Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Doki’s left eye flicked across the little shrubs and rugged hills below her, down to the fire and tents in the dry creek bed below. Her right was closed- it helped with the disorientation of zooming and enhancing, she’d learned.

She was perched on a red rock cliff, one of many in their parts of the west. The little rivers and canyons that crossed it made for excellent vantage points- and theirs in particular was a long, thin thing that ran all the way from Brightwater to their part of Dadwood Canyon. She had ridden her cycle most of the way, kicking dust and rock behind her, yellow-gold bandana pulled tight against her face to keep from inhaling a bug or choking on a stray dust cloud.

She hadn’t come alone, and while at first there had been playful racing and swerving into each others paths, there was now a deadly quiet as the pair watched the valley below. Their quarry was there, a camp of a single wagon and a trio of tents. The pair were leaning against their cycles, far enough away to be lost to any but a rifleman's scope, and even then they would have to peer against the setting sun to make them out.

“How much do you think the Marshal will pay?” Tenjin was on her right, looking down the scope of a long rifle. They were scraping the bottom of the barrel for a ‘legal’ job, hunting down smugglers in the Zona desert. Lots of folk said it was ‘good work,’ necessary even. Plenty of drugs and arms were smuggled from the western border to the Tech-Cities of the east along canyons like these, a necessary, safe part of their journey. For Doki, it was just work, and work that paid little and was more annoying than enjoyable.

“After my tab is cleared?” Doki had to do the math herself, the little computer that had come with her left eye was already overtaxed identifying threats and calculating ranges. “Five hundred alive. One hundred dead. Bonus if we can get some of their cargo back.

There was a long silence after that. It was not good money, and it would be a pain in the ass to bring any of them back alive. They could do it, sure. Was the risk and the time worth five hundred?

“Listen old man,” Doki said, knowing the answer to that question, “I just need you up here making sure they dont try knifing me in the back or whatever. I’ll get one of them alive, you’ll get a cool seventy five for a road trip and a bit of patience.”

Neither of them had taken their eyes off the camp below them, though Doki could see the sight marker of her rifle scanning the rocks and hills above it once, then twice after Doki finished speaking.

“Alright,” Tenjin said, firing the motors of the rifle, “Seventy five and you buy tonight's drinks.”

Doki cracked her right eye open, giving Tenjin a narrow glare. He didn’t even drink anything decent- not wines, not good beers, he hadn’t even tried the Augrem Mead that had been shipped in years ago. This was just going to be a free meal.

“Fine, fine,” she said, shaking her head, “lord knows you need to start saving for retirement. Seventy five and drinks.” She opened her eyes fully after that, the cybernetic lens sliding back into its casing, her eye returned to its natural blue. “But don’t start firing unless I need it. Munitions for that thing are a little more expensive than your pea shooter.”

Doki hadn’t trusted Tenjin’s much more rugged rifle at this range, insisting he use her LR-704. It was a good gun, magnetic firing systems could roar out a bullet further and faster than any other lead thrower, and even the heavier plasma and light weapons from the Tech-Cities couldn’t match its punch.

She heard the little motors along its length whirr to life, magnets moving into position, half charging in preparation of firing. “I remember,” Tenjin said, “you fucking billed me the last time I shot it.”

That got a snort out of Doki, though it did remind her to bend down and untie the little band of munitions at her ankle, tossing them to Tenjin. “Are you going to remember its bolt action this time?” She asked.

“I’m thinking about forgetting,” Doki laughed at that and started picking her way down from the cliff, careful to avoid sliding on loose dirt or dislodging rock and tumbling down. She’d learned how to navigate these canyons with scrapes and falls and a half dozen twisted ankles from fun little trips down the sude of hills and over short cliffs. She managed to avoid those, at least, and as she reached the flat, sandy base of the canyon she walked with more confidence, half pulling her revolver from its holster to make sure nothing was getting in its way, flexing her shooting hand once.

She made little effort to conceal her approach, and when she heard half shouts of alarm and curses as two of the tents were opened and their half asleep owners stumbled out. The third had been on watch, and sat perched on the wagon, rifle trained on Doki. Her cybernetics activated as she approached, lens sliding into place over her eye, feeding her information. Ranges, effectiveness of cover, possible threats, all laid out against her retina.

“Hoi! Fuck on outta here!” One of the sleepers was shouting before they even faced off. Doki took note of their weapons as she stopped some ten meters off. One had an automatic. A strange weapon out in these parts. Four Gun Kan used them, but she hadn’t been that far west in years, not since she'd been elected. She would seem a strange inspiration for a smuggler to take from, even if she was around. There was the rifle, of course, half rusted. It was a 44, according to her eye, packed a bit more of a punch than Tenjin’s preferred gun. Enough to shoot through her and hit someone on the other side. The last was armed with a long knife, probably more used to skinning and butchering than killing.

“Strange place to be camping,” Doki started, “see, I was told there was a shipment of arms coming through these parts.”

She saw the rifleman twitch. The muzzle of his gun lowered as he took a better look at Doki. She held back a laugh at that, and the way the two in front of her shared a glance and grimace.

“I’ve got a contract to bring some runners in for questioning- stamped by the Marshall and everything. Unless the three of you have a really fun family camping story to tell me, I think I’m going to be taking you in.”

The three didn’t respond. Doki hadn’t expected them to. She was already plotting out the fight. Pistol’s gun was still in its holster, Knife had brought the wrong kind of weapon to the fight. Rifle was the threat. She could get a bullet into his gun- probably into his shoulder as well- before any of them reacted, and after that it would be a matter of how she wanted to down Pistol. A shot to the knee would down Knife as he charged, though she might prefer the foot to avoid the fun complications of punching through all that bone and blood.

Doki didn’t know if Rifle meant to set her off, if his twitch had been nervousness or an attempt to get the first shot before her, but his little move downwards, the raising of his muzzle was enough.

Doki was very good at the fast draw, and her cybernetics made her an even better shot. Her first of six followed exactly where she wanted, cracking through metal and flesh. She heard sputtered curses as her arm dropped, firing a second shot into Pistol. She didn’t bother going for the gun, not after seeing him reach across his body in an attempt to draw his automatic, instead hitting him once in the shoulder. The force was enough to throw him back into the sand.

The last was Knife. Four shots left, though she would only need one. It went through his foot after a half seconds wait. She smirked as she saw him stumble, then cursed when it was just that, a stumble. The charge continued.

“Fuck!” Doki’s second shot was much less accurate, old militia instinct guiding her aim to the center of mass. One, then two shots into his chest. Doki’s revolver was a heavy thing, and its bullets had been designed to put someone down permanently. They could pierce through most body armor like paper. When she didn’t see the spray of blood behind, and her cybernetics told her she had failed to puncture, it took a full second to process. Her final shot went wide. It had been aimed to kill, whatever plate or ceramic inserts had protected his lungs wasn’t going to save him from a shot between the eyes, but a lucky duck meant it went over him, and Doki realized she was probably going to take a knife between the ribs before she could pull her own from her belt.

The roar of an accelerated shot reminded Doki that she was not the only gun out there, and certainly not the strongest. The LR-704 had been designed to punch through armored vehicles and take out controls or high value targets, and its power was more than enough to throw Knife back. Doki settled herself as the roar of her long gun settled into echoes, and then silence.

Doki took a moment to collect herself, to load her revolver from the bullets in her bandolier, her eyes fixed on the other two of her targets. Rifle was still cursing and clutching at his bloodied arm. Pistol though… pistol was gone.

Doki froze at that, scanning with her cybernetics, eyes roving around the camp. The blood trail led to the wagon, a red handprint against the white cloth letting her know he was inside.

“Listen,” Doki called out, her revolver leading her closer, “I don’t know what fucking drugs your friend was on, but this doesn’t need to end the same way. Come out, hands up, and we’ll take you to the Marshall. Thats it, no executions or-”

Doki paused as her eyes started feeding her more information. Carbons, oxides, charged particles.

“Are you fucking-” Doki had learned the hard way there was no outrunning explosions. Instead she turned and dived, shielding her neck with one gloved hand, the other holding her revolver close. She was followed by a great roar, the shockwave chasing her to the ground and keeping her there a moment, crackling fire blooming into a great cliud of smoke and ash.

The explosion was more up than out at least, and other than the wave of heat brushing at her legs and her little feathers curling against her head, it passed without note.

For her at least. For Pistol and Rifle- there was nothing left but a roaring flame, flickering with color as it burned through chemicals and by the smell, some very expensive electronics.

“What the fuck was that.” She breathed out. She heard the distant grumbling of cycle engines and half turned, watching the shape of hers and Tenjin’s growing larger. Her eyes were still analyzing the fires, feeding her a list of chemicals that probably would be burning, sorting through what internet was left looking for what those could make.

She tabled it as her cybernetics began to get uncomfortably warm. She’d put it through one of the computers at Brightwater later. No sense in cooking brain cells over it.

“What was that!” Tenjin was shouting over the dying engines.

“Someone really didn’t want us looking through their prize,” Doki answered. She laughed at the absurdity of it, shaking her head as she continued. “Some high end electronics, I think. I’ll run the data later. Thanks for the save old man.”

“Took three shots from your gun- fuck, I'm surprised the long gun put him down.”

“Yeah, well,” Doki spoke as she turned to the body sprawled out in front of the fire, flipping him with a grunt of effort and a curse as she looked at scorched skin. “There's a difference between being amped up on coke and body armor and being able to survive…”

She trailed off, eyes narrowing.

“Tenjin, did you use one of my fucking anti electronics rounds? Bro, those are like three times as expensive!"

“What?” Tenjin took a moment to walk over, frowning as Doki pointed to the burning slag of metal and circuit in the man’s shoulder. The bullet cut clean through, not even shattering the ceramic plates that had stopped Doki’s two shots. It had also cut through just below his sternum, far from whatever cybernetics had been in his shoulder.

“Doki, you don't even have anti electronics anymore, remember? You lost them in a bet.”

She had, and a very poor bet at that. She cursed, more at her drunk self than being wrong, and turned her attention from Tenin back to the body.

“Then what the fuck did that?”

“Maybe the explosion?” He sugested, poking at the charred metal with his boot. They both knew that wasn’t the cause. “This was a weird ass job, I’m going to be real. Let's get out of here before something else happens.”

Doki didn’t protest that. She used her eye to take a few snapshots of the body and the pyre. Proof enough to get paid. They were on the road after that, wind whistled against them, dusk settling over the canyons, sun bleeding into the ground and shadows pooling in every dip and behind every hill.

By the time they reached Brightwater, the moon was peeking over the horizon, and the town's few street lights were flickering on against the night.

The town had been built in the ruins of another, and that one had been built atop a long abandoned rest stop in its time. It was small enough- an arms and armor store was its main attraction, making it a good place for the honest folk of the west to equipt themselves. It was also a good place for the less than honest, and that necessitated the Sheriff's office that sat next to it. That position had long been vacant, and after her semi-retirement from the military, the Marshal had taken residence there.

The rest of the town… well, it was enough. A general store, a butcher's shop. A station for the I-3 line that ran between two tech cities hundreds of miles apart. Enough houses built into ruins and sprung up around them for almost 60 people.

Brightwater was not home, that was somewhere a few days northwards, but it was good enough. Doki saw Tenjin off as they entered, promising him his seventy five and her tab when he went for dinner before she made her way to the old Sheriff's office.

The Marshall was there, grimacing over old maps, tracing routes through them. The office had long been transformed into something more resembling a general's war room. The long desk and counter that had once been a place for complaints to be filed and paperwork to be done had been dragged out, replaced with long tables and longer maps, most spilling over their edges, pulled one way or another as needed. Against one wall was a rack of weapons and an old set of body armor Doki had never seen in use, though it did look quite impressive.

“Hey, one eye,” Doki didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Want to tell me why my mark tried suicide bombing me instead of surrendering?”

True to Doki’s word, the Marshall had only one eye, and it was half covered by silver hair. The other was under an eyepatch, lost in some forgotten battle. She barely acknowledged Doki’s words, instead crossing off a junction on her map. “None of them alive then?”

“One of them also had ceramics, by the way. That’s something you warn a girl about.”

“Did you recover any of their cargo?”

“That was the bomb part of the suicide bond. I’m fine, by the way, in case you were wondering.”

“Dokibird, remind me how much of this bounty is going to clearing your other crimes I could be arresting you for?”

The Marshall held a hand up before Doki could answer. “You know what? Never mind, not worth it. Your name is cleared, I’ll give you your hundred for no survivors. Unless you have anything else?”

“Analysis of the fire,” Doki said, pausing for a moment to consider how best to sell that bit of data.

“I'll throw in twenty five for it,” The Marshal reached for a stack of data chips on one counter, pulling one and tossing it to Doki. “Inscribe it.”

Doki caught it and held the chip up to her eye, allowing her cybernetics to transfer what data it had saved. “I need seventy five to go to my partner, by the way.”

“Tenjin?”

“Yeah.”

“It’ll get done.”

That was a dismissal if Doki had ever heard one, and she had no desire to stay longer. She left the Marshal and her office behind. The roads were quiet. It was out of the harvest season, and the tourists wouldn’t return until spring. The only sounds were the buzzing of power and the low drone of light flies flocking to their lamps.

The Brazen was one of the few places open late into the night. A cross between an Inn, brewery, and rest stop, it bore none of the comforts of one and all the shitty food of the other. It was a terrible little place, and the center of Brightwater’s nightlife.

It was a little more muted inside, though Doki chalked that down to the fact that she was arriving a full two hours later than usual. She clapped Tenjin on the back as she saw him, grabbing herself a beer that was more water than flavor, before retiring to her spot.

It wasn’t officially her spot, of course. It was a tall table in a back corner, some distance from the loudest parts of the bar, close enough for her to see what drinks were flowing that night, far enough to be ignored by most. The people at the Brazen knew that she preferred that spot, they usually left it open for her, some days even added a complementary beer if she was doing an odd job around town.

Today, it was taken. Doki recognized who it was, of course. They were not conspicuous, could not be conspicuous. The antenna rose almost a half foot above her head before dropping back down. Two of her hands were holding a glass of wine, while the other two were disassembling and cleaning one of her four automatics.

Doki noticed other things, too. The little cracks patched over with Scuttler-Glue, the nicks and bruises on her exo-skeleton that were pale white rather than the more muted pink or gray of the rest of her.

Four Gun Kan had gotten into a fight. And now she was sitting at Doki’s table, waiting.

“Who’d you piss off?” Doki had considered opening with ‘you look like shit,’ but she figured a less… combative approach might be more helpful.

Matara Kan, matriarch of Scutlers, did not respond. Instead she took a sip of wine and eyed Doki. It was an appraisal, Doki realized. Four Gun Kan wanted something, and she was trying to see if Doki was the right person for the job.

Perhaps she found what she was looking for, or perhaps there were precious few who she could ask. Either way, Matara spoke. “Someone has been stealing ghosts.” She said.

Doki froze at that, mind flying north, to-

“She’s fine.” Matara interrupted her thoughts. “For now, at least. Whats happening hasnt reached that far north yet. Entire towns of ghosts have… vanished. Signs of struggle, shootouts in some places, but I can't find out who or why. All through the Meander, outside the Third Infantry Garrison’s patrol ranges.”

“So ask them to extend their ranges.” Doki had a feeling the answer wouldn’t be so simple.

“I did,” was Matara’s answer, flat and bitter.

Doki eyed Matara’s recent wounds, looking between her eyes and them. “Shit.”

“I am needed in the east. Again. And if the army out here can’t be trusted, I need someone who can figure out what the fuck is going on.”

“So- what, towns go missing and the governor of everything west of Tibaski is just fucking off?”

“I am a known quantity out here. And if the army is involved in whatever it is going on out here, you are going to need more help than four automatics. While youre figuring out the who and what, I am going to find some replacements for the third."

“I haven’t said if I’m taking the job yet,” Doki said quickly. Too quickly, too sharply. Matara’s only response was to raise an eyebrow.

“I need a gun that can track down whatever is happening in the Southlands before it spreads,” Matara acted as though she hadn’t heard, “preferably of some discretion. Expenses paid after the job is done, plus a thousand on top. More depending on how the job ends.”

Doki almost wanted to refuse. It would have been nice, Doki had done her service, after all. Four years in the militia, back when Bagdroll had invaded. Four years hunting tanks through the desert. She’d given up her little private eye business, her aspirations of moving out to one of the tech cities, delayed upgrading her cybernetics for who knows how long.

But then she remembered a green little ghost, and bagels and coffee in the morning. She remembered sweating out a fever while listening to old stories from ghost’s past, and sitting on a rooftop under the new moon, pointing out old constellations Doki’s mother had taught her.

Doki sighed, long and reisgned. “Fine,” She said, fircing herself to relax, to take a drink as though it were an easy choice. “Give me everything you have. I’ll take the job.”

Chapter Text

Doki slept poorly that night. Her mind was north, on the job, on what she would find when she was actually up there. She was already plotting out a path, stops, places she would check before… before she got to the cafe, the place she intended to make her home for a time. The morning came slowly, painfully for how little she had slept and how early she wanted to leave. It gave her time to think, at least, time to nurse a can of caffeine and a breakfast of toast and meat.

The lands that made up ‘the west’ were divided into four sections in most folks' eyes. There were the red rock canyons and many sandy cliffs of the far west, a place the law had a hard time reaching, and the main theater of many skirmishes between the Tech-Cities and Bagdroll. To Doki, that was the true west, the place that had become her home after her service in the militia.

In the south were the low wastes, places too wet to be sandy, too dry to grow. Few lived there, and they eked out a poor life.

In the east of the west were the furthest of the Tech-Cities, the great hive cities of the Scuttlers. Everything that happened in the west passed through them, at one point or another. Once upon a time Doki had ambition to move there, and while that time was long passed, she missed the days she would hop on the I-6 train and spend a weekend there with friends enjoying the luxuries of public air conditioning and fresh fish from the far coasts.

And finally, the north. The land of ghosts. It was a far more mild land than the other regions of the west, defined by the Wrack. It was a high plateau, dotted with villages and townships. Each of which were built around a tower of ghost stones, little rocks and gems ghosts often used to anchor themselves to the world. Doki spent the long dry seasons of the west there, avoiding sandstorms and biting winds.

Ghosts were… interesting. Doki had enough experience around them to know that much, at least. While it drained them, they could fade from view, and even from tough, becoming invisible and intangible. They might have been allergic to salt and iron, but they made up for it with manacasters and, among the more experienced of their number, simply phasing through bullets.

There was probably more, somewhere on some long forgotten server. Research and articles and a thousand other things about ghosts. The internet had long been shredded, leaving great holes in what people could actually find, and even more vulnerabilities that lead to most disregarding it entirely.

Doki wasn’t one of those, mainly because she used public terminals. Like the one outside the arms and armor shop, Gold Run. It was 5 dollars an hour, and of course she couldn’t pay for parts of that hour. She spent the first fifteen minutes searching old electronics forums and abandoned websites looking for what kinds of electronics burned and exploded like the ones that had almost caught her.

She came up with very little, and any attempts to poke further into the internet were met with annoying warnings and ‘unsecure websites disallowed.’ She moved on from there, browsing through her own little cache, frowning as she checked alerts for a mobile computer she’d wanted to buy on sale (the 50 she had made from the last job was barely a tenth of what she needed) and an offer to buy her cycle (a complete lowball, she trashed it as soon as she read the price).

After that it was just browsing. Bagdroll was posturing again, but everyone knew they’d never cross the desert again. The Tech-Cities were reporting record birth rates, some politicians were taking credit for a new tax break, a thousand other boring things.

She did check a few important things in that time. Kan was not on an official trip- in fact, from what she could gather, the media thought she was holed up in the Matriarchs Hall drafting a bill. She thought about researching the Third, wondering if she could pin some of their command to gun runners or some mafia.

She considered what she already knew first, though. Matara, on some covert mission, the involvement of the Third to the point that they would attempt to assassinate a governor of a Tech-City. Anyone that deep might have web crawlers out looking for things like that, if they were even sloppy enough to leave evidence somewhere on the web.

Instead Doki left the last twenty minutes of her time empty, and went into the Golden Run. She wanted to replace the spent shot in her LR-704, as well as top up her smaller munitions.

The store was compact, none of the fancy displays and holographic displays of the Tech-cities, no flair or pomp. Just solid wood, a long rack of rifles and handguns, and shelves piled with oils and bullets and a number of other things to keep weapons cleaned and ready to fire.

Doki paused at the bullets, looking upwards. Perched on the top of the shelf closest to the cashier’s counter was a box of All-Purpose Rounds. Doki hadn’t gotten her hands on any of those since her time in the militia. They would punch through anything short of an armored vehicle- the ceramic armor that had almost gotten her killed earlier would be no obstacle to them. Hell she had seen aircraft downed with a lucky shot from one of them.

They were also wildly expensive. The box was for sixty shots, and cost three hundred. Normally Doki would never spent that much on shot alone.

Matara was paying her expenses, though. And hey, maybe Doki ‘forgot’ that it was supposed to be after the job. And Kan was still in town.

“Hey,” Doki swiped the box of All Purpose and placed it on the counter, “this and one mag launch. Put it on 4 Gun Kan’s tab. I’m doing a job for her.”

She got a strange look, and then a shrug. Stranger things had happened. “Three twenty. All on Kan’s tab?”

“Yes sir,” Doki said, laughing and taking her new bullets. “Tell her thanks for me.”

She left without her usual browsing- she did not want to be there when Matara woke to a new bill. Doki had left her cycle on the west road, parked just outside Brightwater proper.

Her cycle was by far the most expensive thing she had ever owned. It had more than earned its value, large enough to carry a few days' rations and strap her long gun to, fast enough to outrun most of what the desert gangs could muster, and strong enough to endure years of riding asphalt and rock.

Despite that, it was not a pretty thing. Paint had long chipped away, and there were old dents from pursuits and its occasional use as improvised cover. Still, its electronics had not lagged, and its batteries held their charge, it was more than enough to carry her north. The world tinted yellow as she put on her glasses and pulled up her bandana, and then she was gone.

The road there was one of the few well kept ones in all the west. Even those between the Hive Cities were not so well maintained. It was thanks to the scattering of outposts and army bases built along it. The smooth asphalt made for easy riding, and Doki let her hovers take over while she turned her mind to the job.

Five towns in total had vanished- that Matara knew of, at least- each with signs of a struggle, but no survivors, no escapees to tell the tale. Four of them were clustered along the southern approaches of the Wrack, old mining towns that now played host to ghosts and their flocks of lesser spirits, ones they farmed frost and ectoplasm from.

Each was quite similar- far from the well traveled roads in the plateau proper, all but one with more than fifty residents. Vulnerable. She had some thoughts about that. The northern strike had been on a town of less than twenty, barely a collection of houses, at that point. Probably a test, she imagined, which meant that whatever was happening to these towns was being done with some new technology or…. Magic wasn’t often seen in the west. Too unreliable, too finicky, but it certainly was an option.

Doki had to take control as the road made a sharp curve. It was here that she would leave it. The proper, paved path headed east until it met with an airbase. The long, dusty path she would follow kept north.

She remembered the place well, even if there was nothing but the change in focus to note there. The last time she’d come to the bend had been going the other way, after the end of a particularly intense dry season. She’d spent it lounging in a cafe, enjoying discounted drinks, living off the chunk of savings she’d prepared for just that time.

It had been eight months since then. Doki missed it, missed her.

She refocused on the road. Mooning over something she didn’t have wasn’t going to spare her from the sharp rocks or the random dips in an unpaved road.

Doki wasn’t quite making a beeline for her intended destination, though. A detour took her west, first, along a side road a bit better taken care of. In the light of the morning sun she could barely make out herds of wisps and wraiths, lesser spirits the ghosts of the Wrack tended to. They were out of pens, disorganized, and as Doki came to a stop, she could see why.

An entire town vanished. It's great ghost stone cairn toppled and scattered. Doki had stopped well outside it, pacing closer slowly, cybernetics picking out burns from range while she eyed the ground beneath her.

There was nothing interesting there, not until she was just in front of the furthest of the towns houses. A singular, curved line of scorch. Doki turned with it, following it as it curved around the town, only stopping when she had passed a full minute following it.

It would be a circle, she guessed, though she would check the far side before leaving. She walked into the town next, poking at places her cybernetics had pointed out, the red lens in her eye still pointing out new ones.

Most of them were burns. The circular, hollow marks of a mana caster were the most prominent, though Doki found plenty of returning fire. All plasma based weapons, no bullet holes, no scatterings of salt that traditional anti-ghost weapons would leave.

There were also no weapons. Even if whatever had come had intended to not leave any trace of themselves, there should have been manacasters, abandoned or broken over heads.

Instead there was no legacy of the battle but burns.

The fact that only plasma weapons were used against ghosts was another point of interest. They couldn’t kill ghosts- something about the way magic and they interacted meant plasma had a difficult time killing anything magical. Doki’s harpy side had saved her on a few occasions by that fact alone, and she was only a fourth bird. Against ghosts they could disrupt, but never kill.

Doki didn’t like the implications of that. Perhaps a kidnapping, but for what? The old cults had long been driven from the west, and the last time Doki had heard of occultists she’d been ten.

There were no tracks, either. Ghosts usually floated about when they were unconcerned, but in a fight they anchored themselves, and whatever had attacked them almost certainly had feet.

Yet, there was nothing, no imprint of boots or wheels or treads that might indicate who it was that had attacked. Someone hadn’t just attacked, they’d taken the time to clean the entire village, leaving nothing of themselves behind.

She took the time to cross to the far side of the town, and find the burnt in arc there. The town had been called Merghoul, with a population of fifty three ghosts. Doki tried to remember what Matara had told her about them. Farmers, mostly, their main export being ectoplasm. They were friendly folk, from what she said. She took a moment to pay them a moment of silence at their toppled cairn before she continued.

Doki knew she could do nothing for them, not from their abandoned village. Instead she returned to her cycle, and set off north once more.

The roads were becoming better traveled, and occasionally there would be little pens of whisps or ghouls, signs of life for the first time since she’d left the proper road. As the sun rose to its apex, Doki began to pass more and more of these, until they began to give way to hamlets and roads branching off, even a ghost on a spectral steed or pulling a cart on some daily chore.

None of them were her goal. That was another hour further down the road. An old inn, repurposed a thousand times over. These days it was a cafe. Out in the Tech-Cities they might call it a bed and breakfast, and most referred to it as the best inn beyond the Morgish border. But to Doki, it would always be the cafe. Perhaps the Fair Maiden’s Rest, if someone was actually asking for directions to it.

Doki parked carefully, pulling down her bandana and returning to a much less yellow world without her aviators. She looked down and cursed, wiping dust and sand from the green of her shirt and attempting to beat it from her jacket.

She failed, for the most part, reduced to cursing and wondering if an hour to the nearest stream to wash them out would be worth it. Then she remembered she would need to let them dry, and scrapped that idea. She was reduced to attempting to wrangle her windswept hair into something more controlled, using one of her cycles mirrors. When that failed she let out a long sigh. And stepped into the cafe.

To the average customer, it wouldn’t have been anything special. It was manned by ghosts, sure, but the wood was old and Doki could trace the path of the sun through the windows by the long blacked timbers, and its tables were scratched and burned from years upon years of service. On the walls there were paintings and posters, many of which had faded into blurs of color, the newest of which a campaign poster for Matara ‘78, a relic from when she had run her northern campaign out of the cafe.

The bell that rang when she entered had been added a full year ago, though the rug was new, as was the only ghost she saw in residence. He was younger, clad in the greens and whites that had themed the cafe for years.

He was also quite unused to Doki, all dust and wild haired and, perhaps more importantly for him, armed with knife and revolver.

“Hey,” Doki started looking around for a moment. She was usually taking her lunch, or at least in the cafe proper. Doki checked the time on one of the seven (too many, a comment from ages ago, you’ll still forget, the response) clocks. She must have changed up her schedule,. “I’m here for a room, and lunch. Is- is Mint here?”

It took a moment for the ghost to relax, to open his mouth to answer, but he was cut off by the ringing of the door opening. Doki half turned, catching a glimpse of frills and white green hair before she heard it.

“Doki?”

Doki turned, taking a moment to chose how she would present ‘cool and calm bounty hunter’ before deciding it was leaning on the counter behind her.

“Hey, Mint. Been a while.”

Doki enjoyed the little laugh that followed that, and the hug after as Mint entered, though she was quick to reel back, whipping sand from her pristine uniform. “Doki! What, did you pass through a sandstorm on the way in?”

“I’ll tell you about it. You mind if I get something to eat first?”

Doki’s lunch wound up being much like her breakfast, though it was bagels this time, and the meat was of a much finer quality. Mint brewed her some tea as well, and while Doki ate, the ghost told her how things had been.

“So big guy comes in, breaks two of our chairs over his knee, and you know what I think?”

“You think?” Doki asked between bites.

“Asshole,” Mint’s laugh was a warm thing, “I think, ‘man, I sure do wish we had our own bounty hunter up here. You know, some real security. You give him one of those looks and flash your gun and I bet he never comes back.”

It was mostly stories like those, little things. Mint was more than happy to fill the air with them, only stopping when Doki finished the last of her tea. “So, you’re up here a month early. You get a nice job and decide to take your break now?”

“I’m-” Doki paused, considering how much she would tell Mint. “I’m on a job, actually.” She saw Mint’s frown and quickly added, “not a hunting job, not really. More of a finding job. Some… things have been happening.”

Doki saw Mint’s eyes narrow. “What kind of things,” Mint’s voice was quieter, with an insistence behind it that let Doki know she would be telling her everything, even if she really didn’t want to.

So she did, the vanished towns, the army involvement, what she’d seen at Merghoul.

Mint took a while to process. Doki could see her thinking. If the story had been less grim, she might have ribbed her over it. “Okay, so, you're out here-”

“Looking for who’s doing it, and wherever they’re doing it from.” Doki answered before Mint could finish. “I’ll figure that out, and Matara will bring the hammer down. Hopefully, at least.”

“I’m coming with.” Mint said.

“What?” Doki had been looking out a window, but at her words, she snapped back to Mint. “Mint, no. This is something I need to be doing. You’re- it’s too dangerous. Whatever is doing this is targeting ghosts.”

“Yeah, that's the point.” Mint crossed her arms, “Doki, you know two is better than one. And I actually live up here- how long has it been since you spent more than two months?”

It was a good point and Doki… she wouldn’t mind having Mint at her side. “Mint- just, if we get into a shootout-”

“Oh no,” Mint held up a hand, “absolutely not. Come on, I need to grab some stuff if we’re going to be doing a lot of traveling.”

There was little room in Mint’s voice for protest, she was already standing and striding towards the door. “Do you still have the necklace?”

It took Doki a minute to find it in her jacket, before she remembered placing it in her breast pocket. It was nothing special, a rounded river rock on the end of old wires.

One of Mint’s old ghost stones, a lucky trinket that had seen Doki through her time in the militia.

Mint reached for it, placing a finger on it for a moment before it took on a faint green tint, a reflection of the ghost inhabiting it. “Alright then, come on. We have places to be.”

Doki didn’t follow her a moment, instead looking down to the little stone, resting it in her palm. It was a touch warmer than it had been, and for a moment Doki could almost believe she felt the pulse of Mint’s heartbeat through it.

“Doki?” Mint stood at the door, one eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, okay,” Doki took a second to put the necklace on, hiding it underneath her bandana, “where do we need to go.”

Chapter Text

Doki remembered the road they were on. Years ago, when she scraped enough together to buy her first motorized, she and Mint had tested how fast it could go. They had raced up and down that road, laughing with the wind and dust.

Now she was on a cycle going almost twice as fast. She was fortunate that the hovers were good enough to correct for dips and little bumps in the road, as her mind was fixed on something else.

Mint was not content to simply ride along with Doki. As long as she kept her focus and Doki was carrying her ghost stone, she could fly with the cycle. Hair whipping in the wind, frills flapping like stunted wings. Doki watched her dive, almost fading into the ground a moment before she pulled up, laughing and roaring against the wind.

Doki echoed her, a quiet chuckle, all but lost to the wind. Mint heard it, or felt it, or perhaps she simply realized Doki’s eyes were on her. She swooped down, settling to float just above the handles of the cycle, a precious few inches separating the two.

They froze there for a moment. Doki could see a spark of mischief, a teasing smile. “Hey,” Mint’s voice was just loud enough to be heard over the wind breaking against her, just quiet enough to remind Doki of the thousand other times Mint had greeted her with that.

Mint didn’t wait for a reply. She realized she had an audience now. It wasn’t just swooping with the wind and allowing gusts to carry her, now she was flying. Figure eights daring dives, laughing and looking back to make sure that Doki saw the latest of her little tricks.

Doki did, of course, she didn’t even try to pretend to watch the road, the cycle’s systems could keep them on the road. And Mint… she was radiant, and her laugh left a warmth behind the wind couldn’t take with it.

She evened out eventually, content to swoop around rather than her flips and rolls. Doki leaned back in her seat, eyes still on Mint, laughing with her, shouting once when Mint sailed through a cloud of dust and came out the other side coughing and wheezing.

The road was good, at least. The only things she knew about it came from feeling the hum of the hovers, and they had not strained themselves at all in Doki’s distraction.

“Doki!” Mint was next to Doki now, a finger poking into her side, “wake up, Doki. I know I look good, but you missed our turn.”

Doki shook her head, glad the bandana could hide her flush, “what? What turn, you didn’t-”

“I've only been warning you about it for the last three miles, Doki,” Mint said. She was pointing behind them now, to some off road out of view. Doki took them into a hard slide. Mint shrieked as they tipped, gravel and sand grinding out into the air as they skidded.

Doki felt her hovers flare, pouring power out to make sure they didn’t topple. As they slowed, Doki put a foot down, dragging a boot against the road. She leaned into it as they stopped, lookingnup to Mint who was still fluttering in the air.

“Did I scare you?” She asked with a smile.

“Asshole,” was Mint’s reply. Dok took a moment to look back in the direction Mint had been pointing. She could see what Mint meant now. A narrow little path, probably meant for people on foot rather than a cycle. She could fit it up there though. She had done before.

“That’s… we’re going back?” Doki asked. She knew the path, even if she’d thought she would never return.

“Of course,” Mint replied, “you think there's a better place to start from?”

The answer to that was no, even if the idea of returning made Doki balk.

She took the path slowly, carefully She had to, there were turns that she had to walk the cycle through, places where she struggled to push past brambles and overhanging branches. The path curved up a hill to a small, flat stretch of ground. A single tree grew there, gnarled and hung with a dozen different charms. Beneath it was a cabin, all wood and the black of solar panels. Once it had been owned by some gold baron, a winter home away from the mines on the eastern edges of the Wrack.

When Mint and Doki had first broken into it, it had very much still been in their possession, even if it had not been lived in for years. In those days it had just been a fun bit of daring. The courier and the ghost, wheeling from one adventure to another, always returning to their little hideout to enjoy their spoils

Doki had barely been sixteen then, their spoils nothing more than an old pack of marshmallows to roast or the rare glass of juice siphoned from the usual deliveries.

Doki remembered when they got their first case. It had been pride that carried Doki to it, and the certainty that she and Mint could find the cattle rustlers before any officer could.

The front door was still marked by the time Doki had driven a knife into it after she’d been proven wrong. She watched Mint open the door, take a step inside.

Doki… she almost didn’t want to follow. There was so much in there, so many stories Doki had pushed back, boxed up and left untouched since her time in the militia. Three years of her life with Mint, three years of wandering the Plateau, of trips and jobs and a thousand moments more.

“Doki?” She glanced to Mint, paused in the doorway, looking to her. Doki’s old partner, her best friend, inviting her back into that life. “You coming?”

“Yeah,” Of course she was. She brushed a hand against the old scar in the door, remembering how angry she’d been at the time. Doki almost laughed at that memory. “I’m right behind you.”

The inside was a simple thing. The door leading out, a second one across leading to a bedroom. A bathroom, barely large enough for a toilet and shower. Doki remembered being forced to wash her hands under it, cursing when she got her clothes wet.

The main room had long been converted from the living room it had been to the headquarters of a pair of private eyes. On one side was an old map projector, from when holograms had just been introduced into people's homes. It was a great, blocky thing, taking up more space than a bed, draining more power in an hour than the solar panels on the roof could generate in a day. Across from it and the wide open area where the holos would be was a computer and a stack of data disks. Once upon a time they had been well organized, thanks to Mint. A catalog of their old jobs, strange sightings, information on terrain and geography, old books on psychology Doki thought might help them.

Further from them, towards the door out was a table. Doki… she didn’t want to look at it. She knew what was there, a bowl, a keychain, a bracelet of blue-green stones attached. An old gift from Mint, and on it hung a set of keys. One was for the Cafe, when Mint had just started working there, the other for the cabin they were in now.

Doki remembered leaving them there. She’d been nineteen, Mint had been crying. Doki was joining the militia, a four year contract. The first pieces of armor had rolled across the desert. The table was thick with dust, and the keys hadn’t moved in the seven years since Doki had left them there.

The rest of the cabin, though- there was only the faintest layer of dust. The final corner was the best example of this. A set of cabinets, polished and dusted, still stocked with cans of beans and some instant cheese that was now classified as a poison.

Doki was silent as she walked to the cabinets, checking the expiration dates. They had been old when the pair bought them, and now they were three years out of date. On the wall next to them were pictures. It was a dozen different kinds of film and sizes, hung with tape and pinned with nails. Mint had gone to the projector, and Doki could hear her pressing some commands into it, berating the old touchpad as it lagged and stuttered.

Doki traced her fingers over the pictures, remembering. A capture of the sky as the sun set, the silhouette of Mint pointing upwards to the first star of the night. Another of Mint and Doki sitting on the back of a burned out tractor. A picture of Doki’s back, and the scar she’d earned trying to wrestle a boar. One of Doki sleeping, her forehead piled high with some cracker she had not heard of in six years, Mint behind her waving with the hand not holding the camera.

“Give me a sec to warm up the projector,” Mint said from the other side of the room.

“Throw on a map.” Doki said absently, still browsing through her memories, laid out on the wall. “One with villages.”

Above them were posters. Mcloglin’s old bounty, before he’d gone big time and gotten taken out by the army. The vanishing whisps. The monster of Warcreek- that one was the boar Doki had wrestled. Big fucker. There were a few others, some buried under paper. Jobs they had taken, some they had been paid for. A collection of Doki and Mint’s lives as investigators.

The sudden, shining of light startled her, she twisted, hand dropping to her revolver as the half sun of Ishmal Projections Corporation spun to life. She sighed as Mint laughed.

“What, that’s all it takes to startle the greatest hunter in the whole west? I think Matara might need to rethink who she sent out here.”

“Shut up,” Doki was smiling as she said it, walking to the holo as the map loaded in chunks, villages and roads burning their way into the terrain as they loaded. Mint was perched on the side of the projector, legs kicking, one hand on the terminal.

Doki remembered hunting through dealers and surgeons because of that thing, looking for something new enough to be useful, old enough to be compatible. Once upon a time she'd been able to project some pictures and maps stored in her cybernetics.

Once the map was fully loaded, she spoke. “You ready for some names?” Doki asked.

Orduel, population seventeen. Hallowed Grace, population fifty six. Merghoul, fifty three. Achbald, fifty one. Under Laudard, fifty nine. Each was marked in red, one lonely in the north, the other four clustered along a line in the south.

“Idilith’s River bed,” Mint was the first to see it. Neither of them were very good with geography, but the dead river held some significance to the ghosts of the Wrack. “That's what connects those four. But Orduel…”

“A test.” Doki was adding the only information she had left on them, estimated dates. It had been much earlier. “Further out, smaller population, probably the first of the towns.”

It had been attacked a full month before the other four, and those had spans of two odd weeks between them.

“They’re moving fast,” Mint said. There was anger in that voice, and a hint of fear. “They’ll have rolled up the whole riverbed in a few months.” That would be hundreds of ghosts.

“They won't,” Doki wasn’t quite sure where that confidence came from, “we’ll make sure they can't. We just need to figure out where they’re hitting next.”

“Dead’s Crossing,” Was Mint’s answer. “Ferrus has too many ghosts, and the Crossing has only one road into it. Fifty seven people, hard to get to, along the riverbed.”

Doki nodded, “and… shit, we’ve got maybe two days before the next time whoever it is hits?” she said, “we need to get there, fast.”

“I know a bit of a shortcut,” Mint pushed herself off the projector, “give me a minute. Just…” Doki saw her eyes flick back, then to Doki, “just… don't break anything while I’m gone.”

She left Doki for the bedroom. Probably changing, there were half a dozen old outfits in there, unless the place had been really cleaned.

Doki took to pacing the room. Running a hand along the walls, looking at a scratch in the computer from when Doki had fallen asleep against it. There was a dent in one of the walls from when Mint had whiffed throwing a can at Doki, a missing panel in the projector from the time Doki thought she could rewire it to use less power. The place had not seen Doki for so long, and yet there was still so much of her there, bundled together with Mint and three years of memories.

“Hey,” Doki turned to Mints voice, stuttering out a half cough of surprise. Mint’s maid uniform had not been replaced. She still had the frills of her headdress, and while the sleeves had been rolled back, Doki could see the greens of her long shirt. Now she wore a vest, one with more pockets than even Doki’s, thick and gray with a set of tight fitting pants and boots. Steel toed, Doki knew, she'd taken a playful kick from them years ago.

“What, going for battle maid?” Doki asked.

Mint did a little twirl, bowing as she finished it. “Looks good, doesn't it?”

Doki would have loved to tell her no, but Mint’s wink had her looking away, trying to keep control of her face. “Whatever, as long as it works.”

Mint laughed at that, and by the time Doki returned her eyes to Mint, she was checking her own gun.

When they were in the business, Mint had been their shooter. An old automatic had been her weapon of choice. It wasn’t like Matara’s short stubby things, instead it was far longer, a rigger guard and blocky magazine welded to its bottom, barrel reaching out almost as long as Mint’s forearm.

Doki remembered when they bought it, fresh off of outriding a pack of angry dealers armed with shotguns and stun batons. That was the closest they’d come to disaster, the moment they realized they needed something to make themselves a threat if they were going to do that kind of work.

“You took care of the place,” Doki said, surveying the cabin a final time, memorizing it. Would she be back? Would she be able to stay away?

“Of course I did.” Mint said, “its… it was….” Mint struggled to find the words for a moment.

“It’s home.” Doki answered for her.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Mint said. “I always thought we’d- well, maybe that you would come back. Or want to come back here. After the militia and everything.”

Doki felt Mint’s own sadness seep into her, remembered seeing it in Mint’s eyes every time she got ready to make the trip back south after the dry seasons were out.

“I- I didn’t want to.” Doki said. It was both the truth and a lie. “This was… It was a lot. I wasn’t ready.”

“And now?” Mint asked.

“I…” I missed you, I missed you, I missed you, the words were on the back of her tongue. “We should get going.”

“Yeah,” Doki could feel Mint’s eyes on her as she stepped to the door. “Okay, lets go.”

Doki stopped at the table, coated in status. The bowl. The keys, the dust Mint had allowed to collect there.

She reached down, hooking a finger through the chain.

“You’re taking it?” Mint asked.

I missed you.

“Might come in handy,” Doki answered, throwing open the door, slipping the keyes into a front pocket. Her cycle was just ahead, and mint followed her to it, sitting behind her this time rather than flying along.

As Doki started pushing the cycle down the path, Mint settled into her. Doki could feel the coolness of her body seeping through their vests, her back chilling under Mint’s touch. “Hey, um,” Mint paused, “I’m glad you’re back.”

I missed you.

“Yeah, me too,” Doki said.

Chapter Text

A very long time ago, Doki had learned an important lesson. She and Mint had been out in the canyons, far beyond they had ever gone. Too far for any satellites to ping them directions or to stumble across people to ask for a way back. Mint knew the way back though, she swore up and down they didnt need any help. And Doki, she’d followed Mint. To be fair, Doki had also been completely lost, though her idea of waiting for the sun to come back out had been far better.

Instead, Mint led them deeper, insisting a few more turns would have them on the path home.

“I’ve seen it on an old map, back in school,” Mint had said, and of course Doki trusted her. They found the border checkpoint instead of the road, and very nearly been arrested on suspicion of being Bagdroll paid spies. Doki had enjoyed it later. It certainly had been a story they laughed at, once they were back home, lazing on the bed. At the time though… Doki remembered being pissed, swearing she’d never trust Mint with a map again.

She hadn’t stuck to that, of course, but it should have been a lesson to her. Mint and directions? Better ask someone else.

They were halfway through Mint’s ‘shortcut’ when she realized she should have remembered that a few miles back. Mints idea of a shortcut was a long, barren plain of sand, whipped up into clouds by the slightest wind. And Doki’s cycle needed its air vents to cool its engine.

“Mint,” Doki could feel each time the vents were clogged. The metal under her legs would begin to heat, and even the thick denim of her riding pants wouldn’t save her skin from that for very long.

“Doki,” Doki could hear the embarrassed flush in her voice. She could feel it, too. Mint had decided to sit behind Doki this ride, rather than float next to her. Doki was beginning to relearn the way Mint touched. She had always enforced a sort of distance between them, even when she took her trips north. Now though, now that Mint was riding with her, that they were on a job, she was allowing Mint closer.

When Mint was embarrassed, she leaned into Doki’s left shoulder. Doki was remembering it, now. If they had been standing, she would have taken a half turn, smile pulling at the far side of her lips.

“How much longer is this shortcut?” Doki asked.

“Oh, you know,” Doki felt Mint pausing, leaning away from Doki before she answered, “another mile. Or two. Probably two.”

Doki’s sign was a long suffering thing, let out as they slowed. “I need to clean vents again,” She said, swinging a leg over the cycle as they rolled to a stop.

It was an easy thing, at least. Pull vent covers off of the forward air intakes, shake them a few times, maybe rub a particularly stubborn clump of sand and rock from them. She took a moment to kneel, checking the actual intakes to make sure her filters were doing their job.

They were, thankfully, but Doki knew she would need to buy new ones after this. Going as fast as they were, the sand would be cutting through the mesh. “Mint, I am going to bill you for these,” Doki said as she replaced the filters.

“Really?” Doki knew that voice, the fake worry. She turned and was the smug little smirk, and the wide, sad eyes that did nothing to hide it. “You wouldn’t make me pay for it would you?”

“Shut up Mint,” Doki was already laughing as she said it, and Mint followed her, leaning forwards on the cycle, hands taking the handlebars.

“Maybe I should just drive off. Go for a joyride, huh?”

“You? Driving? Fuck Mint I’ll give you the keys, I want to see that.” The last time Mint had taken the wheel around Doki had been on her old motorized. She had nearly driven them into a gravel pit, shrieking the whole time.

Mint must have remembered that, or never gotten any better, as she pulled back, patting the seat in front of her. “Aw, I won't leave a lady waiting. Come on Doki.”

Doki rolled her eyes at that, settling herself back in front of Mint. She took a moment to look back at Mint. “We’re gonna be speeding these last two miles, gonna try getting through without having to stop again,” Doki warned, “so, uh, hold on, okay?”

Mint didn’t need to, of course. Doki didn’t really know why she warned her.

“Okay,” Mint said, wrapping her hands around Doki’s waist, huddling against her back in preparation for the wind.

It felt good.

They didn’t need to stop again. The sand rolled beneath them, little ridges and bumps in the ground testing how quickly the hovers could adjust. At very least, Mint had been right about the shortcut. They came to a proper road, leading almost straight on to Dead’s Crossing. They’d avoided the long bend that curled around and away from that bit of desert. It would have been almost a full day’s detour, especially since Doki’s cycle would have needed time to recharge.

It took them another hour to reach Dead’s Crossing. It was one of the few ghost towns that didn’t rely on farming spirits, sitting on a road that led between Bagdroll, the Tech cities, and the rest of the Plateau. Idilith’s Riverbed sat just beyond it, the old scar running north along the lower edge of the plateau, and south towards the dam that had killed it.

It had not been attacked, not yet at least, though Mint was certain it was next.

“Trust me,” Doki said, when Mint again repeated that the Crossing was next, “I believe you. Just means we have some time to check the riverbed, see if they get sloppy on the way back.”

They did not go there first, though. Ghosts elected a council rather than Mayors. Dead’s Crossing had a council of three, Holding court in the center of town. It was a property dispute, the difference between owning a tree and a fence. Incredibly boring stuff. The council was gathered in the town square, standing behind a pedestal with an old book, perhaps their code of laws or old agreements held within, a group of twenty or so ghosts listening to them read from it.

Mint wanted to wait, to let them settle their legalities.

Doki pushed a ghost out of the way and stepped in front of the three.

“Hi,” Doki paused a moment, realizing that she should probably say something more before she was arrested. “I- I’m on a job here. Hunting work. I have reason to believe your town is in danger.”

There were a long few moments of silence. Doki had the feeling she was about to get herself a fun trip to a jail cell, but, fortunately, she had not come alone.

“Councilmen,” Mint had never liked this part of the job. Doki winced at the quick breaths, the little shake in her voice before Mint forced it to steady. “We are on an investigation into disappearances of ghosts from this area. We think that your town is under threat of it. I apologize for interrupting this proceeding, but it is important that everyone is informed of this.”

Doki relaxed a moment as the eyes were turned from her, and as she heard the council begin whispering between itself, huddling around their lawbook.

“We thank you for this warning,” Doki knew it was old ghost tradition for the council to speak as one. Didn’t make it any less creepy. “We will take the necessary precautions.”

They were dismissed with little else. Doki wanted to insist a little- they didn’t know the threat, and they certainly didn’t seem worried enough.

“Doki, come on,” Mint had an easy enough time talking her down from it, “they’re going to get ready after this. Don’t you want to check out Idilith? Or would you rather see the inside of the town jail?”

Doki relented with a grimace. “They had best be getting ready,” Doki said, “if we get screwed over because of this-”

“We’ll be fine,” Mint said. And sure, Doki believed her, but it would have been nice to see ghosts with manacasters on roofs.

The riverbed was within walking distance, and Doki didn’t want to bother running from one side of town just to drive back. Dusk was approaching, the blasting heat relenting to the cold of the night. It would be perfect, for a precious hour or so.

They spent it walking along the riverbed. They found precious little, of course. Mint pointed out a snake, Doki picked up an old river rock, but tracks or trails or anything that would lead them?

“I’m not surprised,” Doki said, “they covered themselves well at Merghoul. No point in doing that if some kids wandering the desert could pick up their trail.”

“So what do you think?” Mint asked, “wait for them to hit again?”

“I’d rather not.” Doki answered, “maybe we post up along the river, get ourselves some desert camo and wait. Follow whoever it is north or south back to whatever shitty raider camp they're launching from, call it in to Kan. Easy money.”

“Do you want to go back then?” Mint asked.

Doki looked up to her. Mint was walking with her, rather than floating along above the dust and rock. Doki remembered asking her to, a very long time ago. ‘It feels like you’re more here,’ she’d told Mint. She remembered Mint learning how to run on two legs, rather than fly haunt her way around. She remembered a lot of things.

“Not really,” Was Doki’s answer. “Want to walk with me?”

Mint was at her side before she finished, taking the first few steps along the riverbed.

She was also the first to speak. “Do you ever miss it?”

Doki didn’t know what she was asking. Her? Life up on the plateau? Their lives before Doki joined the militia?

“I miss feeling like i was immortal,” Doki answered, deciding it was the last, “fuck, some of the stuff we did, back in the day… we’re lucky to have made it this far.”

Doki knew she chose wrong when she heard Mints laugh, a forced echo of what Doki knew. “Yeah, I guess… I guess we are. You remember that gang, the one that tried robbing trains on I-9?”

Doki was glad for the deflection, glad to move away from whatever it had been that pained mint. That talked for a time, jumping between old memories. There were fights and escapes and adventures.

“Oh, oh, you know that time we hung old sheriff Bartell’s hat on that tree?”

“And I said the tree would be gone before the har?” Doki did remember. That tree had been an ugly thing, dead branches and grubs burrowing into it.

“Yeah, well, guess what? Its flowering these days. I went up there, not too long ago.”

“Really?” That thing was far- that was the intention, after all. Bartell had never seen his hat again, “why’d you go all the way out there?”

“I- uh,” Doki could tell she caught Mint in something, “I was just in the area, you know. Figured I’d stop by.”

“Sure, Mint,” Doki said with an eye roll, “there's a whole lot to do out in that desert.”

She didn’t press, though her mind was running through the possibilities. What had Mint been doing in their old stomping grounds? Reliving memories, maybe? Same reason Doki stopped at the junction between I-7 and 6 every time she passed.

They really were hopeless, Doki guessed. “Come on,” She said, taking a step up the old bank, back towards Dead’s Crossing, “lets get back into town. It’ll be pitch black soon, and I know you’ll trip over something.”

Doki laughed at Mint’s annoyed ‘I will NOT,’ reaching a hand down that Mint didn’t need.

She took it of course, Almost stumbling back into the bed when Mint pulled on it with a smile and a wink.

“Asshole,” Doki was laughing as she said it, shaking off the memories that had welled up down in the riverbed. The job was fun, at least. A good vacation from the usual.

They were on the river side of town when Doki heard the whine of engines. It froze her- she hadn’t heard airjets since the militia, and they had always spelled some misfortune.

“Mint,” Doki had turned, peering into the darkness. Whoever it was had chosen to come in against the sun, forcing her to squint into its last rays of light.

“Doki,” Mint must have heard it too, or seen Doki’s hand on her pistol.

“Trouble. We need to warn-” Doki’s words were drowned by the roar of four airjets. Not a strike craft, Doki noted, a military hauler. She watched it slow, two of its engines swiveling to bring it to a stop, hovering over the village. Something was welded to its underside, a mess of wire and plate. Doki watched it begin to glow.

“It's a dome,” She said, before watching that glow expand, racing down and out. A great glowing dome, encompassing the whole village.

“Mint- Mint?” Doki turned, expecting to see Mint, weapon drawn. Instead, the ghost was collapsed, clutching at her head.

“Doki, I can’t- fuck, what are they doing?” Mint couldn’t even turn to look at Doki, her gun dropped at her side. Her voice was small, fading, and it seemed to take all her energy just to cough out a few words. “I feel so…”

Whatever it was, Mint couldn’t even finish her sentences, instead curling in on herself.

“Fuck me,” Doki checked her munitions, though she already knew what bullets she had. She’d left her fancy bullets in her cycle, which was on the other side of town. Her regular bullets were nice, but they wouldn’t be downing an airship.

“Mint, I’m gonna go grab my gun, you- fuck, I’ll be back, promise.” Doki hesitated a moment longer, wanting to say anything else. Instead, she settled on reaching a hand out, taking mint’s own.

“You hear?” Doki asked, “Just give me a moment and I’ll bring it down.”

Mint clutched at Doki’s hand a moment before she squeezed it, the only response she seemed capable of.

Doki didn’t take the fastest route- it would have put her out in the open of the town square, and she would rather live to save Mint than get shot from the air.

She took a side street- open, sure, but there were plenty of buildings to put between her and the airship.

It wouldn’t be the only vehicle joining in. Doki heard engines and the sound of rock pinging against metal. A ground force. She also heard the scattered sound of manacasters- some of the ghosts could still fight, at least. It was too few to make a difference, though, and Doki wasn’t going to rely on them to swing things.

By the time she got to her cycle, it was occupied. A pair of flatbeds, four gunmen in old fatigues. They weren’t real military- they would have noticed her when she popped out from behind a corned too quickly and had to backpedal, though they certainly had surplus gear.

Four rifles, though they were more interested in her cycle than watching the surroundings.

“How much you think we can get for this, huh? I bet we can-”

Doki had six shots, and she didn’t miss. The first shot was through the only one facing Doki. The second she put through the shoulders of the only one with a warmed up weapon, the third through the one sitting in the seat of her cycle. Only the fourth could bring his weapon to bear in time, and it was an old plasma launcher. The second warm up time it needed was more than enough to down him.

“Fuckers,” Doki didn’t bother to gloat over them, pulling her LR-703 from its saddle holster, checking to assure that yes, Tenjin had reloaded before he’d given it back.

The airship was easy prey. It was much older than anything else these fools had brought, and whatever stabilization it was running needed all four engines.

Doki’s shot went through the right front, usually where the calibration systems checked first. Some older models would fry their computers when it was shot out.

This one didn’t- or at least she didn’t see the cockpit flash with sparks. Instead it reeled right, and then started spinning, crashing off to the side of town.

Doki got to watch the dome crack and burst, smiling as it finally shattered into light, and then nothing.

There were shouts in the town- every attacker had heard the sound of a mag shot, and if they were smart they would know it wasn’t a ghost who had fired back.

Doki didn’t really care- she had someone to get back to, and she certainly wasn’t going to keep Mint waiting.

She took the same side streets, stopping only once to watch a handful of ghosts, chasing a pair of their attackers out of the town with manacaster shot.

Doki paused when she arrived at the river side of town. There were half a dozen trucks there, all recent arrivals, all with knocked out ghosts loaded onto the back. And Mint- Mint who Doki had left defenseless- she was gone.

Doki’s heart stopped a moment, before it roared blood into her ears. She was going to tears these idiots apart until she found Mint.

“Doki!”

She turned when Mint called her name. She was cornered, two of the towns attackers had pinned her against a wall, struggling to hold her down. She was struggling, cursing and spitting at them even as one bashed her with the butt of his rifle.

The momentary relief was subsumed by red. Doki did not bother to be careful with her shots- she put three into the first before she realized her finger was on the trigger. The second got the same treatment. Doki considered reloading and emptying the next six into them as well, but shouts and a hail of gunfire had her ducking back the way she had come.

The trucks, and their cargo of victims, wheels kicking up sand as they were lost to the desert.

Doki didn’t care about them, not in that moment. She was at Mint’s side a heartbeat later, one hand feeling along her sides for injuries, the other holding Mints arm.

“Doki- Doki I’m fine,” Mint said, “thanks for the save, you can let me up now, yeah?”

It was supposed to bring a smile, but Doki saw red on Mint’s frills, knew there was a bruise forming where she’d been hit.

“Doki?” Mint had to press her back to stand up, and even then Doki was silent. “Come on, we need to get after them. Doki, hello?”

“No,” Doki finally spoke. “All they know is they got unlucky with a town, some drifter fucked them. If we go after them they’ll know someone is following them, looking for their base. We’ll wait, and follow them up in the morning.”

“Okay,” Mint said, pausing, “Doki, are you good?”

“Yeah,” it was dismissive, said with the shake of a head, “let's just… just get somewhere to sleep. We’re going to need to be careful tomorrow, we don’t want them knowing someone is after them.”

Thirteen ghosts had been taken from the town, when the headcount was finished. Doki listened to the town thank them, though her mind was far an away. Even when they took a spot in the town’s general store, the only place with free beds that didn’t belong to someone who was kidnapped, she wasn’t really present.

They were in a back room, hard floors and hard cots, one blanket between them. Mint had it, Doki was used to sleeping in worse. It was all but pitch black, the light of the moon struggling to make it through first the window and then the doorway. Doki knew if she turned, she would be able to just make out the shape of Mint laying on her side, eyes locked on her.

She wouldn’t. She didn’t want to have this conversation, to say what she was thinking. Mint, of course, was not satisfied with that. “Doki?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

Doki liked to imagine that she had just… stopped, after the militia. That she had made the switch to being a bounty hunter instantly.

“Thinking about what?” Doki knew what she meant, of course. She just… didn’t want to answer.

She’d done one job with Mint. She’d promised, after all, to come back, to get back into the private eye business with Mint. They were going to hit it big time, maybe even wind up on some wild cases in the cities.

But one last try, out in the wilds of the west, sure. It was smugglers, easy as can be. A quartet, running drugs from the outskirts of the plateau to buyers in Brightwater. Easy- especially with Doki’s training.

“Brightwater. That day, the time…” Mint trailed off. That time Doki got cocky? The time she almost got both of them killed?

Mint had been perfect, of course. She’d done the investigation, found their little hole. It had been Doki, ready to show off, Doki, charging right down the front. She’d faced down armor in the red cliffs, what could four smugglers do to her?

“I don’t think you should do the rest of this job with me.” Doki said. “This next part is the easiest bit. Just follow them north. A few days of riding, maybe hiding out a time or two.”

“You’re thinking about when I got shot.”

Doki tried to ignore that. Tried to beat away those memories. Crouching behind her motorized, cursing as a half dozen pullets pinged off its metal. Mint, running down, pistol lowered. Watching her take that shot, watching the blood.

She’d always known ghosts could bleed, had seen Mint get scrapped up dozens of times. But that…

“Doki…” Mint’s voice seemed so small, so sad. That day it had been desperate, scared. Doki, Doki, Doki. She remembered it.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” was all Doki gave Mint.

“I- Doki,” Mint took a long breath, “I need you to promise me something.”

Doki closed her eyes for a long moment. She wondered if she could pretend to have fallen asleep for a moment. She turned to face Mint of course, Mint who smiled despite everything, Mint who’s right shoulder had a scar because of Doki.

“Promise me you won’t leave,” Mint said.

Doki had done that to her, after Mint had recovered. Got on her motorized and left. She remembered crying on the ride down to Brightwater, feeling alone for the first time in ages.

“Promise me,” Doki didn’t know if she could do that again.

“I promise.”

Chapter Text

Doki expected to dream of her days in the militia. Firefights usually brought that out, stress and the adrenaline reminding her of old battles. Tonight there was something else, a cooling presence, one that reminded Doki of years past.

Doki knew the dream. She was younger, dumber. Her back was not scarred from wrestling a boar, but she had earned the little divot in her chin from standing too close to a saw blade chewing through old lumber.

Mint was with her, though not at the table. The two were on their second year of terrorizing the edges of the Wrack, straddling the line between legality and landing themselves on a wanted list.

That day was close to the later, though cheating at a game of poker wasn’t quite illegal. What a boring fucking game, poker, but Doki had an ace up her sleeve. She was sitting at the bar, watching the table, dressed down in browns and grays, doing her best to remain unnoticed.

The two of them had worked out a system. Mint could turn invisible, and Doki could keep a straight face. And so began the cycle. When Doki would bet, Mint would fade from view, usually after darting to a side room. And then the fun would begin.

It had taken a long few days to teach Mint hands, to drill the rules into her skull. Once she had, once Mint had learned to hover around for the whole round, to watch bets and cards with the eyes of a player- that’s when they started making money.

The day Doki was dreaming she had… well, Doki had been a little shit. Sliding up to a game three hours old, dropping a ten onto the pot to buy her way in, smiling when three of the players cursed at her and nodding to the dealer.

They took the other four players for everything. Doki enjoyed watching the best of the lot sputter and curse as Doki slowly whittled away at his winnings, enjoying the feeling of Mint’s cold hand on her shoulder, the flickering guide on her way to fortune.

Four hundred and seventeen dollars. More money than Doki had ever held, more than she could even think about using. In that moment, Doki had infinite money, and she was perfectly happy to blow the first twenty buying the whole bar a round of drinks.

She and Mint didn’t stick around. They had learned that drinks and losing could get them dragged into a bar brawl, and while Doki enjoyed putting overconfident wasters on their ass, the chances of one pulling a knife or drawing a gun was too high.

Doki was learning to fast draw, at least. Someday soon she would be able to be up there with the great duelists, whipping her pistol from its holster at her hip. That's what she told herself, at least. She still drew across her body, still used a rusted old semi automatic pistol she had looted from a job.

Mint was still their gun, though she didn’t enjoy that role. She was floating along with Doki, counting out their winnings. They were plotting out how they were going to spend it, portioning it between repairing Doki’s old motorized and buying up a better gun for Mint.

“Hey!” Doki knew the shout meant trouble. Mint was smart enough to stash their winnings under one arm, the other ready to draw.

Doki turned, cursing when she saw three of the four they’d just swindled.

“Fucker is a ghost!” One of them said, “they cheated!”

“Doki,” Mint’s voice was level. Doki was already reaching for her gun.She hesitated though, when her right eye eas lit up with a half dozen warnings. Her eye was not the combat cybernetic she loved in the modern day, rather a mix of an old crop dusters augment and a computer older than Doki was.

The three already had their weapons drawn, pistols, all of them. Doki felt her cybernetics buzzing against her, the usual civilian safewear warning her that it was bad to be shot. Over and over again, each one taking up more and more of her vision with little labels and requests.

“Doki,” Mint was pulling her closer, one hand on her own gun.

“Yeah, yeah,” Doki tried ignoring the buzzes, “I’m ready.”

“Who the fuck are you calling a cheater?” Doki set herself as she called back to the three, “not my fault you play poker like six year olds.”

The two groups stopped less than five meters apart. Doki’s eye was highlighting their weapons now, reading warnings and making requests to call the authorities. Mint had her gun out, Doki’s was still in its holster.

“How about you two give us our money back,” Doki was doing her best to assess, looking for cover. Water troughs for the poor few who still needed horses, the alleyway between the butcher’s and tailors shops. Mint must have done the same, by the time Doki returned her attention to her companion, her feet were set, ready to dive left.

There was a too long moment of silence between the five. “How about you turn around and fuck off.” Doki suggested, her hand resting on her pistol. “Losing money is bad, having new holes put in you is worse.”

There was laughing at that. “Allright, girlie,” Doki knew that tone, recognized the twitch of and arm and the half step backwards, “lets see who’s day-”

Mint knew it too. Her shot was on target, taking the leftmost through the knee. Doki divided before the other two could recover.

The rest of the fight was chaos wrapped in her own dreamscape. In reality, the fight had been a simple thing, two versus two. If her cybernetics hadn't been frying themselves, it would have been easy. But in the dream, it was shifting and changing. Sometimes there were just the two, sometimes four.

It all ended the same, though. Doki, pressed against a wall, trying to blink tears out of her eyes as the burning, throbbing pain of a cybernetic dying ate away at her skull.

It was quieter, at least, the shots had stopped, the fight won, but Doki couldn’t even see that. Mint found her there, hands on her head, whimpering with the pain.

“Doki,” Mint’s voice had been soft, scared, “Doki, look at me.”

It was difficult to focus. Her left kept changing views, her right trying to compensate for that. Mint pulled Doki’s hands down, replacing them with her own. The cold of a ghost did little to abate the burning- but it was something. Enough for Doki to whisper out what was happening- she was all but blind in her cybernetic enhanced eye, her head felt like it was on fire and being split open, she was- she was-

“It’s going to be okay, Doki,” it was hard to be scared with Mint. “I promise, its going to be okay.”

She had been telling the truth. The town’s surgeon did not sleep through a ghost pounding on his door, and was more than willing to operate on Doki for fifty dollars of their winnings.

Doki didn't remember much of the rest of the night. It was a haze of drugs and words she barely understood fully conscious. The only thing that stood out, the only part she remembered into her waking hours was the hand. Cool and steady, the fingers interlocking with Doki’s, squeezing back when she needed reassurance, her connection to the world beyond that night.

Doki woke when the dream Mint let go of her. It was just after sunrise, the little alarm in her cybernetics pinging her brain awake. She did not get up, not for a long moment. Instead she turned, looking across their temporary bedroom. Mint.

Doki still felt the phantom of her dream, was tempted to reach out for the real thing. She stood, taking a step closer.

“What the fuck are you doing, Doki,” She asked herself, forcing a turn away from her companion. Instead she stepped into the general store, leaving a quarter on its counter as she grabbed its phone.

She did not call Kan directly, she’d been warned against that. Instead her line went to Tenjin, who picked up after the first ring.

“I didn’t realize you got up this early,” Tenjin was used to night jobs with Doki.

“Yeah, well, I’m on a bitch of a job,” Doki said, “Don’t suppose you can take a message for me, pass it off to Kan when she’s back in town.”

“Alright, shoot.”

Doki told him of what they’d found. The raid, the vehicles, their plan to chase them into the desert.

Once she was done, Tenjin whistled. “That’s quite the story,” He said, “makes that smuggling job look like a fucking day in the park.”

“Yeah, well, it’s only going to get worse. You know anything that could generate a shit ton of electricity up north?” Doki asked, “pretty sure they need something more than solar panels to charge their plasma and get whatever this dome thing is working.”

“Not off the top of my head,” Tenjin took a few moments to think it over, “I mean, there’s some old coal plants up there, but they need so much water.”

“Right, yeah,” Doki paused thinking about their next move. Thinking about Mint, about the risks and what they were heading into.

“You alone up there?” Tenjin asked, “this doesn’t really sound like a one man job, you know? I can get up to you in- what, two days?”

“I’ve got- I’m with Mint.” Doki said.

“Ah,” Tenjin had heard some of the stories. “And how is that going? Been a while since the two of you were- you know. Together.”

Doki considered hanging up on him, or not answering. “Feels like I’m getting a look at what I could have had,” Doki said, “if I didn’t fuck it up. I…” Doki didn’t know what she was going to say. I hate it? A lie. I miss her? Too much of a truth.

“Doki,” Tenjin was picking his words carefully. He had opinions, about all of this, had told Doki to fuck off back north at one point. “Just- enjoy it.”

Doki laughed at that. “Not really a choice,” how could she not enjoy being on the road with Mint?

“Good luck,” Tenjin said, “shoot straight.”

A

“Same to you,” And then there was the buzz of a dead line. Doki put the phone down, leaning back against the stores counter. “What the fuck are you doing Doki,” she asked again.

Mint was awake when Doki returned, already half out of bed, eyes locking onto Doki when she returned. “Oh, you’re…” There was a lot unsaid there.

“I promised you I wouldn’t just leave,” Doki said, “I was just calling someone in Brightwater. Figured someone should know what's going on before we head into the desert.”

“Right, yeah,” Mint stood slowly, pausing to stretch out. It was catlike, almost. “So… we’re going?”

“We are.” Doki said, “come on, no sense in burning daylight.”

They burned it all the same, of course. There were ghosts that wanted to offer them assistance, food and water skins and ammunition, some that wanted them to look for specific ghosts, and a hundred other things. Doki did her best to wade through it, to leave no promises and accept none of the offerings.

It took nearly an hour to get on Doki’s cycle and get moving, riding along the bank of Idilith. Doki was watching the riverbed as they rode, noting how deep the tracks were, how broad the tires.

“They’ve cleaned up every time,” she told Mint. They stopped as the sun peaked to eat. Doki was sitting on the edge of the riverbed. “Probably not even with those vehicles. I'm surprised they didn’t even do a partial job.”

Mint’s eyes were on the horizon. “They know something,” she said.

“It’s a trap, or the weather is about to get really fucking bad.” Doki said. “Which one, do you think?”

“Where we are right now?” Mint paused a moment, “Look at those clouds.”

Doki turned to look up, following Mint’s eyes up. Long daggers of clouds, rushing in from the west.

“Windstorm,” Doki said.

“Windstorm.” Mint agreed, “coming in over the emptiest parts of the desert. It's going to bring a lot of sand with it.”

They rode harder, after that, veering away from the river. Deadwood was far and away now, but the red rock canyons ran all this way north, along the edges of the plateau. There would be a cave somewhere- hell, Doki and Mint had spent months poking through them looking for a good place to store some less than legal acquisitions.

“Doki,” Mint was hovering just to Doki’s left, having to shout to be heard over the whine of the cycle’s engines being pushed to their off road limits.

Doki acknowledged her with a tilt of her head, eyes focused on the terrain in front of them. Hovers would not save Doki at this speed. “Take a left up here- and slow down.”

Doki didn’t question, swinging them into a turn, letting her air brakes fire off the drag them to a jerking stop.

The canyon wall was indeed right in front of them, a narrow offshoot cutting them a path. Doki followed it until Mint tapped her on the shoulder. There was a little divot in the canyon there, a chunk eaten away by who knows what. There were caves in that little corner, though more than half looked too small to even crawl in.

“Come on,” That did not deter Mint, who lead the way to one of the larger ones. “Do you remember this place?”

It took Doki a long few moments to wonder before she did. “Holy shit,” she had to duck to follow Mint into the cave, their cave. “Home base.”

The inside was not pretty. The bedroll they had shared has rotted into nothing, the old solar powered condenser was long broken, and even the rugged little survival computer’s screen was cracked.

“Three months,” Mint was turning in place as she said it, taking in the cave. It was a deformed thing, an oval with a gaping hole cut in one side. The pair had used it as a home away from home in their younger years, hiding out here for months after they had pissed off the wrong people.

“Three fucking months in here,” Doki said, “I think I’d rather just get shot by the mob now.”

“Really?” Doki turned to see Mint smiling, “it's not that bad. Remember how cold it got at night?”

“And we’d sit under a single blanket because you refused to let me go out and get another one.” Mint was laughing before Doki finished.

“I knew you were going to get yourself shot.” She said, poking Doki, ”plus, it was the summer. We didn’t need it.”

“I sure as shit needed it. I had a ghost cuddling up to me, freezing me out of the covers.”

They were laughing- Mint brought up the night Doki had just gone and laid in the sand outside, Doki reminded her that it had been a very good idea, a dozen other memories from this place.

“I missed you,” Mint’s words jolted Doki’s train of thought to a halt, froze her in her wild retelling of the time Mint had had her chase a jackrabbit across the canyon. It was so simple, tacked onto the end of a comment about how she refused sandbathes. It would have been so easy to respond in kind. I missed you too.

“I- I mean,” Doki tried to recover, “We see each other.”

“It's not…” Mint was looking at Doki now, searching for something. “You know it's not the same.”

It wasn’t. They never went traveling, never saw the sights. Doki came, lounged around Mint’s cafe,l and left. That was their cycle.

“We should do it again.” Mint wasn’t content with that. Doki wondered if she ever had been.

“No,” Doki said, “We- I can’t.”

Mint was quiet for a moment, looking at Doki’s arms, her jaw, the handful of scars she’d picked up.

“Doki,” There was something in Mint’s eyes, a certainty there Doki had not seen in years. And then she was taking her clothes off.

“Mint what the fuck,” Doki took a step back, half turning.

“I’m not fucking stripping, Doki,” It was her vest, and then the shirt below it. “Turn back around.”

Doki did. Mint was left in her long pants and an undershirt, one whose sleeves had been cut. Hell, Doki might have cut them. It looked close enough to the old ones Mint would wear underneath her gear.

Doki could see everything from her shoulders down. On her right, the little starburst of a scar, peeking out from underneath. “Mint- I-” Doki was looking for something to say, looking away from the scar. Her fault, her dumbass choice, her cockiness. And Mint forever bore the mark of it’s price.

“Doki,” Mint took a step forwards, reaching out to take Doki’s hand in her own, guiding it up, pressing Doki’s fingers onto the scar. Her other hand traced up Doki’s arms, fingertips sliding along old wounds, the cold sending shivers up Doki’s spine.

“Doki,” Her forehead was pressing against Doki’s now, “I’m not scared of it. This,” Her hand pressed against one of the longer of Doki’s scars. Doki wondered if she would reach around, trace the old boar scar on Doki’s back, wondered how that would feel for a moment. “This is the job. It’s life, out here.”

“I don’t… I don’t want to watch you get hurt.” Doki’s voice was a weak thing, but Mint heard it, Doki could see that in the way Mint smiled, in how she leaned a little harder into Doki. She still had her hand on top of Doki's, forcing her to feel the scar. “I don’t think… I don’t think I can do that again.”

Mint allowed that to hang between them. Doki’s thumb traced the edges of Mint’s scar, wondering how different their lives would have been without it. Where they would be now.

“Come with me,” Mint whispered.

“Where?” Doki didn’t know why she asked. Mint could have said the Moon, and the answer would have been the same. Doki was dangerous, she couldn’t-

“No,” Mint’s voice was hard, her hand squeezing down on Doki’s. “Don't think that. I know that look.”

Of course she did, of course she’d learned all of Doki’s new faces in the few months together. There was another pause, another moment of Mint watching Doki before she spoke. “I got accepted. In Tabaski.”

The forensics program. Mint had told Doki of it years ago, her savings for it, the little bits of learning she was doing to pass the entrance exams.

“You should-”

“We should.” Mint cut in. “I want you to come with me. There’s- there's a thousand different things you can do in Tabaski without a gun. Without putting your life on the line everyday.”

“When… when do you leave?” Doki asked. Tabaski, hours by train. No more holidays away from the dry season.

“I…” Mint hesitated.

“You put it off?”

“I wanted to see you again.” Mint said, “I want you to come with me. Last semester I’m qualified to start for is this spring.”

A few months, then. That’s the time Doki had. “If- if it's just me, I wanted to go up early, get somewhere closer to campus.”

The other option hung unspoken. A last summer, touring their old haunts. Taking the train to Tabaski, finding a nice little apartment for the two of them.

Maybe they would get one with two bedrooms, maybe Doki would sleep on the couch until…Doki looked down to where their bedroll had been, remembered the nights of freezing ghost pounding against the heat of a harpy’s heart.

“Mint,” Doki wondered what she would say next. She wondered what Tabaski would be like, wondered if she could survive the pain of seeing Mint off one final time.

“I missed you so much.”

Chapter Text

“I missed you too.” It still echoed in Doki’s ears. She didn’t know why, didn’t know what she thought Mint would say. Even as they sat together, she wondered why she had put this off for so long.

“Dumbass,” had been the other thing Mint said. She knew well enough the distance Doki had enforced, and now she knew some of the reason. And still she was there.

They were pressed against the back wall of the cave, where their old bedroll had sat, listening. The windstorm had finally caught up to them, and outside their shelter the two could hear it whipping sand and rock against the canyon. The only other sound was the occasional clang of a rock bouncing off of Doki’s cycle. It would have new dents by the time the storm was over, but Doki didn’t mind. Her focus was on her left.

Mint had not left her scars. Doki’s arm was in the ghost's lap as she traced over them. Occasionally she would ask. The knife fight in Brightwater’s short lived casino, the bullet that been a second off from taking her arm. There were a dozen stories there, and Doki was happy to tell each.

Her hands traveled upwards, to an ugly mess of a scar, earned from-

“You jumped off that train because you wanted to make it to Ferren’s before they ran out of the good bread.” Mint knew it. Doki had earned that scar with her ages before.

“She was always running out. And it was your favorite. I figured I could get in front of the line, get us out of there before she started rationing them.”

Mint’s laugh was quiet. “And she turned you away at the door. Didn't want to clean up your blood.”

Doki’s laugh was cut short. She froze as Mint’s hand went from her arm to her jaw, a single, cool finger tracing the jagged line that ran along it. Most didn’t notice that scar, not unless she pointed it out.

“What about this one?”

“I had a knife to my neck,” It was not a fun memory, one of her first jobs after leaving Mint behind. She’d made a lot of stupid mistakes in that time, “Didn’t have a way out. So I just… went for it. Bled like a bitch.”

Mint kept following it, sending shivers into Doki. She wasn’t looking at the scar anymore. Instead her eyes were on Doki’s, watching her with a soft little smile.

“We should have done this so long ago,” Mint said, her hand coming to a rest. Doki wondered if she could feel the blood pumping, feel the way Mint’s eyes made her heart beat faster, stronger.

“I guess we just need to make up for lost time.”

Mint opened her mouth for a moment, on the verge of saying… something. She leaned closer to Doki a moment. Whatver it had been died before it was spoken. Mint pulled back from Doki, taking a moment before saying, “I guess we do.”

Their ride out had taken most of the morning and afternoon, and with the windstorm upon them there was little to do but talk. Mint nestled herself against Doki, leaning into her warmth, while Doki enjoyed the aura of cold that radiated off of her.

Their voices were quiet, lost to the wind. Mint told Doki she had taken her exams just before her last trip up for the dry season, but hadn’t gotten her results until after she was gone. Of the cat she’d been feeding, who had wandered in scraggly and in desperate need of a bath.

The windstorm did not weaken, not then. They spent hours sitting there, leaning against each other, waiting. Mint’s hand returned to Doki’s scars, pulling her hand down from where Doki had been playing with the little frills of her headdress.

It was an ancient habit, from the time Mint had inherited the headdress and decided that she would be wearing it with everything.

“Doki?” Mint asked, as she felt Doki leaning onto her a little heavier, a little less composed.

“Hm?” It was later, and between the chill Mint brought and the soothing of her fingers on Doki’s arm, she was beginning to drift off.

Maybe she said something else, something about shifting them into a better position or the neck pains Doki was sure to have. But Doki had Mint at her side, she’d fallen asleep in stranger positions with the ghost there.

Doki did not dream. It wasn’t until she felt cold hands shaking her that she started to wake. The pain made sure she got up, a stiff ache along her spine, the price she had paid for her night next to Mint.

The ghost had not fared much better. It was nice having Mint as her alarm again, though Doki made a note to make sure next time they had decent beds.

“Shit, Doki,” Mint was rubbing at the back of her neck, “you know, I told you that this would happen. But no, you wanted to use my as a pillow.”

“You could have gotten up,” Doki said, “I mean, just let me lay on the floor, picked a nice bit of rock for yourself.”

Mint had stood and given herself a little stretch by the time Doki had blinked the sleep from her eyes. “Yeah well,” Mint paused, looking back to her, “I just…”

“You just?” Mint's flush was a light thing, barely noticable. Doki had learned it, knew how to bring it out with a wink and a smile.

“Shut up doki,” Mint turned away from Doki’s laugh, though Mint was laughing along with her, “let's just get some food, yeah?”

Doki kept her provisions on her cycle, which had indeed earned itself a few new dents. Nothing serious, and after shaking out the filters another time, it would be ready to carry them across the desert again.

Their morning meal was nothing special, dried meats and canned water kept the best out in the desert, and that was their pickings.

“We could always see how edible the cacti are.” Doki suggested.

Mint rolled her eyes at that- the last time the two had stooped that low, they’d been drunk, and wound up pulling cactus thorns out of each other the next day. “I’d rather not.”

It took them some time to be ready to resume their ride north, but they were off in decent time.

They were fortunate that the Idilith was a simple river- they could head east and hit its riverbed anywhere along it. It took them less than half an hour to reach it, and only a moment to confirm what they both knew.

“No tracks are going to have survived that,” Doki said, looking down to the fresh layer of sand that had become the riverbed's bottom. “Fuck me.”

They had stopped when they reached the riverbed. Doki was now pacing alongside it, while Mint’s eyes were north, trying to create a mental map of what she knew was up there.

“Doki,” Mint asked, “do you know anything along the river? It’s gotta be something.”

“I don’t, that’s the problem.” Doki said, “I only ranged this far north once, and I needed- oh shit.” Doki’s head perked up.

“What?”

“Maps! Old ass atlases, but they'll work for this,” Doki said as she pulled up her seat on the cycle, lifting the thing along a hinge, revealing the metal box it sat on. Most kept weapons or money or whatever other valuable they wanted to stash. Doki had atlases, at least beneath the pile of letters.

“Letters?” Mint picked up the first one. June, 857. Two years into her service. “I didn’t realize you kept these.”

Doki had a photocopy left in a deposit box in Brightwater and a scan she kept safe in her cybernetics.

“Yeah,” Doki paused as Mint pulled the second one out. August, 859, just before she’d come home. “They- uh, they helped. I keep them with me.”

Mint laughed as she pulled another out. Febuary, 855. Her first year in the militia. "All of them?”

“All of them.”

It took the two a moment to extract the atlases from underneath them, and then another moment when Doki put the letters back in their box and closed the seat on top of them.

“I kept them too,” Mint said, as Doki was opening the maps.

“You did?” Doki’s letters had been less frequent, a symptom of her deployments in the desert. Mint had almost gotten herself arrested after three months without one, prowling too close to the outpost Doki had been assigned to.

“I keep them in my nightstand.” Mint said, her eyes glancing from the map to Doki.

They didn’t speak for a moment. Doki wondered how much else they had kept, if Mint was going to dig up the old smartwatch they’d shared or some other relic.

Their silence did not last, instead they returned to the map before them. It was nearly sixty years old, before the I lines, before most of the towns of the Wrack were considered enough to be put on maps.

Doki followed the Idilith north, looking for something that would draw their prey in. An abandoned town, an old mine, anything.

Mint found it first, working her way south from the map's upper edge.

“What about here,” there was a half laugh in her voice, more a sign of disbelief than humor. Mint was pointing to a little dot marked ‘Hamton’s F.R.’

Ages ago there had been dreams of industrializing the Wrack, of founding another Tech City in its center. To do so would need power, and to provide that, far in the north Hamtons had been built.

It was a nuclear fission reactor, long since decommissioned. “Not a fucking chance they got that working,” Doki pulled her hands down across her face, hoping that rubbing at her eyes would find something else, something better. “They got it running, didn’t they?”

“They need a ton of power, and to remain out of sight.” Mint said.

“Yeah, but fission? That much heat has got to get noticed.” Doki said.

“By who?” Mint asked, “who has the equipment to detect that.”

Doki paused. “By the sniffers in the Third.” Doki answered. “Fuck me.”

“They’re just out of the usual patrol ranges, too. Far enough to have plausible deniability, close enough to get help.” Mint observed. “That’s a pretty smart place to pick.”

“We still need to get there.” Doki said, “if that’s where they’re keeping everyone, then Matara is going to need to know exactly where and how many.”

Doki was already doing the math. Two days of hard riding, and the job would be done. “We can come up from the cliffs on the south,” She said, “scope everything out from there, make our report, and Kan will call in the real army.”

Mint didn’t speak for a long moment. “Yeah,” She finally said, “I guess that’ll be the job. After that…”

After that? Doki wondered too. “We can…” She paused, “we can figure it out, after.”

“Right,” there was disappointment in that voice, something that cut into Doki, “let's get going.”

Again they were following the banks of the dried Idilith. Doki kept them riding hard, that first day, stopping only for a midday rest and the night.

They bedded down on top of a tarp that was tied to the back of Doki’s cycle. It was a cold night, the desert night leeching the miserable heat of its day and replacing it with chill.

Doki knew, on some level, that Mint sleeping on the other end of the tarp was a good thing. She was already cold, Mint would only make it worse. But the comfort of that night in the cave, the peace of having Mint back, it made her wonder if a little more chill was really that bad.

The next day Doki rode slower. She had realized that her speed was taking them headlong into the end. After this, after they were paid and done, Mimt was gone, and Doki didn’t know if she could go with her. So she delayed. They took breaks for snacks and to stretch and a dozen other excuses. They stopped at the north most point of the Wrack, looking up to the cliff, the last bit of friendly territory before they left it behind.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been this far north,” Mint said as they stood there.

“I’ve never got beyond Horncliff.” Doki said. They had left that behind yesterday.

“It’s nice,” Mint said, “Going on another adventure. I didn’t know if I ever would again.”

They stopped again for lunch, and then when they found a grove of strange desert trees. When they found an ancient airplane, buried halfway into the sand, Doki insisted they climb to the top of it, even as the afternoon sun beat down on them.

“Doki,” Mint was at Doki’s side as she pulled herself onto its tailfins, pushing how much further up she could go.

“Yeah?” Doki asked between breaths.

“You know we have time, right?” Mint asked. “Months before I leave. I can put off finding a place for that long.”

She would, too, Doki knew. Mint would trade her comfort for a few last adventures with Doki. Doki would do the same, in a heartbeat.

“Mint,” Doki had scrambled her way up finally, now standing on the little horizontal peices that extended from the tail fin. She was looking out into the desert as she spoke. “I really want to go with you.”

“Will you?” Such a simple question.

“I don’t want to fuck it up again.”

“Doki,” Mint’s voice was sad, her eyes cast down to the desert. Doki turned to face her, drawing herself up. She took a long breath, imagining the day she would leave, imagining seeing her off at the train station, returning to her life in Brightwater. She looked out into the desert. Saw the cactus and the rocks and the sun burning it all, the endless room for adventure. Imagined wandering it without Mint, without being able to see Mint again.

“I’ll go.” She couldn’t do that. She’d known that from the moment Mint had haunted the little necklace Doki kept close to her heart. She hadn’t realized how different it would be, how the cold little stone could feel so warm with a ghost in it. How she could feel so different with a ghost with her.

“You will?”

“Yeah.” Doki said, “I… I don’t want to miss you anymore. We do this job, we… I don’t know. We go see the sights again. Make it all the way to the Highrock before it's time to go get an apartment.”

Doki imagined it. Coming home to Mint, or listening to her unlock the door. Maybe the cat Mint would bring along. She imagined cooking and groceries and the thousand other facets of domestic life.

She could do that.

“Doki,” Mint took her hands, “are you… are you sure?”

There was trepidation there, but Doki had settled into her choice. “Yeah,” the softness in her voice was gone, replaced with the confidence she’d earned in her years fighting. “We have to make up for lost time, right? I’m not going to leave after all this.”

Doki had not seen the smile Mint wore in a long time. It was the same one she had when she’d shown off the deed to their little cabin, finally giving them a real home. “I… I can’t wait.” Mint was laughing now, twirling in the air. “Doki, you’re going to love Tabaski, there's so much to do, AC in every building, cold water,” Doki was laughing with her, realizing how low that bar was, how easy she was to impress. The price of frontier living was creature comforts. Doki hadn’t minded in a long time, but now she found herself looking forward to them.

It took them time to return to the cycle. Mint was swooping and laughing, darting past Doki only to rush back to swirl around her. Doki couldn’t keep the little half smile off of her face. That was her future, she’d realized. She was going to enjoy it.

Once they had actually reached the cycle, there was no more lollygagging. Doki wanted to be done with this job, wanted to set her eyes on her new future. The thousand plus would certainly help (and she sure as shit was going to make Kan give her that plus) but it would be the last of her old life, the last of Doki the bounty hunter.

Mint had suggestions, investigator, liaison, analyst. Other jobs Doki didn’t know, things that only existed in Tech Cities. She would find her place in time. Now though, they were pulling up to the sand cliffs across from Hamton’s Fission Reactor.

They weren't so much across as they were far and away. Almost two miles separated them from the reactor’s complex. Still, Doki kept them low. Her cycle had been parked down below the heights of the cliff, and as they came to its peak Doki transitioned from hiking to kneeling to crawling. She was carrying her long gun, but as soon as they were in position she passed it to Mint. The scope was her only way of seeing the compound.

There was a long few minutes of silence as scope and cybernetic scanned the place. There was a raggedy camp laid out in front of the fission reactors housing, unorganized and dirty. Whiever was living there was notnprepared to defend it, or even catch someone sneaking in.

“You see those trucks?” Doki asked, “Those were the same ones at Dead’s Crossing. This is definitely the place.”

They had so few people for such a large compound- maybe twenty, milling around in the evening light, and their professionalism was lacking. Doki had been militia, sure, but she had been Brightwater militia. Professional, smart. They posted guards, they patrolled their zones, they knew how to keep a night watch. These fools barely managed the first, and it was clear they expected no trouble.

“They’re overconfident.” Doki said, “they have no fucking idea what’s about to descend on them.”

Mint was silent. Doki turned to her, her cybernetics linking with the scope, following her as she shifted between the vehicles and the side doors, unguarded, perhaps unlocked.

“Mint?”

“There’s more than two hundred ghosts in there.” Mint said.

Doki froze. “Mint, that’s- that’s on Kan. We just need to go back and report. She’ll sort them out.”

“How long?” Mint asked. “If the Third is helping them? There’s ghosts who have been stuck in there for months. Who knows if they’re even alive.”

Doki clenched her jaw, looking between Mint and the view through her scope. “You want to get them out.”

“They’re not even watching every door.” Mint said, “And they leave their vehicles right there. If you sit up here and cover me-”

“Not a chance,” Doki said. Mint frowned, turning to Doki for the first time since they’d started their watch, “listen, this is a compound meant to keep ghosts in. Who knows what weird sensors they have set up in there, or if they have some fucking… ground mounted version of that weapon. If one of us is going down there, it needs to be me.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“I don’t.” Doki agreed, “but if I have a choice between going down there and sitting up here watching you go down, I know which one I am picking.”

There was another pause, another wait. “Doki,” She looked down to the compound one final time. “Okay, alright. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I promise.” Doki said. “Get in, get the ghosts, get out.” All two hundred of them. It was never going to be that simple, but Doki was set. One last job, and then she would be home.

Chapter Text

Doki took her time hiking down the cliffs and towards the compound. When she reached the bottom, the sun was sinking in the sky. It took another half hour of walking to reach the camp, and when she took cover behind an old concrete barrier, just outside it, there were precious few moments before dark.

She spent them watching and listening. Her initial guess at the camp had been off- the rightmost wing of the building had been converted into a barracks. It probably doubled their number, something like forty odd brigands. There were little landing pads, and Doki took a moment to check them, lifting the tarps to reveal airships, protected from the most recent sandstorm. One of them was empty now, which brought a grim smile to Doki. Across from Doki and the occupied parts of the camp, was an old M-3 Roller, probably a remnant of the reactor’s garrison. There was rust curling around its armor, and the layer of sand around it told Doki it probably wasn’t even functional.

Doki’s next stop was the side door, creeping between vehicles, glad the idiots running the camp didn’t think to keep an eye on every door. It was unlocked, of course, and a quick peek inside revealed the empty slots where security cameras had once been.

There were boxes of weapons inside, not ghostly manacasters but plasma guns. Ghosts wouldn’t be trained with them, but they would be used all the same. Doki slung two over her shoulders, thankful for the straps that left both her hands ready to fight, and crept back towards the camp proper.

Getting two hundred ghosts out of this place was going to be a bitch. They could take the trucks, but that would lead to a firefight. They could walk, which would also lead to a firefight, if not as they left then somewhere down the road, and feeding them would be impossible.

Doki had settled on an initial plan, to scout, to find exactly where and in what condition the ghosts were, and then to retreat to Mint. They would come up with an actual plan after.

But before any of that, Doki had to find the ghosts. That would wait for true night, when the last of the sun’s light had bled into the cool stars and the light of the moon, waxing towards full above. Doki waited for that behind the same concrete barrier she’d started observing the camp from. She could hear the four gathered around a fire near her. They were nervous- they’d lost an airship and some of their friends at Dead’s Hollow, but according to them, “the third is going to roll on down and clean it up.”

Doki recorded that- her cybernetics were starting to run into the upper end of their data storage, but that was important enough to clear some of the pictures she’d taken of the smuggling job. There were other complaints, some high tier circuitry that hadn’t been delivered, they were running low on booze- but nothing of importance, nothing of note.

Once the night had set in, and Doki had memorized the position of the watch- all gathered around the fire, none of them looking outwards, she moved. It was still careful, sure, but now she was moving with confidence, with the surety that she knew the measure of her enemies and that she was better.

She paused at the side door, looking out towards the cliff Mint was posted on top of. She couldn’t see the ghost, nor the glint of the rifle's scope. She knew Mint was up there though, probably watching her right now. Doki lifted one hand in salute before turning to the door, wincing as it creaked as it opened, pausing to make sure no one took note of it.

And then she was inside. The interior was a mess. There were doors that had been welded shut when it was abandoned,and ones that had clearly been blasted off with plasma fire. It made for easy following, and the buzzing of the overhead lights meant that even if she did make sound, it would not travel far.

She didn’t, though. Doki was careful and quiet, checking corners and prowling down halls. She knew to avoid heading to the right side of the facility, where the rest of the camp was housed, taking lefts and following the path of melted doors and open rooms. It wasn’t until she came to a final cross section that she had to make a choice, forwards or left. It took her a moment to decide, to swing left instead of going straight. She was attempting to remember the layout she had seen from outside. The ghosts were probably in their own room, maybe a garage or cleared out office. Forwards, if she remembered correctly, would take her to the reactor room. It was large, sure, but most of it was taken by the Fission chamber, and that itself was encased in three feet of steel and cooling devices.

The left took her around a set of corners, until she was afraid she was looping back to where she started. Instead she arrived at what she guessed was an old dormitory, perhaps for the garrison. None of the beds were left, but she could see the markings for them on the ground, the little yellow stripes that officers used to assign groups.

Now, they were used to divide cages. The room was full of ghosts, all crammed into electrified boxes. Doki could see circuits encircling them, trch walls, one of the best ways to assure a ghost couldnt simply phase through their prisons. It took Doki a moment to realize how large the room was, to see the jagged edges of the far wall and realize the furthest wall had been cut, combining two rooms to host more than forty cages.

The ghosts were looking at her, shrinking away.

“Hey,” Doki had to think a moment of what best to say, “look, I’m on a job to get you out of here. I need you to be ready- tomorrow is going to be a fight, and I am going to need those of you who know how to shoot to be ready to.”

There was a long silence as the ghosts stared at her.

“Clear?” Doki asked, trying to poke an answer from one of them. That triggered the whispers, as some ghosts nodded to her and then turned to their neighbors, as the instructions Doki had given, however sparse, were passed down the ranks. “Alright, I’ll be back, just… act normal.”

Doki turned from them, already plotting her way back out, mind more on how she would be hiking up the cliffs than on the camp itself.

That was a mistake- she turned her first corner and bumped into someone. Doki heard a cure as she scrambled back. One of the sentries, wandering the halls for some cursed reason.

He had a half moment to shout before Doki shot him- a waste of an All Purpose round, sure, but she wasn’t going to be switching through her regular ones and those any time she fought.

He was dead before he hit the floor. Doki stood over him, mind racing. Why was he wandering the halls? She looked down, to the empty drink in his hand, back to the few doors that had been welded open. She wondered which had damned her, which one had the beer or juice or whatever he had been coming to get.

“Fuck,” Doki shouldn't have shot him. A pistol whip, a fistfight, anything woukd have attracted less attention. She turned from her way out, back to the ghosts. They had heaed the shot, the whole camp would have, and they stared at her with wide eyes. She didn’t bother explaining, shooting the locks off the two cages closest to her, and handing her stolen plasma rifles to the ghosts within. “Melt the locks and get everyone together. There's a bunch more rifles if you follow the path out- stick to your right as you go, or you’re going to run into them.

“What about you?”

That was a good question, how was she going to get out? “I’m going to give them hell. I’d appreciate some help, once you get to the plasma rifles.” There were shared glances, voices of doubt, but Doki silenced them.

“Get your people out and move.” She wasn’t laying out the plan anymore, she was commanding, and as she did she turned from them, heading back to the halls, listening for approaching footsteps. She could hear shouts, frantic as the whole camp was waking up.

She picked a nice little corner to settle at. It was a good spot, she could watch the hall she had come through, and retreat through it once the ghosts were behind her, and hold out whoever was going to come for them through the compound.

It didn’t take long for them to show, a trio of rifles, running down the hall. They didn’t even have their rifles up, didn’t have a chance to fire off any of their plasma bolts before Doki downed them, three clean shots. Doki pulled back behind her corner, loading her four spent shots.

Ghosts started trickling through- Doki had to wave the first group back, the second guided by one of the rifles she’d given. There would be armed ghosts on the other side, and that gave Doki some confidence.

The next rifles to try her were more cautious, covering their advance with plasma shots down the corridor, splashing against walls and throwing sparks up. Doki waited for them, for their focus to waver or their shots to slow.

Or for them to take the corner without checking it, without realizing Doki was sitting there, waiting for them. Her gun was just as effective at this range, and with her eye drawing targeting line through the first, she shot the other two from behind her meat shield, pushing them back after the job was done. Six dead, six shots. Doki was having a good night.

The next batch were smarter, not approaching, not faltering in their fire. Doki let them- the last of the ghosts were filtering through, and the last group was led by the other ghost she’d given a plasma rifle to, who waved her over.

They left the same way Doki had come, keeping a careful watch on their rear as they went.

The outside was calm, for a time at least. There were perhaps twenty or so that had armed themselves, the rest too weak or untrained or scared to fight. Doki didn’t bother trying to press them into service- twenty would be enough.

There were no keys in the trucks- of course they wouldn’t be that lucky. Two hundred ghosts milling about in what was essentially an open air garage was a recipe for disaster. Mint would have seen them by now, so Doki stepped in front of the huddled ghosts and pointed to the camp proper- their next target.

She could hear movement there- they would know their enemy had moved, and by the time Doki had marshaled her twenty guns into two groups of ten they were starting to poke around corners, letting off shots of plasma. Doki could tell they were hesitant- she had gathered the ghosts around the only viable way in and out, and they didn’t want to destroy their own vehicles.

Doki heard their solution before they saw it. Airship’s engines were loud, and hearing them flaring, seeing one of them launch upwards from its place on the landing pads was enough to send panic through the ghosts behind her. Doki didn’t have time to settle them, didn’t even give the airship half a glance. She already had the solution to that problem, after all.

Mint’s shot went through the rightmost engine. Whoever was flying it was better than the pilot from Dead’s Crossing- instead of veering and crashing, it only lurched, its remaining right engine flaring with effort, its lefts flickering and lowering their output until it was stabilized, albeit shakily. Doki watched the array on its belly begin to flare to life, smiling as she heard the second shot. Its right rear this time, and there was no pulling out of that.

Doki didn’t watch it fall, she was pushing ahead, her ghostly rifles backing her as she stalked towards the camp, eyes always searching for the best place to dive, for the slightest of movements if she was seen.

Three of the braver ghosts were following her, setting up against low walls and behind tents, the best cover they could find. Doki picked a pallet of food, cans left in the sun for god knows how long. Plasma would burn through it eventually, but for now it would make for fine cover.

The night was lit with flashes of plasma and the burning wreck of an airship. It was enough to see the enemy before her, if only just. They were still waking up, still cursing and pulling on clothes, some of them staring in disbelief after their downed air power.

Two of them were pulling the tarp off their second one, though Mint made sure to put another shot through its engines, assuring it would not take off.

Three shots, out of the twelve Doki had left her. Doki had never needed more than that, never bought a bandolier with more than twelve shots stowed. She was regretting that now, growing even as Mint let out another shot. She wondered what she had hit, one of these idiots taking an angle or climbing to rain plasma down on them from above.

The real fight started then, hails of plasma exchanged in kind, Doki firing off shots whenever she could peek around her cover, ducking back just as fast when fire was focused on her.

Their saving grace was the ghosts, however poorly trained, would not be killed by plasma. It could put them down, Doki could see them laid out behind their cover, clutching at the places they’d been hit, some completely knocked out, but they woukd not die. She didn’t have time to check on them, didn’t even have time to get the few that had frozen up behind their positions to get back to shooting.

The ghosts that had come up with her were all laid out now, and there was no help coming from those behind, too concerned with protecting their families and their fellow townsfolk or too scared to advance up to her.

They were admirable concerns, but fuck would Doki like some help. Without it she was trapped behind her pallet, reduced to firing with only a split second to aim. She did it, cursing when plasma got to close, smiling when she heard Mint threading shots into their enemy.

They were upon her though, a quartet advancing under the covering fire of their allies, and without the punishing shots from Mint. Doki wondered if she had run out, if even how she was riding the cycle down to her.

Doki shouted for help, “rifles, here!” But she couldn’t see what came of it. Plasma had finally burned through metal, food and wood. Doki felt the final gasp of one of the bolts burn its way into her shoulder, sending Doki downwards, a moment of panic and pain forcing her away from her cover. It was her off hand, at least, but she was out of her haven now, and even as she put two shots into the rifles advancing on her Doki knew she needed to find a way to disengage, to find something more solid to hide behind.

There was more plasma now, they knew she was vulnerable even if they couldn’t see her in the dark of the night. Doki’s cybernetics were her best advantage, and she used it to send her enemies scrambling for cover, well placed shots downing the most exposed of them.

Doki had picked her next spot, scuttling to the road that had run just to the side of the compound and the concrete barriers there. The fire of the downed airship was behind her now, outlining her if she were to try to take shots.

It was all she had though, and with the ghosts firing still, she hoped her angle was enough to get some shots in. She took a moment to reach back, to put a hand to her wound. Her jacket was ruined now, and she pulled a hand dyed with her own blood back. She couldnt focus on that.

Another moment to reload her gun, pain shooting through her back at every movement. Adrenaline would keep her in the fight for now, but she knew from the feel of blood and char that she wouldn’t be able to do anything once it left her.

She couldn’t do much now but listen, the occasional shock of a plasma blast hitting her cover assuring her that she was still being watched.

There was something else she could hear though, a low rumbling, the crunch of metal under…

At first she thought it was wheels, though that either Mint had arrived to provide some support or that the ghosts had found the keys to a truck and some of them were bailing out.

It would be good either way, a distraction for a moment.

But then she heard the cheers, the laughing of her enemy, the shuddering blast of concentrated plasma. It was not that of their rifles, nothing those could output would ever come close to that sound.

The M-3 Agoroller was an old armored vehicle, technically an IFV rather than a tank. On its top was a plasma cannon, designed to eat through armor and detonate munitions where they were stored in camps or opposing vehicles.

Doki had thought it abandoned, but now she was watching it roll through the camp, a second blast following the first, the few plasma blasts that had answered its first shot silenced.

Doki shot at it, of course. Her All Purpose had a chance to punch through its armor. Not a good one, of course, but even as the ricocheted off of its armored sides, Doki didn’t mind that. It brought the turret swinging around towards her. Doki wondered for a moment if it would kill her in the first shot, or if it would have to chunk through the concrete barricade first.

Doki wasn’t just going to stand there, of course, she hit the dirt even as the first lesser blasts of plasma followed her,listening for the sound of the M-3’s cannon.

She heard something else in that moment.

It was a tortured whine, the sound of an electrical engine pushed past its breaking point.

It took Doki a second to turn, to see something glinting in the firelight, speeding across the desert. As she watched, its engine began to glow. She heard the engine sputter as it melted through the parts that made it work, its batteries overcharging, energy just barely held in check by their housing.

There was someone riding it, but Doki couldn’t process who it was until it was past her, until the only obvious answer presented itself. It was Doki’s cycle, its engine firing into a new star in the desert as it crashed into the M-3, the final impact shattering the engine's casing, all the energy within flaring out, melting stone and metal into slag.

And it was Mint, Mint riding it, Mint now–

“No,” Doki didn’t bother with the cover. She could hear the M-3 dying, its engine shuddering as fail safes kicked in, the screeching as its metal frame softened and bent under the weight of a wrecked cycle. Her eyes weren’t on it, though, instead she was searching.

“Mint!” She shouted to the night. She had to have bailed out, had to have escaped that. Broken bones, road rash- Doki could treat that, Mint could live through that. But Doki could feel the heat from her cycle, knew that if she hadn’t- if Mint had bailed out too late, or had been too set on saving Doki.

There wouldn’t even be a body. "MINT!"

Chapter Text

She’d done it again. That was all Doki could think of, the only conclusion she could come to. She’d known she was dangerous, known that bringing Mint was just putting her in danger.

And now Mint was… she was…

“MINT!” Nothing, no reaction. Not even the sound of her auto pistol firing.

Doki couldn’t think it, wouldn’t think it. She pushed herself forwards, ignoring the screams and the shouts and the blinded who had not had the chance to look away from the new sun appearing on the battlefield.

Doki felt herself focus, even if it was held together with terror. She would find Mint, she just had to search. She knew roughly where the closest Mint could have been, because she hadn’t been any closer. Mint wasn’t dead, Mint was… was somewhere. The wind knocked out of her, that's why she wasn’t responding, even as Doki ran her throat ragged calling her name. She couldn’t even hear herself saying it, couldn’t hear the fires or the battle. The explosion still rang in her ears, and the blood roaring through her drowned out anything else.

Doki divided the battlefield into squares in her mind- old militia search and rescue training kicking in, applied on a much smaller area. Places too close to the blast she discarded- she wouldn’t even consider them. The battle around her was ignored, even as she was noticed.

She started along the path the cycle had taken. If Mint hadn’t bailed out well, if she was there, she would have broken… whatever passed for bones in ghosts, she would need help. There was nothing, not even a scrap of her clothing. Doki moved further from that with no sign of Mint. The next square over, then the next. No Mint, even as plasma started to fly back and forth between the sides.

Doki didn’t have the luxury of ignoring it, not as she was targeted. Even so, even as Doki searched as far as she could possibly imagine Mint could have rolled, she refused to acknowledge it, did not even flinch as bolts of plasma missed her.

It wasn’t until one dug into her leg that she turned, and that was only because her leg buckled under the injury. Doki fell to a kneel, one hand brushing over her thigh, feeling the place a bolt of plasma had grazed her. A better aimed shot would have scorched her to the bone. She’d been ‘lucky,’ most of the muscle was intact, even if it was difficult to flex, even if it would be difficult to stand at all.

It would not matter. Doki was on a knee in the middle of nowhere. The closest place she could find cover was a full meter away from her. And as she looked forwards, it was into the barrels of a trio of plasma rifles, happy to remove her from that fight.

Doki wondered if the ghosts would manage. She and Mint had taken the airships down, and the armor. Even if there were salt and iron weapons somewhere, the kidnappers were outnumbered by the twenty guns the ghosts had.

It brought Doki some comfort, that even if she’d gotten herself killed (because Mint was not dead, no, she had to be somewhere) the ghosts would get out. She hoped Matara would pay Mint for the job, she deserved a thousand to start her new life.

Doki saw the heat gathering at the muzzles of the rifle begin to redden with heat, knew that her story was at an end.

“DOKI!” Doki wondered if the voice she was hearing meant she had already passed on. Ghosts were ghosts, after all. Maybe they haunted the afterlife?

And then she was shoved, tossed to her side, shrieking as dirt and sand dug into her burned flesh, blinking back tears of pain. She got to watch the shots of plasma go over her head, felt the cool pressure of a ghost. One with a frilly little headband, one who turned to respond with her own auto pistol, one who called Doki by her name.

“Mint,” She was crying now. “Mint,” Mint, Mint, Mint.

She tried to do anything. To get up, to join Mint in firing back, to reach out and touch her, if only to assure herself that this was real.

“Sorry ‘bout your cycle,” Mint helped her, pulling her to her knees again, letting Doki lean against her as Mint led them to the last bit of cover on that side. A low shrub, eeking out a life in the desert. Maybe an import from when the reactor had been running, meant to brighten up the place. It wouldn't stop a plasma bolt, but it would hide them.

Doki had never been particularly patient, though she did an admirable job of waiting for them to be fully hidden before she pulled herself into Mint, slotting herself into Mint’s shoulder.

She had a smell, even after days of travel and hours laying in the sand. Doki hadn’t realized that, how comforting it would be.

“Doki,” Mint was rubbing little circles in her back, “Doki, you’re… oh.”

Her hands had found the charred flesh, the new scars she had acquired. The gouge out of her thigh, the shallow burn at her back. Doki could see Mint thinking, reaching for… Doki saw her falter. On a good day they would have something, a medical kit stored on a vehicle or stashed nearby. They hadn't had the time to prepare the site of their battle, and their vehicle had just been used as a bomb. They had nothing.

“Mint,” Doki’s voice was weak, ragged. “You’re here.”

“Of course I am,” Mint paused, one eyebrow raised. “Doki?”

Doki realized she didn’t understand. For Mint, it had been… Doki didn’t know how long. Perhaps she’d heard Doki screaming Mint’s name, even as she recovered from bailing out of a cycle going that fast. It could have been seconds, minutes. Time Mint spent recovering from the fall and scrambling away from plasma fire. For Doki it had felt like hours, hours when she thought she’d done it again, she’d gotten Mint killed this time.

Mint pulled back from Doki, hands drifting to Doki’s face, holding her gently, wiping tears from her eyes. “Doki,” the way she said the name, like something precious, like something she’d found, “hey.”

She leaned forwards, her forehead pressing against Doki, her hands still holding onto Doki, Doki’s reaching out to hold them in turn. “Sorry about your cycle,” Mint said again, but there was more there. “You taught me that move, I figured I could pay you back for it.”

Doki laughed at that, a snotty, coughing laugh. She had after all, running an old electric car into a stolen train. She wondered if Mint had bailed out at the same moment Doki had described, wondered If Mint had wired the engine in the same way Doki had.

“I’m sorry,” Doki said, “I almost…”

“I’m still here,” Mint said, “I’m not leaving.”

Doki wanted to stay there, wanted to relish in the coolness, the closeness, wanted to live forever in that moment.

She also wanted to curse the resumed firefight that interrupted them, that dragged their attention back to the fact that they were in a fight, that they had a job to finish.

“Ready?” Mint asked.

Doki wasn’t. She could feel the burns at her back and leg throbbing, knew that moving was going to be cripplingly painful. “Yeah,” She still said, “I… I’m going to need some help.”

Mint was gentle, sliding one of Doki’s arms over her shoulder, standing slowly. Doki was leaning on her heavily, curses bit back, breath coming in short gasps as the pain rocketed through her.

“You don’t have to do this,” Mint was right. The fight was over- The detonation of her cycle had blinded, killed, or incapacitated most of the remaining guns, and those that were left had been too busy focusing on the armed ghosts to keep track of them.

Doki’s hand tightened on Mint, a moment of fear shooting through her. Mint could just leave her, Doki was weakened, couldn’t even stand on her own. It would be easy to just drop her behind the bush, maybe even smart.

“I won't.” Doki wondered if Mint had guessed where Doki’s mind was going. If she knew exactly what Doki was thinking.

"Thank you," it was a whisper, but even on the battlefield Mint heard it. She squeezed Doki closer a moment, another reassurance.

They were an awkward pair, slow and halting. Still, they were ignored by the last few rifles aimed against the ghosts, and they hit the rear with little mercy. Doki realized that she wouldn’t be able to reload, that her arm around Mint was not moving, not for all the riches in the world.

It was enough, especially with Mint’s auto. By the time the fight was over, the moon had reached its peak above them. They were not left in silence. There were the moans of pain from ghosts who’d been shot, from kidnappers who’d had their own guns turned against them, from the crackling embers where plasma had lit tents on fire.

Doki sagged against Mint, who walked her to the trucks, to the ghosts they had freed. There was whispering, discussions, people came and left from the little circle that had surrounded them. Doki couldn’t focus on them, not with her wounds pounding pain into her skull, not with exhaustion creeping up on her.

She slept leaning against Mint. It wasn’t a peaceful thing, not like their night in the cave. She’d wake with aches and shivering against the cold of the night. But each time Mint was there, at first still awake, soothing her with soft words, and even when Mint had fallen asleep, it only took the comfort of watching her breathe a moment for Doki to relax to drift off once again.

The morning came with heat. Mint had delegated, there were ghosts searching through the camp, looking for keys, for water, for anything that would make the trip across the desert easier.

Doki knew she needed to have her wounds bandaged, that burns loved to fester and delaying that until they reached some form of civilization would make her life better. She still hissed and cursed as it was being done, still bit back shrieks of pain and squeezed on Mint’s hand hard enough for the ghost to phase through her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Sorry,” Doki said after. “I didn’t mean to grab that hard.”

“I know,” Mint was pulling Doki up again. She still couldn’t walk by herself, and Mint was happy to help her around.

They started at the tangled wreck of metal and circuits that was her old cycle.

So much of her life after Mint had been wrapped up in that thing. So many jobs done, so many run ins with death escaped on its back.

Mint was apologizing again, though Doki wasn’t listening. She was trying to piece together where its seat had been, and the little compartment underneath with years of letters.

That was the only thing she regretted losing. She had copies, sure, but it would never be the same. She told Mint as much, standing above the wreck.

“I didn’t even think about them.”

“It’s okay,” Doki said. It was. There would be time. “I just…”

“Doki?”

“Can I still come?” It was such a sad request. Doki imagined her saying no, imagined Mint finally realizing that Doki was too dangerous to keep around.

“Idiot,” Mint was pulling her into a hug, “Dumbass. Doki.”

Doki almost laughed at that. She knew Mint was right, even if the fear from the night previous was still clinging to her. “You’re coming with,” It wasn’t a question, or permission. Mint wasn’t going to leave her a way out. “You better get planning that trip around the desert. When December comes, we’re moving to Tabaski.”

There was precious little else to do. Some of the ghosts had found the truck keys, old swipe based locks opening and engines revving to life. It took almost an hour to divide them, to agree on where their convoy was going and who was riding where.

There were enough for Doki and Mint to have one to themselves, riding at its front.

Before they left, the pair stood just off from their battlefield, looking over it. “This’ll be my last job.” Doki said, looking down on the wreckage.

“Yeah,” Mint said, “did you think it would end like this?”

Doki hadn’t thought about it. She’d always imagined her future out here, retiring filthy rich to some desert mountain, dying in some great firefight, becoming the Brightwater sheriff. It had always been out here.

“I didn’t think it would end.” Was Doki’s answer. “I’m glad it is.”

They were gone after that. A convoy of forty odd trucks, kicking dust into the air. The cloud marked their passing, the only thing that did. They followed the Idilith south, using the same route the kidnappers had to steal whole villages.

They didn’t stop until they reached Dead’s Crossing. From there they would split.

From there, Doki would make a call.

“I fucked it,” were her first words to Matara.

“I know,” was Kan’s reply.

That forced Doki to pause. Mint was at her side, doing her best to look like she couldn’t hear every word.

“They won't be stealing anymore villages.” Doki tried, “and i have a lot of recordings, datachips, just about everything.”

“Do you have someone who can testify?”

Doki and Mint shared a glance. “Uh, no.” Doki said, “but I do have-”

“Doki,” Kan’s voice was strained. There was anger there, and tiredness. “Thank you, for putting a stop to them. But I really needed someone who I can call to the podium. That’s infinitely more valuable than data.”

There was a long moment of silence after that. Doki was trying to find something to say, wondering if she could squeak out with half pay.

“Send over what you have- through something more secure than a call, mind you,” Matara said, “and… thank you. For clearing that nest of vermin. Two hundred souls saved from whatever they were preparing is good work.”

“What-”

“Were they preparing?” Doki heard Matara sigh, “that’s a very good question. One I’ve been trying to find out on this end.”

Doki waited for her to continue. When she did not, she asked, “that’s it? That’s all you have?”

“And a thousand for you. A thousand two hundred, for saving those people.” Matara said. “But as for information… yes. Certainly more will come to light with the data you give me, and from whatever the surveyors at that site find. But that Is a concern for me, rather than you.”

Doki was happy to leave it at that. There were thank yous and goodbyes, and that it was her and Mint, alone in a phone booth.

“So, now what?” Doki asked.

-

It had been a year. A year since Hamton, since Doki’s last job in the desert. She was a courier now, running things that couldn’t be sent over the internet between people. Most of the time it was money- wires couldn’t be trusted anymore, so people like Doki stepped in, running checks and cash between two sides of the city, always quick, always confidential.

Mint was in her second semester, of the full six. She was already dreaming, the Mint and Doki Investigative Office. She always described it as some grand thing, a place of repute and renown. Doki was starting to believe her.

Their apartment was a small thing. They’d toured many, bouncing between two bedrooms and one, bouncing between their own washer and a public one.

They’d settled on one bedroom, with an automatic laundry tucked into a corner. Doki had insisted she would be fine sleeping on a pull out, that she would spend much of her time out and about, that perhaps she would find her own place in the building nearby.

Maybe they had both known how it would end, that Mint would pull her back into the bedroom, that they wouldn’t sleep apart longer than a few weeks.

Doki had the day off, relaxing, preparing dinner for them. None of the instant noodles and meat they’d had the past week. No, she had time, and she intended to make a nice roast. It was cooking, would take hours. But Doki’s mind was on something else. It was four fifteen in the afternoon, and she was waiting. She heard the keys, knew who it was. She stood, arms open as Mint walked in. Back from her classes, her bag dropped at the door. She was pulled into a hug, laughing when she saw the pot over Doki’s shoulders.

Doki wanted to say a lot of things. She wanted to welcome Mint, wanted to ask her how her day had been. Wanted to go out tonight, walk the streets. She wanted to curl up on the bed and watch a movie with her. She wanted to say I love you. I love you, a thousand times and again.

“I missed you,” She said instead. It was so easy now, so true. The rest could wait. There would be another time, another day.

“Hey, I missed you too.”