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interluuuude "black angel"
you bet your life, i deal in souls. an angel only in name, delivering salvation through death.
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One of my many great traits (and I mean many) is that I was known as the Gambler well before my reputation laid in guns and killing. I placed winning bets, too often accused of cheating. And sometimes I did. Most often I didn't. I had a good sense for the way things would go down. It's about the people. You learn to read every little thing: the twitch in someone's eye when they've got a bad hand, the way their fingers drum on the table when they're bluffing. It's like a code that only I could see. Some poor sap would sit there, thinking they're slick, all while their body's screaming what they won't say out loud. And me? I'd sit back, relax, and take them for a ride. So, as valued brains, I'd gone from shanty town gambling to smaller mafia organizations out of JuLai and November trying to make use of my sense before people caught on that I had goo aim too. I mean, if you live your 160 or so years in your banging hot twenties you're bound to pick up some tricks.
But anyways, that's why these days, I'm better known as the Gambler.
Which, was why infiltration was easy at the time. Easy pickings. The Gambler wasn't so much a hired gunman than a woman who could win you wads of cash and take a cut after. And I didn't mind doing it for others. Jobs in itself were bets and I had fun. Take X amount, if you triple it, I'll give you half. Some idiots doubted me, and that brought in the moola.
It made life easy. I think I liked easy. I liked fun. I never grew up with an easy life. I didn't know how to let loose.
"Parents" is a loose term. It was more like they picked me off the streets like a guinea pig, and discovered a genius. In that sense, I've always been someone's cash cow.
It isn't like I flaunted the wealth. I didn't care that much about what I earned. I cared about the games I'd win, and the name I carried. I was the same as I'd always been, in a sense. Before being adopted, sacrificed, a scientist, murdered, reborn, recruited.
Some players can't pay the money they owed. So I was somewhat of a shark, I'd make a game out of it. But what my contractée hired me for, it seemed this time they weren't looking for the money on the table. They wanted a hand dealt that would force another to cough up other payment. I wanted their plant, and I thought infiltration through offering my game smarts was the best, least lethal, and easiest way in. Least clean up too. It pays to have information.
Don't get me wrong. I do cheat. Zazie helped me. Plants helped me. Maybe some reflection here and there to see playing cards. Humans have always been predictable, sorry losers.
Well, this group had other ideas about their offering non-cash. It wasn't the plant. It was the children they trafficked. One by one, they had to offer more and more to get out of debt with me. Two, three, I wondered how many more they had as they'd pull them out of a dark hallway barely dressed in anything but rags and looking forlorn. If they wanted to "sell" them, their model wasn't going to work if they didn't at least dress them up a little.
