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Dex hadn't been to this bar in a while. It was a lot easier to get drink than food, if anything. Those days were behind her, she mused. She wrapped one of her crinoid tendrils around her glass, thinking about how different her life might have been if she'd made different choices. She hadn't talked to Jackie in a while, for one thing. It was strange that she'd pop into Dex's mind, considering how long it'd been, yet there she was for some reason.

Bringing her glass to the lamprey maw between her crinoid tendrils, she idly wondered what the roach had been up to lately. Last time they'd talked, Jackie had still been going on about her crazy plan to leave the System as if that was a thing, but then the roach always did go on about things like that, didn't she? It wasn't like it'd been a new thing, nothing to justify thinking it'd materialize any more than any of the other times she'd tried.

Dex's heat pits sensed trouble. 'Trackers.' She lowered her crinoid tendril putting her glass back down.

It was Trackers.

For a split second, Dex couldn't help asking herself if they could tell what she'd been thinking about. It had just seemed like such a coincidence that she'd have been thinking back on the old days with Jackie at just the same time as they'd shown up. It wasn't like even Trackers could read minds. If they could, their investigations would've been a lot simpler. If someone in the System was working on that, she wasn't talking. She recognized the gravelly cough behind her.

"Officers." She uncrossed her flamingo legs turning around on her barstool, casually, she hoped.

"Citizen," the other Tracker's voice creaked. Dex did the best approximation of a polite nod that her physiology allowed.

"Something wrong?" Such a calm, melodious voice coming from a toothy lamprey maw.

"Depends." The scratchy monotone sounded scratchier than usual by comparison. "On how you mean."

"Can I help?" With Trackers, it was best to make sure they knew what a cooperative mood you were in.

"You might," Sticks answered, "if you're up for it." Since Stones hadn't given her a straight answer, Dex had directed her attention to the walkingstick, but that wasn't quite a straight answer out of her yet either.

"What can I do?" Sometimes Trackers were purposefully vague in the hopes that the person they were talking to would say too much. Dex hoped this wasn't one of those times, but she chose her words carefully.

"How's work going, Dex?" The termite went around her question altogether.

"Did someone complain about it?" Dex was the best bodyguard in the System. No one had complained about her work in quite some time - no one but those she fought against.

"What my partner means is," Sticks picked up where Stones had left off, "do you like it? Is it everything you want it to be?" It was always so much easier to manipulate people when they were desperate, the walkingstick regretted.

"It's alright." With people like Dex, they had to do things a little differently. "No complaints from me either." Not too emphatic, but enough for them to know she meant it.

"Ever thought of doing something else?" She turned the question over in her mind.

Dex had enough put away by now that she never really had to take on a job she didn't want. There wasn't much that people could do about it if she said no. After all, if they thought they could take her, they wouldn't have wanted to hire her in the first place. Dex was good enough at it that she didn't get killed all that often by this point, and she could afford it when she did. Her reputation preceded her, which helped her with friend and foe alike. Her ship wasn't too shabby, and she was able to go to a lot of Jamborees without having to work at them to afford them. All in all, Dex supposed that no, she hadn't thought of doing something else in quite some time.

"Not really." What reason could the Commission have to be unhappy with her work, though? "Should I?" The termite cleared her throat.

"We have no problem with what you've been doing," Stones hastened to add, "just so you know." That much was a relief, at least.

"Glad to hear it." Dex couldn't smile as such, but you could still hear a smile in her voice.

"The Commission is grateful you've been making its job easier," Sticks went on. Dex didn't know what the flattery was for, but it did have the merit of being true.

"It beats the alternative," she chuckled understatedly. An offhand remark, enough to let them know she wasn't up to no good, but not so much it seemed to be covering anything up. She threw in a gesture with a crinoid tendril for effect, a small one not to startle them.

"We're glad you'd think so," the termite rasped.

"The Commission's been good to me." Dex raised her glass to it, and took another swig. "So I'm good to it, right?" She put her glass back down.

"And how," the walkingstick broached, "good to it would you be prepared to be?"

"Am I in trouble?" Stones coughed at Dex's remark. Was that a chuckle? Dex couldn't tell.

"What my partner means is," the termite clarified, "have you ever thought about working with us?" Until then, most other patrons had made a show of pretending to ignore the conversation they were having, whether they really were or not.

"Wait, as a Tracker, you mean?" That turned a few heads.

"Yes," Sticks creaked, "as one of us." The thought of Dex as a Tracker was definitely enough to give a lot of people pause, Dex not least among them.

"Our equal in every way, shape and form."

"New challenges to test your skill."

"Someone at your back when push comes to shove."

"Full coverage, the works."

"Better weapons."

"A better ship."

"And a way to make a difference," Stones pointed out.

"We know you care," the walkingstick appealed.

"Work with us, Dex," the termite pleaded.

"You'll find we care as well," Sticks promised. Many patrons who were pretending not to eavesdrop on their conversation would've taken that offer without a second thought. It really wasn't such a bad offer, when it all came down to it.

"Is that right?" Dex asked understatedly. They nodded expectantly. She leaned back in her chair against the bar, stretching out her crossed flamingo legs and crossing two crinoid tendrils behind where her head would've been if she'd had a head. "Well, Stones - may I call you Stones, officer?" Our equal in every way, shape and form. Stones nodded, albeit grudgingly. This time it was their turn to pass her test. "Well, Stones... May I ask you something?"

"As you wish, Dex," the walkingstick answered for her partner.

"How often do you think the Commission would tell me to kill, more or less?" Dex had still been addressing the termite, undeterred.

"You have to have killed Renegades as part of your work as a bodyguard, haven't you?" Dex gave the best approximation of a shrug her physiology allowed.

"When I can't avoid it, yeah."

Sticks hoped that would give them a foothold. "So is it the same with us, I assure you."

"The Commission screens its Trackers carefully," Stones explained. "We don't need loose cannons wasting resources, what a bad example that would be, don't you think?"

"I guess so." But Dex's tone belied her words.

"A last resort, when it's the only way to protect other citizens," Sticks offered. 'Or their stuff,' Dex completed mentally - but she didn't say that part out loud.

"And you don't get charged for it," was what she did say, "unlike the rest of us."

"We don't get charged when we get killed, either." The termite thought she was staying one step ahead of Dex, missing her point completely.

"Oh, I don't intend to need to worry about that for a while." A bit of disarming bragging should throw them off, Dex thought.

"Do you have an aversion to killing?" So the walkingstick was a bit more perceptive than her partner, it turned out.

"I don't like to waste the Commission's resources anymore than you do, if that's what you mean." But Sticks could see through her smokescreen.

"But the Commission calculates just how many resources Renegades would waste with the damage they do, and weighs how many it would waste to kill them against it every time. That's the whole reason we're allowed to the way we are. Does it go deeper than that for you, citizen?" Dex was already back on the defensive.

"Let me put it this way." Control the narrative. "See that koala girl at that table over there?"

"The one with the eyepatch?" Stones asked.

"That's the one." The eucalyptus-haired koala didn't look up from her table. The Trackers had to do a double-take to realize that she was doing the equivalent of holding her fingers apart on the table sticking a knife between them from side to side as fast she could, but by shooting lasers between her fingers from her ruby eyeball instead.

"What about her?" the walkingstick asked.

"I had to kill her one time, it must've been, what, a thousand years ago?" Her memory wasn't what it used to be.

"And...?" The termite raised an eyebrow.

"And to this day, she brings it up." Dex took another swig to celebrate regaining control of the narrative. "It's the most obnoxious thing, that's all."

"Most people would be thrilled to be offered work as a Tracker, Dex." Sticks was running out of patience. Dex was wearing her down.

"Then why don't you let me ask _you_something," Dex retorted. "Do you like _your_jobs, officers? Are they everything _you_want them to be?"

"Look," Stones answered, "I know you're being glib, but we'll be honest with you. You're a stand-up citizen, we owe you as much. More and more citizens have been becoming Renegades recently. It's becoming more and more difficult for us Trackers to be able to keep them in check. The more of them there are, the more they know they can get away with, the bolder they get. You act detached, it's a defense mechanism, we sort of get it. Deep down, though, you want to live in a System where people get to live their lives, as we do. Renegades make that harder for everyone else. We know you care. That part wasn't just a line." It looked like the termite may have been more insightful than Dex had given her due credit for after all.

"Will you help us make everyone's lives in the System easier... please?" The Commission was used to getting its way. Trackers weren't taught to negotiate from anything other than a position of strength. How often did they ever need to? Dex had to give them points for trying.

"... Can I have some time to think about it?" The walkingstick sighed. If only Dex had had any arms for them to twist.

"If you must."