Chapter Text
In a dimly-lit part of a large city, two women walked with purpose. They kept to themselves, weaving through dingy alleys and abandoned streets to draw as little attention as possible. One would assume they were lost, as they took turns seemingly at random, though had anyone else actually spotted them as they walked, they'd have thought the duo rather suspect. Their posture and stride were straight and controlled—to an almost professional, disconcerting degree. Each step was carefully calculated, accounting for the various bits of refuse that marked their path. Each turn, scrutinized carefully for whole minutes on end before they'd even considered it. They never stepped ahead of the other, nor behind; the women went shoulder to shoulder, as though they were inseparable.
Neither spoke a word to the other, and there was no need for them to speak. Nobody confronted them—how could anyone else confront them, really, when they kept to the shadows which hid them so well only an eagle-eyed person could accurately pinpoint their features? They were animate, yet paradoxically dead to the world. One of the women, sharply dressed in a crisp black business-like outfit, halted suddenly. Her partner, clad in similar garments, did the same.
The second spoke first, her voice soft and almost void of tone, "Are you sure we're going the right way?" She idly lifted a hand to shift a long, blond plait that rested on her shoulder to hang at her back. Her partner smiled knowingly.
"Positive," the first woman replied, her voice chipper and confident. "According to my estimates—" She reached into a pocket on the front of her immaculate black jacket and produced a small phone that was so transparent her partner could see the intricate hard drive and other mechanisms that made up the device. It glowed a soft blue, and showed a map with coordinates and a destination marked with a big red dot. Its owner, pale-faced and brown-eyed with thick shades covering her irises, stared at it with a slight smirk budding on her face. She curled up the device, which bent inward to form a compact cube, before stuffing it back in her pocket with care. "—huh, we're closer than we thought. Let's pick up the pace and rendezvous with the others."
Her partner donned a shadow-shrouded smirk of her own, but one so slight it seemed her lips did not twitch in the slightest. "Roger," she replied tersely. Both started walking again, though this time their stride was a little quicker. The moon had only started to rise behind them in the distant sky, fat and full and ready to shine its silver light upon the city. The second woman took a mere moment to look at it. Few things could rival such a beautiful pearl like that; not even the glimmering of the stars could compare.
But she could not afford to dally. She and her partner had a destination to get to. After a few more carefully-calculated twists and turns, they made a turn onto a populated street that was abuzz with activity. People all around them walked with a sense of calmness, as the various blue neon lights put them at ease. Signs advertising restaurants, hotels, strip clubs and malls galore greeted the pair. A few dozen meters down, there was a town square with a sight to behold in the distance, towering over all else in what could only be described as a gambler's wet dream.
A massive building, easily twenty stories tall, floated—against all odds, it floated—in the square, aglow with neon signs hovering around it and decorated with rather tasteful colors. Decorative jewels shimmered on every possible surface, including the great engine on its bottom that held it suspended—it was hard to tell how many precious gemstones were on the surface, for all of them gleamed with a radiance that couldn't be ignored.
Precious metals made up various windowsills and signs, as well as the front doors that practically advertised their presence. The engines were massive, pouring out steam from various pipes and roaring with a force that knocked the uninitiated off their feet, further supported by massive propellers that span in a constant blur. Amusingly, circling around it was a set of levitating stairs that would, the women assumed, lead to the front dazzling doors if angled just right. The square was enlarged just to accommodate this thing.
That building was, by virtue of existing, almost begging for trouble.
The women took a moment to marvel at the beautiful yet bizarre sight. "This… is unlike the base back home," the second woman commented, an air of stunned breathlessness about her voice.
"No doubt about it. This must be the rendezvous point," the first agreed with a nod. They turned to the street, noticing everyone else had halted around them, and both brows furrowed as a limousine with more precious gems welded onto its surface and propellers in place of wheels flew past, accompanied by a red plane and a blue plane, both of which had mounted machine guns welded to their wings. It circled the big, floating construct a few times, and as it did yet more planes sporting chimpanzees in the pilot's chairs came to join the limo and the first two planes. The duo pushed their way past the crowd to get a front row seat of this popcorn-worthy sight, eyes wide behind sunglasses that hid their irises to the world. A third machine-gun-toting plane, as maroon as red wine, tailed behind them thanks to its fortunately-human pilot.
"Could they not get any more tacky…?" the second woman groaned, trying to stifle her indignance with an air of apathy. She winced as more human pilots flew past, surrounding and seemingly escorting an airship staffed by men with cutlasses, bandanas, wind-blown shirts and loose shorts. The vehicle was piloted by an elderly lad with a scraggly beard, a pirate's hat, and a purple longcoat. The men had thick and scruffy accents to match their outfits and vehicle—sails on top fitted with skulls and crossbones, whirring engines bottomside and roaring to keep it aloft.
The staff of that motley crew were also singing. Loudly. And lewdly. And off-key to top it off. The song consisted of something along the lines of this: "Saaaaaaaailor, stop yer roaaaaaaming; saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaailor, leave the seaaa~" The rest, the professionally-dressed women tuned out—though, they couldn't quite stop the crowd around them from throwing in their two cents.
"You sound like deaf sirens!" a man called.
"Worse than selkies!" a woman across the street howled.
"Miusaki could sing better drunk off her arse!" another man shrieked.
The staff of the airship ignored the outraged cries, and carried on singing anyway as their vehicle slowly circled the floating building. It rose up to hover imposingly from above, the airplanes with it following suit.
The dressed women sighed before another woman in security uniform flew the same path the airship had taken on her lonesome, eyes hidden behind thick shades and a loose, freakishly large braid of pastel-blue hair trailing almost lazily behind her. Her feet pulsed with power that held her aloft; hovering at her sides, against all explanation, were two black spheres with red lines and LEDs that bleeped like landmines. "You have got to be kidding…" the second woman muttered in exasperation.
The first woman deadpanned, "Doesn't look that way to me… if they swayed her into a security gig…" Then a second woman in security uniform, sans arms but sporting mechanical wings on her back, also flew past. "For the love of…" She almost couldn't believe what her eyes had just witnessed.
"Oh boy…" the second woman groaned, brow twitching. "It's almost like he's daring trouble to come after him…"
"Right before he kicks it in the giblets," the first finished, turning to the floating building as the stairs and limousine aligned with its front door. As it did this, a parade of short children, all identical from the custom-made security uniforms to the gerbil ears and tails, marched through the streets with tiny handguns a-twirling in their hands. The first lifted a hand and put it on the shoulder of her partner as she rose and clenched her hands.
"Poppo po-po~ poppo po-po~" the marchers sang in perfect unison.
"The Mikkey Mousses are singing," the second woman cooed in a squeeing voice, her professional air gone for that brief moment.
"Poppo po-po~ poppo po-po~" the marchers repeated, still in unanimous harmony. Within seconds, they started juggling their guns, though they were careful enough to not drop them and fire a stray bullet into the crowd of onlookers. That didn't stop a few stray bullets from going off anyway, but those either hit the road and stayed there, or wound up in the sides of the nearby buildings without damaging any windows.
"And somebody taught them how to fire guns... " the first woman muttered in dismay, as one of the small half-vermin girls strode by on a unicycle, playing the accordion and using stilts to move the pedals. As the instrument sucked in and expelled air through its bellows, it somehow fired off a menagerie of yet more bullets that whizzed overhead, though even this did not drown out the other sounds the instrument had somehow made. "They bastardized an accordion…"
Two people bumbled out of the limo and stopped shy of the door, and one was already badgering the other. "Tell me, Tomomo, why are you having the security detail scare the patrons? Isn't that bad for business?" a man asked, so yellowed and rotund that the two women mistook him for an omelette upon sight. He was dressed in a crisp tuxedo, with low blond hair tied into a plait and a bald spot island atop his head. He had a twirled mustache that wrinkled with his nose.
The other, a tall and well-endowed woman, smirked knowingly. In the roar of the engines, her brown and short hair wavered with a ribbon beset on her head. "Overkill, smoverkill, you think anybody'd try their luck after seeing that crazy parade?" she retorted, waving a hand dismissively.
The omelette-man's brow furrowed, and in doing so, almost let it devour his eyeballs. "My point still stands," he rebuffed firmly. "You may have frightened the customers and damaged business, Tomomo."
"Eh, we'll just have your monkeys sort them out. And any tweaking that needs doing after that, I'll just beat some sense into the Poppos—assuming the pirates don't beat me to it," Tomomo replied, still smirking. With another wave of her hand, and a small burst of light, she conjured an ice cream popsicle, the treat as red as any ground cherry. She grabbed it before it could fall.
"... true enough," the omelette-man conceded with a weary sigh. "And is that red bean ice cream?" That garnered him a nod from his companion.
Tomomo moved the treat to her mouth and quietly licked at her red bean ice cream, after—the observing pair could only assume—remembering who the man was. "I'm sure no one will dare cross our security now... Unless they want a demonstration of real power." She nibbled on the ice cream for a bit, taking out a meager chunk to savor its flavor. "Besides, we got super-strong muscle wrapped around our fingers for our security; they'll also help keep the Poppos in line."
The omelette-man nodded upon seeing the planes, the airship with the still-singing crew, and the floating pair of women dance past the doors, seemingly waiting for somebody to get the show on the road. He cleared his throat mightily, and at once the parade stopped—the Poppos deftly caught their guns without firing them off again, and the one on the unicycle ceased playing her bastardized accordion without slowing down her ride. The floating limousine moved itself to the side of the building, allowing unhindered sight to fall upon him.
The once-stoic woman of the immaculately-dressed pair internally facepalmed upon seeing he was three good heads shorter than Tomomo, complete with noodle-like legs and arms that only further completed the omelette appearance. "He'd make Nanako feel taller," she thought to herself. She felt a tapping on her shoulder, and spared a glance behind her to find a third woman dressed as she was, with piercing red eyes hidden behind shades and a lot of silver hair all stuffed into a bun.
The red-eyed woman turned to the floating building, and the once-stoic nodded before doing likewise. It didn't take long for the Poppos to assemble at either side of the stairs, and the flying women moved to stand behind a line each. The cycling Poppo was stopped by the woman with braided hair, kept upright by a hand clutching the shaft of the ride. The airplanes and airship continued to circle overhead, pilots and crew watching with hawkish attention. The engines of the building and vehicles prevented total silence from reigning, though as far as the trio was concerned, it may well have still been present nonetheless.
All waited, breath bated, for something or someone to pierce this veil of not-quite-quiet. The omelette-man nodded with a smile, somehow twisted by his mustache. "Even though the display of both the airship crew and of the unfortunate frightening marksmanship of the Poppo Brigade were uncalled for, with what their unorthodoxly spectacular introductions, they do display aspects of very unique local cultures," he began, voice carrying over the crowd with authority and concern in equal measure. "That being said, nobody had gotten injured—and as such, I think compensation isn't warranted in this case..."
"With all of that out of the way… I do believe, with all due respect for future customers who are fortunate enough to be within these premises…"
"Oh here we go," the once-stoic woman thought, "it's one of those speeches… and he's one of those jackasses… then again, he's got a face only a mother could love..." She sighed. "If that mother was Mother Goose, sister of Elmer Fudd and second-cousin-twice-removed of Yosemite Sam." She tuned out much of his speech, awaiting when and how he'd open up the doors to the building.
Her eyes gleamed with anticipation. "Say… does his business have a plush toy shop?" she wondered, and reached into a pocket to pull out a cuboid device similar to that of her companion's, except green in color. She flipped it so it took on its rectangular shape, and fiddled with it until it came up with a screen projecting numbers compacted into list form.
MONETARY GAIN, PROJECTED: One quadrillion stellaurum
CURRENT GAIN: Zero stellaurum
ADVANCE: 90000 stellaurum
BETTINGS' EARNINGS, PLUS POSSIBLE ENTRY FEE: 900000 stellaurum
"Maybe… maybe I can get by with this," the once-stoic woman thought as she compacted the device into its cube form and hastily crammed it into her pocket. And as she did so, the walking and talking omelette and Tomomo shouted at the top of their lungs.
"We welcome you, one and all, to the Grand Airstrip Deluxe Resort and Casino!" Tomomo and the omelette-man shouted with all customary bravado, stepping to either side of the doors to throw them wide open. At this, the crowd cheered and got into a single-file line to enter the grandiose, most-definitely-not-asking-for-trouble-building.
The shades-wearing triad got into the middle of the line, walking with purpose as the patrons up ahead were looked at and approved by the line of security Poppos.
Tonight… they were going to make this interesting.