Hot Soba Showdown.
07 Mar 2022Vodan
Clothes shopping; the guy did that most places he stopped, but this time he wasn’t spending like a woman with her husbands’ credits, he was buying extras for his pressure suits. As it was Creamy, the gear was colourful and coordinated, but still managed to be garishly bright. It didn’t look like his target was planning on staying on Solo Orbiter for long; Creamy had ordered some stuff from the commodities market and then went straight to the retail district. Vodan had been following the guy long enough to know what he was going to do. There would be some shopping, a visit to tailors or a salon and if he didn’t drop into a place to eat, Creamy would go to a hotel where samples of food from restaurants all over the station would be brought to him.
Right now, Creamy was the only guy in a place Vodan felt was exclusively for women. He was having something pointless done to his hair, so that meant it was the hotel or a place to eat next. Now was the time to talk to the man he had been following for months on end, Vodan had a feeling Creamy was preparing for something big and this could be the last opportunity he had to propose a plan to get the pirate lord Vengerfield off their backs.
Being recognised would usually be a concern, but not this time. Vodan had abducted Creamy once, and been beaten up by him four times. He’d even been one of the few people to enter Creamys’ cell when the raiders had finally captured the Imperial, but the dude was oblivious. If Vodan hadn’t been covering their tracks and taking down any hunters that had got close to both of them, Creamy would have been back in Vengerfields hands months ago.
Still, it would be fool-hardy to stroll up to Creamy and start talking. Being kicked by the guy or trying to stop a station transport amounted to much the same thing, and Creamy had plenty of reasons to hate Vodan.. . if he managed to recognise him.
After leaving the salon, Creamy sat down at a yatai, the perfect place for a chat. Public enough to encourage confidence, as it was a stall on the main drag, yet separated from the rest of the concourse by the heavy half-curtain. Vodan gave Creamy long enough to be served while Vodan checked all his weapons were concealed and strapped in. Creamy loved to disarm people before he kicked the crap out of them.
He sat down next to Creamy, who was just starting on a leafy soba, and Vodan placed his order in fluent Japanese.
“<Hey, I’d like a spicy Udon with extra Kamaboko please>”
Taking a deep breath disguised as settling down, Vodan finally struck up a conversation with the man who's' fault it was that Vodan had been ostracized from his clan.
“Soba huh? You on a diet or do you actually like the taste of hot drown noodles?”
Continued in Off Station.