Mistrunner - Chapter 32 - Fitting Together (Patreon)

The bare necessities – food, shelter, medical care – should be the last things we have to worry about. Even before the Initialization, humanity had the capability to provide the basics to each and every person in the world. The only excuse for not doing so is abject greed, laziness, and a misguided belief that we should all make our way alone. It’s only gotten worse in the intervening years.

Jeremiah Braddock III

Butchering an overgrown cat isn’t so different from butchering any other animal, so there’s really no explanation for why I found it so distasteful. But meat was meat, and from everything I’d seen, Bayou La Batre was a hungry village. Erica supervised, but she was in no shape to otherwise assist, which meant that it wasn’t as clean or as easy of a job as it probably should have been. But in the end, I managed it, and using the skin as a makeshift tote, I piled as much of the meat as I could carry. Like that, we set off.

“You’re stronger than you look,” Erica said, clutching her wounded stomach. It was unnecessary; the foam bandage would hold until someone administered the solvent. But I didn’t blame her. She’d nearly been eviscerated by an animal she could barely perceive. I’d have been a bit illogical after that, too.

I shifted the bundle on my back, saying, “I’ve had to carry stuff before.”

“But you haven’t really butchered many animals, have you?” she asked. Before I could answer, she stepped in a depression, and when she caught her balance, it must’ve aggravated her wound. I reached out quickly, offering my free hand to steady her.

“You okay?” I asked, hoping that she would forget her previous statement. I didn’t want her to know just how inexperienced I was in the realm of butchering a kill. If she did, my whole adopted identity would unravel.

“No. I’m definitely not,” she replied through clenched teeth. “That thing almost got me. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

“I just did what anybody would do,” I said. “And I got lucky.”

“You got stupid is what you got,” she said, resuming her plodding walk. Injured as she was, the nimble gait she’d adopted during our trek into the forest was gone, replaced by a veritable stagger. “What possessed you to throw a boar spear? That thing weighs as much as you do, and it definitely ain’t made for chuckin’.”

“Uh…I panicked.”

“Right,” she said, cutting her eyes at me. “But you made it work, didn’t you? Lucky, as you say.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m not –”

“Look,” said Erica, pulling up short. “I know you’re not what you’re pretending to be.”

“W-what? I don’t –”

“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t. I’d rather you just refuse to respond than lie to me. You’re not a hunter. You’re a fighter, and unless I’m crazy, a damned good one, too. You’re also not a Tier-1. I don’t know how you’re masking your tier, but it’s got to either be a skill or something high tech.”

I started to respond, but she cut me off again, saying, “Which means you’re not some refugee from an overrun village to the north. You’re a spy. Or an assassin. I don’t know who sent you. I don’t know why. And frankly, I don’t care. You saved my life, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, here. But I’m going to ask you one question, Mira. One question, and you’d best not lie to me. Okay?”

“I’ll answer as best I can,” I said. As she’d spoken, I’d focused on my Arsenal Implant. With a thought, I could have Ferdinand II out and ready. She would be dead in a second, if she said the wrong thing. I could probably even blame the bobcat, if it came down to it. It would be grisly work, setting the proper scene, but I felt confident that I could do it. Even if I didn’t want to.

“Are you here to kill someone?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No,” was my answer. And it was the truth, too. If I could avoid it, nobody had to die. That wasn’t my mission, after all.

Erica looked at me as if she wanted to ask more, but, after a couple of seconds, let out a sigh. Soon, that sigh turned into a grimace, and she said, “Okay. I’ll choose to believe you.”

As I shifted the bundle on my back, I wondered if the huntress realized that, right then, I was debating on whether or not I should kill her. It would have been the easiest way to preserve my cover; who knew what she would do when we got back to Bayou La Batre? Would she tell Savanna? Maybe. And if she did, a whole lot more people would have to die as I made my escape.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, fishing for a reason not to end the threat, then and there, while I could guarantee I would get away with it.

My tone must have betrayed my frayed nerves because she stopped in her tracks. I noticed a tremble in her shoulders. A gleam of sweat on the back of her neck. Maybe it could be attributed to her wound, but I had a feeling that she’d come to realize precisely how much danger she was in. She had just escaped death, but now, it had returned to hover over her.

“Nothing,” Erica said, her voice barely a whisper. “Nothing at all.”

And I believed her. It probably wasn’t the smart choice. I knew that. My uncle likely would have killed her straight away. But I didn’t want to be like him. Not completely. He was jaded and cynical, and all he ever saw were the worst parts of humanity. I chose to see something better. People were capable of good; I was sure of it. I decided to trust that instinct.

Of course, if it all went wrong – and I knew how likely that was – I felt confident in dealing with it. Mercy, my uncle once told me, is the prerogative of the strong.

“Okay,” I said. “Good enough for me.”

For a moment, I thought she was going to continue the conversation, but then, without another word, she resumed her stumbling gait through the woods. I followed close on her heels. Before my Awakening – or my training – I would have struggled with the giant bundle of meat on my back. It must have weighed two- or three-hundred pounds. But with my enhanced constitution, the burden was little more than an annoyance. Still, by the time we reached the gates of Bayou La Batre, I was tired and more than fed up with carrying the thing.

For one thing, it smelled. For another, I hadn’t had a proper night’s rest in a few days. It wasn’t enough to incapacitate me, but it certainly decreased my tolerance for annoyance. Thankfully, when we reached the village, the guards – both of which were men with crude cybernetic prosthetics and ancient rifles – rushed out to help us. Erica nearly collapsed into the first one’s arms, and the second demanded to know what had happened.

“Attacked by a big cat,” I said, unshouldering my bundle and tossing it on the ground at the man’s feet. “We killed it, but not before it got a good swipe in on Erica.”

“How?” he asked, the question more of a demand than a query.

“Together,” I said. “Now, where can I take this?”

I’d intended to have Erica show me what to do with the bobcat meat, but she was already being half-carried, half-dragged into the village. That left me to deal with the guards alone.

“Don’t know you,” the man said, looking me up and down. “Where’d you come from?”

I sighed. “Up north,” I said. “I have a [Hunting]skill, so Savanna sent me out with Erica. We were trying to get a boar, but we were attacked by the bobcat. She was injured. I wasn’t. Not really anything else to say.”

I knew my tone was a little too aggressive, but I was exhausted and annoyed. He was lucky I didn’t just whip out Ferdinand II and show him what was what. Or maybe that was just my irritation talking.

“I don’t think –”

“Momma don’t pay you to think, Tim,” came another voice. I looked up to see a man approaching from the village. With wild, blonde hair that seemed incapable of picking a direction it wanted to grow, a scraggly beard, and a wiry frame, he definitely cut an interesting figure. He wore tank top and striped shorts, which showed off his cybernetic leg.

“What’s it to you, Hadley?” the guard spat.  “I’m a guard doin’ guardin’ shit. That’s what your momma pays me to do.”

Hadley sidled up to Tim and got into the big man’s face. Somehow, even though he was shorter than the guard, he seemed to look down on him. “What’s that, chief? I thought I heard a bit of a challenge in your tone, there. Maybe we need to head on over to the pits and settle this, huh? It’d be like old times.”

“Uh…”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I muttered, shouldering the makeshift bundle of cat meat. “You boys are ridiculous. Can somebody please just tell me where to take this? I’m tired and hungry, and I want to make sure Erica’s okay.”

Hadley didn’t immediately back off. Instead, he just stared at the guard for a long few seconds. Then, suddenly, he chuckled, patted the man on the chest, and said, “As you were, soldier! As you were!”

“What the…”

“Follow me, fair maiden!” Hadley announced, thrusting his finger into the sky. “I shan’t lead you astray!”

“Really?” I asked, just as dumbfounded as the guard.

“Too much?” Hadley asked, looking crestfallen.

“Too much,” I said.

“Well, I stand by it,” he said. “Now, if you will?”

He thrust out his arm, clearly intending for me to take it. I rolled my eyes, then strode past him. A second later, the telltale sound of his cybernetic clomping on the muddy street announced that he was scurrying to catch up. When he did, he was panting dramatically. “Just…up…here, m’lady!” he said, pointing to a building about thirty yards ahead. I suppressed my cringe. “That’s the butcher. Funny story about him. He hates me. For some reason, he got it in his head that…hey, wait up!”

I didn’t. Instead, I pushed through the free-swinging double doors and found myself in a butcher’s shop. There wasn’t much there – just a couple of plucked chickens and a dressed pig carcass hanging from the ceiling, but the smell of offal and blood hung in the air, announcing that I’d found the right place. A huge man with a sizable gut stood over a table near the back of the room, a bloody cleaver in hand. I was reminded of my first real battle, when I’d helped my uncle kill the giant with the arm cannon. He, too, had carried a cleaver, and wasn’t all that much bigger than the man before me.

Without looking up, he bellowed, “Ain’t got no meat. Rhonda’s got some ‘shrooms, but that’s all.”

“I have a delivery,” I said, heaving the heavy bundle off my back and dropping it on the floor. Like the rest of the room, it was stained with blood. With swarms of flies dancing and darting through the air, I had to question whether the butcher’s operation was sanitary. Probably not. A good thing that I didn’t plan on eating anything he’d touched. With Erica out of it – and with her knowing at least part of my secret – I’d taken a chance and stored the rabbits in my Arsenal Implant for safekeeping. I didn’t have a complete picture of the food situation in Bayou La Batre, but I didn’t think it out of the question that someone would try to take my rabbits “for the greater good,” so I’d chosen to preempt that.

At my announcement, the big man looked up, and I saw that my initial impression of the man had been spot on. He wasn’t identical to the person I’d helped kill, but the resemblance was still there. Of course, the butcher was quite a bit older, had both arms, and didn’t look quite as dumb. Still, though, given what I knew about the Bayou Boys operations, it wasn’t difficult to make the connection that the two were in some way related. The big man wore a pair of shorts, some flip-flops, and a leather apron, revealing a massive body completely covered in tattoos, some of which depicted lewd scenes. It was all I could do not to stare.

At that moment, Hadley pushed through the doors, saying, “I told you to wait up!”

“What the hell are you doin’ in here, runt?” growled the butcher, looking past me.

Runt? Hadley was definitely kind of stringy, but he wasn’t small. Well – compared to the butcher, he was, but that could be said of just about anybody. By comparison, I was child-sized next to either one of them.

“I told you not to call me that, old man!” screamed Hadley. I turned my head just enough to see that he’d gone red in the face.

“Watch how you talk at me, boy,” growled the butcher, gesturing toward Hadley with the blade. “Or you’ll have two robot legs instead of just one. Got me?”

Hadley went pale. “I…I don’t…momma said you wouldn’t…”

“Your momma ain’t here to protect you,” the huge man spat. “Now, get the hell outta my shop. Me and this little girl’s got business.”

For a long second, the wiry, wild-haired man looked as if he was going to argue, but it only took one glance at that blood-covered cleaver for him to reconsider. So, without another word, he turned on his cybernetic heel and stormed out of the building, banging the doors on his way out.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” the butcher said, drawing my attention back in his direction. He wore an apologetic smile. “That boy’s always been a disappointment. Now, is that bobcat I smell? Good eatin’, that.”

At first, I was impressed that he could tell what kind of meat I’d brought just from the smell, and from across the room no less, but then I realized that it was bundled in a bobcat pelt. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out, I suppose.

“Yeah. Me and Erica, we killed it a coupla hours ago,” I said, adopting a more rustic manner of speaking. I’d found that people were more receptive and accepting when a stranger sounded like them. Even so, I got the feeling he could see right through the ruse; I could only hope that my [Spycraft] skill would help me. I knew that such benefits weren’t overtly listed by my interface, but I’d begun to suspect that my skills weren’t as limited as the system said they were.

Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.

Either way, I dragged the bundle to the table, where I heaved it onto the nicked surface. Then, I opened the pelt, revealing the bloody meat. The butcher gave a broad grin, revealing a mouth studded with gold teeth.

“Very nice,” he said. “It ain’t boar, but it’ll do.”

“Uh…what do I do? Do you pay me? Or…what?” I asked. I didn’t care about money, but most people would. So, I had to play my role.

He reached into his pocket, then tossed something to me. I caught it easily. When I looked at it, I saw that it was a simple, wooden square, marked with a series of tallies. “What is this?” I asked.

“Quota chip,” he said. “With that, you can get what you need anywhere in town. Only good for a week, though, so don’t let yourself get lazy. Not like that good-for-nothing runt who followed you in here.” The butcher shook his head, saying, “Where I went wrong with that boy, I’ll never know. It’s his momma. She’s too soft on ‘im. Always has been. And now look at where it got us.”

I wanted to know more, but I had little desire to push him. So, with a nod, I said, “Alright. Thanks.”

Then, I backed out of the shop. While I did so, the man went back to his work, cutting the meat into chunks. After that, I went off in search of Erica. Not knowing where she might have been taken, I soon found my way to the town’s main building, where I hoped Savanna could shed some light on things. As I went inside, I got a few curious glances from the workers and guards, but none of them stopped me. Probably a combination of a few of them recognizing me from my previous visit and my ability to look like I belonged.

It was something I’d been taught fairly early in my education. If you can’t sneak in, the next best thing is to stroll in like you belonged there. Most people wouldn’t question it.

After a couple of tense minutes, I was at Savanna’s door. Inside, I heard a familiar voice complaining about being treated poorly. Savanna’s response was oddly comforting as she assured Hadley that she would talk to Burton, which I assumed was the butcher’s name. When I knocked on the door, and a moment later, a red-eyed Hadley answered.

“Oh. It’s you,” he said. “What do you want?”

“I…uh…I need to talk to Miss Savanna,” I said.

“Miss?” he said, quirking an eyebrow in confusion.

“Mrs.? I don’t know,” I said. “I just need to talk to her.”

“Let her in, son,” Savanna ordered, and he stepped aside. She looked much the same as she had before, though she had donned a bright orange jacket that, I swear, burned my eyeballs. I have to admit that I’d developed a definite aversion to that color, even when it wasn’t paired with blue. “What do you need, Mirabelle?” she asked when I stepped inside.

“I…well, me and Erica killed a bobcat, but she was injured,” I explained. It wasn’t news to Savanna, who’d obviously already heard about her hunter’s fate. “Well, I took the meat to the butcher, but I don’t know what to do now. I wanted to check on Erica, but I don’t know where she is.”

“Right,” Savanna said. “Hadley, dear – please show Mirabelle where she can find Erica.”

“But –”

Savanna cut him off with a simple look. Then, she said, “I don’t think I stuttered, did I? Go. And Mirabelle – thank you for everything you’ve done. I think you’re going to fit right in here.”

Recognizing that as a clear dismissal, I followed a grumbling Hadley out of the office and back into the town. The village wasn’t very big, so it didn’t take us long to find what passed for a doctor in Bayou La Batre. I was pleased to see that a familiar white cross over a red circle, marking the practitioner as having some sort of medical skill, was painted on the door.

Inside, I found Erica, who’d been tended to by a withered, old man with wire rimmed glasses. She told me that my quick actions with the miraculous foam bandage had probably saved her life, and that the doctor was flabbergasted by the lack of infection. The prognosis was good, though she’d have to remain in his care for a few days. After that, it would take at least a month before she was back to something close to her full strength.

It was a little disappointing, given the speed of my own recovery, which made me appreciate the Regeneration ability that had come with [Combat Utility]. It wasn’t as flashy as some of my other skills, but it helped in a thousand small ways. From Combat Focus to Regeneration, it filled in all the gaps to make me that much more effective.

Thankfully, Erica offered to put me up in her own home. Then, just before I left, she asked a question that made me feel like an absolute idiot. “Where’s the spear?” she asked.

“Uh…”

“You left it, didn’t you?”

“Maybe?”

“You know you’re gonna have to go back out there and get it, don’t you?” she said. “Because that thing was expensive. We can’t just leave ‘em lyin’ around.”

I groaned, but before I could answer, Hadley offered, “I can go with you! You need a big, strong man to protect you.”

Erica laughed, which made her wince in pain. The doctor, who was hovering nearby, scolded her, but she waved him away. “First of all, you’re the scrawniest one in your family,” she said. “Second, Mira would be the one protecting you, not the other way around. You might have that fancy leg, but she’s a hunter. You’d do more harm than good, Had.”

He tried to argue, but Erica wasn’t a pushover. In the end, he ended up leaving in a huff, mumbling about an ‘affront to his manhood’ or some such.

“Sorry ‘bout him,” Erica said. “He’s always been a bit of a white knight, if you know what I mean. The kind of guy that spends most of his time dreaming about rescuin’ the fair maiden. All that white knightin’ wouldn’t come without a price, right? Of course the grateful wench would sleep with him. In his head, she’d be beggin’ for it. He’s a pig. It’s only gotten worse lately, too. What with his brothers dyin’.”

“What?”

“Oh – you wouldn’t know,” the huntress said. “Sad stuff. About a year ago – maybe a bit less – the clan’s pride and joy, Lars, was killed while on patrol. Big fella, kind of stupid. He had a good heart, though. He was his momma’s favorite and the spittin’ image of his daddy.”

Clearly, Lars was the name of the giant we’d killed on the journey from Nova to Mobile. It didn’t help, having a name to put to the face. It humanized him. Not that I was terribly concerned with his fate; after all, he’d attacked us. But still, I didn’t want any extra information about the people I’d killed.

“Just about killed old Burt,” Erica went on. “He really loved that boy. But then Horace turned up missin’, too. Killed up north by some mutated bear or some such. Wasn’t even anything left of him to bury. Now, there’s only Had left. The least favorite son. You’d think they’d treat him better, bein’ as he’s the only one left, but with Burt, it just got worse. Would be sad if Had wasn’t such an ass.”

“Oh.”

It was strange, thinking that I’d just interacted with the parents of two people I’d killed. I hadn’t really pulled the final trigger on Lars, but the giant was still dead because I’d Misthacked his system and overloaded him. That had given my uncle the opening he needed to end the man’s life. But with Horace, the tiny, mini-gun-wielding man, I was solely responsible for his death. And though I didn’t regret either action, I suddenly felt a twinge of guilt at the pain I’d caused for their parents.  It wasn’t powerful, and it wouldn’t affect my decisions or anything, but it would take an absolute monster to look into the eyes of a mother whose son you killed and feel okay with how things had turned out.

After that, the conversation petered out – partially because I wasn’t the best conversationalist, but mostly because the doctor administered a med-hypo that made Erica’s eyes start to droop. Soon, I started making my way through the town. Armed with my quota chip, I was able to acquire some potatoes, carrots, and a few herbs, and when I got back to Erica’s place, I quickly found a sizable pot where I could make my rabbit stew.

I had some experience with cooking over an open flame – Jorge’s instruction in survival was expansive – but I didn’t really have the knack. So, I just cut the rabbits into chunks, added some water and the other ingredients I’d found, and set the whole thing to simmering over the Mist-powered stove in Erica’s house. The results were…edible. Barely. One day, I would have to learn how to properly cook a meal.

It was so different outside of Nova City. There, everything had been cooked in a nano-wave. More than that, though, it had been pre-packaged with clear instructions. I wasn’t a cook, but I could follow basic directions. But outside of the city, there were no nano-waves, probably due to unstable Mist. That was the reason there weren’t any hovercars, and it seemed a viable explanation for the lack of other technology I’d taken for granted.

Whatever the case, I ate my fill, and it was satisfying enough that I knew I’d go back for another shot at it in the morning. With my belly full, I finally decided to send a message to my uncle. I couldn’t risk a voice communication that might be intercepted, so I sent a text-based message through the connection we’d established before I was sent on my mission. It was a simple explanation of what I’d been doing, but it ended up being a lot longer than I expected.

I might have rambled a bit. But in my defense, I was in that strange state of mind where I was simultaneously exhausted, but still keyed up from the events of the day. When he responded about twenty minutes later, his answer was simple. He told me to infiltrate Savanna’s office, Mistwalk into her personal terminal, and download as much information as I could get.

Simple. But not easy. I had my work cut out for me. So, I found my way to Erica’s bed – I didn’t think she’d mind – and fell asleep trying to figure out how I was going to accomplish the task my uncle had set for me.