Taya’s body falls limp and crooked on the pavement. Crumbs dust her hair, wadded napkins support her neck, silverware jabs her side. The thief lies ten yards away on the shattered remains of a café table. She wobbles with the effort of sitting up and attempting to watch, heart beating lungs aching vision blurring pain. Pale clammy skin, she looks like she would fall under the weight of the sun’s rays.

Two bodies and a woman with a gun is enough to keep any civilians at bay. Flint and the assassin stand alone between the bodies, curious and catlike. They both watch Taya and the stillness of her breath for a sign; some intent, some threat, or some other reason she would drop to the ground unconscious. After long, uneducated minutes, their eyes meet unintentionally. The assassin lowers her gun as she watches him. “Does she do that often?”

“I honestly have no idea. We only met last week.”

“She’s. . . cute,” she volunteers with a cursory nod at Taya’s unconscious body.

“Thank you.”

“I had no idea you liked them so young.”

He shrugs and flicks his eyes to the groaning, twitching heap of bloody thief. A clever bullet would put her out of glassy-eyed misery. “You’re doing well, I see. New target?”

“We have a history.”

“I didn’t realize you kept them alive long enough to develop one.”

“Touché.” She opens her gun barrel into her gloved palm and inspects the remaining bullets. Two spent shells vanish over her shoulder; two new ones appear from the depths of her jacket. The quiet shhlink of metal on metal echoes in the empty space. “Are you planning to stop me?”

“Oh, it’s none of my business.” He kneels down next to Taya and lifts her wrist to count the distance of her pulse. He skin is clammy under his fingers but the beat of her blood marches on. That doesn’t narrow down the question of what happened, but it reassures him that she’s better off than the Assassin’s target. “I’d prefer it if my companion and I could walk away, of course.”

“Poor girl,” she replies in a voice dead to sympathy. She snaps her gun together and aims it experimentally at Taya. “A bullet would hurt her less than you.”

He smirks and gently returns Taya’s arm to its original position without looking up. His hand lingers on the delicate underside of her wrist as he nudges aside the used napkins and spilled cutlery. She really is a plain one, but he gazes through her meaningless body to some alluring unknown only he can visualize. Silence fills the gap between them like sand pouring through an hourglass. “Let me have my fun, Ombrage, and I won’t interfere with yours.”

The assassin lowers her gun again and tilts her head to one side. “And when you’ve had your fun, have you considered. . .”

“Ow!” Question and answer fade with an exclamation from Taya’s hitherto for unconscious body. She jerks upright, yanks her hand from Flint’s gasp, and rubs the back of her neck in one whiplash fast moment. She grimaces. “It wasn’t supposed to do that.”

Flint’s arms are against her back and across her shoulder without a glance in Ombrage’s direction. He furrows his brow and looks, he’s fairly sure, distraught as he cradles her weight against him. “Taya, are you all right?”

Her eyes pull into focus on his face and her body pulls into focus on his hands. The corner of her mouth twitches downward and the grimace evaporates into shock. She removes his hands one by one and pulls wobbly from his embrace. She stands quite cautiously with both eyes on him and both hands up in defense. “You, you keep your hands off me. Hands there, me here, everybody wins. I’m fine. See? Fine.”

She flexes an arm for his inspection and, though it flings farther out than she intended and she keels to the left, she doesn’t lose her balance and that is proof enough. “So really, you can- hey!” She notices the Assassin’s casual retreat in the corner of her eye and swivels to face her. She points and points again, for emphasis, as the assassin continues to walk toward Midori. “And you! Stop it. Leave that poor girl alone or you’ll regret it.”

Midori groans from her heap on the broken table. She coughs between words. “Shut your damn mouth or I’ll show you ‘poor girl,’ asshole.”

Taya gapes. “Sorry! But I’m just trying to help, you know?”

Midori replies with one hand how she appreciates the help.

Ombrage ignores their argument and once again cocks the weapon at Taya. “I have asked you to stay out of this,” she repeats calmly. Flint shoots her a look and she ignores him as well. She fires a warning shot into the ground by Taya’s ankle and the girl falls unbalanced trying to dodge. “Do not interrupt me again.”

Taya squeaks and squinches her eyes shut until the ringing leaves her ears. She doesn’t move but to open one eye again, and trembling, venture to look at the bullet mark in the pavement. She stares at the black dent in the cement and the spidery lines of breakage that spread out over the sidewalk tile in a complex web of ruin.

Flint rests a hand between her shoulder blades and one against her arm. He pulls her standing with unexpected force and pulls her closer to him while he’s at it. She stops trembling and glares at his opportunistic hands. He speaks directly into her ear, a closeness that makes the hairs prickle up on the back of her neck. “Please, leave her alone. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Go ahead! Kill me, you honor-less bastard!” Ombrage is near the thief again, looming, ready. Midori has no recourse but to shout with the last of her oxygen, as it won’t be doing her any benefit shortly. Taya closes her eyes abruptly. She whispers words so quiet and fast that they become a steady drone of unintelligible sound quite lost under the barrage of intense swearing. Light flashes into small orbs that circle her open palms and stir her hair.

The assassin’s gun flashes like a mirror held up to sunlight, ripples, and oozes from her hand into a puddle by her foot. Gun splashes onto her feet and Midori’s leg and leftover gun beads on her glove like mercury. It runs like a river around her fingers and rolls down her arm where it drips, from the elbow, to join the remainder.

Midori stops swearing and Ombrage shakes any remaining metal off her arm. Flint stares mawkishly at the silver puddle of gun and Taya pries him off her being yet again. She stands feet apart, left hand on him, right hand outstretched and still glowing. “Okay. Since you don’t have a gun to wave around every time I try and say something, you’re gonna relax and listen to me now, right?”

The Assassin pulls her jacket back and reaches for a sword sheathed at her hip that Taya hadn’t exactly noticed. The handle, engraved leather shielded by a crescent moon of interlocking silver, glints in the sunlight. Midori sees it from her position and squirms on the ground like a wingless bird trying to fly.

Ombrage lunges, Flint turns away, Midori grimaces and shuts her eyes, and Taya glows. Yellow light flares in her eyes and crackles across her body in a steady electrical charge. Wind buffets her hair in her face but she stares through it to the ground by Ombrage’s feet. The concrete rises without a mantra of quiet words as three for, five coils that shape against Ombrage’s legs and tighten like angry snakes until they harden, statue like, up to her shoulders.

“Right.” Taya flips a stray lock of hair over her shoulder and rests both hands on her hips. “Stay put for a minute, okay? Thanks.”

She walks over to Midori and kneels down awkwardly among the glass shards. Blood leaks onto the pavement in a steady stream from her leg and countless other open cuts. Her left arm juts out at a strange and uncomfortable angle from the remainder of her body that trembles with the effort of making her chest rise and fall. Taya grimaces and rubs the back of her neck with a hand. Two brown eyes stare holes into her skin but she returns with a nervous smile and whistles through her teeth. “Yeek. You really are messed up, aren’tcha? Hang on, maybe I can-”

“Don’t you effin’ dare.” Midori wobbles an arm behind her shoulder and pushes into a sitting position. “Don’t. No magic. No pity.”

Taya sits back onto her heels and holds her hands outstretched in a gesture of peace. “I just want to take you to a healer. Nothing else, nothing fishy.”

“I didn’t ask for it!”

“Well, no, but you’re falling apart. No offense.”

“Then let me fall apart!” The elf glares at Taya with mountain stopping force. Taya pulls her hands back and sighs. Quiet throaty laughter draws her attention back to the trapped Assassin.

“She’ll sooner die than accept your charity. Isn’t that right, Midori?”

“Shut… shut up!”

Flint emerges beside Taya and rests a hand on her shoulder. “Taya, leave them be. She clearly doesn’t want our help.”

She doesn’t bother to twitch her shoulder out from his grasp. She doesn’t bother about him at all, actually, as she fixates on the thief’s injuries. “Look, you’re bleeding kinda bad and you’re in no shape to uh…”

The thief tries to push herself standing. She leans back and pushes up onto both of her legs but the weight makes her bad leg twinge and falter. She crumples, one leg under the other, and sinks back long enough to catch her breath. Her next attempt is to roll onto her stomach and push upright on all fours. She sits upright on her knees and steps forward, but she trips on a piece of table and falls over. The effort and the pain and the loss of blood leaves her unconscious.

“There, now she won’t injure herself further, and one of these hapless witnesses can go fetch the paramedics and what are you doing?”

Taya jimmies her shoulder under Midori’s chest and wraps the limp arm around her neck. She struggles to lift the unconscious body and Midori dangles like a rag doll with the stuffing pouring out. “We can’t just leave her here, she’ll be arrested.”

Flint raises an incredulous eyebrow. “Why on earth would she be arrested?”

“Because she’s a thief, remember? She’s the one who robbed T- me. And if they don’t blame her and the other woman for all these damages, then they’re bound to have some other reason to take her in.”

“Ah. Fair enough. But you plan to take her where?”

“Um. Oh! Back to… my place. My friend is coming to visit any minute now. He’s a top notch healer, he’ll get her fixed up.”

“And you’re sure it’s worth such a thankless errand?”

“Yes.” The force of optimism is overpowering. Flint sighs, shakes his head, and offers his assistance on the other side of the body.

“Then let me help you, you won’t be able to manage alone.”