A lead brick, and a glass oven.
"She's dead, Leaf. Let it go. Stop this." Ten minutes after Umi pulled a gun on me, she finally held it at a low ready, just itching to take my leg out from under me. the conversation got really stale. She followed me onto this old balcony, watching the banquet through the tiled colours of stained glass and fake moonlight. Umi didn't have to chase me, I was here the whole time. This was my new grave-stone. 70 story tall Glass Bottle full of rich flats. If she shoots me here, at least I'll die before i hit the weird fake concrete. Her arguments were stale, and honestly, so were mine. We were both winded, tired, hungry. Thirsty... Her gun was met with my gun. My suit matched the white metallic finish, and all the dirt and blood from my hands. Quite a pair, Its a shame i never got this suit dry cleaned. I'd fill you in on the details, but... "She's alive, I saw her. If she died, you killed her. Don't bullshit me, Umi. We've been through too much. I saw her face, I kissed her on the fucking cheek before she got dragged out. My lips almost melted on her face, Umi, I know she was alive."
Umi grimaced at me, she hates this part of the talks. Every time she has to put me out, cool me off, its this whole missing girl case. It ate me up. It burned me. I was upside down about it. Umi probably orchestrated the whole thing to fix some bullshit between me and the girl's father. She obviously thought I was off my bullshit - but really I was just off my meds. I was going underground.
"You're a peace talker, Leaf. Always have been. You're not supposed to kick doors. You left that behind in the Eurocare death-squad. Leaf, please. Ira is gone. IRA. Is no more."
Umi had a way with words, she spoke in riddles. I didn't always understand them, because of this fucking language barrier. Her weapon stayed in I've gotten way better at it. I tend to learn how to speak local dialects faster when I'm deeper with the crowd. So I took my jacket off, maybe ease her mind a bit. I was only armed with the pistol and a dead-switch. Hooked to several metal pipes of her favorite colour. I was a walking cluster-mine, and at this height we were only a stone's throw away from the Glass wall between me and the Ocean of stars and red Sand on the other side of this stupid mars-dome thing. Umi didn't even look that surprised, so i guess she expected it.
I always hated colony life.
"Darling, I don't speak mandarin too well, you know that. But you're making this hard to believe." I paused to scratch my temple with the barrel of my pistol, finger floating just over the trigger. Umi stepped back, and had a little bit of a sweat in her tough girl poker face. Umi makes a great mom because of that poker face. Her kids can't ever get a read on her, and to be honest, I'm struggling with it too. At least now she had her gun pointed at me properly. I was a threat, suddenly. "I just can't understand your plot, here. You don't cut my brakes, ram my car, take my Glitter and throw it all in the fire. I invented fire. I put that fire out for you. Every night i sang that song, I danced those steps. Each Night I kept the fire down for you."
Umi was silent for a moment while i brought my gun back to face her, generally speaking. At this point she'd need a sixty hard head start to avoid the debris.. and this little patio was only big enough for a bed and a camera to point at it, so we didn't have much choice but to talk it out. "Then I'll Say it in french, dumbass."
Umi didn't like talking to me in my language, she always said it made her feel stupid. I She spoke okay, I could understand her just fine after all these years. "She is gone, Leaf. Stop the game. No more bombs, no more guns. You're bleeding me dry, and once I'm off the table you're going to start hearing choir bells and a burning piano. There are bigger issues at play here, and Andrea is good as dead, too. Close the book. Stop." When you work for these assholes, you really learn to speak one way, and talk another. There were a dozen ways I could interpret her weird stresses, and dumb accent. None of the obvious ones were new to me. I did not ask her for shit I already knew, though. I wanted to hear her admit that she tried to glass me and my date. I wanted to know where the girl was taken. The only reason her captors would still be alive is that she was too injured to fight back. "I know it hurts, but i respect your ability to really 'dumb it down' for me. Maybe they are dead. I know you can't let me go, not after all this. If i stop now, if I close this book... How do you plan on getting me out of it? Kill me? That's not very shrewd."
Umi would have rolled her eyes at me, if it weren't for the guns and explosives involved. She groaned and shifted her shoulders. Her stone like position on the balcony was a little more sloppy. I finally got her angry at me. "Pull your head out of your ass king, we are both dancing tonight because you have the trigger, and I need you to cool down before we all go through a hole in the glass. This is not you. You don't work like this. Innocent people die if you don't stop this" Umi was people-people. She enjoyed the old worlds idea that business on the streets doesn't mix drinks with the civilians. But unfortunately, this dome killed its last civilian. Admitedly, i was tired of the systema, and the drugs, and the turf war. We had to make dirty deals for fucking water pumps to get fixed some times. These people were idiots, and swimming around a sinking ship like rats in oily water. "INNOCENT isn't really what we like to do here on mars! S'long as syndicat is operational, as long as you have a job, every one in this god damn dome is dirty." I was a little pissed off, and the heat in my voice could have caused steam from the dew on my cheeks. I was crying when she found me, and haven't had good time to stop and finish that cry.. hard to choke that shit back for 20 minutes straight. Umi let me catch my breath, really let me cook on that ideal of innocent civilians for a moment - then she stuck her nose in my fucking business again.
"What about Valeriya? -- I was livid. Beside myself. I interupted her, and the conversation devolved from here. "What ABOUT IRA!" I screamed, hot spit flicking through my teeth and down my lips. I heaved each breath through my nose like a bottle rocket. Both hands folded around my gun to meet her eyes with the barrel. Slowly she breathed, and she let me cook off. She opened her mouth to speak again as I dropped a long sigh of grief. "Think, Leaf, -- What about The kids? I've been working for years to de-escelate" Umi used that saccharine tone to speak through my anger, but I was a hot iron in the ashes of a dead blacksmith. Just waiting to be put in the water, so i interrupted her repeatedly. "Fucking joke, Umi? don't fucking joke!" i was loud, Black-out mad, and still huffing my breath. Umi raised her voice to get over my emotional bagge. " DE-ESCALATE this shit, bring it off the streets. We work at the arcade now, you know that! You made that with me! Its working, Leaf, just slow down and think." She preached to me about this shit constantly. She felt like some kind of saintly mother-sister-thing. The proud body of nourishing justice just waiting to see the end of the violence to tell the people that it was her idea the whole time. Umi wanted to be the last boss standing at the end of the seven year war, when all hell breaks loose and corporate gets involved. "You're JUST playing the same shit, there is no progress here. We're not disarming the gang war. We are the gang wars. The entire club is just a gangwar. How many tables, bullet holes, how many wom-" Umi tried to interrupt me. It didn't go well. "Too many, too many, i know. I know. Just" "YOU DON'T KNOW SHIT, UMI. WHERE IS SHE?" I took four steps forward and put her gun over my heart, and exposed the wires under my dress shirt that lead to the heartbeat signal. The bomb was wired back to my life and her life was wired to my death. The commotion stirred my cuff-links enough to expose my watch - a digital reminder of the death trigger. She screamed at me, "LET HER GO! I ALREADY FIXED THIS THREE YEARS AGO. I TOLD YOU TO TAKE A VACATION." the saftey on her 45 dropped and her hand was cool, steady. She was ready to let her kids live if it meant raining glass all over the city below. I didn't buy her bluff, but i let her take the gun from my chest to my head. My hands were resting low now. "Bullshit... I muttered, and ripped the cables out of my arm. "leaf, no, no no." The whole harness of wires came with it. The signal flatlined, my smart watch said so at least. I looked at her beautiful eyes and used my singing voice. "Lets take a nice cold walk."
Nothing happened, of course. Not to us. Not immediately.
".. You were bluffing.." two miles away, the dome's rain system went off. The emergency sirens started blaring. It was loud, the sky shook. I took one of the pipes from my vest, and unscrewed the cap, to take a sip of the clean water inside. "No, I just always loved the rain. I like to think Ira enjoyed the rain, and shitty coffee, too. You capsule lovers always think i'm going after the glass. You worry so much about being sucked into space or getting stuck in the sand, that you never worry about the water." Umi looked up, but the falling rain burned her eyes a little. Unusual for martian simulations of rain. The thunder wasn't real either but i thought it was a nice touch. "There is no redemption here, Umi. It is all Pear Shaped now.. Coporate will be around to fix this shit soon. Go hug your kids."
Umi was rubbing the shit out of her eyes, and I gave her my old sunglasses from my coat pocket. My hat covered my eyes, so I picked that off the ground and put my coat back on. I handed her the entire dome on a silver tray. All she has to do is survive the fall. Once coprorate kick the doors in at the star-port, this whole mafia-mob-triad bullshit love game will wither in the sun. Theres no one on earth that would think a dome with dirty water could turn a profit. Umi shot me in the arm, and i was lucky she wasn't aiming for anything good. She took one of my water cans and walked off.
"You're welcome, and go to hell. You're an evil woman, Leaf.."
