Chapter Text
She pulls the trigger. It slides down easily beneath her index finger, with a satisfying amount of give, but instead of the jolt and recoil she braced herself for the exhaust just gives a sad little cough, her Tetras lying dead in her palms.
She tries again. This time the trigger sticks before popping back up when she releases it, threatening to sink down in the socket and jam. The exhaust gives that same wheeze, tired and pathetic, like it sprained a joint and was calling for help.
It’s just the left one. The right works fine, mostly. Sure, the trigger still sticks a bit and the paint has chipped off enough that it’s nearly beyond recognition, but it’s functional. Not that it really matters, when she can’t pull off a proper dodge-roll if both aren’t in good shape. The lopsided output of the exhausts sent her face-first into the Tower last match. Her nose still aches from where it smashed into the grating.
Astra slides down on the changing room bench, back meeting the cool metal of the lockers. Her Tetras land in a heap beside her sneakers, spitefully discarded. Anyone else’s next step would be to send them off for repairs but she’s seen the rates all the good weaponsmiths set. Borderline extortion. Double it for Dualies, with their complicated inner mechanisms. Touchy exhausts. Size calibrations are in order. Extra fee for Tetras, which make any weapons specialist worth their salt run away screaming. You fuck up one bit, you might as well buy a new pair.
That’d be- what? 10,000G? More? The overhead lights are fluorescent and obnoxiously bright, and the constant buzz is giving her a headache. She groans and rubs her eyes, but the light seeps through. Repairs mean she’d have to send them off for a couple weeks, effectively benching her. She doesn’t like using other weapons. Marie gives her hell for it on patrol, but she’s just stubborn like that.
She can hear the thwack of flip-flops on linoleum flooring, and the creak of the bench opposite her. It’s Arlo, a slosher player that tends to bounce around her XP mark with trademark shit taste in footwear. They play together so often she’d almost fit the definition of a rival if Arlo wasn’t so completely unfazed by everything that she would just laugh at the idea of taking Astra seriously. People in X rank tend not to as a general rule. It’s an age thing.
Something hits her in the side. Case and point. She jerks up only to see Arlo with a bare foot outstretched and a flip-flop on the floor. Her toenails are painted blush-pink, matching her mantle.
She scowls. Arlo just flashes a cheeky grin in reciprocation. “I knew you were hiding under there! Taking your losses hard, huh? Gotta mope around a bit?”
“Shaddup.” She pinches the flip-flop between forefinger and thumb and flings it back. It falls on Arlo’s lap, who predictably doesn’t bat an eye. “I think we lost half the matches we played together in. You should probably try moping around. Do you some good.”
“Lowest common denominator?”
Astra raises an eyebrow. “You were there?”
Another flip-flop hits her, bouncing off her knee as she rises from the bench. She glares. Arlo shrugs. A small part of her tends to envy how easily she brushes off her defeats, like it means nothing about her. Astra dropped fifty points that night and wants to bury her head in her locker and scream.
“You were really beefing it out there, though,” Arlo continues, watching as Astra wrenches her duffel bag from the confines of her locker and onto the floor. “Bad night?”
“Nah.” She forces the corners of her mouth up into a smile. Can’t be sour for too long. Bad for optics. Causes wrinkles. “It’s nothing. Didn’t like the rotation.”
“Really? Cause that whiff you had on the Tower looked naaaasty.”
She angles her face on the chunky plastic mirror stuck to the door of her locker. It’s dull and warped, but enough for her to check her nose. She managed to get all the blood off her face in-between matches. No evidence of failure left behind.
Her face looks haggard, and her smile is strained. She forces herself to relax until it looks natural enough to satisfy and turns back to Arlo, looking all stupid and smug on her bench. “My Tetras are busted. It’s not like I did that on purpose.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“I mean they’re busted.” She tosses the left one over, landing clean in Arlo’s lap. “Try the exhaust.”
“No way,” she says, eyeing it with trepidation. “I'm gonna be sent clean across the room. You know how I am with Dualies.”
“You won’t, though.”
Arlo pouts. “I’ll hate you forever.”
“Cross my tentacles,” Astra sighs. “If they actually worked I wouldn’t let you within a mile of them.”
It’s true enough to convince her. Arlo holds it out at arm’s length and tentatively pinches the exhaust trigger, squeezing her eyes shut in anticipation of the recoil. All she receives is a spurt of air and that same tired whine.
“Damn, you weren’t kidding.” She tosses it back, and Astra handily catches it.
“Course not. I’m totally sincere.”
“Uh-huh.” A sardonic little grin spreads across her face. “You know, with sloshers you never have to-“
“Not this again,” Astra groans, burying her face in her hands. “Every time something like this happens it’s always sloshers-this-sloshers-that with you.”
“Cause I’m right. They don’t have super complicated construction, so you don’t have to worry about all your delicate little bits and pieces jamming up and making you smash your nose.”
“I’m gonna cut the shock absorber on yours if you keep this line of talk up,” Astra mutters into her palms. “Then we’ll see who’s laughing next.”
Arlo wiggles her toes. “It’s for a good cause.”
She hauls her duffel bag over her shoulder and ducks off into the bathrooms to change. When she gets back out Arlo’s bench is vacant, though her flip-flops and tote are left in a heap by her locker. Must’ve gone off to shower. She kicks her locker shut and twists the lock, catching one last glimpse of her face in the mirror before the door closes. There’s no smile now that there’s no one around to convince of anything. Still tired.
She played late. The sun has fully set, and the streetlights buzz overhead in stark white hues, attracting moths. There’s always a few stragglers lingering around the Square at this hour. The Crust Bucket is still open and a group of squids occupy a bench, music playing softly from a portable speaker.
The food smells divine, like always, and there’s no lineup. Perks of the late hour. She knows she has some leftover food tickets shoved deep in her bag somewhere, scrounged up from patrol.
Seanwich? Her stomach says, hopeful.
Rice, she thinks harshly. The few times she’s eaten at the Crust Bucket she came away feeling like the whole of her had been dipped in grease. There’s no excuse for eating there when she has food at home. She keeps snow peas in the freezer to snack on if she really needs it.
She opts for walking instead of taking the bus. They run so infrequent she’d get home faster like this than if she waited at the stop. The strap of her duffel bag chafes against her shoulder and she readjusts it. She knows when she gets back home it’ll have worn a red mark into her skin.
Fifteen minutes into the thirty-minute walk to her place, her phone rings. Ink Me Up pierces the cold silence of the streets. She cringes. It’s Marie. Normally she’d let it ring for a good half-minute just to make her wait, but she picks up the call as soon as she wrangles it from her pocket just to make the noise stop.
“Hey,” she greets, readjusting the strap of her duffel for the fiftieth time. “Is something up?”
“Are you still out? ” Marie’s tone is distant and tinny. Must be in the studio. It tends to have bad reception.
“Uh… yeah? How do you know?”
“Educated guess.”
Translation: She’s still doing that thing where she keeps eerie watch over all of Astra’s habits. She’s seen the Fact-o-Pedia, an unreasonably thick binder with a bad candid photo of her on the cover. Gives her the creeps. “What about you? About to record- what was it? Procrastination for the Uptight? Marie’s Firsthand Tales of Phoning It In? ”
“Those are new ones. You’ve really been hard at work.”
She grins. Annoying Marie is a newfound hobby of hers, but easily her favourite one. Technically, her only one. “Thinking of changing the name? I’ll only demand fifty-percent of the royalties.”
“I’ll consider it.” There’s shuffling on the other end of the line. Probably her producer. In-between agent work and whatever else it is Marie does with herself, this time of night is the only chance she gets to record the podcast. She’s about as predictable with her schedule as she thinks Astra is. “You’re free tomorrow, right? ”
“Ranked.”
“After? ”
“More Ranked.” A bus hurdles by, windows coldly illuminated. She frowns. So much for her estimation. “What do you need me in for?”
“The Samurai’s kettle started running yesterday. We need someone to clear it out. ”
She scowls. “Seriously? Isn’t this the fourth time?”
“Uh-huh. Don’t act like you don’t like fighting him, though. I can tell.”
It’s not untrue, but she’s never really eager for patrol either. Patrol means less time for Ranked. Less time in Ranked means less cash earned, less time spent raising her power. She doesn’t like being tethered to the NSS. She’s not like Three, who has nowhere else to go, or Eight, who basically owes the NSS their life. The only reason she followed Marie into the kettle was because it was dangerous.
But Marie is asking, and she’s ankle-deep in the mud of working for a questionably-legal military force. Something-something traitor to the cause something-something dead weight or whatever Three would say if he knew what she was thinking. He can kiss her ass for all she cares.
“Can’t you get Jude in?”
“He’s on leave.”
“He’s in school, you mean,” she mutters.
“Well, yeah, but besides that.” More talking in the background. She can hear Marie reply, covering the speaker with her hand to mute herself. There’s an insistence to her voice when she returns. Recording probably starts soon. “Look, just come in early. You’ll still have plenty of time for your clam-chasing or whatever afterwards.”
She can at least indulge in the fact that she’s Marie’s first thought whenever anything pops up, though the comfort is meagre. She gets the impression that Marie is secretly hoping she’ll outdo Three one day and gets increasingly disappointed whenever she lags behind.
She’s not alone in the sentiment.
She turns onto her street. The plain white of her complex comes into view, obscuring the moon. She presses her fob to the sensor and pushes the gate with her shoulder, the hinges squealing sharply. “I can come in for seven.”
“Ugh, I forgot you like to wake up early.”
“What, you don’t?”
“Sleeping until nine is perfectly respectable. Besides, I’m up until one.”
“Eight, then.” Down the steps, into the darkness of the foyer. She shines her phone’s flashlight through her mailbox slot, illuminating an envelope sitting at the bottom. She frowns, flipping through her keyring to unlock it.
“Eight doesn’t do combat. You know that.”
“Eight in the morning, s-“ she clamps her mouth shut. Too much casual teasing. Marie is her boss, not a friend. “I can do eight.”
She fishes the envelope out. The logo of her real estate agency adorns the bottom left corner. Rent is an automatic withdrawal, so it’s not like she was late. Besides, it was last week. She checked her account beforehand. Barely enough, but enough. What next? An eviction notice?
“The hell is this?” She mutters, flipping it over. No extraneous details.
“Language,” Marie chides. “What’s wrong? ”
“Uh-“ No way is she telling Marie. You don’t discuss your personal life with your boss. You don’t give people any true information about yourself. Don’t use your true name in strange lands. “Nothing. Weird bug in the foyer.”
“Ugh, gross.” There’s a pause, then the interference of her hand over the speaker again, the din of conversation in the background. “Alright, I gotta go. Recording starts in a few minutes.”
“Sure, sure. Gotta help those kids avoid their homework and piss off their parents, or whatever it is you do.”
“It’s educational,” she retorts, but there’s little bite to it. “Be in for eight.”
“Seeya,” Astra says, and the line drops, leaving her in the dead silence of the night.
The elevator takes a while to descend from the top floor, leaving ample time for her anxiety to mount. She ends up slitting open the top of the envelope by wedging her key under the seal and slicing through. Still too dark to read. The foyer’s light switch hasn’t worked in weeks.
The doors open. She avoids looking at her reflection in the elevator’s mirror and jabs in her floor number. There’s enough light to read the print on the letter, stiff and formal. It’s not formatted like her usual bill. Something about how much her rent costs.
Her eyes nearly bug out of her head.
“You’re kidding,” she says, to nothing in particular. The doors open to the fourth floor. She walks out automatically, gaze still glued to the little string of numbers typed out in bold. In accordance to your contract, your rent will be revised the next payment period to an absurd amount for a shitty one-room place, we wish you a good day, eat shit-
The door jams. She wedges it open with more force than it tends to necessitate. Water damage from the year prior made it so the floorboards in the entrance hall expand during the rainy season, and her door barely opens enough for her to slip inside. She shuts the door, bolts it, then bangs her head against it for good measure, just to feel worse.
The floor squeals under her weight as she slips off her sneakers, flinging them to the side in a graceless heap. Duffel dropped at the entrance. Water bottle on the small table that serves as a desk-slash-dining area. She promised herself rice for dinner earlier, but the will to cook has been sapped from her. She mostly feels like burying her face in a pillow and wallowing in self-pity until the dread passes. Revise her monthly budget. Things anyone else her age would do.
The plaster on the wall is peeling, and there’s a thumb-sized hole just above where her head hits her pillow. Insult to injury. She has weapon repairs to pay for. Even without a direct quote she knows the price will be enough to make her hyperventilate. Unexpected increase in rent. She’d been putting aside a portion of her earnings each week to save up for the deposit on a new place, but that’s just frivolous excess now. Moving costs are too high anyway, and the time it would take would just eat into her schedule, time that could be spent in Ranked or in a Grizzco shift.
On top of that, her parents will still expect a cut of her earnings every month. If it was a sponsorship she’d call the amount extortion, but it is her family. Everyone pitches in. Her brother only just learned to shift and is already trying to get a job at the convenience store in town. She has no excuse for not being able to pull her own weight.
Failure just proves a point. That the hours her mother spent coaching her and shoving her into every available sport she could were all sacrifices that only amounted to nothing. Money spent, time wasted.
Her sole consolation is that it’s past midnight and she’s probably over-exaggerating. She’ll just scrape the cash together for repairs somehow, then she can gain back her footing and repent for the calculation matches she flubbed. Get that fourth X rank, then the publicity and accolades will flood in and she can look back and laugh at how much she strung herself out over a silly little raise in rent.
It’s easy enough to picture the headlines: Three-time record holder smashes expectations to become the first sixteen year-old with quad X Ranks! “I can finally buy my parents a house!” says the overwhelmed competitor.
It’s just her Tetras. She’ll be fine.
Because she likes to deliberately annoy Marie she arrives at Tentakeel fifteen minutes early. The cabin’s interior lights shine through the curtains, a faded blue. Marie’s awake. She can pin down the scent of coffee and can easily picture her blearily rifling through the cabinets to find a mug, scowling when she bangs her hip on the table. Dumping all the cream and sugar and syrup in the coffee she swears up and down she strictly takes black.
From experience she knows she won’t bother to greet her until 8-o’clock sharp. Marie also has a habit of trying to stick it to Astra. She thinks it’ll make her more disciplined, or something approaching that. Something-something duty. Something-something obedient soldier. She can practically feel Jude glowering at her.
It’s quiet and the air is crisp, promising a cold day. Her breath puffs out white, and the chill makes her wish her Hero Gear had pockets to stick her hands in. Adjacent to the Cabin is the snow globe but the DJ is either asleep or doing a very good job of faking it, his mantle flickering idly between muted shades of grey. He’s usually shit for conversation anyways, but it is conversation. Astra isn’t well-programmed to sit around and wait and nothing else.
The plastic hinges of the weapon box creak when she opens it. There’s a portable upgrade system haphazardly attached to the underside of the lid, all the weapons Sheldon loaned her piled in a careless heap. She finds one half of the Hero Dualies on top but has to dig around for the left side, propping the Charger up so the lid doesn’t fall on her head.
There’s a reason Marie always prods her about sticking to one weapon. She’s been using Tetras for ages, to the point where the skin of her palms practically feels moulded to the grip. She likes the aggression, the recklessness, the way she can cause chaos until someone takes her out. The Hero Dualies are nice though, with the added bonus of not being subject to all the limitations they slap on weapons in Turf to keep them from actually hurting anyone. They’re real weapons, and the knowledge seems to make them weigh heavier in her hands, like the potential danger they imposed was tangible.
She’s running through aim drills with the Octo balloons as targets when the door to the cabin slides open behind her, the wood aged. Marie is perched on the steps, a blue velour housecoat slung around her shoulders like a cape and a sullen look pasted on her face that’s usually exclusive to the early shifts.
“Morning,” she greets, grinning and giving a little wave that only seems to darken Marie’s expression. “I like the housecoat. Grandma finally decided to pass it down?”
“Your wit continues to inspire me,” she says, flat. Her grip around her coffee mug seems to tighten, just a little. “Really. I must be rubbing off on you, or something.”
She pouts. “Not a morning person?”
“Now you’re just doing this on purpose.”
“You were the one who told me to come in for 8.”
“I did, didn’t I,” she mutters, staring a hole into her mug. “Ugh, I can’t believe I did that.”
“Anyways.” She gives the Dualies a twirl, using the trigger as anchor points to swing around her fingers. “Samurai?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she nods, and takes a sip of her coffee. “And put those back. You’re not on Dualies today.”
“Shot?”
“No. You need to work on something that isn’t a shooter.”
“Blaster?”
“No way.”
The debate is almost a routine of theirs, alongside the cycle of deliberately petty acts both of them are dedicated to. She’ll ask to use her Dualies, then Marie will inevitably say no because she knows Astra exclusively uses them in Ranked and she can’t let her enjoy herself on the job. Then she’ll negotiate for something else that she’s familiar with and Marie will hem and haw and shake her head until she forces her to use something she knows Astra will be miserable with, like the Charger or Splatling.
“Brush,” she says, finally. “You look like you really need to whack the life out of something.”
She’s not wrong, which scares her. She made sure not to let any remnants of last night’s pity party linger on her face, but Marie must still sense it somehow. She really hates that quality of hers, the way it tends to lead to gestures of consideration.
Like this.
She spawns in the kettle with the Brush over her shoulder, tentacles pale mint-green. The jump sends a jolt through her body, shaking off all lingering cobwebs of the early morning. A crowd cheers, unseen, and the Samurai hefts himself from the spawner the same way he did the first three times.
Marie’s voice crackles in over the comms. “Do you think he looks mad? ”
“He always looks mad.”
“More than usual, I mean.” She snorts, the sound breathy and muted over the poor reception of the kettle. “Someone has a grudge. ”
She smiles cheekily and winks, teeth bared. Across the arena the Samurai glowers, hefting his Roller upright. The fervour of the cheering only increases. She always wondered if it was a live audience or purely artificial, bravado canned and played on speakers like a laughtrack in a sitcom. Like everything else down there.
He pedals forward, teetering on his bike, while Astra uses the opportunity to get as much of her ink on the ground as she can. She recognizes the way he holds his Roller - the glint in his eye. The swipe comes a split second later, bright magenta ink spraying in an arc. It misses her by a foot. She runs with the Brush held to the ground before ducking in under the final flourish of his Roller, slamming it into his bulk as hard as she can, relishing in the give of the bristles against his strange, soft flesh.
His skin bursts. She gives the tentacle a whack and jumps back across the arena, allowing herself ample room to dodge. She doesn’t like the Brush for the same reason she didn’t like the Roller - too heavy, too short-range. It’s easier to manoeuvre in compensation for the poor reach, but swinging one around all the time tires her out fast. It’s not built for endurance, and all she does is run until her legs give out beneath her.
Their ink evaporates, leaving the sandy floor of the arena a clean slate. The Samurai pops from the spawner and roars, his Roller automatically modifying itself to give it more reach. He raises it up like a blade. Astra tenses, before jumping the moment he slams it down. The strip of ink nearly grazes her, before forcing her to jolt back in the opposite direction from the second swing.
He doesn’t give her a chance to react. He adjusts his grip and swings the Roller downwards, revving his bike. The motor sputters before launching him across the arena like a car on the highway, hurtling towards her. She tenses, legs bent. Waits. When it’s feet away from crushing her she darts to the side, spinning the Brush in her hand before taking advantage of the recoil to get a few solid hits in.
“Showoff,” Marie grumbles. “You’ll get hit doing that one day, I swear.”
“I don’t wanna hear ‘I told you so’ until I do.”
It’s not enough to splat. He swings in retaliation, and she presses the bristles of the Brush to the ground, running back. Vertical flick. She swerves, then stops short, avoiding the second flick, paint streaking across the dusty ground. She sends a Curling Bomb towards him and dives in the trail. He hefts the Roller, eager to punish the move, but she rolls out and shirks off his ink. A thrown Splat Bomb rolls at his feet, then explodes. The damage is paltry, but enough to make him flinch. Enough to let her get the last few hits in.
Finish off the tentacle, jump back, wait for him to respawn. She rolls her shoulder, biting back a grimace.
“Did he get you? ” Marie asks, concern seeping in through the grain of the comms.
“Nah, not badly. I’m not used to swinging this thing around, that’s all.”
“Someone needs to work on her arm strength. Maybe I’ll have you do push-ups when you get back. Agent One told me that’s what she does.”
She rolls her eyes, but there’s little annoyance to it.
Final round. Marie was right. There is a nasty look on the Samurai’s face, more vicious than the usual sullen expression he likes to wear. He hefts his Roller over his head, heavy and violent. She braces herself. The Brush’s bristles are already to the ground as the first strike lands, nipping at Astra’s heels. She presses it down harder, urging herself to run faster, the second swing inches behind. He’s more aggressive now, more brutal, like a fish in a net struggling to break free.
Third strike. She swerves, but it’s off-rhythm. The hit catches her full-bodied. The velocity sends her flying across the arena, brush wrenched from her hands. Her shoulder meets chain-link. The metal digs into her skin, uncaring of the layers of clothing. A neon sign flickers overhead, humming blithely over her laboured breathing, like flies.
“FOUR!” Marie yells. The sudden spike of noise in her ears makes her flinch. It’s painful, like she had stuck a thick, blunt needle in her head and twisted. “Can you respond? Are you alright? ”
“So loud,” she groans, forcing herself up on an elbow. The place where her shoulder met the fence aches. Blood wells up from her skin, hot and foreign. The Samurai advances from across the arena, tottering on his motorbike.
She swears there’s a smirk on his face.
“Four?! Can you respond?”
Her armour is taking awfully long to regenerate. Another hit in this state would splat her. Splatting would drain the energy of the respawn. Splatting would be another mark against her, another failure to hold over her head, subtly, like a sword swinging just over her neck.
It’s something else she can’t afford. If she doesn’t finish this now, it’ll be another reason for Marie to look at her with that vague sense of disappointment in her eyes. For her to consider Agent Three over her next time she needs a mess cleaned up.
“Four?!” Marie yells again, frantic.
She gropes for the handle of the brush, palm meeting sleek wood. Her shoulder aches as she forces herself to her feet. She wants to fall back down and let it dangle uselessly, let the Samurai’s roller crash down over her head and force her to live with it.
But she gets back up, like always. She has no other choice.
Marie is waiting for her when she jumps back to Tentakeel. There’s a hard look on her face, lips pressed in a thin line. Obviously displeased. Then again, she’s never really pleased. It’s always some form of discontent or apathy or, mostly, boredom. Astra always assumed it was part of whatever her stage persona was, but it tends to stick during Marie’s off-hours.
She raises her hands up in mock-surrender. Always best to play dead until the danger passes. “I got the job done, didn’t I?”
Marie turns to walk to the cabin. Astra jogs to catch up to her side. “You did that on purpose.”
“What, defeating the Samurai? Yeah, that’s what you told me to do.” Put on a smile. Maybe it’ll be enough of a threat display that Marie will give up on interrogating her, like a brightly-coloured fish warning of venom.
She gets a dark look in return. Marie hasn’t put her contacts in, and her steel-grey eyes are filled with judgement. “You got hit.”
“That? I get hit all the time. It’s no biggie.”
“You practically ran right into the swing. I saw it.”
“Accidents happen.” She shrugs. It makes her shoulder shriek with pain, nerves alight, and she has to actively force herself not to show it on her face. She hates letting Marie know she’s right about something.
And she is, technically. If she just kept running she would’ve avoided the last hit. This is another routine of theirs, and one of her less-preferred ones. She’ll take a hit in battle like it’s a habit and afterwards Marie will accuse her of doing it intentionally because she thinks Astra is some type of masochist and she’s too good to be that dumb.
“Not that stupid.”
Astra pouts. “Come on, I get hurt and now you’re calling me stupid? Literal insult to injury.”
Marie huffs and rolls her eyes. The door of the cabin slides open and she gestures for Astra to go in first. She props the brush against the porch wall and steps in, slipping off her sneakers. The Captain’s ancient, mostly-defunct coffee machine is still plugged in and she’s immediately greeted by the bitter scent of coffee wafting from the cracked pot. Marie enters behind her, sliding the door shut.
“Coffee?” She prompts. Astra shakes her head.
“Don’t drink it.”
“You’re a monster,” she mutters, sliding past Astra to open the fridge. “Anything to eat?”
“Nah, I ate. Thanks.”
She didn’t, but that’s just another thing Marie doesn’t need to know. When she first began what Marie called agent work and she called mandatory military service Marie tried offering her real food; strips of fried salmon and eggs and kelp salad in the morning, sandwiches and boxed sushi from the grocery store or whatever leftovers the Cap’n kept in the fridge from the night before. She always refused. Eventually Marie caught on and stopped offering her anything beyond coffee or tea or the occasional protein bar.
Marie tosses her a bottle of water from the fridge and she catches it. Condensation gathers on the plastic as it adjusts to the muggy temperature of the cabin. She struggles to crack the lid.
“Need help?” She asks, watching. Astra swears under her breath, hands slipping from the moisture.
Eventually she resorts to using the hem of her jacket for the grip. It twists open with minimal embarrassment. “All good.”
She sits. Marie tosses a granola bar on the table, and she eyes it. Spiced apple and cranberry. It’s her favourite brand too. Marie can be considerate, when she feels like being soft. Initially she wrote her off as being stuffy and pretentious, and to some degree it’s still true, but she also snorts when she laughs and cracks bad jokes and likes to show Astra stupid videos on her phone during break. In some ways Marie the international pop sensation with a cult following and a million in cash and Marie the girl only two-and-a-half years older than Astra are very separate people.
Marie sits across the table from her, nursing what she can only guess is her fifth cup of coffee. “What’s been into you today anyways?”
“Huh?” There’s a chunk of granola in her mouth. It clings to her teeth, making her jaw hard to unstick if she doesn’t flake it off with her tongue. Marie watches her struggle with a vague look of amusement on her face before she manages to swallow. “Whaddya mean?”
“I wasn’t joking when I said you looked like you needed to hit something this morning.”
She takes another bite to avoid an immediate answer. It’s probably not a good idea to fess up and tell Marie that her rent had skyrocketed when she was already tight for cash. Telling her she pays her own rent would only invite further questions. What kind of teenager pays her own rent? What about your parents? They’d help you out, right? Not the other way around?
If there’s any one rule she’s abided by since she moved to Inkopolis, it’s to never say anything too true about herself. Strange lands, fake names. The NSS is strictly a formal organization, and she doesn’t want to risk someone taking pity on her and roping her into owing them a debt. She saw what happened to Three and Eight. She has family, an exterior life. She doesn’t have to get overly involved.
“Didn’t do well during my calculation matches.” She makes herself shrug, like it meant nothing about her. “That’s all. Left a bad taste in my mouth.”
“Oh, that,” she says, a sly smile creeping on her face. “I was wondering what was going on there. You’re about 200 points lower on average than last season.”
Astra shudders. “Will you ever quit stalking me?”
“It’s not stalking if you’re on TV. I just pay attention.”
There’s way too much in that statement to unpack. She’s not even going to try.
“Whatever.” She takes another bite of the bar and crumples the wrapper. “My Tetras are busted. It’s kinda hard to do well when you have a faulty weapon.
“Busted? How?”
“Exhaust doesn’t work.”
Marie winces in sympathy. “Have you dropped them off for repairs yet?”
Barring that there’s no way she can afford it now that her budget is stretched tighter than an elastic threatening to snap. “I was gonna, but then you called and I had to shuffle my plans.”
“Duty calls,” she smirks, completely unapologetic. “You know, I could ring in Sheldon to take a look at them if you want.”
She pauses, bottle held a scant inch away from her parted lips. It’s a generous offer, and it’d knock out the problem of her Tetras in one fell swoop. He’s an NSS associate, so she could probably just pull rank and get a discount that would leave enough for her rent the next month, and a nice little bonus to send to her mother when she inevitably blows a gasket over this season’s XP.
Suspiciously generous. What would she owe Marie if she took the offer? Normal people would already consider risking her life on a regular basis to be enough of a debt. What next? Chain her up outside the cabin so she can’t run off and make excuses for not being able to patrol? Maybe she and the DJ can bond.
“Thanks, but I’m good. It’s all under control.” She smiles, making sure to crinkle the corners of her eyes. “‘Sides, I don’t want him yapping my ears off. He’d probably give me hell over proper maintenance and all that and I’d never hear the end of it.”
Marie snickers. “Fair point.”
Astra takes a deep sip of her bottle to avoid any further prodding. A bead of ice-cold water escapes the corner of her mouth, sliding under her jacket, mingling with the remnants of the blood and ink from the fight that morning. Her shoulder still stings. She’ll have to find a way to patch it up before her matches today. She doesn’t need an injury to send her rank plummeting lower than it already has.
Another thing she can’t tell Marie about. She’d probably insist on cleaning it up with the First-Aid Kit she keeps in the bathroom, under the sink. Her undershirt caught most of the blood, her outer layers only bearing a few spare splotches of blue when she twists to check.
Marie isn’t bothering to press her about it though, and has opted to whip out her phone in absence of further conversation. Alongside eating habits and weapon preferences and general temperament, Marie is also quite adept at telling when Astra has had enough of her prodding and is about to bite.
She really is considerate.