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Chapter 0 - Prelude

Part 1

A woman slept on a red velvet chair, light filtering through a small oval window just next to her head. Above her was a bed, completely untouched. In front of her was a small table littered with documents. All of them were marked with the red seal of a many winged eye, obviously not meant for the layperson. Through the window, the expanse of space reached out, eventually giving way to the many stars beyond.

She let out a small snore as the ship rocked forward ever so slightly. She let out another as the barrel of a gun prodded her head.

“Wake up, missy." The silhouette of a man was visible in the low light, holding a rifle up to her temple. Above him, a square of red hot metal marked where he had cut through into her room. He prodded her again.

“Cmon, jack ass. Wake up."

With this, her left eyelid flickered open. “Whus happenin," she said as she turned to face the gun. “Oh," she said groggily.

“On the floor. Now," the man growled, gun gripped tight in his hand.

The woman's lone eyelid drooped over her left eye. “I'm sorry, who are you," she asked as she let out a yawn.

The man growled. “I'm the guy with a gun to your head. I won't say it again: get on-"

** BANG.**

He was interrupted by his head exploding. In a robotic right arm, the woman gripped a smoking revolver, barrel glowing. Her red right eye cast a scarlet shadow across the man's corpse.

“Hope they don't mind if I get a little blood on the carpets." She held a finger to the right side of her head. “Jack? Hey, you awake?"

There was no response.

“Jack! Wake up, tweety."

Still, no response. She let out a groan as she walked up to the wall of the room. She stuck the revolver back in its holster, then clamped her right hand into a fist, and punched the wall. The metal gave way with a screeching clang. Gripping the metal, she ripped her hand back through, tearing out a chunk of metal as she did so.

A voice, belonging to someone who had clearly just been woken up, responded. “The hell? What is it?"

“Someone just welded through the ceiling of my room from the ventilation shafts and held a gun up to my head. Judging from what he's wearing, I think we're being boarded by pirates."

The man responded, this time awake. “Let me see the body."

“I sent you everything through over Dominion."

Through the hole, a black, scaled hand swiped through a holographic display. The blue glow covered the room. The owner of the hand was sitting up on his bed wearing nothing but boxers. To his right, the woman looked down through the hole in the wall. He stood up, revealing a muscular frame. White feathers covered the front of his body and ran up to his throat, all of it bordered with black. The back of his body was covered in soft blue feathers.

He lifted his talons and rubbed his beak. “Fuck."

The woman peered back into the room. “What is it?"

He shook his head as he stared at the holographic body. “Yeah, we've got a problem."

“What kind of problem?"

Jack walked over to the wardrobe and popped it open, quickly putting on a long sleeved white shirt and gray pants. “These are definitely pirates. Ones I'm familiar with," he said as he buttoned up a blue vest. “They call themselves the Yeen Pack."

“I'm sorry, but the Yeen Pack?" The woman snickered. “Are you sure?"

“I know, it's a fucking stupid name." he said as he finished the knot of his red tie. “A while ago, they were just a group of interstellar bar crawlers. But a couple of extremist infiltrations, a little bit of time, yadda yadda yadda, now they're a gang of drunk pirates. With guns. Drunks who don't like to drink alone." He grabbed the rifle hanging in the corner of the wardrobe.

“How many do you reckon there are," asked the woman.

“Oh I suppose…" He trailed off, wiping off specks of dust from his rifle. “30? Yes, that sounds right." He walked over the to the door of his room. “I'll deal with the guys over here, make sure everyone is alright. You go up to where Mr. Horseman came from, see if it leads you to their ship."

His door was blown off its hinges as two drunk, armored hyenas burst into the room screaming. Two super heated bursts of energy hit both of them square in the face, and they fell to the floor very dead, smoke rising from where their necks used to attach to a head.

“Oh, and Mercy," he said just before he stepped out into the flaming hallway, “Try to waste as little ammo as possible on these asshats." And then he was off.

Mercy walked away from the hole and grabbed a brown, wide brimmed hat from the table she had been sleeping on earlier. She put it on and took her revolver out. Reaching into her duster, she took out a bullet with a dark red casing covered in strange symbols, and slot it into the silver revolver.

Her door blew off its hinges as two more hyenas came into the room. Confused by the seemingly empty room, the two of them noticed neither the flash of brown going up into the ceiling nor Jack sneaking up behind them with a rifle.