Beyond the Broken Moon - Coffee Break

February 2068. Blade and Rebecca's psychologist meet in front of the coffee dispenser of the Mattanza, after a day of work. Blade has no sympathy for shrinks and even less for Tian Zhu, but their forced time together is slowly affecting him more than he thinks.

“Coffee? At this time of the evening? From that machine?”

“Yes, and?”

“Good luck with that.”

Blade slumped against the wall, cup in hand and everything, letting out a long groan. Coffee, indeed, was an overstatement, when it came to that hot beverage that looked black enough to resemble coffee but tasted more like dirty water. Being picky was however a lost cause – no way he’d get some decent coffee in the middle of the South China Sea, especially not on a fishing vessel converted to pirate ship. Yet, the tall, tall, tall woman staring at him from her one meter and ninety-four centimeters of elevation seemed to have a bone to pick with that. Blade had to bend his neck a little to look in the eyes of that slender titan, something that bothered him to no end. Her size made the rest of the crew feel like Lilliputians gazing at Gulliver for the first time – Lucia included. A humorous picture materialized in his mind, the minute wolf girl having to step on a wooden block just so she could have eye contact with the woman in front of him. That sight was kind of ridiculous, but was definitely something Lucia might have done, just to remind them who was the boss. Only for that Chinese woman, a woman that responded to the rather corny name of ‘Heavenly Lord’, to bend on Lucia like a crane, still being taller despite the support. There were more than twenty centimeters between them, and it showed. That rubbed Lucia the wrong way, so Blade had to keep his laughter in check every time her annoyance became too apparent. That diminutive wolf girl had a very specific way to signal displeasure, which might or might not have included twitching her ears while puffing her cheeks like a hamster and gazing at the floor with her arms crossed. In a way, that felt cuter than it should have been. He glanced back at said Chinese woman – the only other person standing close to the coffee machine – who was currently bending over it to observe its encrusted display, in the low lights of the common room, muttering something in what sounded like Cantonese.

“Ah, of course, of course! Made in China, of course! That explains the bad quality.”

Blade answered back in the same language, or at least in a bold attempt at it.

“… isn’t everything made in China, nowadays?”

His accent was pretty heavy, but the woman smirked at him in response.

“That was in the ‘10s. Now, it’s West Africa. Everything comes from West Africa, yes? So, China can focus on shitty products, like it always did. I hate my country.”

“That’s something we have in common.”

Blade stared at her again, at that woman that went by the name ‘Tian Zhu’. A name that, in Mandarin, was somehow used to refer to the Christian God. He had, of course, asked her about it, only to be given a cryptic response.

That’s how the prostitutes called me in Macao.

Which was saying everything and nothing about that weird human being currently dissecting a coffee machine with her gaze. Before she started side-eyeing him, with those dot-like pupils swimming in the never-blinking white ocean of her sclerae.

“Your Cantonese isn’t half bad, fish man. Too good for a foreigner. Where did you learn it?”

“Directly in Guangzhou. I was stationed there for two years, to film my stupid streaming series before it got canceled.”

That was an event from a past long gone, when he was still known as Blade the Golden Avenger, member of the Deep Sea Warriors. RealLifeAnime had spent big bucks on them, but their show never picked off. During his forced stay in Guangzhou, Go and Blade studied the local language to feel a little less lonely, while D., Feliz, Shaz, Jorma and the others simply didn’t care. Incidentally, in Guangzhou Blade had stolen Shaz’s first kiss too – a memory that remained vivid and stubbornly refused to fade, despite the cruel eternity that passed. The affair with D. developed not much later. In a way, wooing both Shaz and D. was true to Blade’s philosophy of always hedging his bets. That philosophy backfired so badly that now he was roaming the sea under the command of an eccentric, overexcitable wolf girl, one that could shred him to sushi with the flick of one finger.

Tian Zhu gave him an oblique gaze, her pupils smaller than usual, almost reduced to simple dark dots swimming in a sea of white.

“Only two years? Bullshit, fish man. You lose it if you don’t use it.”

“I’ve brushed it up, as of late. Lots of time to kill on this ship, can’t hurt to learn it again.”

That remark seemed to please her enough for her to drop the accusatory stare.

“This I can believe. Same for me with Sicilian and Neapolitan. Good practice here – a crew of uncultured simpletons.”

Blade nodded in half agreement, sipping down the dirty water he erroneously called ‘coffee’ not even a couple minutes sooner. It tasted. That was as much as he could state. Choosing between ‘bad’ or ‘good’ was too much of a stretch. That beverage tasted. That was it. Yet, it contained enough caffeine to rev up his brain to working order again, after a full day of tiresome planning. Logistic. Trade routes. Military intel. Market research. A whole lot to take in, all in the interest of keeping the gears running and well oiled. And, if that weren’t enough, he had to deal with a second, overexcitable wolf girl too, one that was coming to terms with her new body. He casually glanced back at that living crane of a woman, enduring her sharp gaze.

“Say, what’s your read of that new gal, Rebecca?”

“Coping and grieving she is.”

“Lucia’s all smitten with her.”

“That bothers you how, fish man?”

Blade sipped a little bit more of his beverage, leaned on the wall.

“I’m not that forgiving with people who tried to blow me up with a bomb.”

“Oh.”

“Lucia’s going too easy on her.”

Too easy on a woman who tried to kill both of them in Hong Kong, before instantly become his boss’s best friend forever. That was hard to stomach. If Rebecca could plant a bomb under Lucia’s table under duress, why couldn’t she do it twice? That thought made Blade crazy with suspicion. He turned to Tian Zhu again, finally able to speak his mind.

“She might be a Stratosphere plant. A double agent, if you want.”

“A double agent that just got her sister killed by them? A masterful tactic, huh.”

Blade could feel the sarcasm in her voice, despite the language barrier. Yet, he answered with a shrug.

“Have you seen Lemur’s body? I haven’t. And even if there were a body, you cut the lizard’s tail to keep the rest safe. Her sister might have been a necessary sacrifice for them to get close to Lucia.”

“Nah, wolf woman’s broken broken, fish man. Not an actress, seen many like her. Genuine despair and all that. Split in half, she is. I wonder whether she’ll recover or not.”

“Wishful thinking.”

“Is it, really?”

Blade weighed Tian Zhu’s words, closed his eyes. That Rebecca was in a genuine state of distress, it was almost undeniable. Yet, he saw how fast she turned her coat on them in Hong Kong. Lovey-dovey one instant, tearful puppy performing a terrorist attack the instant immediately after. Lowering his guard, even after she gifted Lucia those handmade dolls, would have been a significant mistake. But Lucia didn’t seem to think it like that. She totally bought Rebecca’s sob story, with none other than Nadia Nagase as a witness.

Nadia ‘emotionless death angel’ Nagase.

Her involvement was yet another alarm bell ringing inside his brain. According to all of his sources, Nadia Nagase was born incapable of empathy due to some unspecified brain defects. Someone like her couldn’t feel affection or remorse… but couldn’t fake it convincingly either. From eavesdropping her calls to Lucia and Rebecca, he had concluded that she wasn’t toying with them. Her patterns were genuinely those he’d have expected from someone not accustomed to show any emotions suddenly remembering they were human. That was, to Blade, the greatest mystery in all of that bizarre chain of events. Tian Zhu tapped his shoulder, holding a small, crumpled carton box between her slender fingers.

“Cigarette, fish man?”

Blade glanced at the envelope. Pale Horse – his favorite brand of portable lung cancer. Just what he needed after a pseudo-coffee. He nodded, grabbed one, brought it to his jaws. Tian Zhu pulled out a lighter, clicked on the wheel. Two clouds of smoke started flowing soon after, as the two leaned on the metal sheet of the corridor, the vent above them lazily spinning, encrusted with dirt and dust. Tian Zhu drew a puff, looked down to the ground.

“I met too many prostitutes like wolf woman, in Macao. Broken in half, psychologically. I was the one wannabe therapist in the brothel. Didn’t study for it, found myself in the business. Long story, fish man, long story. There’s mafia in the middle, and even a devsk. You know devsks, yes? Heavenly lizards?”

“I happen to know the richest, the one who lives in the UK.”

“Ah, yes, yes, the cocky old bastard. I heard he was an ambassador.”

“Might as well be.”

Tian Zhu leaned on the wall, her slender fingers toying with her cigarette.

“But no, he’s not the one. The brothel’s owner was one of his ilk, though. Had appetite for human warmth, said he liked how soft our skin was. Xenophilia at its finest.”

“Xeno…?”

“Love for the different. Devsks like fucking humans because we are so unlike them. Same as Western man wanting to bang Japanese kawaii chick. Got it, fish man?”

Blade shivered. The idea of bedding a human felt somehow foreign to him. He tried a couple times, just to see if there was any merit to the idea, but was quickly repulsed. The thought that an entire race of space lizards loved doing that made him feel like puking. Yet, he restrained himself and, instead, nodded in approval, taking his sweet time to ask a new question.

“You met Kobase back in Macao too?”

“Yes. Helped me hide a heavenly lizard corpse. Good fellow, despite what they say.”

Blade didn’t react immediately. The picture of Shissu Kobase digging a hole with a broken shovel to help a tall crane of a woman hide evidence of a murder felt funny, at first. Then, he remembered that Kobase was considered a war criminal due to a certain unethical way he conducted his medical practice. He wondered whether that was before or after the events of Macao, but didn’t voice his concerns. Tian Zhu basked in the resulting silence, drawing yet another puff of smoke.

“My turn to ask questions, fish man.”

Blade drew a puff too, savored the taste of nicotine, his eyes closed in contemplation.

“Speak.”

“Who’s this Dee you keep rambling about?”

Straight to the jugular, Blade quietly surmised. He shrugged, dissimulated disinterest.

“Someone from my past.”

“Why don’t you call her by her name?”

“Because I can’t. Not without an electrode frying my brain. Thank Kobase for that.”

“I mean her real name.”

So you know who she is, you slender bitch. Blade groaned, waved his hand inside the cloud of smoke, dissipating it.

“Her real name is D.”

Then, he blew smoke on Tian Zhu’s face, whispering his answer with contempt. To which the woman simply stared at him, without changing expression, her pupils shrinking down to two minuscule dots.

“Say, fish man. What am I?”

“An annoyance.”

“Be more specific.”

“A psychotic tall woman who cannot mind her own business and takes joy in asking unwelcome questions.”

“Except this woman was once a man, yes? Dick, balls and all.”

Blade squared her up to down, then back, his eyes half closed. No Adam’s apple, no bulge. Large-ish hips. Small breasts, contained by what looked like a pink t-shirt of a rock group called Maverick Ånchained. Human anatomy was a subject he knew very little of, but Tian Zhu looked everything except a biological man. Her body missed all the obvious markers.

“When? In your dreams?”

“Heard of deep genetic reprofiling? Of course you have.”

Blade squinted his eyes, glanced at her without saying a word. Deep genetic reprofiling was the barbaric procedure that took D. away from him, feeding her delusions of being human. He crunched his fist, muttered something under his breath, slowly calmed down. Letting his anger consume him was not something he could allow himself to do, not in front of a subordinate. Tian Zhu took the chance to keep talking, a manic grin forming on her face.

“Was it easy, fish man? No, not at all. Painful. Lots and lots of paperwork. Needed three reports from psychologists too, yes? They wanted to be sure I was of my right mind. Lots of questions I didn’t want to answer and yet I did. And the process? Required weeks, days of being plugged to a machine. Any interruption might have caused irreparable damage.”

“Your point being?”

Tian Zhu drew another puff, shrugged without looking at him.

“Your Dee must have gone through it too. And you morons tried to snatch her during the process. No wonder she has a bone to pick with your little mafia. Neither human nor fish woman. She still has gills, right? Her body must be in constant pain due to the partial reprofiling, her halves fighting for a right to exist. Screwed it up well, you have.”

That was too much. Blade stopped listening, turned around, a step away from the common room, a step away from that coffee machine, from that annoying woman. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t the syndicate’s fault. It was…

“Though, fish man, I’m not one to talk about screw-ups. I got this body I wanted, just to fall into debt and end up doing sex work for space lizards in Macao...”

Tian Zhu’s pupils narrowed even more, now almost as small as two dots.

“… before ripping a cock off with my teeth and slicing a reptile’s jugular with a glass shard. Get me in huuuuge trouble, that did. But, see, devsks were the main reason why the gals at the brothel needed a psychologist. Brutal mofos, those scalies. Their weenies are not something designed for human bodies. It hurts like hell to get them inside you, trust me. Shoigas, though, are different. Waaay more manageable and with slicker tools.”

Blade’s mind missed the last part almost completely. He had no interest in discussing alien penis sizes, not while his brain was still elaborating on what he was told just before. Some of Tian Zhu’s words had found their way to the depth of his consciousness, awakening questions he didn’t want to ask. He exhaled, started playing with his cigarette, as the acrid cloud of smoke left his nostrils.

“You say D. might be… constantly feeling pain, since she… turned?”

“Every second of her waking hours, yes. She didn’t show it?”

“She didn’t.”

If anything, she looked like she was enjoying her life to the fullest. Going to stupid cosplay conventions, wearing stupid costumes, rocking a stupid human boy’s night – sometimes, all of it within the same day. If she ever felt that unbearable pain Tian Zhu was talking about, why was she behaving like that? Blade felt his teeth grinding against each other as an automatic reflex, almost chewing the cigarette off. Yet, Tian Zhu’s voice interrupted his line of thoughts again, as if she couldn’t let him alone with himself even for a second.

“Good.”

“What’s good about it?”

“It means that what she had was enough to bear the pain. She found happiness, despite the pain. A good life, this Dee had. Something worth struggling for.”

Something I took away from her.

That thought hit Blade like a rock falling from the tip of a mountain, rolling down the hill, falling down faster and faster, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. He was the one who started all of it, pushing down the boulder. Taking away something from everyone around him. Was it only his fault, though? No, that wasn’t the case. Blade was sure of it. D. had done the same to him, leaving him alone first. So, he had every right to take away something from her in retaliation. Which led to her ousting him from the syndicate, in a cycle of revenge that harmed both of them. A complex chain of cause and effect, ending with him stranded at sea. A chain that maybe started even before he knew it – when he double-timed her and Shaz in their syndicate days. Blade liked D. as much as Shaz, loved sharing a bed with each of them separately. He couldn’t bring himself to choose – why choose, when you can have both? But that was the first crack. D. Shaz. They were his playthings. Want it or not, Blade toyed with both and never once felt guilty about it. He was in control. The full situation under his thumb. Was that the reason why? That thought ate him whole, as his teeth sunk into the cigarette filter. He shook his head, exhaled. Smoke filled once again the corridor.

“Don’t play shrink with me, Tian Zhu. I’ve got my reasons and saying sorry wouldn’t change anything. It would just be another lie. So, Just let me enjoy what little’s left of my break and quit it.”

“You can begin with a name.”

“Which name?”

“You know which.”

Blade rolled his eyes, put out the cigarette on the coffee machine, grinding it’s butt on it until nothing but black powder remained.

“You want me to say it?”

“Just once. I’ll stop pestering you for a week, if you do. You won’t hear a word from me, unless prompted.”

“Two weeks.”

“Ten days.”

“Fine. Elena. D.’s new name’s Elena. Happy, now? Happy that I said Elena?”

Tian Zhu nodded, smirked with what looked like satisfaction, as her pupils grew to a more natural size for the first time in a while.

“See? It’s not that hard. Now, excuse me. Gotta go back to wolf woman. She needs me as much as you.”

With that said, Tian Zhu put out her cigarette in a small ashtray too, before slowly strolling away, letting her long black hair swing like a pendulum at every long step she took.

Leaving Blade alone with his ghosts.