New Beginnings [2430-2-2-Tues-12:30]

[Klove Makem]

It looked like Rebecca traveled light. Most mercs did. It seemed like most of them didn't exactly have any place to call home. He often wondered what they did with any of the possessions they accumulated. They didn't seem like home-owning people. Maybe they had family around to keep the extras. Or maybe they just make a point of not owning anything that didn't fit into a knapsack.

"About five years." Klove answered, folding his legs under him. He could faintly smell Quillan in the bunk he was sitting in. It would probably keep lingering for another month or so, and then maybe finally fade away. Smells lasted a long time in here, mostly because there wasn't much to dislodge them. "I used to hang around the spaceport on Nox, and managed to talk her into taking me along with her. I've been working for her ever since."

[Rebecca Ranger]

Nox. Becca searched her brain for the information. One might have thought that facts would be easy to remember for someone who had no memories, but instead it seemed that they were simply lost in all the extra space. Yes, Nox, she remembered now. The dark planet inhabited by were-people and vampires. Sam hadn’t made it sound too appealing when he’d described it to her, but Becca wanted to go anyway.

She wanted to go everywhere. Not your typical adventurer, but rather a woman who was anxious to catch up on thirty years of lost time. Maybe when she’d done that, she could relax and settle down. For now there was too much to be done. She was on the point of asking Klove to tell her what Nox was like, but she realized suddenly that she didn’t want to know. She wanted to find out for herself as she stepped onto the planet’s surface, everything about it fresh and new. So instead, she continued to ask Klove about his work for Grace. “Do you like it? Being here?”

[Klove Makem]

"Yeah, I like it a lot. I mean, most of the time, I like it a lot. It can get kinda claustrophobic some days, espeically if we're out in space for too long, but Grace tries to make sure we dock at least once a week." Humans seemed to be able to stand long space-journeys better than a lot of other species, espeically Weres. He was used to the space travel these days, but in the beginning, it had been pretty stressful. He'd gotten restless and ended up pacing through the hall just to keep from going crazy.

"The work's never boring." That was true. Though, it wasn't always work you liked. Klove tried his best not to let a scowl go over his features. Rebecca didn't need to hear anything about the vampire. "And if you like killing things, we do a lot of that. Mostly just wildlife though, never bounties. That stuff's always a headache."

Bounties paid well, but people always had relatives, or lovers, or some sort of attachment that might be angry enough to pick up a gun and come after you. If you killed a mammoth, the other mammoths couldn't do anything. If you took down a dragon, the other dragons couldn't put a hit on your head. And if what you were selling was illegal, well, you could make just as much money as you could with a human. Maybe even more.

"Do you do a lot of merc work?" Klove asked, slightly curious to know more about Rebecca. Big cats weren't rare to come by outside of Nox, maybe because as restless as they got in spaceships, they handled it loads better than anything with a grazing animal as their other half. Rebecca looked tough, like she'd been doing this for a while, but she also seemed friendly in a way that most mercs weren't. Curious even, despite how annoying that particular stereotype was.

[Rebecca Ranger]

It was a bit frustrating that she could only nod as Klove spoke. Becca would have liked to add on to what he was saying, to give her own opinions, but the trouble was that she hadn’t formed them yet. She didn’t know how she would deal with the claustrophobia of being out in space for so long, or whether or not she liked killing. She couldn’t agree or disagree with Klove’s comment about bounties, because she’d never been involved in one. Or had she? Did she simply not remember?

But when the question came, Rebecca went from frustration to fear. How could she answer that without giving away her secret? She doubted a simple ‘no’ would be accepted. It wouldn’t have bothered her all that much to tell him, but Sam had warned her time and time again that such revelations were a bad idea. And so far, Sam’s advice had proved to be fairly reliable.

Well, She thought, I guess today is the day I find out if I’m any good at lying. “Not too much.” Becca said carefully, “I… have just gone through a major change in my life. I stayed with a friend for a few weeks, and now I’m starting over.” Starting over was certainly the right term. Rebecca only hoped she’d been convincing enough that Klove wouldn’t realize why.

[Klove Makem]

Rebecca's answer was cagey and carefully constructed. It wasn't the first time he'd heard somebody answer like that. Some mercs talked about their past, but others didn't like to give anything away. Rebecca was apparently in the second camp. That wasn't a big deal. Klove liked talking, but he'd gotten used to being around people (and weres) who acted like talking about what they used to do was like pulling nails.

"That's cool." Klove said, and switched topics, not prying any further into Rebecca's past. She would tell him if she felt like it, and if not? Well, it didn't really matter. Klove settled on something he knew about Rebecca, something she'd been willing to put on the Network. "Your ad said you were pretty good with a gun. Are you really accurate, or really fast, or a trick shooter, or what?"

[Rebecca Ranger]

Rebecca was relieved that Klove seemed to have accepted her lie as truth, but it didn’t make her happy. Klove seemed like a nice enough person, and lying to him just didn’t feel right. Quite apart from that, she would have liked him to know because he could have helped her. It would have been wonderful to have someone on the ship who knew her secret. Someone like Sam, who would understand why she missed things that seemed so obvious to everyone else, why she got confused so easily, and why she was constantly asking questions. But it was impossible, because the very person she was missing had instructed her to keep her mouth shut.

Klove’s next question however, was luckily much easier to answer. “I suppose I’d fall under accuracy, although I’m not terrible for speed either. As for tricks, the only one I know is point and shoot, but it sounds like something that could be interesting to learn.”

[Klove Makem]

Klove nodded. Speed and accuracy was good, accuracy even more than speed. They didn't get into gun battles often, but when you did, the last thing you needed was an idiot who just started spraying bullets everywhere. "Tricks aren't so important. They're nice if you're showing off, but pretty useless when you're actually pinned down somewhere."

"I've an okay shot with a gun, but I'm a lot better at hand-to-hand, obviously." Most Weres were, especially if you were a big cat. But Rebecca didn't need that explained to her. "If you're accurate, you'll probably get to use your skills soon. There's lots of good money to be made on Heimdall if you're not opposed to killing dragons, and if you're a good shot. We've got a few rifles, and an RPG launcher for when things go bad. I usually sit back and watch, but maybe I'll join in this time."

[Rebecca Ranger]

Why it would be obvious that Klove was better at hand-to-hand combat rather than with a gun Rebecca couldn’t understand, but she decided to leave it. “I guess I won’t bother with tricks then. It sounds incredibly impractical to learn anything if it’ll never really be useful.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m not really that interested in impressing people.”

Practicality. Becca liked that idea. All circumstance and no pomp. No showing off, no glitz, just plain old her and whatever she felt like doing. Right now she felt like getting to Heimdall at that very moment and not waiting a minute. But of course, she couldn’t do that. So there went that part of her grand scheme. She looked at Klove. “The way you talk about these things. You make it sound fun… is it?”

[Klove Makem]

"That's fine. Usually tricks are only really good for impressing people who don't know much about guns, since it looks cool." If you knew how to handle a pistol, seeing somebody spin it in their hands wasn't all that impressive. If anything, it told you that you didn't have to worry too much. By the time they finished their fancy spins, or tried to shoot from over their shoulder, you could put a hole right through their skull. Klove grinned the grin only a teenage boy could muster, "It is pretty good if you want impress girls though."

"Yeah, it's a lot of fun. You've never been to Heimdall?" That was a bit surprising, but at the same time, not all that shocking Heimdall was good money, and had plenty of work. But it took a while to get used to how bright it was, no matter the time of day, and the heat was enough to kill you if you had a thick fur coat. Maybe if he'd been on his own, he would have avoided Heimdall too, but Klove had gone where Grace went, and Grace went where the jobs were. "It's hot as hell, but it's good. There's never a dull moment when Grace is running the show."

[Rebecca Ranger]

“Well, I don’t think I’ll have to worry much about that.” Rebecca laughed at Klove’s expression. Teenage boys were the same everywhere. Wait. Where had that conclusion come from? As far as she could remember, she’d never met another teen boy.

Why did things like this keep happening? Why couldn’t she just remember, instead of the memories nagging at the back of her mind all the time, as if teasing her? She couldn’t even answer Klove’s question, because she honestly didn’t know if she’d ever been to Heimdall before. Perhaps she’d been to all the planets, or maybe she’d lived on Terra her whole life, maybe even on the street corner where Sam had found her. Either way, she just said, “Well, it certainly does sound like fun. I can’t wait!”

[Klove Makem]

"You'll have to wait a little. It's a three day trip to Heimdall, but we'll be planet-side by Friday morning. The Queen runs a little faster than most ship, so we usually save a couple of hours each day. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it adds up." Especially on the longer runs, where you'd end up in port a day before you would arrive on other ships. Klove sometimes had to tell himself that over and over again when they were out in space for way too long, and he was getting sick of being cooped up.

"Until then, we'll just have to kill time. Me and the doctor play Sticks at night when it gets boring." Klove had been making an attempt to be friendly with Enan, even if he didn't really like him too much. He was still better than most of Grace's other choices, espeically when stacked against the fiking vampire. "You can feel free to sit down and join in. It's a real easy game to learn. I picked it up from another merc."

[Rebecca Ranger]

So the trip would be a waiting game. Too bad, she’d waited enough already. But Becca supposed this was a different kind of waiting. When she’d been living with Sam, she’d just been waiting, with no knowledge of what for or how long. But now, she was waiting with a purpose. She knew her life was headed somewhere.

“You people do a lot of killing around here.” She remarked with a grin, “Killing dragons, killing time…” But when Klove mentioned ‘the doctor,’ something about him changed. And somehow, Rebecca just knew that the new aspect to his personal scent was anger, frustration, and resentment. She didn’t know why, so that ruled out her being psychic, but she knew that she didn’t want to get this kid angry. Becca hitched the smile back onto her face. “I’d love to learn. I don’t know many games.”

[Klove Makem]

Klove just grinned and shrugged. "We're a violent, motley lot. You'll get a taste for it." That, or she would quit. But if Rebecca was a merc, and as good of a shot as she said, then she probably already had a taste for it. Most weres did, or at least, most predator weres did. Big cats especially. There was just something hardwired into the brain that made them equate killing with fun. Klove was no exception.

"Really?" That was a bit of a surprise. Most mercs Klove knew learned to play all sorts of games, mostly because you got tired of watching shows on the Network and you needed some sort of social contact after a while. Cards were a great way to shoot the shit and keep busy at the same time. "I know dozens of games, I'll teach you some of the best ones. We just got a new deck of cards too, since the old ones were too beat up." Or, rather, too easy to mark. While it was fun to win, it was just a bad idea to cheat when you were trapped on a ship with the people you were cheating. So every three or four months, Klove was in charge of getting a fresh deck of cards. It was kinda dumb, but better than spending days in space with a rotting corpse because somebody snapped over a game of Euchre.

He got up and grabbed the key off the wall, unlocking the games chest. There was the usual assortment of darts, padds, cards, and bricka bracka to keep people busy. Klove grabbed the fresh package of cards and got the wrapping off, "Do you know how to play war? That's probably the easiest game to learn."

[Rebecca Ranger]

Becca shrugged. “Well, I guess we’ll find out.” That at least was honest. She had no idea if she’d get a taste for killing or not. But she either would or wouldn’t, and the test began now. No matter how confusing things got, and they could get pretty confusing when you’re common sense ran on two weeks worth of memories, Becca was comforted by the fact that there was one thing she always knew. So far, she had never been indecisive. She could never tell what choice she’d make, but she always knew she’d choose.

The cabinet Klove opened interested her. It was full of strange items that were all vaguely familiar in a very frustrating way. She watched as he opened the cards, and shook her head at his question. “No. I don’t think I know how.”

[Klove Makem]

Klove sat down on the floor, putting his back against the bunk he'd just been sitting in. He shuffled the cards with an ease that came from years of playing, making sure to get the fresh deck completely mixed up. Klove split the deck in two and gave one half to Rebecca. "War's probably the easiest game to learn. It's really nothing but luck in the end."

He turned his face card over and set it on the floor. It was the nine of diamonds. "You take the top card off your deck, and I take the top card off mine, and we put them together. If my card's higher than yours, then I take them. If yours is higher, you take yours. And we just keep doing that until we run out of cards. If we turn over the same number, then we put down three cards and turn over the last one, and compare those two. Whoever has the most pairs at the end wins. Aces are low, Jokers are high. It's that simple."

It had been the first game he'd ever been taught. It was easy, but also kind of boring since it depended on luck. Once Rebecca got a handle on this, it would be easy to teach her other games. Maybe snaps, which Klove still enjoyed playing. It helped that his reflexes were faster than most mercs, and he'd been able to easily beat the pants off of men who were easily twice Klove's age, and three times his size.