The Ghost Shepherd

Undercurrent

Steelforged arrived in the city of Hope by the time the team was having their fourth drink and headed towards the main tower immediately.

“Mrs. Millie Piggles please”

“One moment…”

“Yes…”

“Sister Millie is me, Steelforged. I got some headhunters and Nanotrons to turn in and I don’t want to cause a scene. Can you help me out?”

“Oh...How is Sly doing? I heard you were working with him”

“He is doing amazing, I’ve never seen some of his skills before. Not even the leader’s shadowstep can compare to how Sly moves, but can we come back to turning these guys in. I need to get the reward, I had to split the profits from the Argonians with his little team”

“And are you going to split this reward as well? It should be substantial since the Nanotrons are worth alot…”

“Only with Sly, he killed a few and the other members don’t mind it. I also need help finding info on their organization as far as I know they belonged to some guy called Raol”.

“That is easy, Raol's group is the one running all kinds of dark businesses in the east bunker, we tolerated their behavior because so far, nobody has stepped up with hard evidence. How did you run into them?”

“One of our members saw them killing the remaining members of their team after they were ambushed by a large pack of Dracos in the red zone. It seems that they had done it quite a few times, you should be able to know how many by the amount of times they returned Nanotrons. Here is the video of what happened and of the people that came looking for them that we also killed…”

“How many did you get?”

“11”

“Yawn...Boring”

“You want to hit their organization with a team? We can wipe them all out. I doubt there is anybody above a One Star Commander among them”

“That is an Idea … but … is too early for that, I want him to learn what it is like on other planets before he leaves, so go ahead and let what is coming next happen. I’ll take care of the rest ”

“Sure” said Steelforged as she licked her lips.

Sly woke up and by the time he popped out of his capsule, Steelforged was waiting for him by the information desk. The moment she saw him approaching, a big smile came over her face and her arms spread wide in a ready to bear hug position while she moved forward and swept him off his feet before she tworl him around like a little kid.

“Guess how much money we made on those headhunters?”

Sly’s grimace turned into a smile the moment money was mentioned and he answered Steelforged with the wildest figure he could think of, “200,000”.

Steelforge lifted her hand and it had 5 fingers opened wide, “500,000 and when we get the leader of their organization the reward is going to be juicy… maybe a million Ehereal Coins”

“Wait... How Much for the leader?”

“About a Million for sure”

Steelforge was as loud as she could be in order to send a message to the people listening to the conversation and to spread the news about foul play in the area. If people were aware of what was happening, it was possible that the finances of the dark organization could take a hit forcing them to act against team Overpowered to vent their anger while sending a message to all others wanna be heroes that they were not to be f**k with.

The news spread fast and even the other members of the team saw pictures of Steelforge and Sly with the captions, headhunter killers underneath causing Alice to almost puke.

Sly had full confidence in Steelforge abilities and since they had just returned from the wilderness he had a few days to relax before he had to head out again.

The two people went to a nice restaurant and Sly had a very nice meal a little more upscale and this time he was able to ask for sweet breads that came from a gazer, an Argonian not found in planet Alpha and recognized for their many eyes. The plate was 2000 E.C but since it was Steelforge's treat, he enjoyed every single bite.

Compared to the raw brains from the dracos, the ones from the restaurant had a nice hint of delicate herbs that reduce the gaminess and the best part was that they melted in his mouth. Steelforge on the other hand went for quantity with a massive 10 pound rack of ribs from a creature native to another planet that resembled a pig but in this case it had wings.

“How are your ribs?” asked Sly.

“They don’t call it the heavenly creature for nothing kid… the Umami flavor is out of this world and thanks to having wings they don’t move their muscles much making the meat extremely soft”

“Hmm… that does sound good but I don’t know why it doesn’t call my attention”

Shrug…

“Anyways... I got a request for you Steel”

Steelforged lifted her face up while the grease from the flying pig was still around her lips, “What’s up?”

“I need a face mask or something similar that can cover my eyes, I am getting tired of using this cut up t-shirt and the ones in the stores here are not to my liking… something like this could be ok”

Sly showed Steelforged a picture of the Puppeteer with hopeful eyes but Steelforged immediately shook her head and replied, “that mask has illusion capabilities and an assortment of utilities, infrared vision, heat vision, wave interference against mental attacks, and the big one a plasma shield that can stop one attack from a lord rank Argonian… that is a two million E.C Mask that my master made”

“Your master made that?”

Yup!! Said Steelforged proudly

“Wait! do you know the puppeteer?”

“ Duh… of course she is part of our organization”

“WOW that is so cool… sigh” Sly was wondering when he would be able to join this mysterious organization and had more contact with his idol but there was no sense in wasting time on thinking about it, so he continued, “Anyways, the mask doesn’t have to be that awesome but I was talking about the design… All I really needed to do is dim the amount of light coming into my eyes at different levels and if it can work with my chip so that she can control, it would be awesome. The most important part is the design Steelforged… I want to look cool, how much do you think it will cost”.

“I can make the hardware for you with the ore that I collected so 50 barrels of liquid fire and I got a guy that can work on the tech and he is amazing and since it will be done on steel and the specs are not that high it would probably be around another 15k”

Sly was speechless, he had only gotten 21k from the hunt and the price of the mask was already 30k, just thinking about it made him depressed.

“I can’t afford it, Steel, is there a way to make it cheaper? I still got to buy a plasma shield for the up and coming missions”.

“Are you f*****g kidding me Sly? Didn’t I just tell you the money for the Headhunters was 500,000 E.C Half of it is yours…”

The mouth of Sly looked like the letter O while in his head K.C was cheering non stop like the money was hers and she was getting partnered up with the best of the best the market had to offer, the NZ1900.

He stood up extremely fast and almost knocked the table over before he moved towards Steelforged and gave her a strong hug to as much of her body as he could get his hand around.

“Thank you.. thank you... thank you.... I am rich bitches!!!”

“Sit the f**k down, you are not rich. This is chump change anywhere else but here so keep your panties on”

Steelforged removed Sly from her and placed him on a chair next to her but she was touched by his reaction and she liked him a little bit more.

“I’ll start working on the mask, in the meantime, DO NOT going out into the wilderness without me”

“No problem, with this amount of money I can spend my days shopping”

“Good!” Steelforged transferred 220,000 thousand E.C and continued with their meal until there was a commotion and people started to rush out of the first floor of the Bunker towards the outside in droves. It was so loud that even the people in the restaurant moved out of their seats and towards the window to spectate, it almost looked like the Bunker was getting attacked by a drove of Argonians.

Sly’s interest was picked and he spoke with and excited voice, “I’ll go take a look”