"You said you'd been to Pao?"

He focuses his eyes on the contents of his tea. "Well, I was actually heading somewhere else at the time and I got lost."

Taya grins sheepishly and spears a corner of shortbread with her fork. It crumbles into several useless pieces which she has to trick onto the utensil and into her mouth. "That's usually, um, how people find us. What did you think of it?"

"Well it is a... quaint place to live. Very picturesque."

She laughs and nudges the last of the shortbread across her plate into the final mound of whipping cream. "You can be honest. I know it's really small."

"No, I really did think it was picturesque. The rolling hillsides of undetermined flowers fenced between those stubby town walls were very impressive." He grins at her over the cup and she smiles. "Honest enough?"

"Very, thank you." She knows she's probably glowing around the ears, but she likes listening to him talk. He has interesting things to say. To her. To impress her. And he listens like he cares what she's saying in return. "So, do you travel a lot?"

"As often as I can afford to on a two-bit performer's wages. Which is, admittedly, not often enough." He pours hot water from a small silver cafe teapot and bobs the teabag up and down in his cup. "But I've explored this country fairly thoroughly and I'd like to return to the Southern Continent sometime. I enjoy Ryn, but I miss the ancient cities."

"You've _been_?" Her eyes widen.

"Oh, yes. I went when I was younger. They really are as grand as everyone makes them sound: towering and sleek and inhuman."

"Wow,” she breathes. Her imagination conjures sky high black and silver relics covered in ivy and moss. She awes herself at the thought. “Or does that make me, um, sound naiive?"

"Hardly. Looking at them made me feel small, and it still does thinking about it.” This reassures her. The fact that he cares to reassures her adds another checkmark in her mental tally of reasons why her dream self is dead wrong. “Anyway, you should make time to visit on your own trip."

"Trip? Oh. No. I'm not. Um. I don't travel."

He raises both eyebrows over the brim of his cup. "Oh?"

Taya makes shapes with her napkin under the table. Without looking, they feel like a cross between a crane, a frog, and a vaguely cow-like lump. "Well, I mean, I'm from Pao, but I'm planning on staying here. I think. Maybe."

"So you're moving, then."

"Sort of?"

They face each other old-western style, two titans on opposite ends of a desolate plane. The attacker holds her sword in one hand and a pistol in the other. Both her hands are shiny black metal that does unfortunate things to Midori’s headache when she tries to focus on it. She clenches and unclenches her fingers around the dagger.

"You gonna stare at me all day or we gonna do this?"

"After you."

In her head she performs a mighty leap, smacks her attacker with a roundhouse kick that knocks the weapon clear of out of hand, and lands gracefully - and dare we say catlike - on the roof edge. Gravel dust rises in her wake and blows dramatically in the still afternoon air.

“That’s right, now who’s the-“

In actuality, her legs move too slowly and the bullet lands in her leg with a force that knocks her backwards. She fumbles for the ledge but it wobbles in triplicate across her vision. She grabs at the empty air and drops like a sack of potatoes onto the ground below. A garish red-and-white awning breaks her fall and a table smashes under their combined weight. Glass prickles up through the canvas.

“Goddamn...”

She’s still conscious by sheer demands of the pain. She wants to roll over and be sick but for the pain of actually rolling over. And blood is everywhere. God, is it hers?

The couple dining at the adjoining table stares, forks trembling halfway to their mouths, and runs.

“Selfish cocksukaaggh.”

The assailent pushes down on the bullet wound with the toe of her boot. The pain exceeds any possible metaphor or swear-word in her repetoir.

"You must find this disappointing."

Midori doesn’t reply. Words take up energy that could be used for breathing and not being sick. Must be a way out of this. Sure, she can't move, she's stuck out here in some hoitey-toitey human district with a gun pointed at her head but there must. Be. Something.

"Gun, or sword? I feel you have a right to choose."

"S- stop."

The attacker turns. Midori closes her eyes. Flint stares. Patrons inside the cafe press their faces against the windows. Abandoned napkins flutter off their tables toward freedom and fall, windless, to the ground.

Taya flinches at the attention, although mostly the attention from someone carrying two weapons. She rises nervously from her seat, bangs her knee against the glass, winces and almost trips over the chair legs as she tries to extricate herself. She can feel her heart beat through her ears.

"P-please s-stop. Um. Hurting. Her."

The attacker raises an eyebrow. Taya widens her eyes into an unabashed gape. A blue-skinned face emerges from Beneath layers of carefully cut black fabric. Was this what Koneko was talking about? A what’s it called, Shifter? The attacker moves enough to aim her pistol at Taya. The sword remains over Midori's throat.

"I have additional bullets in my gun. Unless you would like to experience one, I suggest you sit down."

Flint grabs the sleeve of her shirt and tugs her back toward her seat. "Taya, sit down."

She stumbles back like a ragdoll in his grip but stops before momentum carries her back into a chair. She doesn't really notice and she refuses to pull her gaze away from the blue-skinned woman and her gun. Everything feels distant; the sounds come from farther away, the images move slowly and deliberately, and her thoughts have no connection with the body that half stands half sits by the strength of Flint’s arm.

Taya wraps her free hand around the amber pendant at the end of her necklace. The smooth stone brings strength enough to go through with this very, very unwise idea. "You had better not been lying," she whispers.

"Take every risk,

Reward yourself nothing.

Come when I call,

Go when I please.

My source, my strength,

My sacrifice:

Help me."

And then Taya drops to the ground unconscious.