10 – i – Bounty

Noblesse Oblige.

Before Sargon of Akkad united his peoples and formed his empire, before the pharaohs of old Egypt erected their monuments to their own demise, before the Romans built their roads, and before humans made the paradigm shift from hunter-gatherers to an agricultural society, man hid in caves and cowered from the monsters that lurked in the night.

The apex predator, the tool-using top of the food chain… Those titles did not belong to humanity. They weren’t the dominant species. Not until they prayed. Huddled around their flames, clutching tight the wooden sticks they used as spears, humanity called for a protector.

Their cry resonated through the void. Something answered. Gods, devils, dragons, youkai. Humans applied a great many names to their saviors. They worshipped, they rejoiced, they prospered, and, as time went on and the horrors of the night faded, they forgot.

Now, thanks to some irrelevant pacts made a million years before she had even been born, The Emperor sat in an Italian-made leather office chair at a solid wood desk at half-past six on a Saturday morning. When she consumed the heart of a dragon, she knew it would bring responsibilities with its power. She had somewhat imagined those responsibilities would involve more punching vampires and less paperwork.

Times changed. The world changed. Everything alive adapted or perished. Dragons included.

The Galleria, a nascent coven of vampiric Parasite-class beings, was seeking authorization to promote a blood drive around their lair on the east side of Chicago for two weeks at the start of November. Forty percent of the collected blood would go to actual hospitals while the rest would supply the vampires for the next two to four months depending on quantity.

The Emperor signed her name without reservation, marking the proposal with emerald ink. The Galleria was exactly the kind of unnaturals that The Eclipse tried to encourage. They didn’t go out attacking people for their needs, they policed their own, and they played nice with the other factions in the city.

If only every faction could be like them.

As The Emperor placed the request into the outgoing box on her desk, she frowned at the next item on her list.

It was a simple letter, typed, from The Castle. It was polite. Cordial. Even apologetic. Nonetheless, it was a rejection of attendance for the next State of the City meeting that The Eclipse regularly hosted. They cited schedule incompatibility as their reason for rejecting the invitation. In place of a signature was a simple stamped mark. Regards, The Director.

“Bullshit,” The Emperor grumbled as she tossed the letter into the trash.

The Castle was one of the more irritating factions. A few years back, they sprung up overnight with several powerful unnaturals. Blindsided everyone with their sudden revealing. It seemed like with every major appearance of the group out in the city, they added more and more unnaturals to their roster who also manifested without any previous sightings in the city. They weren’t recruiting from the various factions in Chicago but they kept growing nonetheless.

At the moment, assuming the reports were accurate, The Castle rivaled The Eclipse in terms of numbers.

Something would have to be done soon. The Eclipse couldn’t afford to be seen as anything but the strongest party in Chicago. Everything she had worked for… Everything the previous Emperor had worked for, would crumble to run.

Removing her rectangular glasses and tossing them on the desk, The Emperor rubbed her forehead around her eyes. They needed to recruit. Or… convince a few of the lesser factions to lean on The Castle and put some pressure on them. The Castle hadn’t done anything overtly against the laws of the city; openly acting against them would only turn others who toed the line against the careful balance The Eclipse maintained. A few whispered words in the right ears could have far-reaching actions. Maybe influence The Liar to look in The Castle’s direction.

Yes, The Liar was positioned perfectly to harass The Castle. The Liar could be trusted and the rest of that group were a bunch of deniable mortals who had been sticking their noses into places they weren’t welcome. Easy to manipulate.

Donning her glasses once again, The Emperor reached for her desk phone, only to pause as the intercom light blinked red with a two-tone beep. Her eyes flicked up to the clock on the phone, wondering who might have business with her so early on a Saturday.

“Yes?” she said, pressing down on the intercom button.

“Madame Emperor. The Church is here to see you.”

The Emperor sucked in a breath only to sputter a cough as a bit of spittle got caught in the back of her throat. It was some small consolation that nobody heard her coughing. Pressing the button again, she forced out, “The Church?”

“Yes, Madame. The Analyst and The Banker wish to meet with you.”

“Chingada madre,” The Emperor muttered to herself. Looking down, she grimaced. The lives of unnaturals invariably trended toward a nocturnal schedule. Morning for her was the end of the workday. To make matters worse, she hadn’t planned on or prepared for a meeting of this caliber. “Send them up,” she said, standing. She didn’t have a choice.

One did not refuse a meeting with The Church.

Moving past the large open windows that looked out on Chicago from the tallest building in the city, The Emperor moved to the wall of shelves. Books and tomes and odd knickknacks provided tasteful decoration even if she hadn’t looked through them in years. The Emperor popped open the closet at the far end and swapped the somewhat wrinkled suit jacket she had on for a fresher one. White suit jacket, black vest, gray button-up with no tie. She used the mirror to adjust her glasses and fix her black hair into a long ponytail down her back. A sharp touch of red eyeshadow drew out her slate eyes.

The Emperor stalked back to her seat and sat down just in time to stand up as her office door slid aside. Years of practice let her adopt a smile in an instant.

“Welcome,” she said, looking between the two who stepped into her office.

One, a tall man with a perpetual five o’clock shadow and a bushy mustache, shuffled inside. His tie hung loose and his shirt was only half tucked into his trousers. The glasses he wore weren’t even straight, one arm riding high on his balding head of gray hair. He carried a black attaché case in a loose grip.

The other stepped inside with precise, measured steps. Her black and white nun habit looked freshly cleaned. Not a single stray spec of dust or strand of hair marred the black fabric. Which just made the linen sling holding one arm to her chest stick out all the more. Her eyes swept over the room, jumping from point to point at random. Were it not for the utter precise nature in which she moved, The Emperor might have worried that she was having a stroke.

The Emperor moved around her desk, holding out an arm to lead them away from the clutter covering its top and to the short table and couches she had set up. “Please, take a seat.”

The Analyst’s eyes stopped roaming the room and snapped to The Emperor. “We will not be staying long.”

Hiding a wince, The Emperor returned to her position behind her desk. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected meeting?” she asked as she moved. “I confess, you’ve caught me off guard.”

The Church didn’t just meet with people. People met with The Church. Rarely the other way around and never with The Analyst in person.

“We require information,” The Analyst said, voice as cold and emotionless as always despite the absurdity of that statement.

Dropping the attaché case on the desk, The Banker popped open the top and withdrew a few glossy photos. With a flick of his wrist, they spun across the surface and slid to a stop in front of The Emperor.

She looked down. Each primarily featured a young woman with black makeup in an older-style coat, wielding a baseball bat. Although all three photographs were of someone wielding a bat, they weren’t the same person.

“Do you recognize this woman? Any variation of her?”

“I can’t say that I do,” The Emperor said with a frown. A shapeshifter? Shaking her head, she looked back up.

The Banker and The Analyst looked to one another with the former offering a shrug.

“In that case—” he started, pausing to yawn. “Sorry. Been up all night.”

The Emperor gave him an empathetic nod of her head. “Haven’t we all…”

“The Church will be placing a bounty on the pictured woman. Dead or alive.”

“We will answer a single question on any topic,” The Analyst said, making The Emperor’s eyes widen. “Two, if the subject is alive.”

The Emperor sank back into her chair, weak in the knees. Two questions on any topic, worded properly, could turn an average mortal into… well, into something like her. The Emperor hadn’t always been the inheritor of a dragon’s heart. She had once been an ignorant secretary who had, through just one little clue from The Church as to his true nature, gained the confidence of the previous Emperor and eventually usurped his position.

That clue had been heavily restricted and cost her every penny she had earned up until that point in her life.

As enticing as it sounded to immediately launch everyone they had against this poor woman, The Eclipse strove for justice and mediation. The Adjustment, in particular, would not stand for a blood hunt against someone without knowing their crimes.

“Would you be willing to tell me what this person did to incur your wrath?”

“Espionage, trespassing, battery, destruction of public property.”

The Emperor frowned, raising an eyebrow. Depending on exactly what The Analyst meant by espionage, none of those seemed worth getting up in arms about.

“It isn’t so much the crimes,” The Banker said, seeing the confusion on The Emperor’s face. “It’s the how. She broke The Analyst’s arm with nothing more than a baseball bat—”

“Correction: She broke the concept of my arm. No matter the form I take, my arm is broken. All will have to be repaired independently.”

“Upon being confronted,” The Banker continued, “she began destroying the streets around the Old Church. My spatial warping started destabilizing and The Analyst nearly went nuclear to protect the data storage. I elected to let the girl go to avoid that, assuming we could track her later.”

The Emperor shuddered despite herself. Of all the unnaturals who called the City of Chicago their home, The Analyst frightened her the most. While The Emperor hadn’t seen The Analyst fight even once—her temperament and personality were aimed towards data allocation, not combat—the notes the previous Emperor left behind indicated that attempting to fight her would result in another Great Fire, rendering a significant portion of the city nothing more than ash.

That wasn’t even getting into all the ways the information The Analyst collected could be used to ruin anyone in the city. All it would take was a single email containing the right information to the right person and someone’s life would end, figuratively or otherwise.

“Thank you for your restraint.”

“Which reminds me,” The Banker said with another yawn, “it would be nice if we could get some wheels greased. The street is all torn up. Investigations will surely take some time—you know how people are—but something that gets the street straightened out sooner would be nice.”

“How bad is the damage?”

The Banker removed another few photographs from his case and tossed them over. The Emperor winced looking at them. The street now sported deep fissures. Water, frozen in the picture, spewed forth from somewhere underneath the surface. The sidewalk was cracked and jagged, tilting up and angled down in spots.

“I see,” she said. “I suppose we might be able to push for a ruptured gas line? Or that might invite more inspections.” Shaking her head, she slid the photos to the top of her to-do pile. “I’ll see what I can do after you leave. Before that, however… What can you tell me about this woman?” she asked, looking back to the photographs.

“Very little.” The Analyst sounded like the admission hurt worse than breaking her arm. “Unknown magics are preventing precise knowledge of many identifying traits. I believe I should know more about her than I can ascertain but it is as if the relational data is corrupted or broken, preventing me from associating traits with the woman.”

“It took us collaborating to draw these images,” The Banker said, motioning toward the photographs. “They aren’t perfectly accurate, only about eighty percent. We have two dozen actual photos that, as soon as we look at them, we can’t relate the person photographed with the person who attacked The Church.”

“What we can tell you is that the woman dressed in black, drove a red truck, and has the ability to destroy with ease. In addition, she has some relation or interest in The Fixer.”

The Emperor closed her eyes, searching her own memories. She lacked the eidetic memory that The Analyst had but she always considered herself good with names and faces. “The Fixer. Outsider-class being. Dangerous but prefers to avoid most politics and sticks to himself.” She opened her eyes with a frown. “Generally is only seen when something truly disruptive surfaces in the city.”

The Analyst dipped her head in acknowledgment.

“There are, obviously, more details about this woman,” The Banker said. “However, speaking them will trigger the unknown magic and you will begin failing to associate the previously stated traits with the woman pictured. If you discover them on your own and do not speak them, it seems to help.”

“Well. That’s… lovely,” The Emperor said, taking in a breath. “I’ll set my people to looking into it but given this disassociation ability… it might take some time.”

“We figured,” The Banker said.

“We will be informing The Castle and The Puppet of our bounty as well.”

The Emperor lurched to her feet, planting her hands on her desk. A gout of flame escaped her throat before she could stop herself. The Analyst and The Banker simply took a step back each with the latter pulling his attaché case with him. She clamped a hand over her mouth, took a breath, and forced her temperature back down.

“Sorry,” she said, voice a little raspy from the lack of moisture. “I… Please reconsider. If you bring others, The Castle and especially The Puppet, into this, we could be looking at chaos in the city. All the factions will be fighting for the reward. The Eclipse can handle this—Will handle this. We will do so discretely and our jobs will be much easier if we aren’t having to fend off every unnatural in the city.”

The Banker and The Analyst stood, staring. Neither moved to look at the other. They didn’t make any hand signals or even mild humming noises that someone might make while thinking something over. They went still and remained still for a long moment before The Analyst closed her eyes.

“One month,” The Banker said, sounding as tired and exhausted as he looked. “We understand that this is a difficult contract and are willing to grant the time we deem necessary to allow for it.”

“If you fail,” The Analyst continued. “By the fifteenth of November, we will open the bounty to the entirety of Chicago and, potentially, beyond if we deem it necessary.”

“We will, however, inform The Fixer sooner, as preexisting contracts exist which force us to act.”

The Emperor forced her face into a placid neutrality. Inviting outsiders into her domain was almost worse than just involving The Puppet and The Castle. The Fixer was a lone operative, not likely to cause problems. Everyone else… She thought to argue, to try to convince them otherwise, but as The Emperor, she had learned that sometimes, the cards had to be folded in order to progress to the next round. She had bought time. A month. Attempting to argue now might see that time limit shrink or, worse, rejected entirely as The Church went back to its original plan.

“If we find additional information about the subject or a way of circumventing the disassociation magic, we will alert you.” The Banker closed his attaché case, clicking the latches shut with his thumbs, and let it hang by its handle from the lax tips of his fingers.

“Thank you for your consideration,” The Emperor forced out, watching as The Analyst turned on her heel and started for the door.

The Banker offered a wan smile and a casual shrug. He moved like he was going to adjust his loose tie only to use the back of his fingernails to scratch at the scruff under his chin. “Sorry for dropping this on you.”

“It… is what The Eclipse is here for,” The Emperor said as diplomatically as possible. “To provide a safe way for the city’s unnaturals to air grievances and engage in their activities. The Church has always been a stabilizing factor, current incident notwithstanding, so we are happy to lend our assistance.”

“Yikes,” he said with a good-natured chuckle. “You sure eat corporate bullshit for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, don’t you?”

“Two of the three. Dragons are obligate carnivores so I’ve got to eat a good steak at least once a day.”

He chuckled again as he turned back to the office door. Waving his empty hand over his shoulder. “Good luck,” he said, stepping outside.

The door slid shut behind him.

The Emperor sank back down into her chair. She planted her elbows on the desk and her face in her hands. Her blue-tinted glasses hung loose from her pinky finger as she rubbed at her temples once again. She opened her eyes, staring at the three photographs.

Each was slightly different. One had a pointed chin. Another had curly hair. Two of them looked like she was taller, though with differing body types. One looked like a display store mannequin. Two were busty. One rail thin.

All, allegedly, depicted the same person.

The Emperor drew in a long breath, fueling the furnace that had replaced her heart with fresh oxygen. She drew on the energy, straightening her back and focusing her eyes. Picking up the phone on her desk, she dialed a number and waited two rings before the other end answered.

“The Hermit, speaking.”

“We have a problem,” The Emperor said. “Gather everyone for a meeting. Today at…” Pausing, The Emperor considered. It was the crack of dawn. Most everyone would be standing down their shifts. Some didn’t sleep, and some did; it depended on their nature. “Scratch that. Get me The Adjustment, The Hanged Man, The Lust, and The Tower. Has The Hierophant donned a mask for the day?”

“No.”

“Tell him to lean towards a thinking mask and get him as well. We’ll delay informing the others for now. In fact, given the nature of the incident, it might work best if some are kept ignorant of some aspects.”

“Do I want to ask?” The Hermit said, tone dreary.

“The Church has a grievance with someone in the city. We’ve been tasked with locating them despite problematic abilities.”

“And by grievance, you mean…”

“Dead or alive.”

“I see.” The Hermit paused. “I’ve been in this city a long time. Long enough to remember when The Church first formed.”

The Emperor waited. To the best of her knowledge, The Hermit was the oldest being who permanently resided within the city of Chicago. On occasion, a transient ancient might stop by for a time, often while en route to another destination. The only person potentially older might just be The Analyst and The Analyst was more of an information-gathering tool than a proper person. It cared for one thing and one thing only: knowledge.

To be as old as The Hermit was something that The Emperor couldn’t quite comprehend. She was only thirty-seven years old and had only taken over from her predecessor six years ago. As far as temporal perspective was concerned, she was little different from a mortal. Her wants and desires, even with the mantle of leading The Eclipse and ensuring general peace throughout her dominion, hadn’t changed much from her days as a secretary.

The Emperor wanted power to ensure her own safety and security in this… nightmare of a world.

The Hermit, on the other hand, was an Aberrant-Youkai-class being. A mythological entity who had seen nations rise and fall. She wasn’t particularly powerful on her own but she was immortal, or nearly so. Her wants and desires were practically inscrutable to someone like The Emperor.

So The Emperor held her breath, fully expecting a profound statement filled with the wisdom of ages past.

The Hermit let the pause hang, almost as if she knew that The Emperor was waiting.

“Someone fucked up.”