They bounced from station to station helping out where they could. Due to the family they were born in to, they'd inherited enough time to live more than comfortably, but they didn't want to just sit around and do nothing for the rest of their life. So, taking training in security, combat, engineering, and several other, useful, fields, they went between stations, and aboard ships, just helping out. When offered contracts and pay for their work? The answer was always the same.
"No thanks. I have enough already, just a room and some food is all I ask."
Often much to the surprise of those who had worked with humans before. Unfortunately, there were some who were not above taking advantage of their kindness and worked them to the bone, yet refusing to give even a place to sleep or any food, unless they bought their own. Tired, sore, and a bit discouraged, for this had happened more than a few times, they sat sipping on a cup of tea looking down. A man sat next to them who seemed pleasant enough. He had a tattoo of a dog's head biting off a human hand on his forearm, and a bit of a wild gleam in the eyes, however. He asked the person why they seemed so down in a place known for it's entertainments and, when they explained. The exhaustion from work, and yet the one thing they ask not being honored when it'd been promised before they began, the wild - looking man merely smiled and said "Cheer up, it's already taken care of." -- Anon Guest
They could have surrendered to inertia. It would have been easy. Some people just don't like easy. Further, they had suffered under their parents' iron will and this was a firm rude gesture at everything those pocket despots stood for.
They plunged all their funds into a charity for the less fortunate and exchanged their inherited private yacht for the space equivalent of an ancient combi van with a mattress in the back[1]. It would get them as far as the next station, where they would work to help whoever needed it and help pay for the repairs enough to get to the next station.
It was not always great, but that was the point. On the Edge, people made their own way and sought their own joys. These siblings found joy in retroactive defiance against parents both too greedy and too controlling. It doesn't matter what names they were given, they chose their own. Meet Em and Bee. Free-range do-gooders extraordinaire.
Bee had read somewhere that it never hurts to help. It made an impression, since their parents insisted that helping others was a weakness and a waste. For the most part, helping people was its own reward. For the most part, they managed just fine. For the most part, they were happy.
Sometimes, they landed in a bad place, where just getting by was a struggle. Where the mean-spirited personality of the culture sank them deep into flashbacks of their childhood. In this one, their clunker vessel was impounded, with compounding confiscation fees as nitpicky officials seemed to get off on finding extra charges to add to the already incredible bill. This included late payment fees, insufficient payment fees, and a surcharge for having a negative funding balance. It was fast becoming a mountain of debt that they could not easily surmount.
Worse, the last person they did contract work for reneged because of an escape clause written into the dominant law. Any contract with a non-citizen resident could be rendered null and void if the citizen in question decided that the non-citizens were fraudulent.
Em said, "I found a hole in the security system surrounding their waste disposal, I could snag us some food at least."
"Sure it's not a honey trap? This lot have a predilection towards setting up outsiders to fail so they can have a permanently indentured workforce."
Em sighed. "You're right. I'm not sure. Damnit. If that buttstain had paid us like he said he would, we'd be halfway away from this gravity well by now."
"Food for a day or paying the ever-escalating payment to get the bus back. And finding out that they've added another fee just because?"
"Or... signing up for their pseudomilitaristic indenture payment program that they're trying to push us into all the time and sink into the mire with a sigh?"
At that moment, in came an angel. He didn't look like an angel, they never do. He looked like the sort who could stare down a Vorax whilst eating one of their facial tentacles that he had just casually torn off. He had a permanent six o'clock stubble everywhere a Human face could grow hair and a network of scars that could double as a wormhole map with sufficient imagination. He was dressed mostly in a livesuit that had been revived six times at minimum.
"You're the combi crew, yeah?" he said, sitting down. He had three tear-strip-to-heat ration baggies in the livesuit helmet he held like a basket.
Em, far more paranoid now, said, "What'd we do?"
The smile was almost more terrifying for the chipped and missing teeth. Most of them were stained yellow and one had been replaced with incongruous cerametal. It was a bright magenta. "Oh you done more'n you think you did," he said, distributing the meal packs like someone dealing cards. "Don'chu worry none 'bout Endl Bessik. He's been taken care of."
Bee wasn't about to look a gift meal in the eye, but... "Thank you. What do we owe for this?"
"Your debt's already been paid," said the tough. "You two probably don't remember Erudi VII or the things you done there. I remember. So does m' friends."
"Erudi..." Em scoured her memory as she ate. It was plain and cheap fare, but it was very welcome in this time and place. "That was the corporate-sponsored famine, wasn't it?"
"Last time we pulled any strings," said Bee. "We purchased the farmland with the charity fund and gave it back to the farmers, started up a bunch of little... schools..."
The tough had taken his chestplate off, revealing a series of tattoos. One was of a smiling young woman. "This m' sister. She done better at the reading than me. She done better'n me at all of it. Tech stuff mostly. Me an' friends? We ain't much good f'r much but being the stiff arm 'gainst fellows like Bessik. So we merk f'r m' sister an' all our sisters. Paying it forward where she points us." He saw Em and Bee's alarm and said, "Hey, don't fret. We don't kill no more." Another alarming grin. "All this time since you went through, we been paying your kindness forward. We never imagined we'd ever pay it back. We know th' difference between a hard fist and a gentle hand, us. Most the time, youse is the gentle hand. We're the fist. I'm glad t' be th' gentle hand." He offered a gnarled hand, mangled in years past by machinery. "How can I help y'all?"
Now it all hit. Bee said, "We handed out meals like these to all the armed forces of Erudi as the crews undid the ordinance collars."
"Best meal o' m' life. Generals had us on hardtack and gruel. I thought you was angels. So'd my friends." Now he revealed a bicep. It was the figure of their mural wizard, but with angel wings sprouting behind him. There were letters underneath that spelled WYZZRDZ ANJULZ. "First bit of writing Bo did was this f'r all of us. It's freedom."
"That's amazing," said Em, and she meant it. "It's nice to hear that people we helped are doing well."
"My name's Van," said Van. "My crew says your boat's gonna be free to leave dock thirteen by t'morrah. No extra charges. We sorted it for ya."
Bee took the kind and gentle hand of a gnarled angel. It was true. What went around... came around.
[1] A cool wizard mural on the sides is almost mandatory. These people paid the artist responsible for their time and materials.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / rustyphil]
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