• Mature • The Citrus Deception - Part 1

[Zip]

18th Zi'da 717

Hate Zi’da.

Mutual: Zi’da hates back too.

Weather sucks up all the good in the world and pours in the bad - with interest. No bank would ever have a crying customer if Zi’da stored gold, but no. world was never that good. World was a bronze nel printed in gold - not worth the skin that covers it, but still worth protecting. Still worth hoarding a 100 of them in the silm hope someone was addicted to spare change and willing to trade. That’s optimism. At least that’s what my partner who couldn’t find a point used to tell me.

My dead partner. Who died. Fatally. All the good inside me perished with her in that alley that day. I was 5. I remember the way I held her hand as she bled out in the shit-infested stinkhole. “Be better,” she said, her hideous blue eyes the only blemish on her perfect face, her messy black hair inexplicably gleaming in the moonlight. “Be better than this stinkhole.”

I was. I am. Didn’t need to try.

Because it’s Etzos. A town rotten with ghouls who would sell out their mothers and children trained to embrace crime before they could walk. A town that spelled Danger D-A-N-N-I-E and would try to knife you if you corrected them. This town was bad, always bad, with a stink so hard Rhakros itself packed up and moved to a foreign seaboard, but it was our bad. We worked with it. We had it under control.

Then they came: TorvynCorp

They wheeled in on a carriage of sin in the name of commerce and told us of the greatness that Etzos could become. They killed the last shred of goodness in this gutter of rot the day they gave the people what they thought they wanted.

Their very own Vudas. It meant Visionary Utility Domain Assistant. Two short syllables with long implications.

Teleporting, anti-magical, telekinetic personal assistants mass produced in the magical grave pits of TorvynCorp in the vineyards that may or may not be Rharne. Who knows. Who cares. We got fucked either way. The Vudas killed the etzori working class within trials of activation through sheer efficiency, destroying any need for working. In a month, the paying mage lost their place in society, obsolete now.

Just like that.

We still don’t know whether these things will go rogue.

That’s a lie: of course they will. It’s Etzos.

Now all we see is Vudas. Go to a barber shop, there’s a Vuda cutting your hair without moving a muscle. Go to the theatre, it’s Vuda up the entire cast. Go to a restaurant, you’re being served by Vudas. Prisoner of war? Surprise, surprise, it’s Vuda here to choke the life out of you with unreleased magics.

Go to a brothel-

No. I’m not proud of what I am, but I do have standards.

What happened to the rest of the mages you ask? You didn’t. You don’t care. Neither does Etzos. Cast them aside when the Vudas rolled in - and why shouldn’t they? Loyalty’s a sham. Some died in the ditches, unable to earn coin. Some moved on to greener pastures like Athart or Augiery. Some probably joined the Vudas in the brothel-

Stop. Stop thinking.

-And some adapted.

Enter me.

My name is Robinson ‘Stone’ Stark and I am a private detective.

Messy idiot, refuses to listen to reason, often a crybaby

And ex-defier.

The sign says open, my heart says closed for business.

[Zip]

It started, as all my days seem to do, with a lady.

Beautiful like wildfire was beautiful: hot, uncontrollable, very bad for exposed dry vegetation. She had legs. Don’t know what that has to do with anything, but I would like to make a note for posterity in case anyone thinks she’s an Ithecal. She wore a coat too expensive to afford after the Vudas took over the economy, and the way she flitted her eyes reminded me of the way my partner looked at me in better days-

Before the alley.

One last unimportant detail: the lady was also a tunawa.

She took a full 15 bits to trudge across my office floor, climb my desk, reapply her makeup, and strum up that tiny lady charm that she seemed to have misplaced after the long hike. I pretended not to see her as was tradition, feigning surprise at the sight of the tiny lady that had suddenly materialized on my desk.

“We’re closed, lady.” I said, puffing on my pipe. The many perils of my life had driven me to arcs of vice to cope. “Try again tomorrow.”

“I made it open,” the lady insisted, a small, coy smile on her face. She leaned both hands onto the hand on my desk. I recoiled at her soft touch. I swore I would never love again. “I think you’ll want to hear this one, Mister Robin-”

“It’s Stone. Just Stone. Robinson’s dead.”

“Pretty spry for a deceased guy, Mister Stone.” She held out a tiny hand. I didn’t take it. That was, looking back, my first mistake of the week. “I’m Vin.”

“Okay.” He picked her up by her tiny nettle-like hair and tossed her out the open door. “Bye Vin.”

And that was the end of it. I spent the rest of my trial as I usually did: drinking, smoking,staring into the fire and seeing my old friend crackle lifelessly, not a single word offered, and railing to any passer-by’s out the window below about the destitution of the post-Vuda era.

If only.

15 bits later, I faced a similar scene: tiny lady Vin on my desk, only this time huffing and puffing as if a tiger had chased her through a vegetarian tavern.

“You have to help me, Stone.” Vin said between breaths, her hands on her knees, her head bowed over. “I’ve got no one else to turn to.”

“Lots of eyes in the city, lady.”

“Not anymore. Vudas moving into the business. You’re the last of the good ones.”

I cursed under my breath. Not an industry left unturned by these market-killing assistants.

“Same words to you: Not anymore.”

“Please.” There was some desperation in her voice that made my heart stirred. Be better, were her words. I gave it a shot. I listened.

As if.

“Nope. Get out.” I said.

“10 million Nels.”

Okay. NOW I listened.

“I don’t entertain grifters, lad-”

She pulled out a domain bag and dropped enough proof for me to take notice.

“-The job?”

Vin took a deep breath. I had a new respect for her in that moment after her next sentence. I would have never been able to articulated the loss she had to tell me:

“My lemon tree was killed in a jealous crime of passion. I need you to find the culprit.”

[Zip]

“I’m sorry.” I meant it. Death was life in Etzos but the bond between a Tunawa and the tree she haunted? Made a strong marriage look Rynian in comparison “If there’s anything I can do for you-”

“No,” Vin said, hugging her tiny wood-like chest. “No, not you too. T-they said you were an ass. They said you were always an ass. N-not you too.”

“Lady?”

“I am tired,” Vin said, her squeaky voice rising. “So tired of people asking me whether I’m okay. I thought you of all people would understand.”

“Why?”

“They said you were a Defier before the Vudas came-”

“Lady, I’m sorry -or not sorry if you want me to be- for your loss, but don’t touch a line we’ll both regret.”

“Listen to your own advice, Stone.”

“What can I say? I’m a hypocrite.”

“I just want this done.” Vin said. She drew herself up to her full intimidating height, dwarfing the quill on his desk. “I want justice served and I want that 10 million to go to not just finding the murderer but doing what needs to be done. Are we clear, Stone?”

“Crystal. Which, incidentally, is a stone too. Any suspects?”

“The whole of little Tunawa,” Vin said. The colony of Tunawas that accidentally migrated on an insane Sohr Khal driven to a flight of madness by his owner’s horribly itchy beard. Stranded in Etzos, they worked behind the scenes as the shadow leaders of some of the largest drug cartels in Etzos. “They were always jealous of lemony. Her leaves were so green and healthy, her fruit so luscious and juicy. We used to sit by the window sill and talk about what we would do with our futures together. I wanted to go see the world, she was content with the silent comfort of our sill-” Vin’s eyes watered again, her tiny tunawa tears like a damned dam waiting to explode out and drown a small village of renegade Naer rebels sworn to do good.

“You don’t have to, lady.”

“Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do, Stone!” The fire made me respect her more… Or want to put her to one. “There’s also the etzori agricultural club, who think lemony’s their messiah.”

“Not much of a cult-”

“Hobby club.”

“-If they kill their messiah.”

“So he may rise again 7 trials hence and cleanse the world.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“Just find the culprit, Stone.” Vin said, her little eyes burning with black hate. “And make him a victim.”

[Djinn]

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Comments: What the hell is happening here?! Well written, and I would totally read a novel like this. But... What the hell? I... I don't even... I hate you. You write non-sequitur nonsense too well.