Erin was moved to another department as promised that Monday. This came with a new desk on the same floor as Janey and Tyson. The job put Erin somewhere in Janey’s hierarchy, though not directly under her.

No one spoke to Erin directly at work, still, even in  a new department. She’d gotten an email from her manager directing her to where her work on the server was, along with what she needed to do, cold and mechanical. 

Mostly, it was untangle and organize a sprawling mess of code that was left behind by a three person team, according to Max, when he’d stopped by a few weeks ago. They’d all left under unclear circumstances, and Erin would bet it was to get away from Janey and Tyson and maybe herself. The code had already been beta released to the customer, but improvements were expected.

Janey was so busy she didn’t stop by and see Erin that first day, and Erin didn’t even hear from her new manager, Donovan McMillan. According to a few notes she found on the server, the contract was supposed to be a project to support database queries from remote platforms. As far as Erin could tell, all the code would do was basically start a process, and if the process stopped responding, it would start two more processes to compensate for lost time, like some sort of hydra.

 Erin didn’t make any changes outright yet, trying to figure out who would make something so inefficient and complicated out of a simple task, and just added notes and comments so she wouldn’t spend time deciphering it all again later.

That afternoon, Erin got a phone call from ‘Rat Catcher’.

Erin looked at her phone in a bit of dismay, not sure if it would ring more than once. Maybe it was a wrong number. When it continued to ring, Erin resigned to answered, “Hello?”

“Erin, this is The Ferret. Did I catch you at a bad time?” The voice modulator was on, but not turned up, making her voice only a little out of place.

“Nope, what’s up?”

Her row of four cubes was empty but for her, and closest to the executive offices and the corporate meeting rooms. Where Tyson and Janey would be most likely to appear. Erin didn’t need to be told she was still being isolated. The group on the other side of the cubicle wall was giving Erin terse, but helpful emails guiding her through the server. Likely hoping she wouldn’t talk to them directly if they helped in this manner.

“I was wondering if you were free later today. The group loved your work - I rendered the code into a website for them to see - but they wanted to talk with you directly about it.”

Erin typed up a few lines of nonsense, just to cover up how tense she was, talking to the Ferret within earshot of other backdrop. “Sure, what time?”

“When are you free?”

“Anytime tonight. I don’t have anything planned.” Too late, Erin remembered it was Monday, a Plot night, as she spoke. Worse, this felt like a setup for a bad story event, but she’d already acquiesced. 

“Alright. How does seven sound? And are you sure about this? I know you didn’t really want to do this to start with…”

“I’m good. Don’t even worry about it. That time is fine.” Vague vague vague; Erin really didn’t want anyone to get the idea that she was the one who was going to host the Cavalry website.

“Alright. Well, let me give you the details…”

Erin wrote down the address and went back to her work for another hour.

She was about to head out when she got a text from Misty.

‘Hey I think I can help ya with getting your insurance claim through soonest. Wanna meet up this eve to talk about it?’

Erin frowned, trying to decide if the world was testing her. Or if maybe the Cavalry was.

‘No, busy tonight. sides, the insurance company said it would be a few days. Ill ask when they balk.’ 

Erin hoped that would be enough to appease the litigious Protagonist.

‘Art thou sure? I’m gonna be pretty close to your apt around six, finishing a meeting other clients at a coffee shop.’

Misty sent the address. Surprise, it was actually closer to the small abandoned storefront The Ferret invited her to. The abandoned storefront was one of their known small “secret” bases around the city.

Erin saw what Misty was trying to do, but she didn’t want to mix superhero business with her personal life. It would feel a little too much like Misty laughing at her for not being in on the secret of the Cavalry. Misty probably didn’t even mean it that way, it was just a convenience for her to deal with Erin twice in the same night. Erin just didn’t want to feel like she was being mocked anyway.

‘Na, sorry tho. I cant make it, and Im sure the fire insurance folk will come through.’

Erin chatted with Misty a bit, arranging to go home around four to make up for her absence on Friday. She needed to get used to staying later, really, given that she was being kicked off the last forum she’d lived in during the wee hours of the morning. No reason to get up before five AM anymore. She might as well act like a Puppet if she was going to have to live like one.

She went home to change and drop her work stuff off. When she returned to the parking garage, there were a trio of guys loitering over her bike.

When she’d gotten back to the apartment building, she’d noticed one guy who seemed to be chilling against the far wall of the parking garage, smoking and looking at his phone. He had a real look-at-me-be-a-punk attitude, but Erin had ignored it as she grabbed her work stuff from the bike and the third new motorcycle helmet she’d bought a couple weeks ago. 

She never recovered the one lost after her kidnapping. Erin had her helmet under one arm, and her backpack slung over the other shoulder. She figured she’d better bring her own laptop, in case the Cavalry wanted to make requests or changes to how she planned to set up their website. Her cellphone was in her backpack as well, as these new pants had no pockets suitable for most human sized objects. Erin’s pocket just contained her keychain with her motorcycle key, her apartment key, and some little keychain alien that she’d gotten from walking into a shop on their anniversary a few weeks ago.

The little green alien had a perpetual grimace, as if they’d been told bad news before being turned into a keychain charm. Erin had become strangely attached to its plight, and kept it. It looked nothing like the aliens from a couple years ago at Hong Kong with blue skin and four eyes, or the lupine aliens who landed in Sengal last month.

When she got back to her bike again, there was the same smoking punk she’d seen earlier, but he had been joined by a wide, round bruiser type, and his cousin - the tall muscle-bound brute. Erin didn’t know that they were cousins; in fact, they looked nothing alike. They were just so clearly their archetypes, that she couldn’t help but lump them into the same family: trouble.

As Erin approached the gang members gathered near her bike, she wondered what they were.

Real people? Or permanent Pawn thugs? She was leaning towards the second. She’d run out of time to really consider it as she sidled up to her bike, a couple of meters from where they leaned against a pillar, next to a beat up truck that had two flat tires.

Erin was willing to let bystanders be bystanders. The smoker called out to her as she rested the helmet on her bike to put both of the backpack straps on. “Hey, that your bike?”

Erin looked down at Oda, at the keys now in her hand, and then back up to the talker. “Yes. You seen any Protagonists lately or are you just a local league?”

The three glared at her a moment and the punk responded without missing a beat. “No one’s called the Red Street Roamers little league since we wiped out the Road Kings gang. Where you got, popping off like that?”

Pawn thugs then - three of the tens of thousands that exist in a city this size - who lived to give Protagonists things rough up and defeat at the Plot’s demand. Of course, without a hero around, they were just going to cause trouble for people like Erin.

Erin used her key to pop open the little side compartment on her motorcycle to pull out her gloves.

“Hey. Jimmy, think she can’t hear so good?” This was the tall brute, though Erin couldn’t discern which of them was Jimmy. The three of them stepped away from the pillar. “Listen, lady. No one drives two wheels on these streets without paying the Roamers their fee.”

Erin’s hands hesitated on the gloves but asked, “How much do I owe you to leave me alone?”

The three of them looked at each other again, as if surprised by her acquiescence.

“Two hundred,” the wide one said, impulsively, making Erin wonder if they’d been spit balling the number.

“And how long does two hundred protect me?” Erin was willing to deal, if these people would just leave her alone. Her heart pounded, though it was far more controlled than it had any right to be. After facing Rex and Doppelganger, these three were just not quite as terrifying. It would be incredibly sad if she did just die by being killed by some punks, as if the Plot couldn’t think of what else to do with her.

“Two hundred, heh,” the punk started, “that’s just the deposit.” Erin saw the punk step closer to her, now within arm’s reach. His cigarette bounced in his lips as he spoke.

 “And how much after that?” She asked, not able to keep her voice completely level, hitching lower. She hated that, but she also didn’t need to look cool. She just needed to hit this Pawn’s particular threshold, whatever it may be. Most Pawns weren’t creative, and had their scripts to follow.

“Another two hundred a month after that.” Smoker paused, looking at her bike. “Man, it would be a shame if something happened to such a pretty bike.”

“That sounds fair,” Erin swallowed back her pride. She could pay it. These were just Pawns anyway. She might as well become arrogant for rain being wet too. “Especially to earn the protection of the Roamers. Weren’t the Road Kings top dog just a couple of months ago?”

The Road Kings had lost half their vehicles to Modulus’s bots around then, if Erin recalled. Back when Rex arrived and quickly left the city.

The three of them grinned, flattered by faint praise. “Tha’s right.” Erin didn’t mention she barely had heard of the Red Street Roamers. Pawns weren’t very clever. 

“Then four hundred it is this month, and two hundred following that. I don’t have the cash on me now. How do I get it to you later?” Her skin burned and prickled, not with Plot but with that shame in her bowing to pressure so easily. It was harder that these were Pawns, not Protagonists. She wouldn’t have anything in savings after this, and would need to skate along until insurance came in.

They explained to her that they have a person posted inside the garage each night, protecting it, marked with a maroon stripe on their clothing, just like this trio did. The trio gave her almost pleasant smiles, business complete, and walked towards the garage’s stairwell.

Erin didn’t want any of this, but couldn’t refuse the universe its due. At dinner, alone at a chain restaurant, she had to fight back another wave of shame and anger and tears. Erin ended up throwing away most of her food from nausea even though she really couldn’t afford to be so frivolous.

The meeting with the Cavalry was at a little strip mall that never had a chance to succeed and parked her bike near - but not under - a dying tree that once was planted to provide some life to the surrounding grey concrete and dull red brick building and parking lot.

The asphalt parking lot was cracked and craggy, though there were still lights that illuminated the parking lot. The strip mall once had a hair salon, the sign still depicting scissors without lettering, what looked like a glass walled cell-phone store completely boarded up from within, and the far end was taken up by a closed one-car garage with a sign that promised the best audio systems in town.

She pulled out her phone from her backpack to call or text The Ferret, to find she already had a text waiting.

‘Saw you pull up. Just walk into the salon and to the back. We have a setup inside.’

Erin strapped her helmet to her bike - if anyone was going to try to steal from her here, the more fool they - and headed inside.