N0ne stepped out of an air car on the sidewalk. Her new NEW uniform with its pressed seems cut a sharp contrast with the dingy city street around her. A new pistol sat in the holster under her left arm.

She wasn’t exactly alone. Two new quadcopters flew out of the car door after her. The aircar’s driver yelled to her, “Be careful out there this time, Corporal! If you need back up, I’ll be sixty seconds away!”

She much preferred automated driving vehicles. Automated vehicles did not usually tell her facts that she already knew nor give her unwanted advice. After the laundry incident, the company felt that she should operate with at least partial supervision. The company wasn’t going to pay anyone to be her partner or directly oversee her. Those payroll hours were not in her budget assigned for her case. It would, however, reassign one of the company drivers to shuttle her around. The decision was one step above babysitting her, and she knew it.

Still, the company did recognize that she procured them the corpse of a wanted felon – or what turned out to be a wanted felon – with a bounty on his cybernetic head. With that bounty came a promotion in rank. Her platoon captain wasn’t pleased, but he had little choice than to honor her when the accountants told him to do it.

N0ne merely nodded acknowledgment and hoped that the driver didn’t expect more conversation than that. He did not. The door closed behind her, and the aircar rose into the sky. She looked around herself as the aircar’s shadow passed over her.

A short Truman in red robes and a straw hat ran up to her. N0ne was short, but this man barely came up to her elbow. “Welcome to Little Busan!” called the small man. He held out a cheap robot arm. “I can read your fortune. Only one coin!”

“No.”

“A blessing from Haedong Yonggung Temple? One little coin!”

“No.”

“You are new here, Soldier. Don’t trust the mapware. You need a knowledgeable guide to show you the best hotels and casinos.”

At N0ne’s unspoken command, one of the copters projected a tight-beam light with an image directly into the beggar’s eye. N0ne said, “If you are knowledgeable, tell me when you saw this girl.”

“She doesn’t look familiar to me,” the beggar said with a quickness which sounded almost defensive.

N0ne told him, “Then you have nothing for me worth one coin.” She stepped around him man as walked the sidewalk with the two copters flanking her.

The Beggar yelled to her, “I’ll ask around, Miss! I know everyone in Little Busan, and I’ll find out for you! You’ll see!”

She spent two hours, stepping into each business on the street. At each business, she showed witnesses her picture of Wanda. She asked if anyone had seen the red haired human-looking girl. No one had.

She stepped into a small shrine between two much larger buildings. The open air shrine did not impress at first. A vending machine which generated blessings sat in the middle. Birds cooed and drop their waste from a tree onto the bench below them. She commanded the copters to spread out and search the grounds for any possible clues that Wanda may have passed through here.

While they searched, she took a closer look. The garden was quite lovely even if all of the plants were transgenic constructions engineered to survive the harsh toxic city air. A robotic butterfly with convincing fake wings fluttered between flowers.

She looked up and closely at the birds at the same time. They were pigeons with cybernetic parts: one eye here, one talon there, an antenna in the middle of anothers back, et cetera. Every bird had exactly one enhancement.

A group of young people entered the shrine from the street. Most went to the vending machine, but one young man approached N0ne. He had large ant lion mandibles growing out of his mouth and a monkey tale coming out the back of his pants. He asked, “Are you a bird watcher?”

N0ne said, “I am now. I would like to speak with the owner of these syntho-animals. They may have security footage which I require.”

The young man spoke through a voice synthesizer in his neck since his mouth could not form words. He said, “There is no owner. Those are pigeons.”

“No owner? I thought that no natural birds survived the toxification of the air.”

“Well, pigeons aren’t exactly domesticated, but they aren’t exactly natural either. They adapt. Or at least, they get by. They know the air currents and avoid the areas were the worst pathogens linger and breed. They’re basically immune now. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of those pigeons have lung filters.”

“They aren’t synthetic nor uplifted. Why are they given customized cybernetics?”

“Nobody knows.”

N0ne turned to face him. “Now, I am almost certain you are lying to me.”

“Check any sources. There have been a few news articles over the last couple of years about the cyber-pigeons of Neo-Miami. Pigeons began following humans thousands of years ago. They settled in every human city on the planet. Why wouldn’t they outlive humans in the cities that humans live.”

“But the cyberwear. What’s the purpose of that?”

“Maybe it’s gangs trying to weaponize the wildlife. Maybe it’s the megas testing experimental new cybertechnology. Why depends on which wacked out conspiracy theorist you ask. Speaking of whom, my name is Leon.”

None asked directly, “Leon, I am searching for a twenty-year old girl. She’s about my size with short red hair and may be very natural looking.”

Leon chided, “You’re supposed to tell me your name now. That’s how flirting works.”

N0ne said, “The last Truman who flirted with me had his head removed from his body. Please answer the question.”

“no.”

The two stared at each other for an uncomfortable few seconds. N0ne then answered, “Corporal N0ne, Hyperborean Knowledge soldier. That is my name and designation.”

Leon said, “That wasn’t so hard, was it? It’s very nice to meet you, N0ne.”

N0ne asked, “We’re going to fight now, aren’t we?”

“Oh yeah, big time.” Two hwando blades extended from his arms. The single-edge swords gleamed in the daylight like a psychedelic light show. He stood menacingly close to her. “You can give us your gun and copters, and we’ll leave. Or we can take those things and also your body parts.”

N0ne scanned her opponent. He enhancements had no electronic signature to hack, only bio-augmentation RNA signatures. She couldn’t hack that. His blades although metal contained no electronics. He probably had enhanced strength to damage her body with them, or else he wouldn’t have stepped to her so confidently. He wasn’t even carrying a phone, no doubt because he was planning to mug someone all along.

Even worse, someone was trying to hack her. His two companions were launching their own hacking attacks at her firewall. She shouldn’t shut down her signal or the copters would fall out of the air and get snatched. She wasn’t able to counter-attack successfully because they weren’t presenting themselves as targets long enough. The two thugs were alternating, one would attack her digitally while the other shut off his own signal, and then switch every second or so. She couldn’t stop to focus entirely on either the physical threat in front of her nor the digital attacks from which she was already defending.

N0ne formulated a desperate plan. It involved using the copters on suicide runs against the two hackers while she dove into the sword attack, suffered the damage against her legs, and brought her pistol to bare at point blank range. This gave her an 81% chance of winning with considerable loses, even worse outcome than the laundry fight, but felt confident it would be a win. She commanded the copters into position as Leon reached for her with the sword tips.

“Only one coin,” came a gruff voice from the shrine entrance.

Leon froze in mid-swing. The digital attacks stopped at the same time. Leon said, “We didn’t see you there, Sir. We apologize.”

The short truman stood three times as tall as N0ne. He had unfolded long spindly robot limbs from under his robe. In his hands was a still-sheathed sainchamasageom. The heavy double-bladed “four tiger sword” was held tightly in one hand with a tassel swinging back and forth, the only movement. No one dared to breath.

The beggar spoke after a tense moment. He said, “I’m not your sir, and you spoiled rich thugs know better than to kill in a shrine. Do not be sorry. Be reformed. Next time, I will not hesitate.”

The other thugs each said, “Yes, we’re leaving now and ran out.”

Leon retracted his blades. He said, “Thank you for your mercy, Hwarang.” Leon slowly walked backwards with his hands up and empty until he was clear of the shrine and dashed around the corner.

N0ne admitted, “Now, you are worth one coin.”