CHAPTER 127 - NOT TAKING A HINT

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It hasn't even been a day yet and I've seen things, technology that will make earth's look like it was made in the stone age.

Even on planets that look way worse than ours, they had technology that eclipsed ours. So much so that it made Fury's prized Phase 2 look basic.

We were dropped off in a place between sector GN-6308 and a Nova military outpost which was a den of criminals and a budding underworld despite its proximity with Nova's military outpost. 

"From a backwater planet to the underworld. At least we're moving higher." Pietro said as we rode in a subway to the city below the one above. 

"Why are we here, Sif?" I asked. 

She replied. "To lease out a ship and see if we can get another story of what happened that caused the fight that has half the universe scared of a universal-wide war."

"And you guys might want to change your appearance because races like yours are quite rare after all. We don't want the focus now when we haven't even started our mission." Sif gave us one last piece of advice and with a few taps and configurations, Wanda and Pietro changed their look while I just went back to default and switched the color to a dark blue. 

To us we remained unchanged but the others will see a group of a normal bounty hunting group, nothing standing out. 

"Both of you stay here and see if you can pick up anything, Simons will come with me as I need his help." Sif said and led us into what looked like an art museum mixed with a stripper's club and a casino. 

We went through a few backdoors and met up with the guy Sif wanted to lease a ship from. 

"Zena? Now that's a rare face to see. Is this a good or bad omen?" The owner of whatever this place is was a buff man with protruding exoskeletons in dirty overalls fixing a small pod. 

"I want a ship."

"Of course you do. That's the only reason anyone would be on this floor in the first place." He said plainly and signaled one of his workers to take over the repairs, and started inquiring Sif of the specs of the ship she needed. 

"Switching up from your usual fit, that dingy thing? Or are you trying to impress a guy?" He looked over at me and whistled. "Zathorians? That's an acquired taste. An excellent one too."

"Do you mind hurrying up?" I asked him and he smirked at me. 

"Hold on for a bit, man. Patience means how long you last, that's why they say patience is important." He said, adding his own version of a patience quote. 

He brought up a holographic contract that Sif signed without thinking too much. 

"Here's the key. It'll be rolled up by the time you get to the surface. Now I have a beauty to attend to if you mind."

We left his repair shop and went up a couple floors only to arrive in a room of chaos as blasters, bullets and magic flew around haphazardly. 

"What the hell happened here?" Sif asked in a measured voice. "Let's go."

I called Pietro and Wanda over and listened to them narrating how the fight started with a guy of the same race as Wanda and Pietro's disguise walking up to them and trying to have Wanda join him and when she refused coldly, his first reactions was to punch Pietro which resulted in him losing both his legs… and then chaos followed. 

"Not like I can expect anything else from lowlifes like them." Sif said as left for the exit only for someone to call us from behind. 

I tilted my head to the side to get a look of who made us stop without turning back and guessing from the way people were scurrying away and quieting down as he took composed strides towards us. 

This guy was strong, no doubt. 

That was my honest thought about the guy and the way Sif's hand stealthily edged towards her sword as we got surrounded was proof. 

"I've never seen one of their kind being a speedster so my bet is experiments or bio-upgrade, but that aside, your friend there called us lowlifes and all I see are gentlemen in this fine establishment. Am I right?"

"Yeah!!!!" 

"Tell them, Gork!" 

The audience were hyped up and his crew had their eyes trained on us, mostly on Pietro and Sif, hands already on their weapons currently being pointed at us. 

Seeing the crowd's reaction, the guy, Gork, spread his arm out wide. "You see? We are all fine gentlemen here. I don't want trouble, no-no. We talk this out like men, yes?"

The situation was already as annoying as it could get and I was heeding Sif's words of not starting trouble just to not complicate our journey going forward or else I would have reduced them all to dust. 

"The point?" I asked with a voice that showed just how fed up with this farce I was. 

"Quite an attitude, man, but I understand. Just have your friend point out who she was calling a lowlife so we can identify that person and kick him out. We will be square that way." He said. 

I turned back to Sif and asked as we were running out of time. "Any problems if I kill them all?"

"Better to avoid that or we'd be hard pressed to get a ship as easy as this." She said. Our voices weren't low so everyone around us heard what we said, including Gork too. 

"Hey, are you looking down on me?" He stopped forward with a frown on his face, almost a head taller than me.

"Kindly fuck off, will ya?" I said and the moment he tried grabbing my neck, I grabbed him while his hands passed through me. 

His eyes turned white and rolled up as he died after I severed everything in his neck; veins, muscle, spine, windpipe and all. 

"Let's go." I said led my group out of the place while everyone else looked on dumbly at the dead Gork. 

The ship was in a hangar on the surface and with how hasty Sif felt as we went back to the subway, I made an educated guess of possible scenarios that caused her current state. 

"They are coming for us, aren't they?" She nodded. 

I gave Pietro a look which he understood and his body flickered for an imperceptible instance. 

"Small number. 42."

I then asked Sif the same question I asked her before killing Gork and her answer this time was different. 

"This isn't on anyone's business or private property so apart from the authorities, no one will care about it. Do you want to kill them all?" She asked after we got inside the train taking us back to the surface along with our attackers. 

"Yes."

She cracked a grin at me and unsheathed two short blades. "I was apprehensive about fighting inside the building because we'll be instantly surrounded by all the forces in the underworld, but that's not a concern now."

Of course the warrior from the battle maniac race will find this exciting but at least she knows when she's over her head or in an unfavorable situation. 

The doors to the compartment we were in were opened from both sides by an angry mob which scared the other passengers who had been sitting to the other compartments. 

I took a seat which earned me a confused look from Sif but I just waved her off. "You guys are enough. I am overkill."

°°°°°

We exited the subway as spotless as we went in as long as one ignored the three pairs of bloody footprints trail that Sif, Wanda and Pietro left on the ground with every step they took to the hangar. 

"Someone's bound to put up a bounty on our head for that squabble." Sif said but the rest of us just shrugged. 

The hangar only had one craft in it, the one Sif booked. 

"This thing gotta cost more than a few zeros, right?"

"It normally costs around the same prize as a large solar system. That's approximately five times the system Midgard is in , just so you know."

"By the gods! How rich does one need to be to buy a solar system? Maybe I should take up bounty hunting as a side job after this."

Leaving Pietro to himself to marvel at the ridiculous extent that money has gotten in this part of the universe, I took control of the ship and completely downloaded its schematic before adding it to the other blueprints I've acquired since leaving Asgard. 

"Building this thing ain't cheap. Maybe it is for T'Challa but definitely not for Tony if they are buying the materials."

I kicked the ship into motion and took a few minutes to get a real feel of it before kicking it into hyperspeed and tearing through the planet's atmosphere with little to no resistance. 

"Hey Simons, I've been meaning to ask but are you a machine or a mix of both?" Sif asked as she took the secondary pilot seat next to mine since we were alone as Wanda and Pietro were busy checking out the ship. 

"I can be either, both and none." I answered. 

"Huh?" 

I then gave the simplified version which also is the longer one. "I mean I can switch between being a machine if I want, a human - like I mostly do - , or a mix of technology and living flesh. Just see me as a normal human with the power to become a super durable robot if I want to be." 

"Oh, now I see. That makes a lot more sense if you put it that way."

Her ridiculous reply made me shoot her a deadpan. "You have a sword that can cut through virtually anything if you're strong enough, friends with a demi-god, a real life mythical warrior and you guys have a magic Uber express that shoots you to anywhere you want to go in the universe and there's something about me that doesn't make sense?"

I don't know why she found it funny but she did. 

"Okay, truce. Let's just say that there are some parts of us that don't really make sense, hmm?"

I rolled my eyes but agreed nonetheless. "Not a fair truce but I guess we can call it a tie."

[Initiating spatial tunneling in 3…2…1]

[Sequence initiated] 

[Spatial tunneling successful]