Tales from Jackson's - Portrait of a Lone Cub as a Young Girl

October 2067: A quiet moment after the storm. Tiger and Cyphr celebrate a new development at their favorite cafe, under the annoyed yet serene gaze of a familiar, faceless bartender.

“If you’re looking for Lejl, she’s off duty until Wednesday.”

“I know, Vince, don’t worry. I’m not here for her!”

A puzzling response, one Jackson wasn’t expecting from the girl sitting at his counter – flashing data bands, mechanical arms and all. Yet, not an unwelcome one. If Cyphr wasn’t there for Lejl, it meant that A) his employee didn’t cause any additional trouble with law enforcement B) if that wasn’t the case, Jackson’s wasn’t liable for whatever she did and C) most likely Cyphr was there to place an order, instead of spending a good chunk of the evening fawning over her girlfriend’s work outfit. If anything, Sambiong’s presence and lack of military uniform seemed to corroborate that hypothesis. That was a nice change of pace, for once. No complications, just a plain drink between friends, without involving any of his employees and without causing his customers to complain about the overly spicy language those two lovebirds tweeted in their exchanges. A low growl escaped Jackson’s lips, as he pushed his magenta hat down on his head. Hiring Lejl hadn’t necessarily been a bad choice – there was a plethora of worse candidates – but her directness, air-headedness and general lack of modesty made him second-guess himself pretty often. Only for said horny gremlin (moniker courtesy of Shaz) to surprise him with some perfect new cocktail recipes, impeccable service and deep philosophical musings on existence and the meaning of life. She was a real mystery, all things considered, but a mystery he was glad to have met. If only the dumb shark and said gremlin didn’t blow up a luxury car by mistake (or rather, an unfortunate series of circumstances), he would have probably given up on buyer’s remorse for a long time already.

“We’d like two beers, Vince. One pint each!”

Cyphr’s voice interrupted his recollection, as she raised her artificial hand to better convey her message. Jackson side-eyed her without saying a word, focusing his attention on the feline mutant sitting close to her. Said mutant looked kind of guilty or at least uncomfortable at his subordinate’s stunt – and for a good reason. After a long, awkward silence, Tiger stared back at Jackson, saying the magic word.

“Alcohol-free for me, please.”

Jackson nodded, took a glass from the cupboard, started cleaning it, before pouring half a pint of alcohol-free beer into it. If Sambiong ever ordered alcohol again, he knew what to do – refuse service and headbutt him on the snout, as it was tradition. Maybe the physical pain would remind him of the night he drunk to the point of unconsciousness, airing his woes about the progeny of a mixed couple for all to listen (including a somewhat snoring, pre-rehab drunken sharkman). Still, it seemed like he learned his lesson, that now-happy father of two kittens. Jackson glanced at Sambiong’s clawed hand, at the wedding ring adorning it. As an automatic reflex, he looked for his own one too, touched it with the tip of his index. Still fresh, hard to get accustomed to, but doubtlessly the same. Sambiong and he were both married men, with truly magnificent, strong wives and children to come back home to every evening. Well, Jackson’s children weren’t his biological offspring, but Kia and he hoped to fix that soon, during their upcoming honeymoon in Greece. If that worked and the newborn was to be a girl, her name was already set: Kasumi Ann Jackson. For a boy, there were still a little too many options on the table and a couple vetos (including all of Shaz’s aliases, a list now totaling around forty-five different names in at least seven different languages). As the first beer got ready, the grumpy barman handed it to Sambiong, before now filling a second jug with a less kid-friendly beverage. When he turned around, Cyphr’s wide smile welcomed him, her robotic fingers closed around the handle, snapping it away.

“Dankeschön! Much appreciated!”

Before Jackson could even nod in response, she slammed the glass on the counter once, only to bring the beer to her lips and chug it down at a speed he didn’t even believe was achievable. Tiger opened his mouth, turned towards Jackson, meeting the barman’s equally puzzled gaze, his unnaturally wide eyes, as the brain under the hat was going insane with weird comparisons.

Not even Shaz. Not. Even. Shaz.

After gulping down no less than half a pint in one go, she slammed the glass back on the counter, with a satisfied grin on her face.

“Aaaaah, this is a beer! Not that shameful Pisswasser they sell at Le Coq! Das schmeckt so gut, verdammt!”

Jackson stood still for a second, flabbergasted by that drinking prowess, something displayed only by his best finned friend before his stage two cirrhosis. Of course Cyphr had been at Jackson’s other times, of course she drank more than once, but it was his first time seeing her chugging down so much alcohol in so little time. While Lejl couldn’t have more than a cocktail before getting wasted. Cyphr seemed to be able to steel an entire brewery without even flinching. A cold shiver ran down his spine. If his employee ever asked him for free drinks for her girlfriend, he knew how to reply now – with a resounding, absolute, non-negotiable hell no. Before she could swallow the rest of her drink in one go, he decided to weigh in, trying to give some time to Sambiong to at least savor a little bit of his beverage.

“So, what are you celebrating today? Something Delta-Team-related, I take it?”

“In a way yes, but not really. It’s all for Cyphr.”

Tiger had finally brought the glass to his lips, let its amber content flow down his throat with a satisfied smile. He cleaned his fur with his hand, removing the hints of foam that had stuck to his chin.

“See, the little lady here’s having her first personal painting exhibition next month, at the Skating Pavilion in Turing Avenue…”

“… and it’s all thanks to you, Alter!”

Cyphr’s voice interrupted her boss, as she leaned forward on the counter, getting dangerously close to Jackson’s hatted face, causing him to jump back as a reflex.

“H… how so?”

She lifted her finger, pointed at two small paintings affixed right above the counter.

“You remember these, or? I’ve painted them for you when you hired my babe, but I wasn’t expecting you to hang them here!”

Jackson didn’t need to look at them, he knew them perfectly. Under her Lone Cub signature, Cyphr had created two very atmospheric pieces for him, with oil-based colors on canvas. The first portrayed Jackson’s, the bar, with him behind the counter, serving a drink to a tigerman, while a sharkman was snoring wildly. That felt like a nice present, a view of his microcosm of life as watched by an unseen observer. The second, of course, portrayed Lejl in her bartender suit, mixing cocktails in front of the Jackson’s logo for a couple customers. Both works had a peculiar play of light and darkness, with surprising amounts of details (especially on Lejl’s unbuttoned shirt, which probably wasn’t a coincidence). Jackson appreciated them a lot, thought they were a nice addition to his café’s decor and that they were too good to be kept at home. So, he proudly displayed them and gave Cyphr’s contact to whomever asked him who the artist was. That included his acquaintance Lee Carter, manager of The Lighthouse, a pub in the red light district which shared some business agreements with him. Jackson had heard that Lee commissioned a couple portraits to Cyphr too, but didn’t know more than that. He felt that previous statement of hers was oddly exaggerated.

“Of course I remember. What of it?”

“Well, after I’ve painted a couple pieces for your friend Lee, I’ve got some commissions from a patron of his, then from a friend of said patron, then… huh, to cut the chase, I’ve got so many requests that I have to put people on a waiting list! Right now, I’m even painting a portrait for Myadeline Heargreaves! Yes, that Myadeline Heargreaves!”

Jackson nodded without really understanding why that was a huge deal. That name Cyphr said felt completely foreign to him, but, by the sound of it, she seemed to be someone famous. Neither Kia or he were reading gossip columns and tabloids, so maybe that was the reason why he was completely unaware of her existence. If that person was someone of note, good for Cyphr, of course – all good publicity for her side gig. Yet, it was hard for him to fully grasp her absolute excitement. Excitement that became even more obvious, as the German girl’s downed yet another long sip of beer in one go, leaving less than a quarter of the original amount inside her glass.

“Last Tuesday Myadeline came to New Langdon for a fashion parade, so I had one whole weekend to work on the first sketch with her in person as my model! Meine Güte, Vince, you should have seen her! She asked me for a full-figure nude painting of herself, after she saw my Unveiled Star at The Lighthouse! A full-figure nude! Aaaaaah!”

She closed her eyes, a grin opening on her face, as her cheeks turned red – maybe because of the alcohol, maybe not.

“That body, Vince! That body! Perfection, Vince! Absolute perfection! I was breathless, I had to fight against my urges for three days straight, while she was posing for me in her birthday suit! I can’t even… ah, if only she were into girls, Lalli and I and she could have…”

A low growl. Jackson rolled his eyes, pushed his hat against his forehead, grumbling like a caged beast.

“Thanks, Cyphr, I don’t need to hear the details.”

Tiger couldn’t help but chuckle at that exchange while sipping down a little more of his drink. Cyphr was as serious as a military-trained black ops soldier could be, but, once in a while, the full extent of her quirkiness seemed to have the best of her – causing her to compulsively gush over her obsession-of-the-week. The obsession of this week was said Myadeline Heargreaves, a scandalous neko top-model that was becoming a sort of celebrity as of late, even landing a major role in the upcoming live action series based on an animated show called Ex Lacrima Remnant. That had caused an online uproar, as she was casted in the role of blindfolded violinist Kryzalid – who was definitely not a neko and didn’t have a tail or cat ears in the original material. Amy was one such covert fan of the show, someone who would never admit she was watching it but would be found quoting it when her guard was down. When she got wind that her favorite character (“best girl Kryzalid”, as Lejl and Amy both called her) was going to be played by Myadeline, she had a minor fit of quiet rage.

“I have nothing against nekos, Tiger. I mean, have I not married you? Nevertheless, this casting choice is inexcusable, despite the unquestionable talents of Ms. Heargreaves. It is indeed the equivalent of hiring a man in a fursuit to play your role in a movie! That can not end well, can it?”

Funnily enough, that precise circumstance had already happened twice, to his memory – in both Schwarzerblitz and Schwanzerblitz (the R18 version of the movie, which his wife found more enjoyable than the real deal). No, wait, three times including the direct-to-video sequel, in which Commander Sam Jaguar died to save Chazz Altar from a rogue train possessed by the Black Lightning. Apparently, his expy was written out in such a cheesy fashion because the actor portraying him asked for a salary adjustment, after getting wind of Evilobster’s cachet. Of course, Mr. Daevka solved the issue by firing the poor sod on the spot and re-arranging the existing filmed material to justify his absence from the rest of the movie. Said movie had been carried by Combat Idol MIRAI Nanami and Shocker the Electric Lobster anyway, so nobody seemed to care or complain about Sam Jaguar’s untimely death. Nobody except Tiger himself, maybe. Somehow, he was fascinated by that weird two-part adaptation of their adventure in Euterpe and was among the very few people who genuinely liked it. It was a low-quality naive action flick, but that was for the best. Having Donner be the anti-hero he deserved to be would have caused the movie to become an existential philosophical piece on who is worthy of survival, among two different worlds. Making him a plain, large ham villain made the movie fit a ninety minutes runtime and gave it a satisfying conclusion, without all the shades of grey of the real story. After all, Tiger didn’t need to be reminded of his decision to help his own world and condemn Gaia to perish every time he watched it. That choice was still weighing on him, eating at his very soul, but playing with his cubs every evening gave him some peace. Had he not stood up for his reality, Jill and Leìn would have never existed… and Amy would have died too. That thought caused him to shiver. He sipped down a little more beer, savoring it slowly. It felt good, right as he liked it, and yet…

“Hey, Vince, is it a new brand? It tastes slightly different than usual.”

Jackson shrugged, pushing his hat yet deeper on his head.

“It might be due to a new additive. Those pricks from Yard gently advised me to pour it in every drink I serve, they told me it was for sanitization purposes and that it shouldn’t affect the taste in any way. Well, guess what? They were wrong. I’ll have a word with that short excuse of a detective...”

“Nein, nein! It’s fine, mein Herr! Only my full-furred commander can tell a difference, I didn’t even notice it! Now, please, one more beer! Please!”

Jackson squinted his eyes at Cyphr, before refilling her glass. She was clearly fired up, almost like that time she met Lejl at Le Coq after her return – according to Shaz’s recounting of that night. Because of course Shaz was there, and of course he had to stay and clean the whole place the morning after, since he had no money to pay for all the drinks he had chugged down. Yet, that meant that he witnessed the whole story unfolding under his very eyes. Eyes that bawled with fear and terror, while reminiscing his cleaning duty, accompanied by a peculiar choice of words.

“The horror, Vince! The horror!”

He never elaborated on it, but something in the room those two gals slept together in deeply traumatized him. Jackson didn’t want to know what, and Shaz didn’t seem inclined to explain it, so it remained both a mystery and a cautionary tale of curiosity that killed that proverbial cat.

A whisper surprised him, caused him to get back to the present, to the current moment.

“V… Vince...?”

Jackson turned around, only to see Sambiong carefully trying to tell him something, while Cyphr was hugging him and singing Oktoberfest songs off-key, stretching his ears and tail in the process. Jackson’s hand froze on the machine, uncertain on what to do. She had ordered a beer, but was serving it the right decision? He glanced at the half full glass, then back at the girl with mechanical arms squeezing the tigerman’s cheeks, then back at the glass, then back at Sambiong. Then, he shrugged and kept on pouring the alcoholic beverage. She was young, she wasn’t drinking often, she surely had swarms of medical nanomachines in her blood, so she could definitely survive a hangover. If anything, that would have been Lejl’s problem for the night, not his. That thought, that devilish thought, made him feel like a bad person. Only for a second, though. Only for a second.

“Here. A pint of beer for the excitable puppy.”

“Dankeschön, Vince! Zum Wohl!”

Cyphr grabbed the mug, brought it to her lips, savored a little bit of foam, before gulping down a quarter of her drink in an even shorter time than before. She slammed the glass on the counter again, with a genuine, dumb smile on her face.

“Okay, okay! Maybe I should slow down a little, or? I can’t turn this evening into a nightmare! After all, we’re here to ce-le-brate!”

Her hands rested on the fine wood surface, her fingers playing with the mug, following the relief of its decorations.

“I’m getting a three months sabbatical, away from Delta Team, starting tomorrow! I’ll use the time to build a small art studio, close to where I live! Lalli has already found a garage with a very cheap rent, I’ve signed the contract today! I can’t wait to reshape it completely!”

Her open palm slapped Tiger’s back, all of a sudden, almost making him lose his grip on his mug.

“Herr Commander Furry here will have to deal with my absence for a loooong while! So, we decided to drink something together in preparation!”

Jackson squinted his eyes for the third time during that conversation. Cyphr. The vengeful hound of Delta Team. The hungry wolf. The robot killer. Getting a pause from her job. That did not compute, felt completely foreign to the girl he knew. Thus, his stare moved quizzically to the anthropomorphic tiger sitting next to her, asking him a how, followed by a why, all without even needing to vocalize those questions. Said tiger’s response, though, was just an enigmatic wink, something Jackson had issues interpreting on the spot. Before he could inquire further, Cyphr raised her hand, laughing like the dolt she was.

“Hey! Hey Vince! Huh, excuse me for a second, I gotta use the toilet! I’ll be riiiiight back!”

“Fine, as long as you don’t Shaz it.”

Using Shaz as a verb wasn’t probably something allowed by the English language. Yet, Jackson couldn’t help himself, while staring at the uncertain steps of Cyphr, dangerously skirting the line of drunkenness without actually being there yet. As soon as he saw her disappear behind the door to the restrooms, he found himself sighing, staring at that glass still full of beer. He was indeed a bad person, but not that bad that he’d like to live with the consequences of it. So, he grabbed the mug, poured the beer down the drain and replaced it with an alcohol-free variety from the same brand. That wasn’t something he used to do, not for a paying customer, but after having dealt with Shaz for so long, he didn’t feel like he could consciously let Cyphr slide into the same tunnel and get wasted at the beginning of her best evening – even if she was German and drank booze since she was an infant in her crib, probably. Of course, he would tell her about the swap as soon as she came back from the toilet. She might have protested, but that was his café, his rules. He was allowed to refuse service to a customer and, for her sake, he would have gladly taken the fall. His actions, though, didn’t go unnoticed, as Tiger’s eyes followed all of his movements, well after he replaced the alcoholic drink with an equivalent alcohol-free version. That’s when the mutant’s voice got louder and warmer, almost surprisingly so.

“Aaaaaw, Vince… so you care about her too?”

“Shut up, Sambiong.”

An amused chuckle. Tiger grinned at the hatted barman, winked again.

“I was the one who suggested her to take a short leave. I can deal with most chores without her for a while, thanks to Jenn and Jorma. ‘Sides, I’ve got more than enough collaborators – the government increased our funding, after the giant plant bloomed.”

“Okay, but why? Why are you… pushing her out? She’s perfect for that job, she could be born for it! She’s the right person at the right place and she’s totally aware of it! This makes little sense, you know that, yes?”

Tiger put his elbows on the counter, rested his head among his open palms.

“Cyphr is a talented painter, really. A couple years ago, she started drawing with her feet – I think she still does, at times – but now, with the help of her new hands, she has reached a whole other level. Her works have a light that’s unique to her, a light she could, she should have nurtured since she was a kid. Even Amy recognized it. AMY!”

“The same Amy who would gladly put a cyanide pill in her coffee? That Amy?”

“That Amy, yes. So, huh, Vince… her grandpa stole her childhood, right? Cyphr’s always been a war machine of sorts. Living with a cyborg mom that had 80% of her body replaced by mechanical parts and who had a love story with a bounty hunter wasn’t probably the best for her.”

Jackson crossed his arms, rested his back against the wall, before pushing down his hat. Said bounty hunter was Ange, of course. What would he have done if he was in her place, if his lone vigilante parent had an affair with someone like that French body-building, control-freak idiot of a friend of his? He would have probably run away from home or would have become a bounty hunter freak like them, right? He felt he understood Sambiong’s point, at least partly. He pushed his hat on his head, massaged his chin while staring back at the mutant.

“You’re giving her a chance to build the life she could have had, huh? Color me impressed.”

“Impressed? And which color would that be? Lime green, lemon yellow or shocking pink?”

“The color of your upcoming shiner, Sambiong.”

A bout of crystalline laughter. Tiger couldn’t stop it, shook his head, pulled up his glass.

“To our little wolf girl and her new atelier?”

Jackson’s hand reached for an empty glass, then for a bottle of whiskey. The amber, strongly scented liquor filled it up to half, before his other hand raised it too, clashing it with the jug held by the mutant in front of him.

“To someone who’s being more of a father to her than her father, I’d say.”

“Know that Ange was fine with it too.”

“Now, that’s what I call a miracle.”

The glasses clinked, once, twice, before Jackson and Tiger brought them to their lips, savoring their content with a barely concealed satisfaction. Once again, Jackson’s mind went back to Ange’s drunken rants, to that first awkward meeting with Lejl, to Tiger’s depression, to Shaz’s liver issues. Not even two years had passed, and yet the world, the people around him had changed – for the best, even. He had changed too, in a way he could have never believed, back in his cramped hideout inside the Witch Tower. A married man with a wonderful wife, two children, working in his own café at the outskirts of New Langdon, laughing and joking with people he could really call friends.

People who cared for him, despite his twisted origin as a laboratory experiment.

People he genuinely cared for, despite their absolute disastrous shenanigans.

If someone could have read his face, at that exact moment, they would have noticed a wide smile opening onto it.

A smile worth more than a thousand words.