Dolly stretched, taking in the sun. As with most pixies, she was largely vegetarian, though a lifetime in the swamps of Louisiana had provided her extensive exposure to Creole cooking, and so she had developed a penchant for seafood. The smell of various meats wafted to her position on the roof of her home on Blount Island. She wasn't in any of the premium neighborhoods - and nowhere near the expensive beach front properties - but she could still hear the lapping of the waves on the beach and the sound of families enjoying the sand and surf. The families here could afford real meat, and real seafood, and so her stomach growled in hunger from the smells.
A soft chime from her commlink alerted her to the message from One67, so she searched blindly with her hand for her trode set - not wanting to open her eyes and fully awake from her relaxing sun bathe. At last her fingers alighted upon the custom-sized device and she placed it on her head, instantly gaining access to the wealth of information the Matrix afforded, but most particularly the message that had disturbed her. The trodes were an amazing piece of technology, providing input and output directly from a metahuman mind. But she wasn't metahuman, and yet they still worked anyway, thanks to years of refinement in the self-learning algorithms that allowed training on any organic, sentient brain. She mentally "read" the message, wondering just how urgent it was - she would have liked to lay out for a little longer - but her stomach quickly reminded her that it was time to eat anyway, so she might as well rouse herself from her near slumber.
The prospect of some work sounded good, and SixtySeven was good people as far as fixers went. She cringed at the expletives laced throughout his message, but that was more influenced by her Ivy League education than her personal distaste. Growing up in Orleans had exposed her to a variety of colorful languages, most of which swore in French, making the English expletives sounding harsh and inelegant to her ears. Of course, spending much of her life ensconced in corporate provided quarters had left her with only a hint of the rich language that characterized the geographical region from which she hailed. And so she cursed her plain - even haughty - sounding response, but sent it anyway. They had talked at length in person and he knew how she talked; she had nothing to prove by injecting colorful language into her messages.
<< @One67 [Dolly] Sounds exquisite. I'll be there after I've eaten. >>
She sat up and looked over at her commlink. Roughly as thick as a matchbook, it was also custom shaped to sit comfortably on her back while remaining between her shoulder mounted wings, thus not interfering with her flying. Of course, pixies didn't really require their wings to fly, it being more a function of magic than physics, but the physiological reflex was there to flap them when airborne. Her wings looked very much like those of a Dragonfly - gossamer like and nearly invisible until the light catches them just right, reflecting light much like the muted rainbow of a oil slick - but for one important difference. Dragonfly wings were permanently affixed at a ninety degree angle to their body, either spread wide or straight back, while Dolly's wings could fold "down" parallel to be body like a stiff cape extending down near her ankles. This made diving through narrow openings possible, but also - and perhaps more importantly - made maneuvering around the tight places of the sixth world much easier. Walking through a door with a meter-wide wingspan could be tricky, and walking around with wings trailing 18" behind you like lumber in some old slapstick comedy had its own set of problems.
In a practiced maneuver, she swept up the commlink and slung it across her back, latching the straps that went over her shoulders, but under her wings. She didn't know any neighbors, so she didn't linger long on the idea of stopping by to eat and run, and figured that really, a nice meatless burger appealed more than what was being cooked nearby. She wondered what sort of food Big Pook served, though she needn't have. Later, as she sped through the city toward the rendezvous, she found that there were street barbecues largely open to all and stopped at the outskirts of the crowd at Big Pook's large gathering to buy a small burger. It was way too much food for her tiny body, of course, and the friendly ork that was manning the grill was more than happy to cut her burger into quarters, giving her one and handing the other three to some of the children that swarmed the street looking for handouts. She munched happily as passersby snapped pictures of the Tinkerbell fairy in dreads.
Of course, before taking her trip into town, she had to prepare. She flew in to her house through an open window and headed to the closet to change into some comfortable but fashionable clothing suited to the weather but not revealing enough to expose her body armor, then to the bathroom to carefully apply the earthy "makeup" that was common to the practitioners of Vodou. The look changed depending on the time of year or the occasion, but usually just on her whim. But she had a default "mask" that she wore, and this is what she applied. She then summoned up a loa, exchanging some time in her body - especially time flying - for getting her there quickly. She slung a backpack over her commlink as well, throwing in her sneak suit in case it was needed later. Some reagents went into her pockets along with some credsticks and a dose of Psyche, then she checked that her biomonitor was secured to her arm before she flew out the window, mentally commanding it to close behind her and locking the rest of the house, then gave her body over to the loa and flew to the meet. The feeling of flying at 200 km/h is exhilarating, and she flew in almost a straight line to the meet, stopping only at the outskirts of the crowd to grab her meal.
