Saga Just Meat: A Mori Kasaa Adventure

Hi all,

Hope to make this a series, with other stories with this character.

Cheers.

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It looked like a sewer.

At least that was what bounty hunter Mori Kasaa thought as the corridor stretched before her. The walls were lined with brown stone that wouldn’t look out of place in a dungeon. But, the house’s decorating woes were none of her concern. She finally had him. Laurie Margotson had been on her list for years.

The heir to the Margotson meat packing fortune, he had come under scrutiny several years back for his alleged involvement in the distribution of Spice, the drugs supposedly smuggled in the circulatory systems of sealed, flash frozen Nerf carcasses. The man had money, money to pay off bounty hunters, politicians, police captains, and detectives, and it was this one asset that had kept him in freedom for the past five years.

But not today. Today he would answer for his crimes. She had been contracted exclusively by the Republic security apparatus to bring him down. New evidence had surfaced that had linked him to several unsolved murders in close proximity to his estate, gang killings related to the Spice trade. Mori didn’t know the exact details of the murders, or the nature of the evidence, but that wasn’t her concern. Bringing in this monster was her concern.

Aside from dealing in drugs, Margotson was also an enthusiastic humanocentrist, a gleeful accessory to the old Empire’s reign of persecution of non-humans. He particularly hated Equams, the species of which Mori was a member. Margotson hated them specifically because of their natural force talent. A naturally force-strong race, their species had been repressed particularly brutally by the Empire. Most Equams had natural, limited telekinesis, although confined to small objects or what could be done with a pair of hands. Mori thought that it was an absolute miracle that they hadn’t been exterminated outright, only surviving because of their excellent culinary skills. In fact one of their planet’s star chefs, enslaved, as many were, to cook for imperial royalty, had been killed on the Death Star.

Today, one of her world’s most hated war criminals would be brought to justice.

………………………….

Laurie Margotson tapped the activation stud on the side of his visor, and grainy camera footage splashed across his glasses. It had been shot by one of the street urchins he “took in” Truly, these wretches would do anything for a candy bar. It showed a quadruped, female equine walking down the crowded street, passing the stalls of Vinefruit market, only a few blocks from his estate. The creature nudged past an Omwati child and disappeared from view. The link winked out. She was coming, and he? Well, he was ready.

…………………………..

“Come in, sweetheart. I’ve been waiting all day”

The words came through the doorway in a raspy, nasally drawl, with a hint of cold metallic twang coating the words. Mori knew exactly who this was.

“Laurie, so good to see you,” Mori replied, clearing the blind spots of the room as she entered. The room was round and opulently furnished but still walled in that hideous dark brown stone. Around the circumference of the room lay a rich four-poster bed, a dresser, and various other furnishings of a bedroom. No doors led off of the space, so Mori felt comfortable turning her full attention to the man sitting in an overstuffed armchair to her left.

Dressed in an immaculate waistcoat and business slacks, he would have struck a handsome presence, except for one thing, namely, the exoskeleton snaking over his body, all steel wires and whining servos. The lower half of his face was covered in a plastisteel mask, shaped to resemble the lower half of his face. However, the skin tone was poorly matched to the forehead peeking over it, pale blue eyes following the bounty hunter as she entered the room, weapon raised. Mori assumed that this look was intentional. Since his injuries, Margotson wanted to maintain the intimidating visage that he had previously cultivated, and horror worked just as well as intimidation.

“Well, well, well. Busy, busy, busy. Chasing me all this time. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had a thing for me,” The words were amplified by a vocoder, to compensate for his weak voice. Even so, they dripped with all the sneering sarcasm that was endemic of the Margotson she knew. “Well, what do you think?”

“Ooh Laurie, if I wasn’t asexual before, I definitely am now,” Mori had little tolerance for banter with this man, but it was keeping him from attacking or calling for bodyguards, so she fought to keep her impatience in check, “You know it would never work, not with the history we have.”

If the mask were able to move, Mori knew Margotson would be smiling, a machine-coated chuckle escaped from the expressionless plastisteel. “Our history, yes…”

Six months earlier, Mori had taken a contract to bring Margotson in for a local crime boss. Justice was justice, so she took the job. She had tracked Margotson to one of his nerf-packing plants, and after a shootout with several armed guards, she had cornered him on the slaughter-line. After a struggle, Laurie had been pushed into one of the whirring machines, which had taken ahold of his face, tearing it apart and breaking his neck. Thus, the exoskeleton for movement, and the mask to hide the presumably inoperable damage to his face. Mori was quite shocked to learn he had survived. But, she had never had time to check for a pulse or collect the body to bring back due to incoming reinforcements. A quick snapshot with her datapad was proof enough for the crime boss.
“So, what happens now?”

“Well, you have two choices. Either come with me, or I kill you.”

“Sweetie, I don’t think that the…authorities would be too happy with you if you were to callously murder the defenseless cripple you were sent to apprehend, now would they?”

“They’d forgive me. You are entirely replaceable. Margotson Meats was around long before you, and it’ll be here long after you’re gone. You are not as important as you’d like to believe.”

“Aww come on, why so rude? I’m being entirely hospitable. I haven’t called security yet on the intruder that has broken into my house. I think I’m being extremely generous. Well, let’s start again, would you like some refreshment?” Margotson gestured to the table beside him, where a pitcher of tea and several glasses rested.

“No thank you, I’m fine. I had lunch at the Garden Grove, up on Breakthrough.”

“Fine place, fine place. But…I’d like to show you something before we get moving,” Laurie touched an activator stud on the side of his headbrace, and the floor slid apart.

Mori hadn’t noticed it before, but the floor was covered in a layer of transparisteel. The marble floor slid back into the wall to reveal a cog-shaped hole into a chasm below. A tank really. And out of it rose the largest dianoga that Mori had ever seen. It was easily the width of the room, its large circular mouth, ringed with razor teeth, gnashing from just beneath a layer of reddish-brown water, its tentacles and eyestalk waving and grasping at the room above.

“I’d like to show you what I’m going to feed you to after I kill you. I feed it the offal from my slaughterhouse here, so it has a taste for meat.”

Mori instantly tensed, her hand tightening around her blaster, her off hand rising to grasp the weapon in a two-handed grip. She backed off the transparisteel window, onto a ‘tooth” of the stone cog that framed the window.

“How did you get in anyway? I’m curious so I can plug the hole. Just for reference, how did you get in here?”

“Your street urchins, actually,” Mori replied, trying to keep her voice calm and confident, “As you like to say, they’ll do anything for a candy bar, even give up the ‘patron’ that protects them. Fear has its downsides, you know.”

Behind the mask, Margotson yawned, “Good to know. Well, I’m growing bored with this conversation. So I guess I’ll feed you to my pet now. Security, would you come in, please?”
The comlink, on speaker mode, crackled.

“You know, that is the benefit of using children for recon, they don’t get noticed, don’t trigger alarm bells by their presence. I have my grandnephew outside the perimeter, providing comlink scrambling and heartbeat surveillance. “

“I saw you pass an Omwati child on my surveillance as you entered the district, but I didn’t think anything of it. You have some Omwati in you, yes?”

Mori nodded, it was evident by the mane of translucent, off-white, downlike feather-hair atop her head, and the hint of blue skin showing beneath her brown fur, “Yes, my mother.”
“Ahh yes.”

And as for your security team, before I came by here I popped over to the security station on the east wing. Wanted to test out some new narco-relaxant grenades I got from a…friend. Your bodyguards are probably snoozing or contemplating the mysteries of the universe while staring at the back of their hand right now. So, it’s just you and me.”

“That’s just fine. Is that fine with you?”

“It was my design.”

“Well, then. Here we are.”

Almost faster than Mori could process, Margotson lunged, putting his considerable, exoskeleton-aided weight behind his punch, Mori just managed to dodge, aiming a kick at his back as he swung around.

One of the other talents that her species possessed was limited shape shifting abilities, introduced to her species’ gene pool millennia ago through genetic engineering. It allowed the formerly quadruped species to form their front hooves into hands, which required less focus to use than touching the force. It was in this way that Mori had entered the room, her hands providing a superiorly stable shooting platform. The martial art of Shori Kapaa relied on the strong hand remaining a hand, to utilize a weapon or to grab, and the off hand to be formed into a hoof, essentially a hard keratin cudgel. It was this club that smashed into Margotson’s stomach as the kick missed. He countered with several quick uppercuts from his doubled over position as he gasped for breath, the wind knocked out of him. They missed, and Mori fired a shot at Margotson, who slapped her arm away just in time to avoid testing the blaster bolt resistance of his facemask. The gun spun away and clattered under a desk.

“Well, well. Quite the street fighter, aren’t we. Haven’t done this in a while.”

“Nerf carcasses, huh? Not exactly an efficient way to ship Spice, now is it? Shows your involvement too much.”

“Honey, I’m not going to admit anything to you, I’m not stupid.”

“Your crimes now include the attempted murder of an agent of the Republic. That matters little right now.”

“An armed intruder broke into my house, drugged my guards, and attempted to murder me in my bedroom. That’s how this will turn out.”

Mori was finished debating with him, she aimed several more punches, each of them dodged. Margotson’s exoskeleton obviously granted him a quickness that wasn’t present in their last encounter. She aimed a feint left, which he compensated for, just in time to bring his neck into sharp contact with Mori’s hoof, sending Margotson gagging and choking back.
Still, he was fast, aiming several punches low, Margotson sent Mori staggering back to the wall, which she slammed into, hard.

She needed an edge.

Falling to the ground, she noticed chest of drawers to her right. She had an idea.

She pulled from her jacket a small det-mine. Margotson was advancing. Placing it on the ground, she overturned the chest of drawers on top of it. Margotson noticed, and lunged for her. She dodged past him just in time, galloping quadruped across the room as she detonated the trigger with the force.

The blast, directed downward by the overturned chest of drawers, cracked the plastisteel of the floor-mounted window, and sent the window loose on one corner, the whole thing slanting like a ramp into the mass of teeth and tentacles below. Margotson barely had time to realize that the mine wasn’t meant for him before he was sliding toward the opening, only barely catching the edge and arresting his fall.

Mori retrieved her blaster and carefully approached cracked window, making her way along the edge until she could see the flailing mogul.

She aimed her blaster.

“Not making the same mistake as last time. You’re getting your turn on the Nerf-line.”

“Go ahead, you alien swine. Shoot me!” the polite banter was gone, the high-class polish washed away by foaming water and thrashing tentacles below, “Shoot me and you’ll get yours, you and all your kind. The Nerf-line is waiting for you all.”

“If you insist,” Mori placed her finger on the trigger. Just before pulling it, she had a thought. Dropping onto four legs, she aimed the pistol with the force, one last insult, and fired. The bolt struck Laurie Margotson, square between the eyes, shattering the mask and sending bits of the metal headbrace flying. He flopped like a marionette with the strings cut, off the listing window and splashed ignominiously into the offal-water below. The dianoga, sensing that fresh meat had entered its domain, eagerly grasped the meat mogul in its long tentacle and tossed it into its gaping maw, the man disappearing amid sharp, spearlike teeth, and blackness.

Just meat.

Mori chuckled as she headed for the exit checking her corners just in case. When that dianoga was eventually made into a pie, it would have just a hint of extra ingredient added.

Truly, Laurie Margotson was a part of his business, right to the very end.

 

Twisted ending, there.

Well done; this has the feel of the old Star Wars anthologies (Tales from Jabba's Palace and so on.) I like your bounty hunter's unusual species; it was interesting to pick up the bits and pieces as they were revealed. The confrontation with her target seemed evenly-matched and tense. Margotson was a piece of work, to be sure. Makes me curious if this is the case with most of Mori's targets, or if she catches anyone but takes a special pride in dispatching the nasty ones.

Welcome to Fanfic, by the way.