Ex Lacrima Remnant
Track #77 – Encore
It was night, of course. And, of course, the moon was watching over the central square of the district. Short buildings were dotting the skyline, most of them with shuttered or missing windows, cracks on the plaster or even sheet metal to cover holes in the walls. Trash fires from below illuminated the darkness, spreading warmth through that pitch black limbo. Dobrio pulled down his telescopic visor, letting his eye rest. The target was in sight. And, of course, the information was reliable. He stretched a little, arcing his back like a cat, all while staring in silence at the scene unfolding down below. Drug dealers. Smugglers. Thieves. A nice microcosm of crime that littered the outskirts of Xianghu, in the gray area between Pangea and Eastcol – a place where none of them had authority because of a dumb territorial dispute. So, Xianghu was no man’s land, a receptacle of everything that sullied society… but also a surprisingly warmhearted place, one where communities worked together for the greater good, weeding out the bad apples before they could poison the well. Now, right under his eye, a gathering of many such bad apples was unfolding. Small containers of what he assumed to be rhizome lymph were handled by a bunch of sturdy looking fellows, under the command of a shorter man with a frankly ridiculous purple cap.
“Is that their boss?”
A voice from behind him. A silhouette in the dark. Rather short, if he had to say, but wearing high platform shoes to compensate. A black dress with intricate belts and zippers, topped with a choker decorated with whistling swan feathers, complemented her fit. Her long white hair made her, if possible, look even more like a ghost. Yet, that red rose peeking out of her eye socket solidified her as ‘not someone to mess with’. Dobrio shrugged, passed her the visor.
“Looks like it. Horrible bright cap and all.”
“Says the himbo with his abs and pecs on show.”
Another voice, one he knew full well. He felt the movement of a bunch of fingers on his six pack. Fingers he slapped away with his massive hand, while rolling the synthetic eye of his metal face.
“Says the gal who dresses like a fantasy violinist stripper.”
That elicited a chuckle from the white-haired girl, a chuckle she tried to suppress in vain. Said ‘fantasy violinist stripper’ groaned, slapped her bow on the other girl’s head, causing her to recoil.
“Laccy, you can’t talk! You’re the first that gets the hots for this costume!”
“…but that hurt, Mimi!”
“It was just a poke, come on…”
Mimi kissed her on the cheek, patting her head for a good measure.
“…here, pain is gone. Right?”
“As if just a kiss could heal a contusion!”
Dobrio would have laughed, if he still had a mouth. He wanted to shout ‘get a bed already’, but their gig had priority. After all, if they wanted to keep living there, in that godless neonlit city where law was an opinion and crime was a fact, they had to get the job done. After the whole Lagash fiasco, he was expecting Mimi to go for a quiet life, maybe as a musician, together with her house plant. A nice life, away from chaos. Away from crime. Away from the belly of the beast. A life that wasn’t suitable for Dobrio and Kryzalid, but was definitely suitable for Mimi LeFou. He psychologically prepared to finally part ways with that obnoxious blind girl that had been his partner in crime for so long. Nothing lasted forever, he knew it. It was just… hard to accept. As long as he had been Dobrio, there had been a Kryzalid. Dobrio without Kryzalid. Kryzalid without Dobrio. Unthinkable. He needed months to be ready for that. Because, of course, Mimi was going to move in with her house plant and start leading a new life, one that befitted a hero.
To his surprise, that idiot couldn’t fit anymore in a civilized society, so there they went, down to the last place on that Lagash-forsaken planet where nobody would look for them. Xianghu. The lawless district forgotten by the Eastcol and by Pangea, owned by none. Something akin to a surface version of Aralu – which was probably why Mimi found herself at home there. Now, though, her playing vigilante was something he wasn’t expecting though. The violinist from hell. The flower-eyed killer. And their himbo friend with the big two-barreled chain gun. Rumors had started to spread. Sooner or later, someone would have followed them. Someone would have found them, restarting the cycle. That made his adrenaline skyrocket. It was almost better than getting high on Laccy’s lymph.
Lacrima kneeled on the rooftop, caressing one of the dirty, broken gargoyles that decorated it.
“Usual procedure? I get down and cut their escape route, Dobrio guns everything that evades me, and you deal with the rest?”
Mimi raised her violin, leaned on it while caressing the strings.
“Eh, if it works, why change it? We gotta give them the scare of the century! Organs and lymph traffickers are the worst bar none!”
Dobrio saw a spark on Mimi’s usual Kryzalid costume. That spark was the last addition, something she wore since the moment they escaped the seedship. A pendant. A pendant with a green gem, shining in the moonlight. Mimi put the bow under her armpit, grabbed the emerald, closed her fingers around it.
“…let’s take out the trash… together.”
She rubbed her blindfolded forehead on the cold, slick surface, before hiding the pendant inside of her cape and pulling up the hood. Then, she turned around, bow and violin in hand, spreading her arms in front of the Moon. One step forward. Another. Another. Another step forward, till her foot tasted the emptiness of the sky. She leapt down, gliding in the night on invisible butterfly wings. Heads turned, fingers pointed, as her cape spread, as the hooded figure gracefully landed on the asphalt down there, caressing the ground with otherworldly grace.
Under the gaze of dozens of people. Under the barrels of dozens of thugs.
Still, before even one of them could pull the trigger, her bow grazed the strings of her violin.
And the music started to play, one more time.