The Idiot's Guide to Bounty Hunting [Monroe & Bathos]

"What kinda name is Frank Bishop?"

Nonchalant shrug. "Mine."

Legs uncrossing, crossing again, different direction. Shark's grin, painted red. Beautiful woman, hands bound and resting in her lap. "Maybe we can work something out."

One brow hikes up. "Doubt it."

Practiced pout, shake of a head. Brown hair dances around her face. "I've got money."

"So do I."

"I've got skills."

Leans close, stubbled jaw scraping across her cheek. One hand braced behind her head, against the sofa cushion. The other, it finger-walks up her thigh. Shaky breath, this comes from her. Low rumble of a voice, in her ear. Goosebumps across her arms, she shifts.

"Darlin', I seen you work. And while I gotta say, you're pretty impressive ..." Hand lifts from her lap, up her arm, across her neck. Gentle grip there, just a warning. "Ain't enough 'skill' in the galaxy to save your ass."

Then he's gone, impression of his hand on her neck like a burn. "Damn you, Frank Bishop!"

---

"Here's your payment, Mr. Bishop."

He counts it. Satisfied, he nods. "Pleasure." And then he's gone.

Outside again, headphones in his ears, shades shielding his eyes from the harsh midnight lights. Foot taps, hands in pockets, he looks up the street, down the street, takes off walking. It could be called walking. It's more like choreographed travel. Hips and feet hit to a beat only he knows, shoulders twist between the pedestrians. Past the public buildings, head shifting back and forth to the high hat. Bass drives his shuffling steps beyond the shopping district. Funk guitar, cool and delicious, gives him pause at The Starlight. Glasses drawn down his nose an inch, he looks unhindered at the sign. The neon hips of the dancing girl are hitting the high notes and it's gotta be fate.

Quite a sight, tight white jeans and deep purple blazer, black running shoes. Two heavy pistols, one at each hip. Gloved hand, fingers cut out and he's snapping like a lounge singer of old, before the Event. Taller than average, head above the sea of people, tilted up and still grooving. And he just.

Goes in.

Smell of smoke and sweat. Shrugs out of his jacket, just a sleeveless black shell now, revealing fully inked arms. Headphones useless now, sends them with his jacket to the attendant. Brief pit stop, shot of Cloud from the barkeep. Then it's on to the floor, moving in earnest now. Finds his place in the crowd and he just.

Loses himself.

Partners come and partners go and he's there, sweat slick and eyes shut. Thin all the way up to his lips. Dark flesh, darker where the pictures are. Lost languages and culture wind around his arms, extend to his shoulders and disappear under his shirt. Half of Cheshire Cat visible there, over the shoulder blade, rippling in time, and he just.

Twists like cursive.

'Til the music stops and the lights go down. Jacket over one shoulder, he's down the street. Sun almost upon the city, washing out the riffraff. Past the slums to the docking district, up the ramp. In his ship, collapses there on the sofa, cloying perfume of the vixen with the penchant for larceny flows into his nostrils. She'll be dead by midday, swift post-Event justice. But she's alive in the cushions and he just.

Sleeps like oblivion.

---

"Frank Bishop, here to pick up a warrant."

"One moment, Mr. Bishop."

Frank leaned against the high counter. His hip jutted out, advertising the presence of the hand cannon hanging there. It may or may not have been intentional, hard to tell with Bishop. But the impatient crowd of people who'd been slowly closing in on his personal space all took a step back. As he waited, he took stock of the room, flashed around a couple of lazily friendly smiles, and tapped his foot against the floor, quick and steady.

"Here we are, sir. Fray, Ezekiel. Arrest and transport docs are there."

Frank nodded to the receptionist, took the offered envelope, and pushed away from the counter. The crowd parted for him without prompting and he slipped the headphones hanging around his neck up onto his head. When he stepped out onto the sidewalk outside the Earthling Reception and Diagnostic Center, more commonly known as RAD, he was already bouncing on the balls of his feet and swaying.

He pulled his sunglasses out of his shirt and set them snugly atop his nose. Before making his way on down the street toward his ship, he paused to buy a cup of water from a street vendor. He made no conversation with the salesperson - would have been a useless endeavor with the sound in his headphones cranked all the way up - but paid him plus tip and tipped his head back to down contents of the cup. When he was done, he crushed it in his fist and sent it sailing over his shoulder toward the nearest waste basket.

He missed.

Nine Years Ago


The red planet was still a cold, harsh wasteland, broken up by interconnected bio domes which were the only habitable places to live. Relatively few people chose to live on Mars- most preferred the much more developed moon, or even the crowded, over populated Earth. The ones who did choose to live there usually opted to live in small communities, or, in the case of Maya and her farmer parents, in a small co-op of about fifty people.

It was mid day, and thanks to an orbiting mirror that reflected the sun’s heat and warmth onto the planet, it was quite hot in the bio dome that housed the delta field. In the crop the fifteen year old stood in was tall corn, ripe and ready to be picked. In the far field to her left were tomatoes, hanging heavy on their stakes, and to her right were onions, not quite ready to be pulled from the red soil yet.

The orbiting mirrors heated the glass dome to over ninety degrees during the day, and it was sweltering in an environment that didn’t even allow for a cool breeze every now and again. Maya set down her basket, which was half full of green ears of corn, and wiped the sweat off her brow, leaving a gritty trail of red soil over her light brown skin. The thin shirt she wore was once white, but stained like everything else to a dull reddish brown color. Her clothes hung tiredly from her long, skinny, not yet matured body.

She was alone in the field. The younger kids were still in school, and it was her turn to gather corn and tomatoes. The co-op of farmers had a strict, rotating list of chores. Monday, pick vegetables. Tuesday, clear fields. Wednesday, tend the heaters that melted the ice for their water supply. Thursday, clean the glass roof so enough sunlight shone on the crops. Friday, start all over again. It was a dull, tedious life, but it was absolutely necessary that everyone- even the children- helped out in the co-op. They were all farmers, and they traded for what they couldn’t grow.

“Do you want some water, Maya?” called a deep, friendly voice from behind her. She turned and looked over her shoulder. It was Ezekiel, one of the few people in the co-op that didn’t have a family. He was thirty, but he talked to the fifteen year old like she was his equal, and for that Maya liked him. She nodded her head tiredly and he jogged over, a plastic, reusable bottle in his hands. On Earth, the planet had become overrun with garbage, with landfills taking up precious space. Mars had learned better from their example. Nothing went to waste, nothing was thrown away.

Maya took the bottle gratefully and downed more than half of it before handing it back to him. “Thanks,” she said, and bent to pick up her basket once more. A fair hand on her arm stopped her. She looked up at Ezekiel questioningly.

“You’re beautiful, you know that, Maya?” he asked, an odd look on his face. His skin was much fairer than her own, even after he spent hours a day in the sunlight that streamed down through the glass. His sandy blonde hair was long enough to be pulled into a low ponytail at the back of his neck. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but he had such a live, alert look about him that people always looked twice.

Maya shifted uneasily, tucking a wild curl behind her ear. She didn’t know what to say, and just frowned, unsure. “Um, thanks, Zeke,” she said, twisting her foot into the soil. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently.

“No problem, Maya.”

And he turned and left, as quickly as he had come. Maya went back to her work as usual, but that day was a turning point. It was the first in a long series of events in which Ezekiel Fray began to see her as a woman, and not just a kid. Their relationship would change drastically after that.

---

Present


Maya hated Earth. After her red, organic planet, it’s small populations, and it’s smaller communities, Earth seemed far too crowded. The people there were different; lazy. Were there even farmers on Earth anymore? Was there such a thing as blue collar? No one did an honest day’s work anymore. Earthlings were just junkies living in a virtual world, going from one high to the next. Community meant nothing to them. They wasted, they littered, they screwed the blue planet up even more than it was already.

The whole place smelled like piss. Ever since she’d left Mars for the first time five years ago, she’d had a hard time adjusting. Mars smelled like hot soil and growing plants and heaters melting ice. It looked expansive and red-brown and natural. Earth was artificial and claustrophobic and gray.

She missed Mars, her home. But she wouldn’t go back there, not till she found Zeke.

Zeke and Zakar, she remembered. The inseparable duo. Wasn’t exactly the case anymore. She hadn’t seen him for years, though she heard whispers of him all the time. She didn’t understand how a man like that could go from humble farmer to felon. He’d fooled her, he really had. Ezekiel was not the man she had thought he was back when she was a young and naïve teenager.

She’d been chasing him for more than four years, but he was hard to pin down. Zeke, the reason Maya became a bounty hunter. Nothing but a girl of the land before, now chasing crooks and criminals among the stars. Finding out exactly how low the scum of the universe would go.

It wasn’t just the criminals who disgusted her, though. People walked around the cities of Earth, buying cheap Chinese food out of one-time-use cartons, then throwing them away. Didn’t they realize people were living on top of landfills? These people added to their problems blindly. Earthlings… they were just so stupid!

As if the fates meant to play with her, a man who had just exited RAD tossed a disposable cup behind him. Maya watched it arc, and it was obvious it wasn’t going to make it into the rubbish bin. She reached out and deftly caught it in her right hand, looking at the article angrily. She crunched it in her hand and glared at the back of the man still walking away, an odd beat to his steps.

“Hey!” she shouted above the crowd. “How about not throwing your shit on the ground?”

There was no sign that he had even heard her, and Maya bristled, then realized he was wearing headphones. She rolled her eyes and jogged to catch up with him, grasping the cords of his headphones and plucking them out of his ears.

“Hey, I’m talking to you.” she said sharply, fire in her eyes. “I said, don’t throw your shit on the ground.” She thrust the cup toward him, then caught sight of the folder in his hands. Her eyes widened in surprise and she spluttered.

“You’re looking for Zeke?” she asked, then backtracked. “I mean, Ezekiel Fray? You’re a bounty hunter?”

Frank gave a start when the young woman tugged his headphones from his ears, music and footsteps both skidding to an abrupt halt, narrowly catching them in his hands before they clattered to the ground. He frowned at her in stunned silence momentarily, eyes flickering rapidly between her face, his cup, and the envelope in his hands, over and over again.

Finally, he shrugged. "Yeah," he replied. His voice wasn't deep or high pitched, just sort of regular, but it had a certain quality to it that sounded like weariness, like a smooth shot of Cloud filtered through gravel. In direct contrast to this effect, his tone was airy and light. He quirked a bemused smile at the woman. "Do you know Fray?"

He repositioned the headphones to hang around his neck and with his newly freed hand, took the disposable cup from her. He cast a look around over her head, spotted a much closer bin, and tossed it with a bounce, like he'd seen players do on old recordings of pre-Event sports. This time, it sailed into the garbage, though it bounced against the rim before doing so.

Bemused smile turned satisfied and he turned his attention back to the woman, eyebrows raised, patiently awaiting her answer.

Maya opened her mouth to bite out a sharp response, but stopped herself at the last moment. “I’ve heard of him.” She replied. “Hasn’t everyone? He’s all over the tele-casts.”

She didn’t want to admit she had a personal tie to the criminal. It seemed unprofessional for bounty hunters to hunt those they had personal issues with. She kept that fact securely hidden with her cold, blasé nature. She was quick to ignite, though. A long, lean but strong arm lifted and she put her hand on her hip, utterly unamused with him. Though she had grown up since her days on Mars, she still had the same long, skinny body. Arms that could till soil, legs that could run forever.

She looked more exotic than the Earthlings in the area they were in, though she’d have fit right in other places with her butterscotch skin and wild, chocolate colored curls. Her black eyes were hard and assessed the bounty hunter in front of her carefully.

“Get yourself another assignment.” She told him. “I’m already looking for Fray. And trust me, if I can’t find him, you don’t stand a chance in hell.”

Her eyes traveled down his body and she gave him an unimpressed look. He looked too wiry to pack much of a punch, and he wasn’t exactly intimidating with those headphones in his ears, oblivious to the world. Ezekiel could have walked right past and he probably wouldn’t have noticed. At least he had a gun, but who didn’t pack some heat these days? Subconsciously, her hand sought the glock on her hip, brushing her fingers over it’s holster.

“I’m going to be the one to bring him in, so find your own target, okay? I don’t need some second-rate bounty hunter getting in my way.” Strong words from a beginner.

His eyes narrowed briefly, lips pursing together as if he were trying to discern something vitally important. When he did this, his chin crumpled into a canvas of dimples and the lines around his eyes became more pronounced. He looked older than his twenty-nine years. Then his face relaxed and he looked much, much younger.

He tracked the movement of her hand as it stroked over her Glock, quirking a brow at this with something like amusement. Suddenly, his smile was back and just when it seemed like a very real possibility that he may have gone permanently mute, he spoke.

"Second rate?" Frank was anything but. He had a curious methodology and it typically seemed to the uneducated observer that he more stumbled into his bounties than he actually worked for them, but he had a reputation for getting results. In addition, he was known for being a 'loony,' a pejorative term for citizens inhabiting the Moon during a minor air filtering catastrophe some fifteen years back that left one particular settlement almost entirely dead. The survivors mostly went insane. Anybody's guess whether Frank fit into that category.

There were rarely any casualties reported on his assignments, a particular accomplishment because he made a habit of only accepting dangerous targets that came with the authority to use extreme measures. Maybe he liked the challenge. Maybe it was something else entirely. Frank rarely talked about anything that didn't involve Earthling culture and personal convictions were no exception.

"Sorry, lady, no can do. I've got unfinished business with Fray." He mimicked her own gesture, but more deliberately, by dropping his hand to his large, custom revolver and patting it. He flashed her the same lazily friendly smile that he directed at everyone who crossed his path. "But if you want, you can watch when I bring him in."

There were two things in the universe Maya did not like. Actually, there were far more than two, but two came to mind as she looked over the man before her. The litterer, the bounty hunter, the man after Fray when Fray rightfully belonged to her.

One- arrogance, and this guy reeked of it. She could feel it rolling off of him in palpable waves. He thought he was the shit; something special.

Two- Littering. A huge pet-peeve of hers that had a lot to do with her upbringing, and this man just threw his garbage around, expecting other people to clean it up after him. Egotistical pig, she thought.

She jutted her hip out, crossing her arms over her chest. She was clothed in a worn wife-beater and dark, army-green cargo pants that revealed her tall, tomboyish figure. It was matched with a stern, unwavering countenance that seemed to contradict her soft features.

“I don’t think that’ll be happening.” She told him matter-of-factly. “’Cuz, see, I’m going to be the one to get Fray. I’ve been after him, and I don’t give a shit about your unfinished business.”

She raised her eyebrows and smiled. “But, I’ll let you watch when I collect him, okay?” she asked, mocking his previous statement.

Frank withstood the woman's inspection of him, smile unwavering as he stood perfectly still beneath her regard. When she folded her arms, he mimicked her movements, crossing his own arms over his chest and sticking his own hip out in the opposite direction.

"Sold," he said. "Will we be taking your ship or mine?"

She'd said very clearly, 'I'll let you watch when I collect him.' In order for that to happen, obviously they were going to need to go together. For someone like him, it was as good as a formal invitation. Frank had teamed up with other hunters in the past, though such partnerships usually ended in nothing short of disaster. He was an annoying shipmate, always cranking the music and shutting off the gravity simulator so he could scrub the ceilings and the walls. He was obsessively clean, though his appearance didn't prove much of a testament to that fact. His hair was unruly, his jacket rumpled, and his jeans were frayed at the pockets and hems. His ship, however, was spotless. Small, banged up, in terrible need of a scheduled maintenance, but spotless.

"I should warn you, mine's lacking in space. But the sound system is top of the line."

Maya’s mouth dropped open a little and she quickly shut it, barking out a derisive laugh. This man was mad! He must’ve been certifiably insane! There was something unnerving in his smile though, in the way he stood so calmly under her scrutiny when others would have blanched or fidgeted or stammered to fill the silence. But not him. No, this was a tough one. Or maybe just a little off his rocker.

“Are you crazy?” she asked, with a flabbergasted smirk. “I’m not working with you!”

What had she said that gave him the idea she wanted to team up with him? She didn’t even know who this guy was, other than some random bounty hunter who was after her target. But then she began to see things from another angle. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, deeply frowning. A deep line formed between her eyebrows when she frowned, and her eyes became unfocused as she thought it over. She’d been looking for Zeke for a long time with little success, she admitted to herself. It wasn’t that she was bad at her job, but she was still fairly new to it and didn’t offer intimidation as a factor, which sometimes made things hard. It could be hard to wring information out of the unwilling with nothing but toothpick arms and icy stares at her disposal.

Maybe a partnership was a good thing, even if he was nuts. He could help her bring Ezekiel in, and they would both get what they wanted. Sure, it would rob the moment of a little of it’s sweetness to have another guy dragging Fray in, but she’d still be getting her revenge, getting the last word. Finally she looked at him and sighed unwillingly, a very unsure look on her light brown face. “Oh, alright then. Yours, I suppose.”

Her’s was a used piece of shit, a relic a farmer on Mars had given her that she had to incessantly repair. It almost fell into the category of ‘antique’.

Frank nodded, flashing a smile that could only be described as triumphant. It was a small victory, of a sort. This woman had meant to knock him off of Fray's trail and now she was going to help him apprehend the criminal. He unwrapped a long, dark arm from around his chest and offered his hand to her in formal introduction.

"My name is Frank Bishop," he said. "I depart tonight from public platform seven. When should I expect you?"

He didn't offer any more information about where they were headed. This was a common practice among hunters. If Frank had a lead and leaked it on faith, chances were hunters would come crawling out of the woodwork and make a mess of his search before he ever left Earth's atmosphere.

Presumably, the young woman would need to gather her belongings off her own ship and make arrangements to have it stored while she was away. Hunting a target like Ezekiel Fray could take weeks, even months, and though it wasn't expensive to dock a ship for an extended period of time, if payment arrangements weren't made it would undoubtedly be declared abandoned and sold off for parts before the two returned to the planet.

“Maya Zakar,” she said, extending her hand and grasping his. She noted he had a firm, confident, no-frills-attached handshake. After a perfunctory clasp she let go and nodded, putting her hands on her hips as she looked around, trying to decide the best course of action. Her piece of shit ship needed to be stored, and she needed to gather her few belongings. It wouldn’t take her too long, though.

“I’ll meet you there around six, then.” She said, turning away. She hadn’t taken more than five steps when she swung around. “I swear to god, Frank Bishop, if you’re not there when I get back, it’ll be you I’m after, forget Fray.”

And she ran off, darting into the crowd, barely maintaining her balance with the amount of forward momentum she had going. She was almost running parallel to the streets in a precarious sprint, but she was quick as lightning, like a sudden wildfire or the brief, blinding flashes that came off the mirrors orbiting her home planet. She missed the dull sun and the red dirt, the arid climate and the hard work. You’ve got a job to do, she told herself, steeling her resolve. You’ve got a man to catch.

She took her clunker of a ship to a storage dock and paid the man, who took her paper bills greedily, ignoring the sour look on her face, and she slung her bag over her shoulder, checking once more she had everything she would need. She had the essentials, she decided, and it was best to pack light. Two changes of clothes- one for warm climates, one for cold- a toothbrush, comb, necessary toiletries, her wallet and a few bottles of medicine, just in case.

She repositioned the worn backpack and trudged back onto the main street. Five thirty, just enough time for her to walk to the public platforms by six if she hurried and wasn’t delayed. She ate cold noodles out of a thermos on her way with a pair of chopsticks, and her long legs carried her the distance across town quickly. She arrived at Platform Seven at 5:59. The ship was there, she noted with relief. The strange Frank Bishop hadn’t left without her.

“Anyone home?” she called as she approached the ship, shoving her thermos and chopsticks back into her bag. “It’s Maya.”