There is no such thing as magic.
Aliens doesn't exist.
The moon landing is a hoax.
Ben Franklin was secretly a woman.
These are some of the dumbest things said in modern times.
Odd, how there are still people who refuse to acknowledge magic as a real thing, even though its existence has been acknowledged by the public since the 70's. England was filled with it. Heck, Arthur Pendragon being the prime-minister of the country should eliminate any doubt! How could anyone say; nope, don't buy it.
Well, you could just say that magic was just science that hadn't been explained yet. And that was the truth… to an extent.
And the magical creatures, like elves, goblins, unicorns and simurghs? Well, the usual rationalization for these was that they were aliens who had lived on the planet for some time now.
Annahitatata was an alien... of a sort.
She was an alien in this country. She was an unwanted foreigner in America. And like most of the fair-folk who lived in Twilight City, she had her home in the hidden village in the sewer of the human city. Here they lived in peace from the humans (as long as they paid the protection fee to the human crime lord known as the Empress) and most of them had little interest in the world above. But some did. Some entered the streets of Twilight in order to mingle with the humans.
Disgraceful!
Annahitatata was not one of them. Yes, she was about to enter the surface, but only in order to get someone, and once she had found that person and talked him into getting down the hole with her, she wanted to go underground and hope that she would never have to have anything to do with the human city again.
She got up of the manhole once she was sure that no one would notice her small figure. As she stood on the street, she yelled:
"Gregodiarrhea! I know you can hear me!"
Of course he could. It was in his blood. What made their kind such great bankers and traders was, among other things, their great ears. They could hear a coin drop to the ground miles away, or hear the slight sound of someone attempting to pick-pocketing them.
Not that Gregodiarrhea had ever been interested in making money...
Four minutes passed. But then, from a distance, a vertical could be heard. It came closer and closer to Annahitatata, then stopped with its wheels screeching. It was a taxi. The driver came out. A short man, a tiny bit taller than Annahitatata. He was dressed in dirty clothes and he was wearing an old hat in order to hide his pointy ears.
"... Mother?" Greg said. "What you be here?"
"Gregodiarrhea..." The goblin woman couldn't believe how terrible her son smelled. No goblin with any self-respect would allow himself to be in such an unclean condition. It would be bad for business. "Can we... I need to talk to you. Are there a place where we can talk? It's about your father."
"... Sure. Okay." Greg opened the car-door. "Jump in."
As the goblins drove away, Kenneth came. He and his... supplier had agreed to meet by the very same manhole as Annahitatata had used. Beginning to get nervous, Kenneth began to bite his fingers.
Not nails. Fingers.
He started with chewing on his thumb. Then his middle finger. Then his pinkie.
“Hey, PSST!” Someone lifted the cover of the manhole. It was the leprechaun. “You, fat human!”
“Finally…” Kenneth sighed in relief as he took off his backpack. “You got the stuff?”
“Aye. I’m no cheating goblin, lad.” The leprechaun held a small wooden box in his left hand. He opened it and revealed a small yellow rock. “You have me gold?”
Kenneth opened the backpack. It was filled with gold. They traded.
“This is WAY to cool!” Kenneth practically drooled as he looked at his newly bought magical artefact as if it had been a dirty magazine. “’I can’t wait till the guys see this baby!”
“Remember, this is powerful magic you are dealing with. Timestones are nothing to play around with.”
Kenneth didn’t hear a thing and went home, smiling like an idiot. Appropriate, since that was exactly what he was.
Kenneth almost bumped into a tall woman dressed in a brown coat. That would have been a fatal mistake, as said woman was in a bad mood.
Sarah had to find a way to get to that damn cat. Mr. Rabbit was losing his patience. Not that weird, as his business as Twilight’s provider of underground gambling had seen better days. An awful lot of money had been invested in that Minotaur event and the Burrow was in ruins. Repairing it was not only too expensive, it was pointless. Unless he could find a way to continue his business and still be able to pay the Empress her 20 percent, someone else would be allowed to take over the gambling marked.
Sarah had suggested a boat for the new casino.
Mr. Rabbit suggested that she should keep her dumb advises for herself, unless she could bring him a skinned Cat.
She was honestly unsure if he meant it literally.
The smart thing would normally have been to jump ship and find someone else who would hire her as muscle. But Mr. Rabbit did not like it when people quit. He took it rather personal. And bullets wouldn’t do her much good against a giant boot that was about to step on her.
So she had to kill Cat, the sooner the better.
She had until recently manage to track him by the use of a scanner that could detect the electronics in his suit. But that didn’t work anymore. Either because he had removed all tech from his tuxedo or maybe because he had replaced the tech. either way, she had to try something else.
Maybe she could find someone with a connection to him?
There was a time where she almost had him, but he had been saved by the famous unlicensed taxi of Twilight. It wasn’t much but it was all she had.
Everyone knew that the mysterious taxi and the even more mysterious driver was nowhere to be found. The car only appeared when someone desperately needed a ride and had the cash to pay for it. He either made the car disappear or used some sort of advanced cloaking spell.
But… what is a taxi driver, really?
A regular Joe. Even if his car was enchanted.
So… what do you do when you are a regular Joe who had a long day and was done with a good day’s work? Where do you go? Home? Or maybe… maybe you go somewhere where everyone knows your name?
Get a beer, meet some of the guys, that sort of stuff.
So… Where would a magical taxi driver go to get himself a drink?
Hannigan's Bar and Grill was the best bet.
Chances were that the driver was a magical creature, an illegal immigrant on top of that (like 80% of the fair-folk in America). Hannigan's had a reputation of having rather… odd customers.
So if the driver went to Hannigan's for a beer, then he probably had a drinking buddy. So… who wanted to be chatty with some most likely odd man? Who was the one guy who was so friendly to everyone in the bar that it was practically a crime?
After telling the barkeep that she was a private eye and letting him keep the change, he told her that Luigi Mario was her best bet.
So she tracked down Luigi Mario.
And he was stupid enough to tell her that he wouldn’t sell out a buddy once she asked about the driver. If he had been smarter, he would have pretended not to know what she was talking about.
Sarah entered her apartment. She took off her coat, revealing her black and white body armour, then made sure that her bunny ears and domino mask sat on right. She took off the blindfold of Luigi. He looked at her. He was clearly terrified. And why shouldn’t he be? After all, he was tied to a chair, had his mouth covered in tape and had been alone in an unknown apartment for 5 hours. And in front of him stood what looked like a murderous playboy bunny. AND his pants were wet.
“Well, Luigi?” The Gunbunny asked. “Ready to talk?”
Luigi nodded as if his life depended on it.
It did.
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