none of them were actively listening.

“Picked up a pair of pupils,” I said quietly. “Came here to see if I’d be able to poach some extra instructors for them.”

Despite my expectation, Deadlock straightened up, his normally lighthearted eyes firming. Huh, so he did know how to be serious. Without missing a beat he asked, “How many, what are their ages, current skill levels, and Quirks?”

“Two, fourteen and sixteen, half cooked noodle and rank amateur respectively, the younger has a mind reading Quirk while the older has a blood based shapeshifting one,” I answered.

He nodded, pulling out a small notepad and jotting down some notes, “Target goals for them?”

“The boy wants to go to UA,” I told him, seeing Deadlock’s face twitch into an aborted smirk. “The girl I’m planning on taking on as an apprentice.”

He nodded, jotting down some notes, before tearing a page off and handing it to me, “I’m too busy for the next few months to help out personally, but I know a few people who can get them started on weapon training. Real training, not the kind of garbage stuff you see in most dojos.”

I took the list, skimming through it. Most I hadn’t heard of, only one standing out. Nodding, I put the list into a pocket before turning to look back at Deadlock, “Anything you’ve heard in my neck of the woods I should know about?”

“Some small-time thieves went missing. There are also some rumors among my contacts about some weird shit going down. More so than usual, I mean,” he said, writing down some more things on his notepad. “A few odd deaths, no apparent cause of death that the coroners can determine. Some kidnappings. The weirdest ones are some break ins and thefts.”

“What's unusual about the break ins specifically?” I asked him, taking a bottle from the platter of them a waitress was carrying as she walked by.

“Well for starters the places being broken into were morgues,” he said, tearing off the second piece of paper and handing it to me. “Adding to it, the only thing taken were the bodies. Most of them had some kind of heteromorphic Quirk.”

Again, I read through the information he provided, pursing my lips as I did so. Off the top of my head, if this were in the Empire, I could think of half a dozen potential culprits for the morgue thefts. Even if I ignored the Failed Air Lock Incident of 8 ATC (I was pretty sure there were still some bloodstains on the streets when I arrived at Kaas City after dealing with the Black Talon).

None of which helped me here, given the sheer insanity and unpredictability of powers available to even the most basic of this world’s rabble. Taking a deep breath, I figured that I’d speak to Max about it, see if he knew anything about this.

“Thanks for the tips, Deadlock,” I told him, finishing the bottle and standing up.

“No problem,” he said with his normal smirk. “Any chance I can get a thank you kiss?”

I was about to brush him off, before stopping. Deadlock was going to be one of Max’s teachers at UA, it would be useful to have him bound beforehand. Plus there were the credits that his capture would provide, assuming that he was worth anything to the Company. To top it all off, Max wasn’t at the point where he was ready to submit yet, and a Lady of the Sith has needs.

“I think I can do a bit more than that,” I told him, putting a bit of a low, growling purr into my words.

His eyes widened, a light red flush spread across his face, and he swallowed nervously, before he affixed a nervous smile, “R-really? What did you have in mind?”

I gave him a predatory grin, the same kind that I’d given Vette when I was feeling particularly amorous, before leaning down slightly to whisper in his ear, “Why don’t you follow me to a… hotel, and I can show you?”

I’d never seen anyone get their money out and onto a table that fast in my life, even when it was that time I’d seen Darth Nox use the Force to drag his apprentice out of the Nexus Room Cantina.