home

“Twins, Malal! It is twins! I love this country!” On any other day, when they had a little more dignity and a little less liquor, Annie and Mary would have been ashamed of the way they were hanging off the Ninth Warmaster, like a couple of cheap bar sluts. …Probably. They needed the break though; shit had been pretty heavy again lately. To be honest, we all did. Even Malal was leaving them alone, seemingly content to…well, I could never quite tell what Malal was doing. Messing with a tablet while her whiskey slowly disappeared whenever nobody was watching, I guess. Nice girl. Damn creepy.

The other member of the Ninth’s entourage kept to herself on the other side of the bar. From what I’d heard, she was a new addition to the Ninth Officio, a girl who appeared from nowhere and mowed down a bunch of the Third. …No big loss, the Third never stood out much, but it was enough to put the cats on full alert. Infighting was never good. Other cats always demanded reassurances and asspats afterward, Eightball included.

We were all happy to see Kharn and Malal again, but the fact that they’d come with the Butcher instead of Mickey or Miss Tomoe was…a shock. Seemed like a terrible fucking idea, by conventional standards, if they were trying to put everyone else at ease. It wasn’t like she was friendly or apologetic or anything. Didn’t like to talk. Didn’t like to be talked to. Seemed pretty content to focus on hating everyone around her to death.

Annie thought she was adorable, but Annie was fucked up in the head from the day I met her.

I wanna say I don’t know what possessed me to go and sit by her, but I honestly felt a little bad. It was hard doing this kind of thing if you didn’t really like hanging around noisy people like Annie and Kharn, and she probably didn’t get a choice. Been there a few times, myself. …More than a few. More like a few every week. She was nursing a bottle of whiskey, looking bitter and oblivious to the world around her. Probably lost in her thoughts.

It was nice whiskey. Kong. Fine icebreaker, good as any – I told her it was pretty rough stuff for a kid. Figured she was still a kid, anyway; I’d never seen someone shorter than Nakajima that wasn’t about ten years old.

“Fuck you.” Her response was brief, but deliberate, like it took her a few moments to find the perfect words. Her sheer eloquence astounded me. I pretty much had her pegged, though - she was too serious. …Same as me. Probably got a little lonely, too.

“Fuck off.” That’s about what I’d expected to get, too. …Trying to be friendly’s such a pain. This is why I don’t do recruiting.  We sat in silence for a little while, though as the Warmaster, Annie, and Mary started to get rowdy, we both turned to watch. …Sort of wanted to put money on whether they’d start fucking or trying to kill each other, but it didn’t seem right with the kid right there.

Malal threatened to get the hose, and I shook my head. Told the kid she probably shouldn’t see this, only to get a small, frustrated noise out of her.

“I’m not a fucking kid.” Came out as more of a hiss than speech. …Yeah, she was right. Nobody in our position gets to be a kid anymore.

I knew I made a mistake as I heard that noise again. …Sounded like ‘home’, damn strange thing to use as a curse. …That wasn’t how I meant it. I tried to explain it to her. It was a compliment. Sort of. In the Eighth, that was just how it was. We were all sisters. You had big sisters above you and kids below you. I always figured it was that way everywhere, but I guess the Ninth ran more like an office, or something. Goddamn it, I was trying to be nice, and she was bitch-walling me here.

Home.

Fine. Jesus.

Kong. She was drinking it like a fucking fish. How about ‘Kong’.

“I’m not a monkey, either.” That was it. Fuck it. Her name was Kong now.

I took her bottle and used it to refill my glass. She gave me a soul-numbing glare, but I ignored it – waved the bartender off, said her drinks for the night were on me. Then, I smiled at her and told her straight up.

You’re a pain in the ass, Kong.

She started to say something, but as another full bottle of whiskey was set in front of her, her mouth snapped shut, and she seemed content to go back to sulking at her glass.

Good kid. Didn’t even try to kill me, better than half the people I work with. Still a pain in the ass. …Better than half the people I work with.