"... ia… Ti…. Tia!"
"W-what?"
Her head spinning and vision spinning with ears ringing, Tia somehow managed to respond to a voice which felt like it was Mac's.
"... ed… go."
Tia's ears were ringing, but she saw Mac in front of her, he appeared to be coaching her to do something, but as she didn't understand what he was saying Mac eventually scooped her up and covered her eyes as he whispered into her ears.
"Just sleep for now."
Although she didn't know Mac for being kind or compassionate, he was being very caring at the moment, so without any further consideration Tia fell asleep in Mac's arms.
Rocking Tia back and forth for a bit, Mac felt her breathing slow and confirmed that she was asleep.
(She's finally calmed down, good.)
Tia had been in a state of shock when he arrived, this was understandable, as multiple people had died right in front of her.
(This went to shit.)
Looking around the room Mac observed that the stealth drone armed with a single suppressed drone pistol had been effective enough, granted he needed to aim for eye sockets and be within point blank range.
"... This was a mistake."
The fact that Tia had even gotten this close to harm's way was a significant failure to Mac. Sure, he had promised Tia and her dad that he boasted a response time of some 20 seconds, but Tia wasn't some elite operator that could occupy hostile forces for the time until the cavalry arrived. She was a VIP that enabled Mac to expand into the Rose kingdom, and Mac had failed to treat her like it.
Glancing at the now blood-stained table in the middle of the meeting room, Mac shifted Tia over to a single arm as he procured a hand grenade from the tactical vest he was wearing on top of his normal clothes.
(Time for a clean up.)
(COMMENCING MOP-UP OPERATION; CLOSING CONTACTS.)
At Mac's mental command, the faint sound of suppressed gunfire was heard all over the inside of Hendrick's import, then Mac flicked the pin off of his incendiary grenade and tossed it into the centre of the meeting room as he left for the roof flanked by human type drones brandishing suppressed short rifles. As the building started going up in flames, Mac boarded a dropship parked on the roof and quickly left for orbit as onlookers outside were busy watching Hendrick's import go up in flames.
-
"Have you caught your charlatan yet?"
Suddenly interrupted in her work, Anastasia looked up from her stack of papers when she heard the familiar voice of her dear elder brother.
"Not yet Will."
Massaging the bridge of her nose before stifling a yawn, Anastasia realised she had worked all night and turned off her lantern. Since issuing an arrest order 3 days ago, she had been getting reports all around the place, each of them more absurd than the last.
"Reports have been placing him all over the place at the same time…"
Looking through the reports spread out on her table, Anastasia fished out a few of the more outrageous ones before presenting them to her older brother.
"Let's see here… Numerous sightings along the western border place strange golems moving through the forests while a trade firm is said to have burned down while one of those flying things left from it… What the hell is all this?"
Unlike his sister who worked as captain, Will's expertise was military intelligence. Still, he didn't need all that experience to tell that at least 90% of these reports were hearsay at best.
"... Are you being purposely misled?"
All of these orders looked like a smokescreen to Will, but Anastasia didn't see it as such.
"No, not to my knowledge at least."
"Then it must be due to bias… You tell a bunch of people that strange black golems have appeared from the sky to extract that charlatan and most of them will see them when they run into something where they don't have all the facts."
"Yeah, that's the issue I'm running into… With all these reports of fantastical happenings the real data I want gets drowned out or slips through the cracks."
Normally tracking down a single person in the kingdom was hard, but not outright impossible. Sure, it was outrageously expressive, and an arguably ineffective use of manpower, but it should be possible for Anastasia to track down the thing calling itself Mac, if he was still within the kingdom's borders. The issue was this flood of unrelated reports still somehow still getting to Anastasia's desk, even as multiple people had already looked them over the reports reaching her were decidedly low quality and barely usable.
"In that case you need to narrow your scope."
Putting the reports back down on the table, Will switched his brain out of holiday mode and started applying his expertise.
"How so?"
"First of you refine your search, forget the golems and that flying thing for the moment and focus on this Mac feller, start noting the place the reports come from, then rank them on validity and you should at least get a rough estimate of his location, from there you can start thinking about the specifics."
Grabbing a few more reports, Will quickly scanned through them before dismissing the vast amount. Then he took notice of the few reports that mentioned Mac as he pulled a map off the wall and placed it on the table.
"I'll help you, start gathering reports mentioning Mac or a person that looked like him, then highlight the location and place them here."
Flawlessly shifting back into work mode, Will didn't think much about using his free day to help his little sister.
"Okay, I'll start from over here."
Getting back to work with a renewed sense of energy, Anastasia was determined to track Mac down and arrest him.
-
Waking up to a familiar but still strange ceiling, Tia recognized that she was onboard one of Mac's cruisers, meaning something serious had happened.
"What happened?"
"..."
Uncharacteristically quiet for once, Mac who sat next to her bed didn't seem willing to speak so Tia tried to remember herself.
(I woke up as normal to the loaded wagon, then left for Hendrick's import where they stiffed me…)
"Urgh!-"
Suddenly remembering the sight of blood and dead people, Tia grew dizzy as she puked into a bag Mac had prepared just in time.
"Y-you killed those people!"
"Yeah, I did."
Answering without any kind of snark or humor, Mac admitted he had killed the people in front of her without giving them the chance to even plead.
"Why!?"
"Because they were going to kill you."
While a part of Mac's mind was tempted to quote the old proverb "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" he realised he needed to be frank.
"N-no they wouldn't, they told me I could leave when I signed."
Still running away from reality, a part of Tia didn't believe people were capable of killing each other in such cold blood.
"Letting you go afterwards would leave you alive to invalidate the contract… Besides, they had already dug a grave out near the animal feed."
Showing Tia a picture of the hole dug in the ground next to a stack of hay in the back corner of the warehouse section of the store made Tia break down as a mix of relief that Mac had made it in time to her and horror at the fact that she once again had gotten close to dying.
(This can never happen again.)
As Tia cried in Mac's arms he made a silent vow, and as his will was connected to and amplified by the ships in the same system as him countless mechanical brains began working on this new problem.
"... Hmm, this should be the place."
Just hours later, after handing Tia back over to her dad, Mac found himself outside a particular bar on the outskirts of the Rose kingdom capital.
(2-2 and 2-1 stay on my ass, ready for hot extraction.)
Aware that he was still a wanted man, Mac made sure his backup was on station and ready to swoop in as he entered the bar.
Instead of farmers or laymen crowding around the tables inside were a special kind of adventurers, all of them armed with various weapons, and all of them, for some reason or another, banned from the official adventurers guild in the kingdom. The reason for their blacklisting varied, but the people inside this unofficial guild were skilled enough that they were still sought after, even after getting blacklisted. As Mac entered he drew a few eyes, but was soon all but ignored as the people inside didn't care much for someone who looked like he couldn't pay much.
(Now, where is she…. There she is.)
Scanning the bar for a moment, Mac quickly spotted a particular demihuman woman with bear-like ears sprouting out on top of her brown hair.
"There you are, I've been looking for you."
Sitting down next to the woman like they were old pals, Mac got an immediate response.
"Fuck off."
Just not the kind of response he had been expecting.
"But I have a job-"
"Not interested."
Hanna was undoubtedly in a bad mood, and why wouldn't she? Her reputation had been all but ruined just a few days ago. Without her reputation, all serious jobs had all but dried up.
"Okay then."
Standing back up undeterred, Mac looked around for a bit before he went to the bar and sat down.
"... What'll it be?"
The bartender was a gruff old man that didn't just sling beer and spirits, he also oversaw contacts between customers and mercenaries, handling requests, payments and contracts.
"Clear the bar, just for an hour."
"What?"
Although he had been in this business for over 30 years, this was the first time he had heard such a request and was about to protest when Mac slammed down a fistfull of gold coins.
"Everyone out, except for the lady I just talked to."
"..."
Staring at Mac for a moment, then back at the gold coins, the barkeep's hardened expression transformed into a smirk.
"That's the easiest coin I've ever made."
Heading over to the opposite end of the bar, the barkeep rang a bell hanging from the wall to get his patron's attention.
"Bar is closed for the night! Pack up and leave!"
Although there was some annoyance at his order, the patron's nevertheless finished their drinks and stood up to leave, Hanna included.
"Not you Hanna, stay and listen to the customer, or you won't be welcome in here again."
"Tch."
As she had been about to leave along with the other patrons, Hanna clicked her tongue in annoyance as she planted her ass again, looking at Mac with barely disguised disdain. Waiting for the bar to clear with a smile plastered all over his face, Mac reached over the bar counter and grabbed a pair of tankards that he filled with beer before returning to sit across from Hanna.
"Hello again."
"..."
Choosing silence instead of dignifying Mac's approach with an answer, Hanna just stared at him with her arms crossed.
"The name is Mac, I'm here to offer you a long term job."
"Not interested."
"If you're worried about your sister I can arrange for childcare."
"Fuck off."
Even revealing that he knew about Hanna's little sister didn't get much more of a reaction other than disdain, leading Mac to breathe a sigh.
"... Then let's discuss payment."
"I said I'm not interested."
"How does your weight in pure copper for each day's work sound? Of course you'll be paid doing downtime too, and successfully protecting your ward will earn bonuses too."
"... You can't be serious."
Although the extremely generous payment did shock Hanna for a second, she quickly realised he was joking and dismissed it as such.
"Yeah, I'm serious, you'll be protecting one of my subordinates, so of course that amount of payment is a given."
Studying Mac's face, Hanna didn't sense anything from his thin smile, in fact most of Mac's body language and expression and didn't find any hint of emotion. The only exception to Mac's otherwise lack of human traits were his eyes, although they appeared genuine they were dead just like Hanna's own.
(This guy is a trained killer… Hides it well too.)
"Why don't you just protect that subordinate yourself?"
"Because my efforts are a little too unorthodox, at least for the moment."
Studying Mac's expression for a moment again, Hanna had a swig of beer as she learned back in her chair.
"I'm sure you can figure that out."
"Really? I'm sure you'd agree my methods won't really go over well."
Drawing a smug smile as he saw confusion spread across Hanna's face, Mac downshifted his vocal cords and modulated it with the use of an implant, his voice turning into the one he had used to speak with Hanna the first time the two of them had 'met'.
"YOU REALLY DON'T REMEMBER? HOW SAD."
Mac's change in voice had an immediate and visceral reaction, as Hanna stumbled backwards and out over her chair as she drew a pair of throwing knives from under her cloak.
"You fucker!"
"Oh, now you remember."
"Because of you I lost my reputation! 10 fucking years of work down the drain, nobody wants to hire me anymore because of that!"
In the kind of business Hanna worked in, reputation was everything. Unlike the adventurers guild that could still guarantee their adventurers weren't complete fuckwiths even if they failed a few missions Hanna had one shot and then she was out, and she had blown it.
"Look, this really isn't all that to get worked up about. If you want to work for me then you're welcome, but if not it won't be a big deal. I've caught a few more rats and released them by now, I'll just go down the skill level until I find someone."
Making it clear that Mac really didn't need Hanna as much as Hanna needed a new source of income, Mac extended one last invitation.
"This is the last time I'll ask, come work for RED. If you won't I'll find someone who will."