Neil showed his teeth in the grin, and he pushed the bottle up off his palm to catch with a quick grab. His stomach grumbled loudly, and the smell of the cheese was overwhelming. Meatlovers was his favorite, and he hadn't had pizza in a hot minute. He plopped down on the couch, leaning forward and grabbing a slice for himself. With his cold bottle beside him, he scarfed down a slice, too hungry to initially savor the taste. His second slice he took his time with, rolling his shoulders so they loosened up from all the leaning they had been doing a mere minute ago.

"I win in the ring, I win in the game." He shook his head, as if lamenting a sincere tragedy. "I'm just too good." She raised a skeptical eyebrow at him, but it only caused him to break out a smile. He remembered when the two of them had first met, back on Hyperion. It was true, she had played him from the start, and admittedly they had some subsequent bumps. But when he had first flirted with her, he saw genuine interest in her eyes. Maybe he had knocked that out from his silliness, but a part of him wondered.

"You got some right..." He began, pointing to his left cheek. She gave an 'mmm' and grabbed a napkin, dabbing at it.

"Usually my drones tell me, but I guess they're lazy tonight." She remarked, the latter half of her statement rising an octave so the little machines could hear. There was a light buzzing in response.

Neil had finished his second piece and reclined in the sofa, taking his cold beverage and idly sipping it. "Where'd you learn to play like that?" He asked curiously. "I know it's a cliche that bounty hunters are slick and cool, but you're pulling it off well." Next she'll tell him she drive a grav-bike and wears a black leather jacket.

Jocasta snagged a piece of pizza and hopped up onto the edge of the pool table, crossing her booted feet as she curved the pizza and took a mouthful, chewing hungrily. Drones poked their occulars up from behind cover evidently feeling somewhat embarassed. She masticated the delicious pie for a moment and swallowed a mouthful.

"I learned in the navy," Jocasta admitted. Cygi marched across the deck in an ancient naval uniform, the tune of 'Anchors away' blaring. Jocasta snickered and took another drink, feeling the warm lemony liquor spread through her body.

"We had a couple of zero-g tanks," she explained. The zero gravity pool tables allowed 3-D play which the Navy thought was good for pilots. The force projected walls slowed the balls, but there was a great deal more ricocheting than in the regular game. A good shot could often sink three or four balls in second and third order collisions. It also meant that the table changed radically between shots.

"I was pretty good, but always a little heavy with the stick," she admitted, winking at Neil as she took another bite of Pizza.

"Really?" He asked, his tone suggestive as he leaned in closer. "Maybe you can show me the technique someti-"

Cygi popped between them and flared red, blaring a bugle from the 1800s as huge letters flashed WARNING: DO NOT TOUCH in Neil's face. The light stung his eyes and he involuntarily jumped from the sudden noise. Cygi's barrier disappeared almost as quickly as it came, though she began to march between Neil and Jocasta like she was stationed at a picket line, a musket with a bayonet leaning against her shoulder as she strutted between them. Neil bonked his head with the heel of his hand thrice, and shook his head.

"Ow..." He complained.

"What about you stud?" Jocasta asked, clearly amused.

"What about what?" Neil asked, grabbing another slice of pizza. He bit into it, and he marveled at how good it still was.

"You said you were in the army?" She asked, looking over.

"I did some ground work as a spy, but that wasn't much. I was mostly an engineer and a mech pilot. In the Valk war on Fortus. Or I was until I got tired of it, hence the bounty." He waved a finger once, as if scratching off a check mark.

“The paycheck raises a good point,” Cygi declared turning to face Jocasta with large cartoon dollar signs in her eyes, “he is worth a lot of money.” Jocasta rolled her eyes at the AI’s antics.

“It is just not proper to turn someone in after you have shared pizza with them,” Jocasta rejoined. It was just possible that she could sell Neil to another bounty hunter at a discount, and pocket the money to fix the ship, but brokering such a deal would be very risky. Besides she could admit that he was growing on her. Cygi placed her hands on her holographic hips.

“What about that job on Pneumonax, or the one on Kappa Kappa 12, or the Sindic job, or the …” Jocasta waved Cygi to quiet while Neil’s eyebrows climbed higher.

“That is an awful lot of pizza related bounties,” Neil pointed out in a neutral tone.

“Well the Sindic thing doesn’t count, I was only using the pizza as an improvised smoke grenade,” Jocasta replied somewhat defensively.

“Changing the topic, a lot of people have trouble with armies, not every deserter get slapped with a multi-million credit bounty,” Jocasta pressed. She picked up another shot of liquor and tossed it back, this one was piney to the point of making her eyes water.

“So what gives?” she demanded.

It occurred to Neil there that this was real curiosity. Sure, he hadn't expected her to be playing him all this time, but at the back of his mind he had always been somewhat wary of her intentions. Maybe it was the fact he had been on the run for the better part of two years, or maybe it was the big point of her having tricked and caught him in the first place. Yeah, both were good points. But still, he felt it somewhat unreasonable now. Hell, the biggest thing that annoyed him at first was that she was a little too nice about it. She had even taken care of his fish! His opinion had gradually shifted (well, gradually for Neil), but now he just felt a sense of kinship beyond the magnetism of physical attraction and her penchant for mischief which mirrored his own.

He scarfed down the slice of pizza and washed it down with another swig from the bottle, covering his mouth as he gave a low, almost imperceptible burp.

"Well, I guess you've accumulated enough points to unlock my tragic backstory." He said with a grin. His feet were crossed, left foot on the table with his right atop it. He loosely held the bottle in his right hand, idly swinging it back and forth.

"When the Valk war broke out, I was in highschool. I was a troublemaker, apparently. Can you believe that? Me? Anyway, I was never really political. Most of my family wasn't either, except one of my big sisters. She was very anti-government. Almost a picket-sign kind of activist. Once I graduated, I took a year of college before I joined up with the Ordo Sanctus, fighting the great fight against the oppressive UNF. I'll be honest, I just wanted to work on big mechs and fight in them, and the UNF needed you to go through all this training, so I went with the rebels. And I was good at it." As if to emphasize the point, a highlight reel of the day's fight flashed on the holovid behind him.

"I was so good the UNF even had a small bounty on me before things went south. But eventually, one day the 189 got torn apart. I had to run, and I ended up on this small countryside house. As luck would have it, a girl mechanic lived there. One thing led to another, she helped me fix my mech and we fell in love. I kind of wish we hadn't, maybe she'd still be alive." He was staring blankly now, until the world came back to him and he took another swill of the alcohol.

"Either way, one of her brothers was a high ranking UNF member. Both the UNF and the Ordo found out, but I was way too stubborn to let politics and protocol stop me. The Ordo tried to take away my mech, but I got out of there. They renounced me and said I went rogue. She told me her brother could help us. I thought that sounded alright, but turns out the higher ups in the UNF didn't see it that way. Apparently some official thought this was an Ordo Sanctus ploy. I guess they figured it was too story book to be real, and her brother was compromised. I found out later he had a rival that wanted him dead, but that doesn't matter now I guess. So they set up an ambush for me at MJ's house, my girlfriend I mean, and there was a lot of shooting. She ended up... anyway I was arrested. I was um... I wasn't feeling my best, you could say. So I broke out, hacked into their systems from a terminal, and released their tetryl explosive reserves. It was easy, it was all automated, and then I got on the comms and told everyone to evacuate. Of course I locked the automated doors to the upper floor so all the decision makers had less time to get out, but to this day I still don't know if they did. During that time, I ran and grabbed a military grade shuttle while they were scrambling, and I got off the planet."

He cleared his throat, shaking his head so the fringe would get out of his eyes. "Of course, teytryl is a toxic substance, not only explosive. I found out later they counted that as illegal chemical warfare, so they stacked that ontop of the earlier 'rebellion' thing and resisting arrest. And since I was a criminal, I went to work for a guy named Sven, doing the usual repairs and system maintenance. Smuggling every now and then. That lasted for about a year. But then I got tired of that and ended up on Hyperion 3, working at a repairshop for about 8 months until this hot biker chick showed up and charmed me into her spaceship."

He gave her a wink. "Hey, don't feel bad about it. It's been fun so far. Apparently I can't stay in one place too long. Might as well have a partner while fate kicks me across the galaxy."