Private Friends With The Floor

[Frea Sheplin]

Mercy

"Right, well," Frea chuckled despite the pain. "If I meet any wounded little birds I'll tell them to look out."

Yeah yeah, 'Mercy' had meant Frea but that hardly mattered, she refused to see herself as a victim. This was just a temporary inconvenience on the path to whatever lay ahead. In a sense they were both cogs in the machine once. Frea had been part of the whole military-industrial complex and the perpetuation of war and all that — albeit as little more than a pawn. Mercy was… Well, probably much the same despite her confidence.

An instinctively disgusted look fell upon the way something seemed to snake beneath the skin of Mercy's extended forearm. It took a special kind of stupid to fall for what could very well be just another ploy to scare the crap out of her again. She lifted her hand but withdrew it for a moment before she sighed and latched onto the forearm with her hand, half-expecting to die upon impact, and yet she felt nothi-

"Graaahhh!!!" The pained scream ripped against her throat. She expected it to maybe sting a little, but 'hurt like a mother' was far too apt to even describe it. It was like someone tore out her entire nervous system to air as they forcefully pushed and pulled at the muscles and bones into place again.

Frea writhed in pain. Her knees gave way and found their way to the floor. For a moment she swore that she couldn't breathe. Something snapped into place, her neck cracked and popped as if it was readjusted while her back was wrung like a dirty rag and then put back again good as new.

When Mercy let go of Frea she fell to the floor again. She found very little comfort in the support that her arms provided, but at the very least they had kept her from planting her cheek on the cold hard ground. She coughed, she groaned, but she was alright. She pushed her leg in front of her, placed her hand on her knee and stood up again feeling somewhat worse for wear and yet not really.

"See?" She exhaled with a winner's grin. "No wounded little birds around here."

 

[Mercy]

Frea Sheplin

This had been a bit risky.

Truth to be told Mercy hadn't ever used Dark Heal before. Just read about it in one of the scrolls on Ashin's academy-ship. But it had seemed simple enough. Run your power through the broken body and force it back into its original state. No nurture, no fuss, just straight up brutalized efficiency in the moment.

It was pretty much the way Mercy operated anyway.

Mercy laughed after Frea screamed, shuddered, picked herself back up and still had enough energy left to joke.

"Ya know, I think I am starting to like ya more an' more." She winked there and patted Frea's shoulder. It was supposed to be a gentle and mostly generous gesture.

But Mercy didn't know her own strength... or rather she didn't care. So instead it would feel like a brick was trying to love-tap you on the shoulder. But at least the hand was soft-ish. "Kay, so I could drive, but." Mercy grinned back. "I wanna know what I am investing in, so why don't ya take the wheel an' I will sit behind ya."

She threw her cigarette out and crunched it under her heel.

"Worst case ya kill us both, but what's life if not a long gambit?"

 

[Frea Sheplin]

Mercy

In a way Frea found the situation intoxicating. Not so much the praise, although it was certainly part of it. No, this was the attention. A tiny little microdose of brain chemicals as she pulled in the attention of someone new like a moth to a flame, a burgeoning admirer of her usually immaculate style. That tiny slither of her mother's inherent pride still burned bright in Frea's blood to lift her out of yesterhour's pit of despair and economical crisis.

Her hand had already wrapped around the handle by the time Mercy had told her to take the reins. Frea slowly leaned back for a moment to ask what pace Mercy had desired before she stopped herself, shut her lips close and leaned forwards into the rumble of the ignition.

"Screw it." She said and revved the accelerator. The bike jumped to life with a whirr and no sooner than it was off the ground it was already well on its way out into the streets.

It started off with a careful and calculated cruise as Frea got the feel for the weight and handling of the bike. Once that had been done she ramped the speed up to find the sweet spot between speed and handling. The balance was struck by the time she had rounded a few blocks at which point all pretenses of caution were thrown to the wind. The pull of the bike grew more intense for each passing second with seemingly no sign at stopping.

There were other vehicles, fast ones, that passed them by seemingly as if coming from the other direction when in fact they should have been coasting along. By the time the authorities managed to get a response out it was already too late. With a deft knowledge of most circuits in the area there was no issue for Frea to wiggle and wind her way down one alley after the other before they came to a stop in the garage.

No sooner than the bike eased into place, Frea was already out to slam the door shut again to prevent any and all followers from the local PD.

"Tarp that. Get it covered up, I'll get the coolant." Frea said and pointed at Mercy and then the bike as she began to throw things around the top of the workstation. "What kind of sorting IS this?!"

"Spanners with the power jacks?" She withdrew a canister that seemed to glow with a gentle blue sheen that she pried open and tossed under the hood of the bike. "We need to talk about the state of your workshop if you expect me to do much of anything in here."

 

[Mercy]

Frea Sheplin

Mercy wasn't quite used to being told what to do.

Scratch that.

She was quite used to it in a different life and didn't like it.

Here was an exception to the rule. Engineering and mechanics was a hobby of hers, so seeing a real maestro at work? Oh, yeah, Mercy could appreciate the art of it. After all, if Mercy wasn't willing to let others tell her how to handle the art of killing, why would she expect a fellow master in a different art to be told what to do?

One of the few times that Mercy could be refreshingly pragmatic.

"Yes, ma'am." She drawled lazily and highly entertained and set out to do the things Frea requested. "I dun' got a formal education or anything, darling, I jus' did what was handy at the time."

It helped that Mercy was practically invincible when she wanted to be. A little bit of workplace hazard had no message to Mercy.

"But feel free to tweak it around however ya need. I am greedy, but..." Mercy shrugged there and pulled out two cold ones from the nearby mini-fridge, offering one to Frea, but popping out hers all the same. In one long swallow she'd already take out half the bottle. If that wasn't a perfect encapsulation of Mercy's greed, what was?

"Dun' mind to share with a fellow maestro. Same goes for chit the workplace don't have, but you'd want. Make a list an' pass it along, I can get mah hands on practically anything."

The workplace itself was top-of-the-art.

It had served as a base for a militant scab gang and had the potential to be entirely automated. Someone with the eye and know-how? Oh, they could make something beautiful from this.

 

[Frea Sheplin]

Mercy

A maestro, now that was a title that Frea could get used to. Her tongue shifted in her mouth for a moment as if to truly be able to savor it before it passed. She held the cold beer in her hands and popped it open to take a small drink with a thoughtful look to her. This garage wasn't exactly what she was used to. The location was good, but her old garage was around the block from her little hidey-hole.

Although she supposed, given her luck this evening, that the landlord had already seized the apartment for someone else to rent. Frea would find out sooner or later, it was no issue right now. At this very moment she needed to get an idea of what she was working with. While automation was an option here she wasn't one to rely on it. "Borrowed intelligence" she liked to think of it as. A robot was only as good as whatever input it had been given, either to re-enact or to learn from, and she would be dead in her grave before she let some polished tinfoil scrap pile factory reset her baby.

"Whoever provided you with these starter cables ripped you off." Frea said and threw them at Mercy. "The X-300 line was manufactured during HeigaTech's post-acquisition fumble. Crumblier than Geonosis sandstone, and most likely even made from it. They are notorious for snapping under pressure despite being priced as premium goods."

"Get me a Two-Twenty from Treego's, or better yet one of their FR-X models, and I'll make whatever you throw my way go from a hiss to a purr." Boxes were opened, cabinets were ransacked and had their contents poured out across the top of the workshop table. "Busy night ahead of us."

"Oh! And I almost forgot." Frea said and turned back towards Mercy. "A box of cherry flavored sugar bombs. For morale."