Ali grasped Zéphyr by the throat. She was about to snap the Maiden’s neck, but the elusive data thief managed to escape, not without giving my partner a few elbows in the nose. My human bled profusely as the androgyne immediately turned around and charged her to the abdomen. Once on the ground, my sapiens forced her attacker back with her knee before standing up, then threw an uppercut straight into her lover’s teeth.

After wiping the blood from her chin, she provoked Zéphyr: “You fight pretty well, boy!”

Her antagonist didn’t answer straight away yet instead picked up a spear and made it whirl over their head. The red silk flag attached to the handle whistled like a falcon. “I’m truly sorry we came to this,” the augmented human went on. The arena’s bright green lava began to lick their toes. “Alas, the only thing I’d like to see now… is you slowly drowning into this hellfire. But not without cutting your pretty face off before.”

The Maiden charged a second time, the point brandished forward. Ali drew the broad scimitar from her back and made front. Her feet powerfully anchored into the scorched earth, she waited for the impact to slip away at the last moment, like a matador.

Zéphyr predicted the treacherous move. Suddenly planting the pike in the slag ground, the androgyne jumped into the air. My partner reacted by raising her weapon, but her opponent executed the unthinkable: a blurred wave of energy had just hit my human’s face. Blinded by the blow, she tottered before receiving a final kick to the torso, and tripped into the molten rock.

It was an atrocious death; the long agony didn’t end until the magma entered through her mouth to ravage her guts as her skin was quickly consumed by flames. Zéphyr had defeated her… for the seventh time of the afternoon.

“We said no magic, you fucking cheater!” the loser cried, slipping off the couch to roll on the antique carpet covered with crackers and Easy Cheese.

“Tiberan is a bonze,” the master thief calmly explained with the little condescension necessary to bad faith. “He uses ‘Ki’, which isn’t technically magic, as defined in the lore. Look it up on the web.”

Zéphyr always deceived Ali that way, bending the rules with sophisms. In the blade-less confrontation, she had waved a stick; at the pygmachia, she chose the four-armed hero. However, she remained undefeated in Forgotten Masters, the versus fighting game of Monsters&Mazes.

“I ask for a rematch, Z. And this time I pick Thorandell!” Ali cried.

But my partner hadn’t yet selected the overpowered barbarian that the Data Maiden had turned off both the console and the 3D monitor. “A day on Neptune lasts 16 hours and I just wasted three of them humiliating you on the Super Nintendo,” she said, picking up the rectangular cartridge. “I think it’s time to stretch our legs.”

“Why go outdoors when you have video games at home?” Ali decreed.

“Why stay home when you’re on Byblos Gate, geek?” Zéphyr pursued.

Our companion then crossed our rental penthouse to open the patio’s beige curtains. Outside, the false rising sun over the round blue roofs of the brand-new yet already nearly abandoned resort was as shiny as Macaulay Culkin’s future career. The white sandy beaches and the turquoise sea bottom of the artificial Mediterranean island almost made us forget that we were on Triton, 4.4 billion kilometers from the original waterscape—probably sunk beneath an ocean of radioactive mud.

The screams of Ali and Zéphyr’s previous fight had pulled me out of my long afternoon nap. “Do you have something in mind?” I asked the Data Maiden while my partner was deflecting her anger on a jumbo pack of Dunkaroos. The smell of the vanilla frosting woke my stomach.

“At sunset, we will celebrate again our latest success on Thalassa,” Zéphyr replied before pointing the pile of blood-covered hard disks with her chin. Our unstoppable trio had fought heavily to steal them from a contract sought by the Data-Brokers’ Guild.

“Would it be possible to know more about these diskettes?” I asked before the headache of the previous evening came back to haunt me.

“I don’t dig into the megabytes of data that I’m required to swipe,” Zéphyr explained. “I tried once and it went messy—won’t make that mistake again. Plus, these drives are a gift to a friend who’s helping me a lot recently. Nobody’s want a present if it has been already opened, right?”

“Your job counts so many boring rules,” Ali sighed, shuffling the drives with her greasy fingers. “So… where do we go? The rollerball stadium? What about some skeet surfing? I’d also like to see Backdraft.”

“Got hotter, Ali-love.” In Zéphyr’s hand appeared holographic musical notes. When she approached them to my muzzle, they danced before forming letters and figures.

“Queen x R.E.M. at the Olympia Stadium?” I read on the animated poster. I heard Ali breathing a sigh of ecstasy. I myself had drool on my chin. “I thought it was canceled because of all these pirates roaming around!” It would be the best night ever.

My human had spent the rest of the day sunbathing in the beach toasters. At the end of the afternoon, she joined Zéphyr and I on rollerblades at the Trix Yogurt Shop of the pier. She wore an outfit even flashier and tighter than the cyborg: tank top and yellow headband, purple yoga pants and pink cotton leggings up to the knees; she was observable without a telescope from Mercure.

“Could we get to the stadium earlier? It will be possible to see the last inning of the baseball game,” I asked as we hit the road.

“Since when do you like baseball?” Zéphyr inquired. Eyeballing Ali, she switched her holographic disguise to a simpler topless fluorescent green minidress. The holosuit detected the slight breeze of this artificial seafront and the pixel hems of her clothes softly waved.

“Since he discovered that the main interest of this so-called ‘sport’ was to eat nachos!” Ali answered while applying a radioactive glossy lipstick.

I took offense. What’s wrong with eating nachos?

The rest of the evening was electric. With our bellies full of gyros and Push Pops, we went to the concert. I remember dancing between two beings of light. The smoke of cigarettes and marijuana had made me float above the audience and its 180,000 blurry faces. We ended the night in our apartment with a crowd of strangers where I nodded off between a Roxette’s karaoke contest and the arrival of the local boy bands’ fan club. I finally blacked out until the next day when I was drawn from my torpor by the artificial dawn’s first glimmers, my caboose stuck in my motorized buoy, drifting among soda bricks. Apparently, I fell asleep in the bathroom hot tube.

I lit my last cigarette which had resisted the soapy purple-colored water. In front of me, Zéphyr was near the granite sink, busy cleaning off her green glowing lipstick. To her suitcase, I saw she was on the departure. “Did you say goodbye to Ali?” My voice was husky.

“Of course,” she answered, adjusting real clothes on her inorganic ebony skin. “She’s vegging out.”

“Good Lord, sugar has melted my electrodes…” Not without difficulty, I slipped outside the overflowing tube. The cyborg dried me with a towel and I thanked her before going on: “New gig?”

“Yes. On an off-grid ice trawler doing much more than gathering blocks of frozen water around Uranus’s shepherd moons. Then, I got to check on my friend—you know… about the floppy disks.”

“Very well. Requiring my undercover skills and the Kitty’s good humor?”

A small household android intervened through the opening of the door. I ordered him a glass of warm milk with a Pixie Stix shortly before the master thief laid her hand on my cheek for a final stroke.

“No,” she replied, scratching my chin. “Simple extraction mission. It’s dull, but perfect to clear my mind. We can see each other again soon.” She then stepped back to glance briefly at the door. “I will need to talk to Ali.”

“I tried working on that point with her but, yes, it could be easier if it comes from you…why didn’t you give it a shot yesterday?”

“There’s something I gotta be sure first. One last thing.”

My eyes rolled the best a cat could. “You impotent bipeds are so crippled by your fears. It’s exhausting,” I snarled. “Just be honest and all will be fine with Ali… She won’t bite you. She grew up since you guys met seven years ago.” I puffed, raising an eyebrow. “Sort of…”

“She did. When I’ll come back, everything will be okay. I hope it will.” Zéphyr smiled shyly before stealing my cigarette. “See you later, Lee.”

I wished the Maiden good luck before she finally left Byblos Gates with the Kisugi, so far moored on the penthouse’s terrace alongside the Swallow.

Shortly after, I enjoyed my milk in the cockpit while praying the hangover would be less severe than the day before. As I went across the various radio stations looking for music through the info-ads, the control computer alerted me about the register’s update. A new contract was an emergency on the moon of Naiad. The dollar-credits were worth a little getaway.

“Ali!” I meowed with my broken voice as I slowly reached the apartment before slaloming between the few guests still asleep in the main living room. It was a never-ending sea of drowsy naked bodies. Holiday resorts often mixed extra drugs with the alcohol they served. Such practices made the customer docile but the dosages were usually so violent the awakening was very brutal. “Ali! Are you here?” I went on, stepping on someone’s forehead. “Sorry, Madame. Have you seen an irritable woman-child with sugar addiction?”

All I heard was a grunt before this party animal loudly knocked off the closest lava lamp. I was then grabbed for a disturbing sweat-soaked cuddle.

“Lee? What are you doing?” A puffy-eyed Ali with overly-messy hair and wrapped in white sheets had opened the main bedroom’s door. Turning on the lights, she noticed the wakening guest crushing me against her cleavage. “Nice hook up, furry ball…”

“Don’t be ridiculous, human!” I grumbled while scratching my way out. “I was looking for you!”

I saw her pouting. “Next time, start with the bedroom. Not the shag pad—anyway. What’s the 411?”

“New C$50,000 emergency contract! Let’s bounce before the hotel staff comes to disinfect the whole floor with napalm.”

“Sir, yes sir…” Ali went on while stretching up, making her makeshift dress fell on the sticky linoleum. She then grabbed her black body and pink vest, rolled into the mini-refrigerator for no logical reason, to casually throw them over her shoulder. “Where are we going?” she yawned.

“Neptune III,” I answered as I escorted her to the Kitty.

“I’m lost with all these moons! Gimme me a heads-up when we arrive. Imma veg out in the hold!”

“You wish! Once onboard you will take a shower and get rid of all the glowing lipstick over your bottom, young lady!”

My partner grumbled, brushing her behind. She immediately passed out in her bed as soon as we left Triton’s retrograde orbit.