Guy Fantastic

Damn, it was hot out. The heat of midday in Malgrave dried the young woman’s scorched race suit of river water, and reflected blindingly off of the sands. Glancing behind her Jenny could see the plume of smoke that rose over the ridge where her bike burned. It had gotten her so far.

Jenny’s whole body tensed as the distant sound of fighters reached her ears. Marauder fighters. Perhaps her bike hadn’t carried her far enough. Stumbling down to the bottom of the sand dune, Jenny dashed for the run down bar not twenty yards away framed by the half dozen ships parked behind it. Maybe there was a bike or a ship she could hop on – or steal. Anything to get her as far away from Blackstar as she could.

Ducking inside the rundown building, the sad excuse of air conditioning was a shock to her system. Several patrons looked up to her and stared, and she was suddenly aware of what a wreck she must have looked like. Sand in her pigtails, covered in sweat and soot, make up smeared, broken bike handles clutched in her hands, and her racing uniform torn from her desperate flight from the raceway, she was certainly a sight.

She moved to the bar, but every little sound made her tense, and at the sound of a passing ship overhead Jenny ignored the barkeep’s greeting to look to the door she’d just entered through as if she was ready to shoot the first person who came though it.

There was a shuffling of feet. Behind her the very subtle, but somehow attention-grabbing ‘thud’ of a glass being quietly set down on a wooden table sounded, and Jenny turned. She blinked, and stared. What was this?! A Jesse Payne movie? Alone at a table sat none other than Guy Fantastic, even more handsome in person than on the holovision, and he lifted his whiskey glass in a slight greeting to her as he nodded.

“There you are, Miss Brightmist. Sit with me.”