A spider's heart and soul

Bounty Hunter's Bounty

You awake in a cold sweat. Your back burning from the memories of the dream. This happed all to often for you to be fazed and so you get up to start your day. You had only recently moved to this city and you had a busy day ahead of you on making more secure connections. You were still frustrated on how many ties you had to cut when you fled the city you lived in before, you had a very comfortable and freeing life there. You were still cautious and slightly paranoid, but ever since the incident that happened last year you might as well be the poster child for paranoia and dread. 

You finish getting dressed and move to leave your home when footsteps from outside stop your hand from undoing the chain at the top of the door. They sounded off, the residents of this floor were loners much like you and you memorized all of there footsteps. These ones that were coming down the hall were almost non existent, as if they were a predator sneaking up on their prey. Yet they didn't carry the same caution and slow pace that those who crept up on people did, these ones were steadily walking down the hall as if the were coming home. You feel your stomach drop. You didn't like this at all, running back to your room you grab your essentials that you kept prepared in a bag next to a secure window that dropped straight into the empty streets below. Throwing it over your shoulder you unbolt the door and drop below just in time to hear the door to your apartment breakdown. Your Safe Zone was activated, you could feel it but instead of screams of pain you heard silence. The silence only made you more uneasy. That's when you realize that whatever activated your nen was not the same as the person who broke the door. They were studying your nen! Maybe even using it to track you! You quickly release the Safe Zone and suppress your nen to make it seem as if you were not a nen user and leave the street calmly to the more crowded ones. It was a trick that took you years to master, but you knew it would be useful in evading your pursuers.

As you move through the streets as apart of the crowd you internally beat yourself up. This is all because you weren't thorough enough when you burned down your house, you were young and stupid and now you were an ex-bounty hunter with the entire underworld hunting you down because your soulmate put a bounty on your head. You wished you had thought ahead back then and made sure that all the bodies were beyond recognition, that the original fence had better dental health and didn't have a crown on one of his teeth. Thanks to that single tooth the Phantom Troupe was able to realize your plans a year ago when they managed to figure out the identity of a girl with a tattoo on her forehead. Your soulmate must have wanted to make sure it was you and did his own checks of the coroners reports. Who was able to discover the fact that it wasn't your tooth at the time.

As you enter a nearby store you head straight to the restrooms and find the bag with a wig, scissors and hair dye you hide there when you first moved. You call up a local drug addict to make her come over for the rest of your stock which you left back at your home. Once she came in you quickly forced her to change clothes with your current ones and you took hers, once that was done you had her cut and dye her hair to look like yours and you cut and dye the wigs to look like hers since you kept a short male style and hers was long and ragged. she then left to collect her reward while you caked on layer after layer of make up to make you look not only like and addict but to cover up the mark on your forehead as well. 

Once you were satisfied you left the restroom and headed to the nearest hotel, you would stay the night and then leave tomorrow on foot so that you weren't to suspicious or could be tracked. The moment you get in the room you set up your Safe Zone and fall asleep, you needed to rest quickly and have as much energy as you could to travel as far as you needed to the next day.

You fall asleep wondering which bounty hunter found you and if you even knew them. It wasn't likely since the bounty was meant for those that typically worked for the ones you used hunt, yet you did still get close to a few on jobs that shared an equal goal with them.