"Hey!" Garibaldi called out as he came about a corner at a fast pace. "All I did was tie my shoes and you're half way to the next section, you'd think I was the injured one."
"Your uniform boots don't have shoe laces," Rally noted with a raised eyebrow.
Garibaldi looked down as he walked and shrugged.
"Well, I guess not," he said. "That might explain why it was so hard to tie them."
"Not going to go with your guy?" Rally asked, changing the subjects with a roll of the eyes.
"He's unconscious and in danger of bleeding to death," Garibaldi noted. "Much I'd like to interrogate him, I'd like him to love long enough for me to get anything useful out of him."
"Yeah, but you could wait for him to get out of medlab," Rally noted.
"Well," Garibaldi noted. "I'd kind of like to get what you have to say about this somewhere more private."
He paused for a moment.
"And there's the matter of my grandmother's gun," Garibaldi noted. "I got a message that it was ready."
"Yeah, yeah," Rally said. "I got it ready."
She held her injured arm with her good one, but didn't mention the obvious injury as she walked through the hallways. Garibaldi didn't bring it up, she'd refused to go to medlab a few times already until she was certain her daughters were safe.
At the moment, the injury was hidden by a borrowed security jacket so that not too much attention would be drawn to them as they walked through the passages. Rally was clearly eyeing things and taking corners in what looked a casual manner but minimized the chance of someone seeing her before she got a good look at what was coming.
"You play things close to the chest," he said.
"Not all of us can be as trusting as you," Rally quipped with narrowed eyes as she glanced toward his shoes and his link.
It was about ten minutes later that they appeared in the passages of the red sector that led toward Rally's shop.
Rally started to search the faces in the open area her shop sat in but was distracted by the sounds she was hearing.
"Of all the incorrigible..." a sharp, Centauri accented voice called out. "You there, girl, this is a weapons shop is it not? Quick, give me a weapon!"
"I can't..." Vivian's voice started to say.
"I'm not going to let you hurt Mr. G'Kar," Shanti called out angrily.
"Oh crap," Rally muttered, stepping up her pace and only barely catching a shift of movement that implied someone leaving the area quickly enough to disturb other people near by.
"Calm yourself, Child," G'Kar's voice came. "I doubt your foster mother would appreciate you dirtying your hands this way."
"Shanti, calm down," Vivian called out.
Rally turned around the corner to come into her shop with a very clear expression as Garibaldi sighed and followed her.
Rally's appearance combined with the fact that both Vivian and G'Kar had moved between Shanti and Londo allowed the more reactive twin enough distraction to calm down and back off.
"What is the meaning of this?" Londo asked indicating the impromptu human wall.
"That's my question," Rally said coldly.
She looked from G'Kar to Londo and then toward Vivian and Shanti.
"Kitten," she said in a soothing tone. "Can you go get Mr. Garibaldi's revolver for him?"
"Umm, sure," she said blinking and leaving the room.
"Madam," Londo said. "I would like to ask what you think..."
"Little Girl," she said dryly. "Why do I have Narn-Centauri politics in miniature in my shop?"
"They both came to talk to you," Vivi explained. "And then started arguing. Uh, Rally, what's wrong with your arm?"
"I see," Rally said, grimacing and pinching the bridge between her nose. "Anything else weird going on?"
"No, but...shouldn't you see a doctor?" Vivian asked, worriedly.
"I will," she said.
"Ms Vincent," G'Kar said. "I do apologize for this unseemly display. I merely came to discuss a matter of potential work when Mollari decided to stick his big belly into matters."
"My big what?" Londo snapped. "Are you descending to personal attacks then? That is always the last resort of someone with no good ideas."
"That explains why you start off there," G'Kar noted idly.
"Do you mean..." Londo started to say.
"Out of my shop," Rally snapped suddenly, pointing sharply with her injured arm without thinking about it.
She hissed in pain but didn't let herself wince...or move to catch the jacket as it fell off to reveal the charred hole in the clothes underneath, down to the clear PPG injury.
Vivian gasped at the sight and stepped over toward Rally's side.
"You need to go to medlab!" she said insistently.
"Madam, I think your daughter is right," Londo said. "That is a dreadful woun..."
Rally grimaced as she turned to face the man.
"Out."
Garibaldi shook his head and moved towards Londo patting him on the back cautiously and shaking his head.
"I think this is a matter for discretion," he said with a smirk, directing the Centauri out of the building.
"What is with these people?" Londo asked irritably. "First they're acting as if I need protection from a veritable child and the other doesn't seem to understand when a business opportunity has been presented."
"Londo," Garibaldi said under his breath. "There might be a video you need to see."
G'Kar waited a moment for Londo to leave and lingered to speak to Rally.
"I do seriously apologize for this display," he said. "I suppose I wasn't thinking clearly when Mollari appeared."
"If you want a sensible discussion, leave, call for an appointment and come back when I tell you," Rally said coldly.
"Yes, of course," he said, leaving himself.
Garibaldi came back in the door a few seconds later as G'Kar left and shook his head.
"Those two are always at each others' throats," he said. "One of these days it's going to be the death of one or both."
Shanti came in then, bearing the gun case with a smile as she walked up to Garibaldi.
"Can I see..." she stopped as she saw Rally's injury, dropping the gun case and only just recovering it before it hit the ground. "What happened?"
"I had a bit of trouble down below," Rally said comfortingly. "It's handled."
"You should have come right here," Dr. Franklin said with a lecturing tone as he glanced toward Shanti and Vivian watching from another part of the medlab. "Running around with a great bloody hole in your shoulder. All right, take the jackets off and your weapons, please."
"Right," Rally said, shaking her head as she sat the heavy pistol that had caught Franklin's eye on the table.
"All right, now that that monstrosity is out of..." he paused.
"Wait a minute," Rally said.
With a flick of her left hand, accompanying a wince, a spring-loaded brace pushed out holding a PPG.
"A back up weapon," Garibaldi said in an approving tone from nearby.
"Yeah, you never know," Rally said as she set that on the table next to the pistol.
"Yeah, it's always nice to have a reserve way to deal death and..." Franklin stopped as Rally reached around behind her back and produced another PPG. "Dismemberment."
She reached into her jacket then and drew out a kabar which joined the other weapons on the table.
"Okay, this is getting a little..." Garibaldi paused as Rally laboriously took off her jacket and revealed two belts around her waist holding an exhaustive number of power caps.
"Are you planning on starting a war?" Franklin asked.
"Doctor Franklin," Rally said, wincing as she tried to take the belts off. "If I were geared for war, you'd know it."
"So, is that all the weapons then?" Garibaldi asked.
"That would get in the way of treating my shoulder," Rally confirmed.
Morann ra Fe'enduma frowned as he followed the soft-spoken religious caste man to the quarters of the...person who had tainted her blood with human genetics. The humans had questioned him endlessly about what he was doing in that place and what had happened.
His frown deepened when he entered the Ambassador's quarters and heard her speaking to someone.
The person in the other chair stood up and turned to face the door.
"What is she doing here?" he snapped, pointing toward the human with her arm in a sling.
"Miss Vincent asked to speak with you," Delenn said.
"And of course you had to let her see me," he said. "I'll bet she's armed to the teeth right now and ready to kill all three of us."
"Actually, she surrendered her weapons while waiting," Delenn noted, gesturing toward a small pile of firearms sitting on a counter across the room.
"We need to talk before someone makes a mistake," Rally said seriously as she stood up. "Before there's another fight."
"Afraid I might finally get justice for my family?" he asked with a sneer.
Rally sighed and shook her head.
"Please, sit," Delenn said. "Lennier and I will grant you some privacy."
"We shall just be in the next room," Lennier said with emphasis as he collected Rally's weapons and moved into Delenn's personal quarters.
Morann watched them leave and moved resignedly to sit across from Rally as she sat back down. He watched as she took out a pair of photographs that held the images of two young human girls and placed them respectfully on the table.
"What is this?" he asked grimly.
"These are my daughters," Rally said. "I've raised them since they were left in my care, taught them, made sure they were protected..."
"And when you die, they will come after me," Morann said dismissively. "This is a cowardly attempt at intimidation, Stalking Cat, such a response is obvious."
"I'm not having those girls stained with pointless killing," Rally said coldly.
He looked down at the pictures then and up again, confused.
"Then..." he started to say.
"They've both come a long way," she said. "But they're not ready to protect themselves yet. Which means, I can't die yet. Not for something trivial."
"You call my brothers' vengeance trivial?" Morann demanded.
"The whole damn war was trivial," Rally said quietly. "Millions of people dead over two bad assumptions. Hundreds of thousands more bathed in blood for no good reason. Nobody really won."
"Only because our leaders betrayed us," the young warrior said.
"You were going to destroy the earth," Rally said. "Eliminate every man, woman and child of us. Civilians and military alike. Is xenocide something the Minbari would want in their history?"
The warrior fumed at that question.
"In the war, some of my people were heroes," she said. "They fought with everything at their disposal to protect our people."
She hung her head quietly.
"That's not why I fought," Rally explained. "I fought because some I loved was killed for no better reason than she was one human among thousands at a civilian, unarmed colony. I fought to kill and avenge."
"Then your kind should have thought before killing our greatest leader," Morann snapped.
"I like how you think you're more honorable because you were better at killing than we were," Rally said.
"What do you know about honor?" Morann asked. "You're an assassin, a stalker in the shadows, attacking from hiding."
"I know I've seen honor before," Rally said. "A man who faced off against an adversary, keeping them busy and neutralized for three days and forcing the failure of the enemy's current mission. All at the cost of his own life."
"I assume this was a relative of some sort," Morann said, bored.
"Yours," Rally commented. "And it is my shame that he died at my hands."
She took a deep breath and steadied herself.
"Before that war, I was a hero," she said. "I had fought real evil. I knew what it looked like, what it smelled like. I'd seen it destroy minds and I'd had it stick its fingers into my head."
She shook her head.
"I went to war for the wrong reasons," she added. "I went to kill. I didn't go to protect. There are questions we ask ourselves when we do something. Going into war, the questions are usually either 'what are we killing?' or 'what are we keeping alive?'."
"And which did you ask?" Morann wondered.
"The first one, the wrong one," Rally said. "And that means I'm a murderer. I have to live with that."
"Or I can kill you and you don't have to worry about it," Morann said.
"If that happens," Rally said, "and it won't because you're not good enough, then the aftermath doesn't give you anything. It just tears that hole in your heart bigger. And then you have become like me, a murderer."
"So all that talk about not killing is just talk then," Morann determined. "You'd kill me anyway."
"To protect my children, yes," Rally said.
"I'm not trying to kill your children, idiot," Morann said.
"If you destroy a wall," the bounty hunter said. "It isn't just destroyed for you. Anybody and anything else can wander in too."
They were quiet for a moment.
"I can't protect my girls from anything if you've killed me," Rally made clear. "I don't know if I'm getting through to you at all, but that's all I have to say. And to ask, 'what's your question?'"
She stood up and moved toward the thin wall separating the front room from Delenn's quarters as she let the young warrior stew. He wasn't attacking her at least.
That was something.
Garibaldi watched the security footage of the area around Gunsmith Cats for the second time and hit pause as an image came on the screen. That of a woman a bit younger than Rally turning about and leaving the area as soon as she saw the bounty hunter.
He had a face now at least.
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(Posted Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:55)
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