Ariane vs. Crime

1

Gereval has warm winters, never much more than a brisk wind and a flurry of snow that melts as it hits the ground. The street-weave never dies; only farmers have plows, and only archaeologists have shovels. Why not gravediggers, you might ask? No such thing. There'll be no zombies in Andragar, thank-you-very-much. If you really love your lost ones, you torch 'em.

Ariane Vastar's feeling chilly, though, and that's no lie. She just got some Blue Spike straight from the finest lineman in the Fifth, Purple Eon. They call him a lineman because he's got an inside line on the quality goods—that's the start of your Fifth Ward slang lesson. Pay attention, there'll be a test. You think I'm kidding. Now Blue Spike, it's tremendous: chills away your troubles, makes everything clear and cool as ice, even puts a blue cast on your vision. Underworld accountants use Blue Spike because it brings the numbers into focus. Sad people use Blue Spike because it takes the pain away while leaving them the distanced mournful attitude. Ariane's using Blue Spike because she's a meta-junkie. She's not addicted to any drug; she's addicted to drugs. If you're under 18, better stop reading: drug use is about to get way glorified. Characters are fictional, world's fictional, drugs are fictional, don't do actual drugs, end of cylinder.

That said, Ariane's digging this Blue Spike stuff. "So, wow... it's like those cool blue shades, only without the red pinchy marks on my nose." Ariane's not so much analytical. More, you know, intuitive, in that "how the hell did she get that idea" kind of way.

Purple Eon's got a little case of hero worship going on. Why? I'm holding on to that one. Sort of a plot device kind of thing. "They look good on you," he says.

"What do?"

"The shades. That you're not wearing. You know, joke."

"Oh, right. Those shades. Gotcha." Ariane makes that little "get it, got it, good" sort of clicking noise in the back of her mouth. Most supercilious thing ever. Not her fault, it was just her frame of mind. (Drugs make it easy to shirk.)

Uncomfortable silence ensues; well, you know, for Purple Eon. Ariane's just chilling, but Purple Eon's riding on the Bad Joke Aftermath Rickshaw and he's hoping to maybe get off. "So are you, you know, interested?"

"Do they not have gossip columns around here?"

"Huh?"

"You know I'm a lesbian."

"I meant in the Spike."

"Oh. Yeah, totally. Gimme five."

"Cases?"

"Doses. I'm travelling light." Ariane's looking at herself in Purple Eon's dusty mirror. Under the influence, she can pick out every strand of tangled black hair; hell, she can count them. Crazy. Her eyes are shadowed, a combination of sultrier-than-thou makeup and chronic drug abuse. (Purple Eon's slogan: "We put the us back in abuse!") Lips are lookin' pretty good, though, as usual: the typical term is "bee-stung," but Ariane's thinking more "luscious." She's got a bit of an ego problem. Or, as her manager would put it, an "ego opportunity."

"Hey, okay, sure," Purple Eon grumps as he hands over the capsules. "That's, what, like eight copper? That's gonna feed my starving children for, shit, two hours."

"God, you looking for a tip or something? I'm free advertising! I'll just talk you up in the Coast, you can clean house next time you visit. You work all the Purgatory concerts, right? The kids love them over there."

"Yeah, and the law hates them. They're fucking war criminals in a war that hasn't even happened yet, remember? Now Purgatory's going to be trekking out to We-Want-To-Execute-Purgatory Land? That's so going to happen."

Ariane gives Purple Eon a Look, but its effectiveness is baffled by the blissful calm of the drug. "I. Know. A. Secret," she singsongs, secretly delighting in the resonance of her own voice (587.32 cps, if you're curious).

"Yeah?" After making sure his drug stuff is squared away, Purple Eon tosses open the blinds to let some late-afternoon sun in. It's a nice day, for Firstmonth. The sun turns Eon's sequined robe into a glittering starmap, like a military flash-code gone horribly wrong. To be a lineman, you gotta have style.

"Purgatory's touring the Coast come summertime. Secretly. Underground promotion. Warehouses, basements, like that."

"The Eternal Guard's PR branch is skulking?"

"Hip skulking. The wool-pulling adds to the mystique. My source calls it 'braggadocio,' but I call it king-size balls. Makes me proud."

"Thought you were a lesbian."

"I can admire balls without wanting to suck on them, all right?" Blue Spike or no Blue Spike, Ariane's got Bawdy Turn of Phrase at skillrank 10.

Purple Eon botches his Witty Response check. "I so don't know how to react to that statement."

2

Ariane's trying to sit still, but Snap 5 doesn't let you do that. Her heart is pounding, doomp da doomp da doomp, and Ariane's doing the standing-in-one-place dance—all the rage among pee-filled children and prophetic asylum inmates. She's humming the riff from "Rivalon Lights," and it's all she can do not to start bouncing around, running up walls, you know, rambunctiousness. Trouble is, she's trying to sit for a picture.

Sketch is doing his best. They call him "Sketch" because he's an artist—witty, huh? And oh so apt. He's got her face pretty much done, he's just filling in the shadows under her eyes. He's an overly honest bastard: Snap 5 gives her a bruised and puffy look that he captures mercilessly. But that's what you get when you make a contract with a pro.

Speaking of pros and contracts, he's also going to try to kill her at the end of this section, because he was hired by an underworld mastermind. Don't worry, she lives. Kind of takes the suspense out of it, doesn't it? But as Schafthauser said, "Everything is decided but means."

Snap 5 is a failure by medical standards. Snap 8 is used to jump-start hearts. Snap 3 is used to calm them down. Snap 5 just stresses them. Fortunately for Snap 5's career, it also fills the world with the frenetic and lively rushing flow that Ariane was looking for when she took it. Snap 5: welcome to the banned list... and glory!

Now, drugs aren't exactly illegal in Andragar. Natural selection isn't a going idea—after all, six thousand years isn't long enough for a hell of a lot of speciation. But "evolution in action" is just the right term for the dragon outlook on drugs. They say "what's this? People take drugs, and if they take too many, they die? Bonus! Stupid people, exit stage left!" But people are always going to look for illegal ways to make money. What can I say, people just like evil! So the dragons have a little intellectual challenge: how do I provide an outlet for crime without harming the innocent population? Think about that one for a paragraph or two.

Sketch is doing some pretty happening shading over here. He's beyond crosshatch and into rocking the fuck out. His sketch of Ariane is taking on a life of its own, well, except in the literal sense. Sketch is fly, but Arrowny he ain't. Ariane is looming a little, leaning a little, showing off her cleavage a little; Sketch is cool with each, but she's trying to sneak a peek at the unfinished picture, and he's totally not cool with that. "No peeking, Miss Vastar. It's bad luck."

Ariane pouts, stamps her precious little foot, and bops back to her spot, dancing the antsy dance all the way. It's not a good dance for her, but she manages to look charming, in a black-velvet kind of way. Sure, she's dressed in a white tank top with a pink cigarette-smoking bunny on it, but she's always got just a little of the Chaos Princess going on. Hot and deadly, straight up.

Oh, about crime: you probably guessed this already, but yeah, the dragons have criminalized the drug trade specifically in hopes that it would use up the greater energies of the crime world. And how do you like this? Drugs are up... muggings, burglaries, blackmails are down. Everybody wins, except the druggies. And who cares about them? Just Raphael, on the "let's cure the sick" side, and a couple of Chaos Lords, on the "let's exploit the helpless" side. Now, Ariane's a druggie, and lots of people care about her, but she's a special case. She's also a Bad Role Model, but that label covers at least half the people in her profession.

Sketch's studio is dark and cramped; Ariane's posing in the only open space he's got. The rest is laden with years worth of art supplies, half-finished artworks, broken kinetic sculptures—Sketch likes the clutter, but he keeps it around mostly for image. Starving artist, immersed in his work, that sort of thing.

"Okay, Miss Vastar, could you strike the original pose? I need to get a reference for the shading." Sketch has been working in charcoal so far. Now he switches over to chalk, a dark gray. Ariane strikes a pose that artfully blends cheesecake and rattlesnake venom; her professional image is "sexy modern city girl who can kill you with her bare hands." She pulls it off like a magician's tablecloth, assuming that metaphor made sense. If it doesn't, just work with me.

The Snap 5 suddenly starts to wear off, but Ariane's neurochemistry can't snap back into shape on its own. The dark fabric of a Snap 5 low wraps itself around her body, itchy and hot. She knows what to do, of course—she swigs a Body Purge, spends the next thirty seconds sweating under hot flashes and wracking aches, and then she's A-OK.

Sketch is down to the easy part; he's not going for perfect realism (and he can't get it with this chalk anyway), so he just blocks in enough to make his drawing come to stylized life, and he's done. "Miss Vastar... have a glance."

"You're done?" she asks.

"Oh yeah. Came out damned good, too—mostly because of the model." His blatant flattery is met with the obligatory air-kiss, but her heart's not in it. Too tired after the Snap 5.

Released from her pose, she pulls a light blue hanky out of her back left pocket and mops her brow. Body Purge cuts the lows, but each purge is like an hour's workout in a bottle. She's going to have to change clothes when she gets home—it's that or have armpit sweat-stains for the rest of the day—but she's the kind of girl who changes her clothes three or four times a day anyway. That's not to say she's always in fashion; far from it: she's a trendsetter, if she's lucky, and Number 6 on the Gereval Gossip's "Worst-Dressed" list if she's not. Last year she was both. Her lucky number is 6 anyway, so it's not a total loss.

Ariane scopes out the finished piece. "Hey, nice rack on that girl," she says.

Sketch wants to joke "artistic license," but he'd get hurt. "I was going for a sort of harshly realistic pin-up look. You know, bring out your inner beauty without hiding the texture."

"Well, it's pretty styling. It'll look great on the posters. Thanks a million, Sketch."

"Hey, we've got the whole wish-command thing going. So it's no sweat."

Sketch takes the thick paper off the easel and blows the excess chalk off of it. He manages to get the chalk dust in Ariane's face, and spends the next thirty seconds apologizing, collecting his fee, rolling up the piece and putting it in a mailing tube for the printer, and hustling her out the door. He likes Ariane, actually, and wishes he could be okay with her, so he shuts the door a bit more abruptly than necessary. He doesn't want to see her go up in flames when the sunlight hits her. Better her than him, though, he thinks.

Trouble is, he doesn't know just how much of a junkie Ariane really is. She knows what poison was in that chalk, because she took it once for fun. The moment Sketch shuts the door on her, she's hugging the shadows, watching the angle of the sun, staying in breezeways and under awnings as much as possible, and wondering who set Sketch up to kill her. If she touches direct sunlight, she's in for a world of hurt. The vampire dust sank into her skin on contact, now her bloodstream's flowing with the power of the unspeakable ancients of the night. She's half tempted to go back to Sketch's studio and threaten to hold him out the window if he doesn't talk; he must have gotten more of a dose than she did in that chalk. But with her luck, he'll just spritz her with some holy water and give her some ugly burn scars, or if he's profligate he'll smash an elixir over her head. Vampire weaknesses are no joke; Ariane doesn't need five dots in Auspex to tell her that.

3

Ariane stalks down Dusk Apple Lane, keeping up a steady stream of subvocal obscenities. The street is really just an alley with three-story buildings on both sides; perfect for keeping out of reach of sunlight. She's headed for Shaver's Roost, where she can chill until nightfall, possibly get an uncurse, and definitely not get assassinated. She already hit her apartment for a change of clothes, opting for a heavy skin-concealment look: blue long-sleeved turtleneck, flowing white cape, white silk gloves, black bellbottoms with blue-white flames creeping up the legs. On her way out of her neighborhood, she'd bought a big carpet, which she carries over her head. It's safe to assume that this is not how the ancient vampire lords do it, but her skin's not on fire, so it's damn well good enough. The thing about vampire dust is that it gives you all the weaknesses and cravings of a vampire, and almost none of the powers. Fortunately, Ariane doesn't need all that much in the powers department, and she's good at controlling her inner cravings. After all, she's 24 and she hasn't overdosed yet—she can definitely go for a few hours without gnawing on some poor schlub's neck.

Dusk Apple Lane is the boundary between the Sixth Ward (motto: "We don't have much money, but we've earned it fair and square") and the Fifth (motto: "Give us your money or we'll shank you"). Amontag Avenue does a little sidways shake and turns into Narrow Sky Lane as it crosses into the Dirty Fifth. Ariane attracts some funny looks, hustling along with a carpet over her head, but the difference between the Sixth and the Fifth is night and day: you cross the street, and you're instantly in the domain of those who live to steal and those who have nothing worth stealing. Slab put it a bit dramatically: "Welcome to the Fifth, where the crooks burn books / And you could stabbed over a cross-eyed look." Truth is, the Fifth Ward isn't any worse than Ilium's Monterey Heights or the Clover District of Ys; and it's a sight better than Credo Vallar's Shadow City.

Half a block into the Fifth is Shaver's Roost. It's sort of a bar, sort of an art house, sort of a dance club, sort of a plane-shifting spiritual anomaly that pulls in equal numbers of the tarnished and the pure. Ariane's both, so she fits right in. She's not a regular, but she knows the people; in specific, she knows Fakhyle.

She pushes open the triple-thickness banded wooden door, and counterweights on a pulley system draw it shut behind her. The darkness is a relief after the vampire-toasting midday sunshine. Of course, the joint is dead (heh) this early in the day, mostly because it's closed—a fact that Ariane didn't make a big deal about, what with the imminent sunlight immolation thing. Nora's the only one around, and she's not even behind the bar, she's sitting at a table reading a book. This in itself is pretty interesting, so Ariane beelines for her.

She would have been heading straight for Nora even if there'd been a three-ring circus in the way, because Nora's just Ariane's type: pretty, nice rack. Not the most specific fetish ever, but it means Ariane's got plenty of options wherever she goes. Plus, Nora's already seen her, and she's looking up with a "here comes my favorite person" expression that practically nobody ever gets to see. Plus plus, she's wearing this low-cut white number with flaring sleeves (very in this season) and black dragons running down the shoulders and... well, long story short, Nora's charms are definitely displayed to advantage. Ariane kicks a chair into a skittering 180 and plops down on it, thighs wrapped around the chair-back. "Heya, Red." Ariane calls her that because she's a redhead and, well, that's actually the only reason.

"Hey!" Nora says, cracking an uneven grin. She was hunched over her book, but now she sits up straight, just happening to pull her shirt down to optimum tightness. Nora's usually not big on primping—she likes to let them come to her—but Nora's an Ariane Vastar fangirl, and refuses to miss a chance to flirt. "Haven't seen you around since, what, late fall."

"Yeah, I was in Rivalon, making the rounds. You know, the exciting life of Ariane Vastar." Ariane tosses the line off with what little self-deprecation she can manage. She's not really good at it; she's naturally laid back, but intentional humility is a little too much to ask.

"I followed the standings. You were doing pretty good out there!" Nora's willing to lay it on as thick as necessary.

"Don't lay it on too thick," Ariane says, forcing Nora into a five-second strategy review. "Five for eight isn't exactly Kalshane territory. Hey, I don't come here to talk shop anyway, you know? Right now I'm just looking for a good friend."

Nora's head is making an almost audible creaking noise as the gettin'-some gears spin way faster than spec. "I can be that," she says, doing her most practiced cleavage-lean.

"Ideally a good friend who can lift the curse of the undead."

"Okay, my qualifications are looking less impressive. I guess you want Fakhyle."

"Don't worry, Red, I want you too," Ariane says, throwing Nora a bone. Dedicated Nora-watchers will find this a nearly apocalyptic reversal of the usual Nora/world dynamic. "Just, you know, not to cast spells on me." Ariane plays it cool, but she knows an intentional cleavage-lean when she sees one. She's just made a snap decision to make a return trip to Shaver's Roost once she's kicked the necessary asses. "Unless you're into that," she adds thoughtfully.

"Hey," Nora says, smelling success in the air, "I can always study up."

"Speaking of which, what's that?" Ariane finally turns the conversation back to her original curiosity.

"The book?" Nora marks her place with a napkin, spins the book around, and slides it across the polished tabletop. Ariane stops it with a finger and squints at the title. "Dark elven poetry? Hello, sinister?"

Nora giggles. "Actually read any? It's romantic. Like, really romantic. This guy gave it to me, you know, playing the sensitive card."

"Sounds like you're into it, though," Ariane says with a raised eyebrow.

Nora shrugs, back in flirt-maneuver mode. "The poetry gets me tingly, but the guy's just sort of a pasty sap."

"You're hard on guys, Nora."

"So? They're hard on me. Um."

"I knew what you meant. I think," Ariane laughs.

"Quit while I'm behind?"

"Nah, I like your behind." Having decided to spend a little quality time with Nora, Ariane feels obliged to stroke her ego. I said ego, right? Whew. "Hey, is Sylvie going to be in today?"

"Sure, when we open."

"She still seeing that guy from the Diamond Nines?"

Nora rolls her eyes; to Ariane's newly-resolved libido, the gesture is quite fetching. "Yeah, and she's even wearing a little blue and white these days. You know, to complete the gang colors. I try to talk her out of it."

"You're kidding! Have you seen her flashing any signs?"

"No, but it's just a matter of time," Nora sighs. "It's her training kicking in. She's working her way into the gang so she can put him to the Test."

"Think he's going to pass?" Ariane's warming to the idea; she never liked Sylvie's latest boyfriend, not that she's liked any of them, but she loves the idea of this boyfriend looking the Crying Demon in the eye.

"I cornered him last Goldday and put the squeeze on him. Run some boobs up against his chest and a guy'll tell you anything. Not only is he the son of a grocer, he's still planning to take up the family business. Oh, and he writes poetry. Crap poetry, I might add. This schmendrick's going to keep his gang oaths under pressure? Shyeah."

"Okay, but Sylvie's still in the underworld loop at the moment, right?"

"Wait a second," Nora says. She's never been last place in the uptake department, and right now she's putting two and two together. The answer is so four. "You didn't take vampire dust for fun. Not during daylight, that's for sure. Hence the carpet, which I wasn't really going to ask about but I was wondering."

"Well, it kind of goes with my drapes, so I'm gonna make the best of it, but yeah, definitely a survival measure."

"So it was a murder attempt. You're thinking professional?"

"Nah, I know the guy who did it."

"He's not dead?"

"Buddy of mine. Guess I like him more than he likes me, but I'm hoping to hear that he was threatened with death or something. Now, if it was just money, then yeah, I'm so not inviting him to my debutante party."

"So you need Sylvie to put some ears out in the underworld."

"I need her to put some entire heads out in the underworld, is what I need. But if ears is all I get, ears is what I'll make do with."

"You know, Ariane—don't take this the wrong way—but you're really coherent right now."

Ariane heaves out a world-weary sigh. "I know, I know." She cradles the book of dark elven poetry and rests her head on it. "It's the vampire dust. Makes me wordy. I can't take anything else, because it reacts badly with the dust. So instead I'm stuck speaking in complete paragraphs."

"We could always, you know, not talk. Still two hours until we open." Nora's tone of voice makes it damn clear what she's talking about. (Hint: sex.)

"I like that idea," Ariane says, with just enough of a pause for Nora's heart to pick up the pace. Vampire Ariane's starting to tune in on the whole blood thing, so heartrate is a big turnon now. "But I'd end up biting you."

"I could be into that," Nora breathes.

"And drinking your rich mortal blood to feed my twisted desires."

"Okay, you win, not my kink."

"Bluuuuuud. Yum." Ariane's just joshing at first, but then she realizes that she's seriously considering taking a little nibble out of Nora's neck. Like, a big jugular-severing nibble. "Ick, that's enough of that. So, um, how about some dark elf poetry?"

4

"So, what you're telling me is that there is no word on the street."

"Nary a syllable," Sylvie says.

"What the fuck did I read all those detective comics for? There's always a word on the street!"

"The streets are as silent as the grave." Now Sylvie, she knows something about graves. Or if she doesn't, you couldn't tell from looking at her, because she is all the dark, there's no dark left. She's wearing half of it, a tasteful but intense dollop of it is decorating her face, and the remainder is ingrained into her attitude so deeply that if she smiled you'd immediately grab something solid, just in case gravity was about to reverse direction next.

There are lots of women in Gereval who dress all in black. Lots of women who like their stockings to have little skulls on them; lots of women who wear chokers with little demon symbols hanging from them; lots of women with pale skin and dark red lipstick; lots of women with wrought-iron-black hair and little silver chains and an insatiable appetite for poetry that equates love with death and vice versa. Lots of women who wear their skirts short and their tempers shorter. But none of these women are rejected Saints of Kahan. None of them except Sylvie, that is. And right now, yep, she's wearing a little white and blue scarf—black, white, and blue are the Diamond Nines' colors. Sylvie puts the "angst" back in "gangsta."

"Give me some details," she says. "Who would want you shipped?"

"I don't know," Ariane says, frustrated. Hard to be too frustrated—Fakhyle's ritual knocked out the curse, and now Nora can give Ariane a backrub without risking her blood vessels. She's good at it, too; if Ariane weren't targetted for assassination, she'd be dying of relaxation right now. Ironic, huh?

Shaver's Roost has filled up admirably. Goldday night is party night, and the hooch is flowing like a chuckling brook down the emerald slopes of Mount Cirrhosis of the Liver. The Roost ain't the Citrus Club—no knife-fighting pit, no Slab, no Glitter, and usually no live nude girls—but it's still in the Fifth Ward, so it's got a colorful clientele. Shaver's Roost isn't quite earthly, either, so in addition to the mortal menagerie of pimps, gangsters, poets, artists, politicians, guildmages, and cardinals, there's a slim but significant cross-section of planar party-crashers. Somehow the place doesn't explode into chaos, even that time Kahan himself came to visit. Well, okay, maybe Kahan caused a little chaos. He prefers to think of it as "alternative order," and he doesn't even realize he's being ironic. Who the hell's gonna argue with the Archdemon of War, anyway?

"I'm assuming you've already ruled out Clay if you had to come to me," Sylvie continues. This totally floors Ariane.

"Whoa whoa, whoa: wha?" Not her most eloquent venture, but it has a certain appealing fluidity.

"Clay? Dameron Clay? Hello? You're working for the Iron Jacks? Naturally Clay's going to send a few rippers."

Goldday is party night at Shaver's Roost, and the music is just loud enough to keep Ariane from figuring out what the hell Sylvie is talking about. Ariane sits up straight, shaking Nora's hands off her shoulders. "What... I've never even heard of the Iron Jacks. What are you, crazy?"

"C'mon, it's all over the Fifth. The Iron Jacks sent an emissary to your place; next thing we hear, you're taking a bribe from Horatius Kepler to take a dive in the ninth. That's war, you know?"

Ariane stares at Sylvie for a good thirty seconds, but you can't outstare Sylvie. She starts with casual but sticky eye contact, then digs in for the long appraising gaze; look at her for more than thirty seconds and she switches over to Evil Eye territory, so not only do you lose the staring match, but you find yourself tripping over a black cat, through a mirror, and under a ladder.

Ariane knows this, she's actually staring at Sylvie's lips, which is safer. Not a lot safer, since Sylvie doesn't swing that way, but Ariane breaks her meditation after a moment with a sage pronouncement: "This is dumb."

5

Ariane could have just gone to the Fire Dragon's Roost in the Seventeenth Ward and had a friendly business meeting with Dameron Clay. But there are traditions to be observed, traditions with the weight of natural law. Crime bosses don't keep thugs around so they can look pretty; the thugs are there to manhandle the hostage before she gets rescued, they're there to wreck good old Mr. Hanson's shop before a mysterious drifter puts things right, and they're there to get their asses handed to them by the hero when the hero's in a fighting mood. And with that much Selenic Ambrosia running through her veins, Ariane Vastar is in a fighting mood. The fact that half her attacks are against her own drug-induced hallucinations just adds to her intimidation factor.

It also works perfectly with her style. Ariane's the 64th Deadly Fighter, and in her bracket most people are using swords or knives or entire steam-powered combat suits. But Ariane does just fine with her charm (ha!), her drugs (oy!), and her bare hands (ow!). She uses Wandering Fist, slipping between the raindrops, staggering from stance to stance, wobbling in odd directions so she can strike from odd angles, missing with half her attacks and hitting like a locomotive with the rest. Some people call it drunken style, but Ariane resents the implication that she's a drunkard. She never touches alcohol. She thinks it's for losers. Irony is absolutely fucking lost on her, I'm serious, don't even try it.

A spin, a little backstep, she looks like she's tripping but whoops! Nope, it was just the prologue to a novella of pain, as Ariane delivers the reeling slapdown to the last of Clay's slow-moving henchmen. A little knife-hand, a little back-knuckle, a little ball of the foot, and the thug (real name Jenson Phand, has a kid and a steady girlfriend, hoping for a year-end bonus so he can pay off his condo, likes late Apprehensionist sculpture, not like you care, you just come for the tight outfits) hits the ground.

Dameron Clay clears his throat. "Allow me to repeat myself," he says. "'Hello. How are you?'"

Ariane squints at him. "You know you've got werewolves on you, right?" As she watches, the werewolves turn into turtles. Ariane decides to ignore them. A judgment call, sure, but she's good at those.

"Yes, I'll have to see someone about that. So really, how are you doing?"

"I didn't make a deal with the Iron Jacks," Ariane says, hopping up onto Clay's desk so she can stare down at him.

"Who said you did?"

"Um... everybody?"

"Okay, so now I'm the Gossip Police?"

"You lost money on me during God Bless the Ring '94, so you had me assassinated!"

"Glad to see you're feeling better."

"You didn't succeed."

"So let me get this straight: you didn't make a deal with the Iron Jacks, so you're here to stop me from assassinating you, which I didn't do in the first place?"

Ariane starts to feel self-conscious with Clay glaring up at her crotch, so she hops back down. "Wait, you didn't order my assassination? Then why does everyone think you did?"

"I don't know, why does everyone think you're working for Horatius Kepler?"

"Oh. That." Ariane flops down on the leather sofa, after surreptitiously dusting possibly-real wereturtles off it. "He dated my cousin, they broke up, I went over there to pick up her stuff. I walked out with... yeah, a suitcase. I can see where the image came from, I guess."

"Okay, so now we're on the same page."

One of the thugs is recovering. "Boss... memo... last week..." Ariane kicks him in the head as a pointed token of her low guff tolerance. "No guff," she adds. You know, learning by reinforcement.

Dameron Clay rolls his eyes in exasperation. "You beat them up once, you have to wait a week or I'll have to start giving them their beating bonus. Okay, lemme check my inbox." He starts riffling through papers in a tray on his desk. "Oh, well I'll be snookered."

"Did you just say 'snookered?'"

"That's what I get for delegating. Serge Gracchus ordered that hit! Put out a call for assassins... your buddy Sketch volunteered. Better get your apartment key back from that weasel. Hey, Ariane, you're a personality around this town, you know? There's plenty of fighters, but there's only one Ariane Vastar, barring time loops, simulacra, and imposters. So let's make a deal: I say I'm sorry, then you don't kill me."

Ariane thinks it over. She's a pretty forgiving type to begin with, and aside from the hallucinations and lust for violence, Selenic Ambrosia tends to make her feel pretty good about the world. "Yeah, okay," she suggests. Then, by way of clarification, "Whatever."

6

When Ariane drops by Sketch's place, he's not in.

When Ariane drops by Nora's place, she's in. She's definitely in.