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When Bryce and Lulu returned, Bryce was wearing a brand new suit and Lulu once again looked like she was dressed for high school. She now had on a small pink jacket, giving her some place to conceal a gun. The outfit she had obtained for Charlene was jeans, a biker jacket with metal studs, and a t-shirt with kittens on it. Doug merely got new pair of jeans and just wore t-shirt he already has on advertising the video game Death Legion 6 (which was no where near as good as Death Legion 5: The Reckoning). They also had a katana for Doug, which he thought was cool but figured the reason they gave him that is because they didn’t trust him with a gun. He didn’t think of himself as irresponsible; he just had some bad luck with firearms that was apparently much more memorable than the countless time he didn’t fire his gun without mean to.
Prepared as they were ever going to be, they headed out, it once again being Doug’s job to carry the weird cube in its cloth sack — something he quite hated. He kept worrying it was going to do weird things to his soul, but he had no one of knowing if his soul was normal or not anyway. They were soon out of the slums into a somewhat nicer part of the city, and Doug realized a sword not only made him feel less prepared for any attack, but also made him more conspicuous. “Everyone will think you’re so awesome, you don’t even need a gun,” Lulu assured him.
“No one is that stupid except maybe Doug himself,” Charlene countered.
Bryce led them to the third floor of a decent apartment building. “Best behavior, people. This is a good contact into the upper levels of Dammon’s criminal enterprise, so we need to look professional.”
Charlene glanced at Doug and Lulu. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“So is this who you were sleeping with to get all your criminal underworld info?” Lulu asked Bryce.
“Tri-Lu! That’s none of your business!” Bryce knocked on the door. An attractive, tall blond woman answered the door. She was wearing a black pants suit sans jacket, a shoulder holster over her white dress shirt. She smiled. “Bryce, glad to see you made it out of Shride in one piece.”
“In crisis there is opportunity.” Bryce motioned to the other three. “Lara, these are my associates I told you about.”
She took a glance at them and seemed to suppress a laugh. “I imagined them different. Come on in.” She led them into her apartment. It was neat but quite Spartan as well to the point it looked like it could have been decorated by a bachelor. Lara looked over Doug for a moment. “You any good with that sword?”
“I’m adequate.”
“He’s fought the Hallowed before,” Bryce said.
Lara smiled, once again looking like there was a laugh just slightly below the surface. “So did you guys have much trouble getting out of that city in the middle of an attack?” Lara asked.
“Of course not.” Lulu folded her arms and stared at Lara menacingly. “We’re Team Hellbender. We’re badass mercenaries.”
“Hellbender? I like the name. Where did you get it from?”
“When I was eight, I saw in a book there was a type of salamander called a hellbender,” Doug said, “and I thought that was cool.”
“A salamander?”
“It’s like a lizard… but wetter.”
Lara laughed. “I know what a salamander is. Why did you name your group after a salamander?”
Doug thought for a moment. “Because it had a cool name.”
Bryce stepped in front of Doug. “Ignore him; he’s got a dry sense of humor that not everyone gets. So, do you think you’ll be able to get us in to see Colette? I’m sure someone could use the arms we’ve acquired. Plus, we have something of special interest to her.”
Lara giggled. “Ooh! Sounds important.” Lara put on her suit jacket. “Anyway, I don’t think it should be a problem getting you in to see her. You’ll need to show up separately from me, though. I’d rather her not know my relations. Like you guys, I’m one of the Last Children, and any supposed lapse in judgment will be heavily scrutinized.”
Bryce nodded. “Of course.”
“You have spot on your shirt.” Charlene point to a little red dot on Lara’s collar.
Lara looked down and quickly spotted it. “Crap.” She blushed a bit as she looked back up at her company. “You shoot people in the head so many times, you think you get used to the way things are going to fly everywhere, but it can still surprise you. I’ll need to change.” She disappeared into her bedroom.
Doug was now more than a little concerned. “When you lie to women and sleep with them, they usually end up so mad they want to kill you. Isn’t really bad idea to do that to a woman who is actually is good at killing?”
Bryce scoffed. “She’s a professional; she’s not going to let girly emotions get the better of her.”
“You all know that Bryce has no idea what he’s getting us into and this is going to end very poorly, right?” Charlene stated.
“Of course it’s going to be a disaster, Charlene,” Lulu said, “but unlike you, we like to pretend otherwise. It’s called optimism; it makes people more pleasant to be around.”
Bryce did not look amused. “Stealing the merchandise was the hard part, and that’s done. I don’t know why you think selling it will be a problem; that’s such a simple thing.” He turned to Doug. “How does selling work?”
“Um… you give someone something, and he gives you money.”
Bryce turned back to the women. “See? It’s so simple, even Doug understands it.”
Lara emerged from her bedroom, a new shirt under her suit jacket. “I have some work to do, but I’ll see you tonight.” She lead them all out her front door, locked it, and handed Bryce a piece of paper. “Here’s where you’ll need to be. Remember: Colette is above all a business woman, so don’t waste her time or she’ll rip your head off.”
“Like for real?” Doug asked.
Lara just smiled and walked off down the hallway.
Doug turned to his friends. “She’s not actually going to rip our heads off, right?”
“I give us about a fifty percent chance of being shot or beaten to death,” Charlene said.
“Cool. I don’t want my head ripped off.”
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