Chapter 3 - Finding the lay of the land

Posted on https://books.clockworkcaracal.com/dragons-heart/old-beginnings/ch3 - if you aren't there, this is a pirated copy!

"--- plenty of places, sure, if you want to buy useless garbage, but for any useful reagents? That one ancient witch with the cats was the only place that wasn't fake trash. Don't even get me started on that crappy book store, I don't even know why---"

Fang let Trace's ranting flow past him as he strolled up the stairs to their current apartment, counting the floors as he went. They'd only moved three days before, so he hadn't gotten a sense for the building yet.

He walked past the sixth floor, pausing to refresh his memory - yes, they were on the seventh - before dashing up the last flight in a few swift bounds.

"Hey!!" Trace squawked indignantly as Nevermore, the bird-shaped robot perched on Fang's shoulder, lost its grip and fell off, flapping frantically for a few moments before flying up after him. "What'd I tell you about taking better care of my things?!"

"What'd I tell you about doing your own errands?" Fang countered cheerfully, holding out an arm for the bird to land on. "Besides, it's good practice. Keeps your reaction times quick."

"You volunteered this time," Trace sulked over the comm. "The rest of us are still unpacking, remember?"

"Still?" Fang raised his eyebrows. "I've been gone for hours."

"Trace is," Jade's voice came dimly from Nevermore's speakers - from the sound of it, she was in the same room, but barely. "I'm done. Ness wants to know where you are."

Grinning, Fang swung to a stop in front of 7B and knocked, a sharp rap against the door. "Right outside."

The door swung open a moment later, revealing Vanessa - a tough, middle-aged woman and the leader of their team - wearing an amused expression. "Nice timing."

"I try." Fang hefted the robot off of his shoulder and tossed it through the doorway, following it in a moment later. "How much did you hear from Trace already?"

"Ugh." Jade walked into the room and threw herself down on the sofa, not bothering to dodge the packing papers scattered on the cushions. "He's been complaining the whole time."

"It's been very informative," Vanessa added drily as she closed the door. "In a Trace kind of way."

"Sounds like you three have been having a blast."

"Moving sucks," Jade declared, swinging her legs up on the side of the sofa as she pried some of the packing papers out from under her head. "Why are we doing this, again?"

"Because," Vanessa answered patiently, "we're getting paid a disgusting amount of money for it."

"And we don't even have to kill anyone," Fang added cheerfully.

"We never have to kill anyone," Jade pointed out.

"Which is why we never get the giant piles of money."

"Yeah, yeah." Jade sighed heavily. "I just gotta get the whining out of my system. Moving sucks and everything smells weird."

"Don't even think about scent-marking the apartment," Trace called out from down the hall.

"Hey!" Jade sat up, yelling back. "I'm a werewolf, not a stray dog. Besides," she added at a normal volume, "the weird smells are mostly outside. I can smell the ocean."

"Isn't that almost thirty miles away?" Vanessa looked dubious.

"Close enough." Jade wrinkled her nose. "Oceans have a lot of really specific, really strong smells."

"You'll get used to it," Fang reassured her - then added, with a small mischievous smile, "just in time to move back."

"Pfffff, you shut up." She threw a crumpled up wad of packing paper at him. He caught it with a grin, tossing it promptly back onto the sofa.

"Complaining aside," Vanessa said, steering the conversation back. "Fang. Any concerns?"

"None at all." He shook his head. "Most places looked like what I'd expect. Corp presence seems like a token effort. I think a few of the places we stopped at were fronts."

"Good kind or bad kind?"

"Good kind." He tilted his head, thinking back through the day. "New Leaf Books - that's the bookstore Trace hated - dropped a couple sideways hints suggesting they're an information hub."

"Ah, my favorite." Vanessa grinned. "I need to feel out the local network. What else?"

"Toil and Trouble definitely does illegal spell work on the side," he continued, remembering the place with amusement. Poorly lit, lots of herbs hanging from the ceiling and suspiciously-labelled jars along the shelves. "The witch running the place does a great old crone impression for the hobbyists. And the last place, CMY resale, does high-quality custom magitech. I made a note of all three locations."

"I don't like them." Trace popped into the living room, frowning. "They tried messing with my spells!"

"Not messing with them," Fang countered. "He was just looking."

"You weren't the one getting all that weird feedback!" Trace frowned, folding his arms. "Although, I guess you're right. I checked Nevermore over and everything looked exactly how it should."

Fang spread his hands in a you see? gesture - although it was really for Trace's benefit, or rather, appeasement. Privately, he wouldn't exactly have called what the blue-haired fey had done just looking either, any more than it was just looking to take a guitar down in a shop and strum a few chords to test the sound. And, just like how you could recognize an expertly skilled guitarist from that test, Fang had recognized an expertly skilled mage. Not to mention the quality of spellcraft built into the man's own prosthetic arm, which was on a whole other level.

"That's enough to get a good start on," Vanessa decided. "I'll send out some feelers through that book shop and my local connection, check out the lay of the land, and look into the reps of those two. I'm hoping we don't need to do much shopping, but we'll see. Trace, how's unpacking?"

"Mostly done." Trace shrugged. "Everything's out, but I only just started setting things up."

Vanessa nodded. "Be ready to go by tomorrow morning. We still need a location and I want us both on it."

"What about me?" Jade asked, lying down again and kicking her feet up onto the back of the sofa.

"I'm still hoping you can sit this one out," Vanessa admitted. "Unless we need to make a mess as a distraction."

"I'm gonna be so bored." Jade sighed again. "Maybe I'll look for a local gym tomorrow and beat up some punching bags."

"There's one on the other side of the district," Fang added helpfully. "I'll show you after breakfast."

"Oh yeah?" She perked up visibly, her eyes briefly flashing green as she grinned. "It's a date!"

"In the meantime, here." Vanessa slapped a chip card into Jade's hand. "You can go stave off boredom by buying groceries."

"Aw c'mon, Fang's the one who went around learning where everything is, why can't he go?"

"Because he's already learned where everything is," Vanessa pointed out. "Now it's your turn."

As Jade continued her token protest - at this point, he was certain she argued with having to do anything that wasn't hitting things purely on principle - Fang made his way around and out to the balcony.

It was a small balcony - not enough for a chair, barely enough for a potted plant - and it looked out over a wide alley with no view to speak of, but it was nice to have. Sliding the door closed behind him, he inhaled deeply, ignoring the smells and chemicals from the dense urban metropolis and reaching for the source of the light breeze brushing past. It carried a cool autumn crispness and a scattering of damp clouds, gently warmed by the sun - and at the very edge of his awareness, the faintest hint of salt spray. The familiar temptation whispered to him, reminding him of how much more he could feel, how much more he could do, if he pulled on his real power, but long decades of habit pushed it aside without a thought.

With a sigh, he opened his eyes again, deliberately not looking up at the patch of sky overhead. There were still a few hours of daylight left, and his tasks for the day were done, leaving Fang entirely up to his own devices. Considering his options, he studied the neighboring building and its almost-matching array of narrow balconies and fire escapes.

Well. He'd already familiarized himself with the streets in the area; it was as good a time as any to explore the more vertical levels. With a grin, he took a step backwards and lunged forward, launching himself off the edge of the balcony rail and across the alley. Landing on the opposite balcony rail, he kept going, using the momentum to spring off and swing over to the closed fire ladder, then climbed up to the top before swinging across the alley again. A series of acrobatic leaps, spins and flips carried him back and forth as he worked his way up towards the rooftop.

"Hey!" A cranky voice yelled after him after he launched off another balcony rail. "I don't like trespassers!"

"Sorry," Fang called back cheerfully, without slowing. "Won't do it again."

"You better not!" The voice faded back out as he made his way up another few floors - and then, as he reached the roof of his team's new apartment building without further incident, he let himself pause and take in the surroundings.

Most of the nearby buildings were similar height or shorter than his current twelve stories - a little taller and denser than back in Nexus. The biggest difference, though, was upcity. Upper Nexus had plenty of infrastructure for it, of course, but the skyways were nothing compared to here.

Any view of the sky above was overlaid by an elaborate knotwork of winding, overlapping roadways, in what looked from below like an almost nightmareish tangle. Frequent support pillars rose up out of the dense down-city architecture, puncturing down through the buildings. Fang was fairly sure he'd passed near one of the pillars in his explorations the night before - in the darkness, he hadn't been entirely sure what it was, but in clear daylight it was obvious.

Their new, if temporary, home was also much closer to this city's central core of dense skyscrapers - a feature all major cities seemed to have developed in the past few decades, along with the increasingly sharp division between the upper floors and the ground level.

Fang frowned up at the roadways twisting their way around and into the skyscrapers. They were here searching for some kind of secret corp research base, so being closer to the corp bases of operations was technically an advantage.

But that didn't mean he had to like it.

Fang gave himself a quick shake, putting the thought out of his mind, and took off again, sprinting across the rooftops and leaping from one building to the next. It wasn't the same, but for a little while, he let himself imagine he could once more take to the skies himself.

When Fang finally stepped back in from the balcony, Jade immediately pounced on him.

"Fang! Were you climbing on people's balconies again?"

"Not climbing," he protested. "And only a little."

"Ha!" She grinned. "Trace owes me ten. Trace, you hear that?" she called out ahead of herself as she bounded into the kitchen.

"Do not." Trace was stirring a pan of something on the stove, wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and a hot pink apron. "We both knew he went up to the roof. The bet was whether he was running on other people's rooftops, or brooding on ours. Were you running or brooding?"

"Hey, I do not brood," Fang protested.

"You totally do."

"He's right," Jade agreed, apologetic (but not much). "But only sometimes!"

"Hmph." Fang pretended to sulk and perched on the edge of the counter. "It's a moot point, anyway, because today I was going for a run."

"Yes!" Jade fist-pumped victoriously. "Trace, you---"

"Yeah, yeah, I owe you." Trace rolled his eyes. "You cut it pretty close there, Fang, I'm almost done with dinner."

"You wouldn't have dinner without me, would you?" Fang put on his best sad-puppy face, ignoring Jade's chuckles.

Trace snorted. "You know we would. And I'd let Jade eat your serving."

"Ooo, extra food. Fang, you should be late tomorrow."

Fang couldn't help a laugh. "I see how it is, you like Trace's cooking more than me."

"I like Trace's cooking more than the rest of Trace," Jade added with a grin.

"If you're going to be like that, I'll just keep the leftovers for myself." Trace waved his spoon at them, mock-threatening.

"Hey, I need those calories." Jade gave Trace the lightest tap of a punch in the shoulder, which still got a wince out of him. "You can't just take 'em away!"

"You should've thought of that before you started talking shit." Trace sounded smug as he took the pan off the heat. "But I might forgive you... if you set the table. Food's ready."

"On it!" In a flurry of activity, Jade flipped through over half the cabinets before finding the one the dishes had gotten put into, then stacked up four sets and carried them around to the table.

Fang was content to stay in the background and watch, letting the friendly domestic chaos swirl back and forth around him. Before long, Vanessa had joined them, getting a small saucer of milk for her familiar as Trace served the food.

"All right, crew," Vanessa said after everyone had sat down and dug in, "Here's where we're at. While Jade and Fang were out, I called on Davier to do some initial base-touching."

Fang paused, trying to place the name and failing. "Your local contact?" he guessed.

Vanessa nodded, spearing a carrot with her fork. "He confirmed most of your impressions, Fang. New Leaf has a solid info hub in the back - good for networking, hard data can be pricy but it's reliable. Mother Hilda over at Toil and Trouble does good work - if she takes the job at all. Apparently she's very picky and likes to know exactly what her spells and potions will be used for before committing."

"That doesn't sound safe at all," Jade declared. "I bet she's running an info farm."

"Possibly," Vanessa agreed. "And last, Cyan over at CMY has a stellar reputation, especially for shiny work. Almost implausibly so," she added, thoughtful. "He specializes in prosthetics but will build just about anything you need, for the right price - and his magic on them is supposedly the best for hundreds of miles."

"I don't believe it." Trace frowned. "If he's that good, how come we never heard of him?"

"He doesn't advertise, so his clients are all word-of-mouth." Vanessa shrugged. "But honestly, I doubt he's that good---"

"He is," Fang interrupted, his mind going back to the blue-haired fey and his cybernetic arm - more specifically, the spellwork woven into it. "I saw some of his work at the shop."

"What do you know about robots?" Trace was still sulking, probably about Nevermore's spells having been "messed with".

"Nothing," Fang answered. "But I know magic, and his spell-work was spectacular."

Spectacular was usually a pretty hyperbolic adjective, but Fang felt like in this case it was genuinely deserved. He hadn't even noticed the magic, at first. Cyan had expertly woven a magical camoflage into his arm to hide the magic - anyone less sensitive than Fang would never have been able to see it. But the camoflague magic didn't even compare to the actual spellcraft itself. Once he'd noticed it enough to study, the detail and complexity of the magic - all integrated seamlessly into the arm's mechanisms - had completely blown him away.

"Well," Vanessa said in dry amusement, pulling him from his reverie, "if this Cyan's magic is good enough to turn our Fang into an infatuated teenager, I say he lives up to his reputation."

Fang blinked, caught off guard. "I'm what, now?"

"Staring dreamily off into space," Vanessa offered, helpfully.

"Fang has a crush?" Trace leaned forward. "The two of them were flirting a lot---"

"Fang flirts with everyone." Jade waved her fork, dismissing the idea. "That's why he gets all the good discounts."

"There's no romance in your soul, Jade," Trace complained.

"Nope!" She grinned back, unabashed. "My soul is made entirely of money and violence."

"Now look," Fang protested, feeling like he'd been the punching bag of this exchange for long enough, "it was just some really impressive spell-work, okay?"

"Mmhm." Vanessa nodded, almost managing to suppress a smirk. "I understand. You only like him for his spells."

"Nessa! Come on." Fang doubled down on the exaggerated attitude of wounded outrage, conveniently using it to hide an uncomfortable twinge - that remark had felt a little too close to something true, and that was a direction he didn't want to go. "Of all the things to compare me to, you had to pick a teenager."

"If the shoe fits...."

"Buy more just like them!" Jade quipped with a particularly wolfish grin.

Trace tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Does that mean Fang has to go buy more crushes?"

"Ooh, good question. Or maybe more cute mages?"

"Or more teenagers."

Fang put his face in his hands, deciding to just let the two youngest members of the team get the teasing out of their systems.

"While I do enjoy the topic of Fang's love life, or lack thereof," Vanessa finally interrupted, "back to the topic of our plans for the job."

Trace raised a hand. "I'm going to get my rig set up tonight, and Jade is doing dishes."

"Gee, thanks for volunteering me."

"And I," Vanessa continued over Jade's complaint, "am going out to make some connections. I plan to visit New Leaf at a minimum; if we're lucky, they'll have a direct lead. If not, it's business as usual and I'll be back late. Fang?"

"I don't have any plans," he admitted. "Do you need me for something?"

"Not yet. You and Jade are free until we've got something more specific to go on than 'somewhere in Neodelphia'."

"My plans for tomorrow are going to the gym," Jade reminded them, "which means Fang's plans for tomorrow morning are showing me where it is."

"After breakfast," he agreed.

"Then we're all set." Vanessa pushed back her chair, clearing up her spot. "And you two, keep your ears open, even if you are off duty."

"Yes ma'am," Jade and Fang recited dutifully, in unison, and grinned at each other.

"You're making me feel old." Vanessa shook her head. "Come on, Felix, let's go."

Her cat-like familiar darted out from where it was having its own snack and bounded up onto Vanessa's shoulder, settling beneath her long braids as they both headed out.

"I think I'm done, too," Fang said after Vanessa had left, standing. "I'm going to take a shower."

"Can you believe Ness got a place with only one bathroom?" Trace grimaced. "Sharing rooms is bad enough."

Fang chuckled. "Added motivation to get the job done and go back home, right?"

"Easy for you to say," Trace muttered.

"I have to deal with it too," Jade pointed out, "and I don't even have a job to get done, so quit whining."

Fang left the two of them arguing, heading into the room he was sharing with Trace to pull out a change of clothes and empty his pockets from the day. His phone, a key to the apartment, three chip cards.... With a bit of surprise, he pulled out a small piece of laminate and glanced at it.

It was, of course, the business card he'd gotten from Cyan and completely forgotten about. Old-fashioned, the fey had called him. If he only knew how old Fang actually was.... Well, fey did live a long time. Maybe he'd guessed.

Moving to put the card on his dresser along with his cards, he hesitated; something about the card was lightly tugging at his attention. Fang studied the design of it (printed in pure ink hues), the contact information (exactly what he expected), then flipped it over.

Imprinted into the back of the card was a faint spell, a speck of magic stretched out so thin as to make any effects useless. Intrigued, he studied it carefully, even lightly brushing a finger across the back of the card to feel the magic in it more directly.

To his surprise, it was just a memory spell - a small "remember me" marker, something that made perfect sense to put on a business card.... If it hadn't been deliberately weakened to the point of ineffectiveness.

Frowning at it for a moment, he shrugged and tossed it onto his dresser. There wasn't much point in speculating on it; maybe if he had reason to go by the shop again, he'd ask.