Masa con Papas: Proxy's Memory

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 You follow the other rabbit as she leads you back inside to the main room. Opera is half knocked out on the  bar setup. The smell of breakfast being cooked from the other room makes your ears perk up a little.

Manzana: That smells good…

Mercury: Yeah? Fenton’s pretty good at what he does.. Pretty sure he cooks for him and his partner.

Mercury: They’ll show up sooner or later, busy handling some stuff with the job coordinator.

Manzana: Job coordinator? It’s not any of you?

Mercury: Nope. But it’s someone I trust enough to know that we’re in good hands.

Mercury: Granted, there’s some choices I’m wondering about…

Manzana: Like what?

Mercury: There were a bunch of other folks who didn’t get brought in somehow. In general I’m not sure why we’re not trying to track things down before the auction happens.

Manzana: As someone who has a little insight into these events, the amount of security around them is incredibly high. Many sensitives keeping watch, storage is kept incredibly tight and hard to track to begin with. The rich refuse to part with their payday so easy.

Mercury: Feel like calling potential world enders and a corpse a payday is…

Manzana: Mm. I don’t particularly care for working with them myself. Most of the time relics like these are tossed at folks like me to tinker and tear apart until we can reproduce and streamline them.

Mercury: Define streamline here.

Manzana: Marketable. Most of the time it’s quite a bit of nothing but as I’ve been informed.. Immortality is a new one. They’ll fuck it up somehow for sure but I don’t think I like the idea of people with deep pockets and power living forever.

Mercury: Death’s one of the few things in this world that they can’t dodge.

Manzana: Exactly. That should never change.

Mercury: Mm… 

The rabbit shifts her eyes over to check on Opera.

Mercury: You doing okay there?

Opera: I’m tired….

Mercury: You want us to drag you to your room?

Opera: No…

Mercury: Fair enough. You met Manzana here yet?

Opera: Mm? Not really.

She turns to get a good look at you. You’re a little nervous after earlier.

Opera: Hearts…

Manzana: Pardon?

Opera: Your eyes, they got little hearts. They’re glowing and everything.

Manzana: Mm…

Opera: You’ve gotten the rough end of a contract. 

Manzana: It’s not so bad these days…

Opera: Mm… It’s one of those things that gets easier overtime I think.

Opera: Not always because you feel better but like…

Opera:  Because you’ve grown used to it. You learn to live with a lot of it.

Manzana: Mmm.. Take it that you’ve got a bit of your own?

Opera: Only a little. Managed to cut ties with things early enough that I’ve been better off than most.

Opera: Though I think everyone here’s got a little something going on at this point.

Manzana: I’ve noticed.

Opera: It’s nice though. Not everyone going through it but…

Manzana: Everyone around you understands.

Opera: Exactly.

Manzana: I can appreciate that honestly.

Opera: How long?

Manzana: Me? Uh… 17 I think

Manzana: I started messing with contracts earlier than that, but 17 is when I got deep enough in one to mark me. Left me with a proxy and all.

Opera: 15. Started messing with magic since Middle School but I got deep into stuff around 15 and that’s how I met everyone here.

Manzana: One of those generational things I think. Witchcraft became way easier to get into over the past couple of decades.

Manzana: This region’s always had local circles but I remember a huge boom when I was around 10.

Opera: For me I just didn’t have much else going on. Small town life.

Manzana: If only.

Opera: What about you?

Manzana: Grew up half my life on the streets, then got picked up by a knight from overseas.

Manzana: Got me housing, education, work. Didn’t let me have anything free though.

Opera: Ah, one of those?

Manzana: Yeah….

Opera: That means you’re uh…

Opera: A squire right? That’s what they call folks like that?

Manzana: No, never was really given any sort of title like that. Not really a knight either.

Manzana: Witchcraft’s more my thing.

Opera: Another one for the pile. Between you, Charon, and Fenton we got enough to run a lab.

Manzana: What’s that mean?

Mercury: She’s calling you a nerd.

Your ears flop down a bit.

Manzana: Nerd…?

Opera: I mean… you’re a cool one! You’re like…

Opera: The popular mean girl who secretly likes anime. You know?

Manzana: I don’t know what that is…?

Opera: Like, you’re cool but you got a secret geeky side.

Manzana: Maybe…

Opera: That’s a lot of my friends though.

Manzana: Huh…

Opera: And you’re cooler than your cousins so…

Manzana: That’s really not hard.

Mercury: It’s not? But we love them anyway.

Mercury: Speaking of, you two mind doing me a favor?

Opera: What’s up?

Mercury: Just remembered we’re out of juice and coffee. There’s a convenience store down the street.

Opera: On it! You want to come Manzana? Want to talk to you a bit more, get some air too.

Do it.

I was going to…

Manzana: Yeah, sure.