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Haze raised an eyebrow. "I guess sake is not very strong, but I still wouldn't FUI if I were you," she shrugged. "But hey, do as you like. I'm staying the night planetside. At the Intercontinental." She hadn't had much use for her Orbital Spa & Cruise membership card but figured a luxurious hotel in OSC's famous chain would be a good place to rest for at least a few days.

She stood up, leaving the scrip worth their tab and a generous tip on the table.
Olivia smirked as she turned to leave the patio. "Worried about me, Haze?" She said jokingly. Heading towards the glass door back into the café's interior - not bothering to check whether her partner was close behind -, she nodded a goodbye to the waiting staff.

"I guess your bounty hunting really does pay well," she spoke over her shoulder. "I couldn't afford anything that fancy. Luckily, the coffee helps with the alcohol, so I'll reach my modest accommodations just fine." Olivia tittered.


Haze clasped on her cowl, keeping the hood down, and followed her outside. "Enough not to have to pay too much attention to money, up to a point. I was going to suggest that I cover for a room for you there, but if you prefer that den of thieves in Shikoku then it's your funeral."

Once outside, she extended her right hand towards Sable. "It was nice meeting you in person, Olivia."
"Sure, it's not the most law abiding system, but it's pretty and I'd never had the chance to see an ocean before, much less live on one." Olivia glanced up at the sky, pleased to notice that the warm drizzle of rain had ceased. She turned to face Haze and, after a moment's hesitation, firmly clasped her hand in her own.

"Yeah, it was nice," Olivia pulled the bounty hunter in a little closer. "I hope our future encounters will be just as agreeable." A mischievous smile painted her face but her eyes betrayed earnestness. With a shake, she released Haze's hand and turned back towards the street, looking around for an air taxi to take her back to the spaceport.

"If you need someone to drink with while in Kusari," she said loudly as a line of cargo speeders raced by overhead, "feel free to give me a call."



Haze shrugged. "Don't piss off the wrong people enough to make them want to hire me and we should be good. Take care!" she waved and turned away, dragging on the cowl's hood to shield her head and eyes from the afternoon sun. She enjoyed walking around cities, even ones as ugly as this one.

The Intercontinental was a brisk, fifteen-minute walk away. She booked a single room for the night through the OSC app on her PAD and requested a luggage carrier from her ship to the hotel. Done with chores, she spent the rest of the way thinking about Olivia and the impression she made on her.

Clearly there was something about the girl that left a lasting impression. Perhaps it was some kind of false innocence, perhaps the fake — she assumed it fake, at least — confidence. Perhaps she cared about her because she saw a little of her own younger self in her. An irrational feeling of protectiveness went over her, for some reason.

It was a sad fate, the fate of a bounty hunter. She wondered what would the twenty-year-old Jennifer think of present-day Haze now. Probably that she was awesome and badass. She might as well have been the fulfillment of a twenties-Haze dreams. But the present-day Haze thought that she wasted her life. A husband, a couple of kids, a cottage on Cambridge. That would be what she would have chosen. Instead, all she got was no fulfillment, no legacy, no companionship. Just credits, death, destruction, thievery and vagabond lifestyle.

The protectiveness towards Sable still felt irrational, but at least now it was partly explained. If Haze had decided to have kids when it had been appropriate, they would probably be just a bit younger than Olivia. Was that it? She considered it for a minute, before letting the thought go. It mattered very little.

The New Tokyo sun started turning orange as afternoon started turning into evening. She stood before the glassy, modern exterior of the Intercontinental.

Haze sighed. Tomorrow would be her fiftieth birthday.
The brief cab ride back to her landing pad was calm, the air traffic having decreased towards the evening. At the small terminal that serviced her section of the spaceport, Olivia sat on a bench, slowly eating away at a melonpan she had bought at the in-port bakery.

The meeting with Haze had been interesting. And surprisingly pleasant. She hadn't expected her to be so... Olivia struggled to think of the right word to describe her and finally settled for a simple friendly. Their brief and, admittedly, hostile encounters in space previously had painted Haze as the usual cold, in-it-for-the-money hunter. But as it it turned out, there was a seemingly genuine - if annoyingly patronizing - personality within the strangely black-obsessed woman.

Taking a few more bites, Olivia wondered how long Haze had been in the business for. Her age came across as completely ambiguous - she could've been the same age as Olivia herself or a decade or two older. Money might not be able to buy happiness, but it sure could afford beauty, Olivia thought to herself, chuckling.

Older, she finally decided. In her line of work, Olivia came across a lot of people around her own age, but none of them had been that... metaphorical. Wise, even. Finishing up her pastry, Olivia shrugged inwardly and jumped to her feet. In the end, Haze was just another hired gun for her to look out for. No matter how cordial their conversation may have been, in space their friendliness could devolve into violence on the literal turn of a dime. And after what Haze had done in Liberty, there was no way in hell she'd ever so much as trust her. Regardless of it just having been business or not.

Climbing into her Sutinga's cockpit, Olivia instructed the autopilot to take her to Junyo, luckily only a short and usually quiet journey away. She couldn't wait to sit at the edge of a floating habitat, looking out across the endless expanse of water, with any luck being beautifully illuminated by a setting sun and the gas giant Seto hanging in the sky above.


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