Week 52: Moving On Up

Hugo felt amazing. It had been hours now and he still felt buzzed. He hadn't been in real combat for a long time. Oh, there were the games, sure, and bounty hunting now and then, but nothing so.. Fun! Except for the tunnel part, that was bad... But it hadn't been enough to shake his good mood.

He didn't own much. The Mule-tech Ace had given him wasn't even half full. But except for some clothes and Una, there hadn't been much to bring. Maybe he would get enough to get a nice holo-screen and one of the holo-cameras, to talk to his brothers. That would be nice.

He gave one last little look to the room around him, shrugged his bag on, and walked down the hall to Silvia's room, a smile on his face.

Silvia's door was half-open, and she seemed to be sitting cross-legged, although at the sound of Hugo's approach, she stood up and came to greet him with a smile. Her room had been cleared, although all that really meant was that the sleeping bag had disappeared and the desk had been moved back.

"Hey. I guess that all turned out pretty well in the end, right?" Her voice was rather more relaxed than it had been in the immediate aftermath of the mission, when she had been rather jumpy. Her new mule-tech was visible in one corner of the room and looked reasonably full.

Hugo nodded, grinning, casting a glance over the room before he focused on Silvia. "I liked it. Very.. different. It felt nice to just.. do what I wanted to do without listening to anyone. And good to finally use Una in battle again." He stretched an arm behind him to pat his back, to the lovingly holstered iridescent gun. "She likes to go out and get regular exercise."

He made a motion to the other Mule-tech. "You ready to go?"

Silvia paused for a moment, giving Hugo an odd look. Evidently she wasn't used to people talking about guns as though they were people. Then she seemed to collect herself and nodded. "Yeah, 'm ready. It's not like I had much to pack." She moved over and picked up the bag, slinging it over her shoulder. "Right. Let's go, then."

Hugo missed the odd look, or at least wasn't bothered by it. He did get it a lot. His hands again absentminded touched 'Una' again to be sure she was there. As they walked out of the room, he cleared his throat. "One question, picara.. Do you know where we are going? I got the address but haven't bothered to look up the route there, see. Only ever seen the Interchange in the distance."

Silvia smiled. "Well, I haven't actually been there, but I think I have a map." With that, she pulled a PDA from her pocket and brought something up on the screen. It was...a map. An extremely detailed map which, after a moment's analysis, was showing a surprising amount of building interiors as well as simple streets. It had a route highlighted on it which started where the two Agents currently were and headed off in the appropriate direction. "One of the benefits of working for a cartography company."

Hugo's eye brows raised and he pulled Silvia closer by the hand to look at the screen. "Whoah! It's got the inside of houses and everything! How did you, I mean, can you just like.. buy that..? Oh! Do you have a map of our new place? Can someone else get it?" The last was said with a note of worry, and he tilted Silvia's hand slightly to get a better look at the screen. He was being fairly gentle as he pulled her around to look at her PDA. "I mean, I know you figured stuff out on the mission, but I didn't think you could do the whole CITY."

Silvia let Hugo pull her hands around without any protest and made sure that the PDA was tilted so that he could see well. She also made absolutely no move to pull away, even once it was in place. "This...is the Black Map." She said the name with a certain reverence - not with quite the fascination that Hugo talked about his gun, but not all that far off. "It's basically every piece of cartographical data that Shinjitsu possesses - including the insides of an awful lot of facilities. Officially, it doesn't exist, and if you're caught with it, the penalties are pretty harsh, but it's just so useful. It's worth thousands. And I did check, our new house isn't on here." She smiled, still not pulling her hands away from Hugo's grasp. "So nobody should be able to find out the layout by just buying this."

Hugo had to bend slightly to look at the screen, face closer to Silvia's. He stayed low even when he looked up from the PDA, grinning widely. "We have something else in common then." He touched the massive galvanic cannon with his other hand, jiggling the gun slightly. "Una is worth thousands, and shouldn't exist either. And AMS would be very.. upset if they found me with her." This didn't seem to bother him much, though; he was obviously very attached to the weapon. He finally let Silvia's hand go and straightened up. He resumed walking, but only once he was ready she would follow. "I'm glad our house isn't on there, though. I want to be surprised... Hopefully Shinobu has good taste."

"Oh, I'm sure it'll be great," Silvia said, hurrying to keep up with the other Agent. "I mean, she seems like a great girl...or guy." She frowned. "That was...odd, seeing her like that. I mean...I've kind of got used to thinking of her like...like she was when we met her. And then to see her looking...like that...it was weird," she finished, trailing off slightly.

"Yeah, it's not.. the done thing in the Fed. Maybe a little more in the Free States, but still kind of.. weird." Hugo shrugged, thoughtful but not very bothered. "Shinobu will always be 'sister', though. Hermano... No, I have enough brothers." He grinned a little, and hit the button for the elevator. "I have enough brothers for five people, and there is only the two of them." He rocked on his heels again, and then looked back at Silvia. "Hey, can I see that map again? I want to compare it with mine."

He fiddled to get his PDA out of his pocket, and began to pull up his own very basic direction finding app.

The mention of Hugo's brothers seemed to take the wind out of Silvia's sails a bit, but then something struck her and she seemed to revive slightly. "Sister, you say?" she said, almost absent-mindedly, and then shook her head as though to clear it. "Here," she said, passing over her PDA. "I'm afraid you can't copy it over or anything," she continued, apologetically, "but you can have a look. It...um...it does cover most of the world, though, so you might want to be careful with the zoom. And...other worlds, too, come to think of it. Shinjitsu pays good money for maps of Venus."

"Sister. She talks to you like sisters." He plucked the PDA from Silvia's hand, and then waved it around to try to find the right words. "Says things that make you blush and both of you say she said nothing. Like sisters. Not that I have any in my family. My generation is just boys, but I know how they work." He sounded very confident about that last part for a young man of twenty-two. "And don't worry about the map, picara. I do just want to check. I would not take it from you."

He strode onto the elevator as it opened, a PDA in each hand, thumbs moving across both screens.

"Oh, um, right." Silvia's cheeks flared again at the memory of exactly what Shinobu had been saying. "I...I see what you mean." She slipped into the elevator behind him, and there followed the usual moment of awkwardness as two people shared an elevator with neither talking - Hugo looking at the maps and Silvia apparently content to stand in silence.

Hugo made a few small appreciative noises before his phone made a soft bleeping noise. A notification alarm, to be sure. "Oh, hey. Hey! I got a bank notice. And you got a.. something." He handed to phone back to her. "I'm sorry, I'm not very good with these things. Did we get paid already? Come on high def holophone."

There were a few moments of silence as she retrieved his relevant registered credit information, followed by even more, deeper, longer, more meaningful silence. Brows knitting intensely, Hugo shook his phone as if demanding answers, or daring the numbers to change.

"Maybe," Silvia said, taking the PDA and beginning to tap a few buttons. "People keep telling us we get paid a lot, so I'm interested to see what there is." She smiled. "Might even be in the thousands. That'd be nice."

Then, as she typed in the relevant details and her current bank balance flashed up, there was a stunned silence for a moment as her face drained of blood. A small squeaking sound emerged from her throat. After a moment, some semblance of a voice managed to claw its way back.

"Whu...whu...what? There...there must be some mistake..."

Hugo stared at his phone angrily for a moment, before trying hard to clear his face. He took a deep breath, and looked upward at the top of the elevator. It had been build with agents in mind, and was big enough for half a dozen Hugos and Unas... Though right now he felt slightly pinned in. He slid his fingers under the collar of his shirt and pulled it back. "W-would they make the same mistake twice? Because this.. ...Heh."

He turned his phone to Silvia, where it neatly displayed the whole sum of Hugo's worldly wealth, the newest entry being a deposit for 2,150,000¢. "Heh.. heheh.."

At this point, Silvia and Hugo received a message from Shinobu.

Hey guys, just bought the house outright. No need to worry about rent! o(≧∇≦o)

Silvia looked back and forth between the numbers on Hugo's screen and the text from Shinobu that was blinking at her and shook her head, still wearing a stunned expression. "That...but...it's so much. They...they don't just hand out money like that. I mean that's...that's about what Shinjitsu owed me. For ten years of really profitable work!" Her voice was almost pleading.

"Heh, heh.. You shoulda got into guns, picarita... Heh, heheh.. Eh hehehehe." Hugo was suppressing giggles, shoulders shaking. It was a slightly unhinged laugh, though, and his voice cracked slightly. The elevator doors opened, and with a jump that seemed more like habit, Hugo cleared the thresh hold to stand in the lobby. He looked her over, and realizing her desperation, he offered a queasy smile. "They said we would get a lot of money. I mean, think of el chulo, all the things he had. The robots and gun and the real wood desk. This is, heh heh, this is apparently the norm here."

Hugo cast a glance around the huge lobby, with the dark glass leading out into the expertly manicured lawn. He looked back to Silvia, grinning wanly, obviously waiting for her to follow. He glance back down at his phone one more time to quintuple check. "...You did go into that tiny little tunnel and risk your life, picarita."

A message from Tansai came through on the phones.

"Guys, we got rank! Awesome! "

"Yeah, it's just going to...take some getting used to," Silvia replied, stepping out of the elevator affter the other Agent. At Hugo's reminder of the incident with the vent she looked down, seemingly embarrassed that he was making a big deal out of it. "Well, I seemed like the best suited. I mean...I've dealt with things like cave systems before. And quite a lot of treacherous terrain. And some stuff I needed to get through in a hurry. There's some nasty stuff out in the wilds. Really it...it wasn't that big a thing."

She glanced down at Tansai's message and blinked in surprise. "She...didn't even mention the money. She...she must have so much of it..."

Hugo watched Silvia look down, and he draped a massive arm around her shoulders. She could instantly tell he wasn't putting any weight on it, though he did put his hand around her shoulder to companionably steer her out of the Oracle building. "The tunnel was a big thing because it was not, ah ha, a big thing, picara. I'm just not.." Hugo frowned, and then he looked to the side for a moment. He shrugged the shoulder that wasn't over Silvia's shoulders. "...I found it impressive."

As they strolled outside, Hugo looked up into the bright day. Pollution caused a diffuse yellowy light that made everything seem to glow slightly. "And it's hard to imagine that tiny little masky lady so rich. Can you imagine?" He cleared his throat, and tried to raise his voice and inject Tansai's bubbly pep into the words. "Oh, I only own the third floor from the top of Eden Spire~!" His impression was terrible, and it would be hard to picture Tansai saying those words, but his falsetto was definitely.. amusing.

Silvia tried to suppress a laugh at Hugo's impression and failed, simply turning it into a series of snorts and giggles. "She...I'm sure she's not...she doesn't even sound anything like that!" By now she was almost doubled over and clinging on to Hugo for support. Though even as the laughter started to subside, she didn't let go of the larger Agent.

Laughter was better than pleading, and Hugo smiled down at Silvia as he easily supported her weight. "I'm just saying she could though, she could!" He kept his arm over Silvia's shoulders, chuckling a little to himself. He looked around and took a few breaths, letting them both quiet down. After a moment, he looked back down at her. "So.. Now what do we do with all this money? I'm thinking.. Cybernetics, and one of those beds that can fit like, four people."