Two Aliens Walk Into a Bar

He gently touched upon the fact that he’d managed a number of time to fend off would be assassins by simply wooing them into no longer wanting to kill him, a fact that Mercury took great delight in and her smirk deepened into a small grin. “A man after my own heart.” Hosrius admitted that he had chosen this location due to its ease as a point of potential advantage, but merely as a method to test her and see if she would seek to use it. As he put it, it was a test to see just how professional she was with things that fell in line with the type of work he did. And apparently she had passed that test, much to his delight.

Mercury assured him that she wasn’t there to be a threat to him, and even admitted to what she had done to save him some future trouble from those that were trying to hunt him down. The Jirian thanked her, commenting on how he was still trying to understand the technology on this planet, which made sense. If Mercury wasn’t the organic embodiment of technology herself, she likely would have had some trouble with it too. The Xocili merely nodded her humble acknowledgement of his thanks before going on to inform him of her real reason for having tracked him down. Or well, most of the real reason. It was all truth enough, simply vague in a few particular details, admitting enough of the truth to make him curious but not enough to lead him to any particular conclusions. Or at least, not any dangerous ones. It was a close line that she was treading between giving him just enough information and too much, but she had to play it in order to keep him from getting too much of her scent, so to speak.

Pleased, he spoke to his excitement about her truly being a bad girl. He hid his surprise masterfully from his face, but that didn’t stop her from registering the slight spike in his vitals. Granted, she expected no less of a response to the admission that she had met aliens before and managed to get on at least one of their bad sides enough to warrant a potential bounty on her head. Mercury grinned and took the time to actually introduce herself before getting into her original plan and explaining how it had led down the road they were currently on. He admitted quite readily that he was rather prone to lavishing charm on attractive women when given the opportunity, making a note to extend his thanks to Carson for falling face first into Mercury’s scheme.

After giving him a bit more information on who she actually was, Hosrius thanked her and assured her that his concerns over her intention for him had been sufficiently put to rest. He also informed her that if she had been hoping to make herself less interesting to him that she had crashed and burned, drawing a small chuckle from her as she drank her coffee. He was just  surprised that anyone from here might have caught the attention of intergalactic hunters, at least not unless they weren’t actually from the planet. Mercury nodded. “I can see how that would be surprising, but Earthland is hardly bound to itself. We still have a ways to go when it comes to technology, at least from what I’ve been able to compare, but we are capable of space travel. The problem is that kind of tech is still very expensive, which means it’s rare. It will still be another century or so before space travel is common fare for us, I reckon, but it still exists. Not to mention, magic is capable of performing feats that completely defy science and logic.”

She shrugged. Thankfully, that was truth enough to give her some cover. Mercury knew for a fact that Mythal and Serilda had spent a couple months out in space a while back, as it was one of many stories that were told when the four of them had first started getting to know one another. Earthland was capable of getting people out into space for significant periods of time, even if it wasn’t common place, and that was all she needed to make her own exposure to alien life forms less suspicious. It would still leave him curious to how she had managed to find herself in a lucky enough position to be one of the supposed few to have ventured off the planet before, but as he himself admitted only a moment later, he had a thing for mysterious women such as herself. He compared it to a game of sorts where one had to keep unraveling layer after layer to find the core of truth beneath, his words woven with about as much blatant innuendo as one could ask for.

Mercury smirked at him. “Only one way to find out.” The proverbial door had practically been kicked right open with that response, the lavender haired woman all but outright suggesting that they move somewhere more private.

And just like that, they were already making plans to move their little meeting to a nearby hotel, much to Mercury’s delight. She wasn’t surprised by the suggestion. No one was able to successfully make a career out of bounty hunting -- or espionage, for that matter -- without learning how to protect themselves, so she had expected him to suggest a neutral place rather than something more personal to either of them. With a grin, she finished off her coffee and waited with him as he paid off the tab. He used his armband to confirm the nearest hotel and with merely a thought a number of the small drones that Mercury had posted outside detached from their positions and rearranged themselves, zooming through the air to survey the route they intended to take for anything suspicious. Not that Mercury thought Hosrius was going to try to pull a fast one on her. No, she was confident that both of them were on the same page and not hiding anything hostile from the other. Rather, it was a force of habit, a survival instinct that would probably be threaded through her genetic coding for the rest of her life. Plus, it wasn’t like Hosrius hadn’t already been a target lately. Better safe than sorry, for both of their sakes.

With a knowing smirk on her face, she gracefully accepted his arm, lounging on it like one would expect from a woman that had a romantic or at least sexual interest in her partner, and causing quite the barely contained commotion amongst the other patrons in the restaurant. It was a reality that greatly amused both of them, with the Jirian fully admitting his pleasure over it once they were out of the building. Mercury chuckled. “I do enjoy a good scandal. They’ll probably be talking about us for a while. Maybe for our second date we’ll find something to do that’s a little more public, just to have a little more fun.”

Down they walked toward the hotel, where Hosrius got a room for the two of them despite the clerk’s bafflement. To the human’s credit, he held himself together better than most, enough to get through the exchange without devolving into a babbling puddle of incoherence. Once more Hosrius paid the fees for them, taking a moment to punch a command into his armband before they started making their way to their assigned room. Mercury’s drones caught the arrival of Hosrius’ device as it propelled itself to the room from, and while she couldn’t say for sure she had a feeling it was probably his rifle. This was confirmed only a moment later when he looked to her and teasingly commented about his weapon being primed and ready. Mercury grinned and leaned a little closer against him. “Well then, I’ll have to take very attentive care of it, won’t I?”

They entered the room and he shut the door behind them. It was a fairly average room with all the basic trimmings, nothing swanky but certainly clean and comfortable, which was all that ever really mattered when it came to hotels. There on the bed was a case that he admitted had his rifle inside, teasing that if she wanted she could pretend that he had been cocky enough to book the room in advance even though he’d really just had a method of transporting the case remotely to a predetermined location. “If it makes you feel better, advanced tech is just as seductive to me as confidence and charm.”

Making her way over to the bed, she tossed her clutch onto the comforter and opened up the case, revealing the weapon inside. “Oh, but you are a big boy, aren’t you?” Lifting the rifle from the box, she turned it slowly in her hands, examining it meticulously, her internal scanners mapping a blueprint of the weapon and running an analysis of it in her head. “Oooh, very clever. A rifle and a pistol. You definitely don’t see that kind of tech around her very often. Quite similar to my own weapon, actually, though mine swaps between pistol and sword.”

“So, what seems to be the problem?” she asked as she moved over to the desk in the room, turning on the lamp so she could see a little better. There were already a couple ideas popping up into her head of ways she could improve the weapon, but he wasn’t necessarily looking to upgrade it so much as fix something that was either broken or blatantly inefficient, or at least that’s what she had gathered from their previous conversation about it. As he explained his primary issue of concern, she took the time to change it back and forth between its rifle and pistol settings a couple times, getting a feel for the efficiency of the transition and to see how the weapon carried itself in both forms.

Once he explained about the cooling issue, she set the weapon down on the desk and went back to fetch her clutch, pulling a small multitool from it that he could probably tell pretty quickly was meant for taking the gun apart. “May I?” Presuming he gave her permission, Mercury tilted the shade on the lamp so the light would shine more directly on the weapon and got to work undoing the chassis to take a direct look at the components inside. Despite his very alien weapon, she handled both the tool and the parts with confidence that bordered on mastery. Each detached piece was placed carefully on the table, though not necessarily in any organized fashion. She clearly didn’t seem too worried about forgetting which piece went where or in what order it was attached. He certainly took good care of it. There was evidence enough to suggest that he cleaned and maintenanced it regularly.

While she worked on disassembling it and running solutions in her head, Mercury figured they may as well keep chatting. “You’ve been around the universe a bit, I’d wager, given your line of work. I’d love to hear some stories about some of your past jobs. They ever take you anywhere especially interesting? Besides Earthland and running into me, that is.” Mercury shot him a playful wink and then kept working.

As Mercury began to disassemble the chassis of the firearm, Hosrius explained a bit about the weapon and the issue he was having with it. The perk to the dual weapon was that he could swap between long and short range shots with ease without it taking too much time in the middle of a battle. Unfortunately, the battery coiling had been installed correctly. The result was that the pistol wasn’t able to vent the appropriate amount of heat it needed to in order to keep from misfiring, allowing the weapon to fire a single shot with the power of the sniper rifle but after that the weapon was useless unless he waited a few minutes or swapped briefly into the rifle form to release the built up heat.

And as she got deeper into the bowels of the weapon, Hosrius regaled her with one of his bounty hunting tales. A few years back he had taken on a suicide job hunting a dangerous mark that had killed one hundred percent of the mercenaries that had been hired to take him down. No matter the outcome, Hosrius teased, it would be to his benefit as one way or the other he’d be free of his debts. He had cased the target for over a year, learning his prey’s habits and building up as much information as he could in order to be as prepared as possible for when it came time to strike.

His mark was no easy target, however, having seemed to be aware of the impending attack with enough time to snatch the woman that was supposed to be his wife and let her take the bullet for him. “Ouch, that’s cold,” Mercury commented, though the light smirk on her face betrayed that she wasn’t really disgusted by the action. Or rather, wasn’t surprised by it. What followed was a vicious game of cat and mouse where Hosrius very nearly managed to be the victor. Unfortunately, the target had revealed a final trick up his sleeve in the form of a self destruct mechanism that destroyed the entire building and would almost certainly have killed everyone inside.

Miraculously, Hosrius had survived and even managed to find a child still breathing among the rubble. But unfortunately, his target had managed to get away, leaving the Jirian as the sole mercenary to walk away from the job that had killed everyone else before him. Mercury softly whistled her appreciation without interrupting him. From there, Hosrius focused on trying to keep the little girl he’d found safe, though that wasn’t exactly easy given his line of work and eventually he had to relinquish her to a new home with a family that could truly provide for her in ways that he couldn’t. It had been difficult, but seemingly for the best as she was all grown up now and had a life all her own.

“Well, it’s good to hear that someone survived. Glad you were able to protect that girl, and I’m sure she’d grateful for you, wherever she is now. So is this Maker the guy you’re hunting here, then? Or did you drop that contract?” Even as she continued to pull the weapon apart and inspect each piece carefully, she logged the name of the man away, curious to see if she could find anything on this mysterious tyrant later. Mercury couldn’t imagine that any sane person would continue that search when by all rights they should have died already, but Hosrius didn’t seem the type to give up very easily. Plus, if an alien that dangerous was living on Earthland, Mercury needed to know. Maker may have “wiped the board clean” for himself, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a trail of some kind. Very few people could totally erase themselves from the face of the galaxy, even those with near infinite resources.

Carefully pulling out the battery, she held it up under the light and inspected the label. “Oh yeah, here’s your problem,” The Xocili informed him. “Whoever replaced this for you last either didn’t know what they were doing, or outright scammed you. This battery is a Chakri 1300 series. Chakri is a good brand, but this one isn’t nearly powerful enough to handle a weapon like yours. At least, not for long. Let me guess: the venting problem kicked in about three or four months after the battery was replaced? It would have seemed like it was working fine for a time but over use with a more powerful weapon would have shorted it out very quickly. I wouldn’t use anything less than a 1800 for something like this.”

Mercury offered the device for him to inspect, pointing out a few places where there were there was evidence of previous surges that had continued to cripple the component bit by bit. “Honestly, I’m surprised it still fires at all. I can definitely replace it with something much better. In fact, I’m sure I could make a lot of improvements for you, if you wanted. I’ll need some time to gather everything together, and I would need to work on it some place more suitable to that kind of work, of course. Probably at my guild.” Satisfied with her inspection, and her mental blueprints of the weapon that she’d crafted from taking it apart, Mercury set back to piecing the thing back together, easily remember which piece went where and in what order. Despite having never seen the weapon before in her life, she assembled it perfectly and handed it back to him so he could inspect it if he wished before putting it back in the case.

She took a big sip from the glass of water he’d given her. “We’ll need to discuss payment, of course. My services are top of the line and I don’t come cheap. Luckily for you, I accepts lots of forms of currency…” Mercury smirked at him with a suggestive twinkle in her eyes before adding, “But I require half the payment in advance, and the other half after the work is complete.”

Frankly, it only made sense. The idea that the explosion Maker had loosed had been powerful enough to vaporize his entire body without a trace, save for a single hand that had somehow managed to survive the detonation, was ridiculous. So Mercury had naturally assumed that after some time he had picked the hunt back up, having first worked on relocating his charge and building his health and resources back up. Apparently, his employers had not been so suspicious. Hosrius explained that he had indeed taken the severed limb back, fully expecting to be told to get back out in the field, only for them to take the hand as evidence of Maker’s death, rewarding the Jirian in full for a job well done. And Hosrius? Well, he had done what any sane person would do: Let his employers live by the assumptions they wanted to make and took the payment he hadn’t technically finished learning.

Mercury smirked at him with approval. Carrying on, he informed her that he was on Earthland for a different target. This one had no known name, having been referred to only as the “Apex Predator”. The information on him was locked up tight, which of course just peaked Mercury’s curiosity and sense of determination. All Hosrius had to go off of was an image of the mark and the knowledge that he was skilled in manipulation and seduction. Mercury looked up curiously as he displayed the image for her to see, her brows instantly shooting up to her forehead. “Hot damn…” Whatever species this Apex Predator was, not even Mercury had heard of anything matching its description, but boy was he pretty. Or at least, pretty for a man who’s smile hinted with no subtlety that he would easily enjoy ravaging a person as much as slowly peeling the flesh from their body and using it as a gag while he brutalized their loved ones in front of them.

So, exactly Mercury’s type.

After taking a good long look and making sure she had every detail of the green skinned alien stored in her databanks, Mercury shook her head. “If I had known there were this many sexy aliens running around Earthland, I’d have gone looking for you all much sooner. On a more serious note, I’ll put some feelers out with my contacts if you want, see if I can turn up any clues for you.” Of course by contacts she meant that she would search her own impressive wealth of galactic knowledge.

After they took a moment to discuss the battery and briefly touch on the fact that Mercury could do quite a bit of work to improve his firearm, they agreed to reconvene after she’d gotten a chance to gather supplies and get things ready. In the meantime, with the weapon put back together and stored away, there was little left to do except find other ways to pass the time, and at this point there was nothing to stop them from jumping past the teasing stage and right into what they had slowly been building toward all evening. Hell, all day. Mercury playfully commented a suggestion on how he might repay her for her work, and Hosrius didn’t miss a beat as he agreed to the arrangement, lightly joking about how he would need to make sure his deposit, so to speak, was worthwhile enough for her to want the remainder of the payment later. “No pressure.”

The Jirian practically sauntered over to her, wasting no time in leaning down as if to kiss her only to first snatch her by the back side and haul her up against him. Mercury grinned and wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her thighs tight against his sides, more than pleased with the development. Before she could even get a final word of teasing in at his comment about enjoying challenges, his lips were on hers. She chuckled merrily and pulled herself closer to him, returning the gesture with excitement and enthusiasm.

It was going to be a wild night.