The entire ordeal began, like many things do, with a scandal.

The story of Wenrum's life was widely known throughout the Salarian Union, from his opulent and pedigreed childhood to the more austere minimalism of his later years. A man who condemned the society around him at a breakneck pace, and let horror stutter in his stomach instead of food and drink, he was determined to change the world around him as many young members of any species are prone to do. In his thirty years he would inspire a reform that echoed throughout the Pranas system.

Those who were once hungry were full, and those in need suddenly had enough to give.

At the end of his life, languishing in sickness and self-imposed poverty, a minor Dalatrass had come to Wenrum and offered him a necklace. It was startlingly beautiful: a chain of silver draped across outstretched fingers that smelled of spring and equatorial forests. And in a moment of weakness, staring into her eyes, he had taken it from her.

And then Wenrum and the Dalatrass that had knelt in front of him with her gift were both consumed by time.

The necklace endured, however, passing through families and clans of great political clout. After a thousand years it eventually found itself draped in the less reverent hands of Dalatrass Maren, whose fingers clutched at it and drank in its reputation until she was overfull with it. As the matriarch of a clan without many achievements nor contracts, she believed that notability should be cultivated with every chance offered. And so Maren wore the necklace, posing with false reverence in front of gawking and scandalized clans who knew its history. She wove it tightly along her skin until it choked her body and she appeared in every newscast on Sur'Kesh.

Maren wore Wenrum's necklace constantly, and vainly. And then Kasumi Goto stole it.

In the time it had taken to confirm that the necklace had indeed been stolen and not simply misplaced, Dalatrass Maren fainted three times and slapped seven of the attendants and lobbyists who were attending to her that night. Her panic escalated whenever her hand made violent contact with a new cheek.

"Imbeciles!" Maren seethed hoarsely in her opulently decorated waiting room, sinking into yet another swoon.

Several attendants dove to assist her as she transfigured into a tumbling pile of velvet and fading insults. Ingratiating hands lifted her swiftly up. There was a clatter of metal, rings, and bracelets - even a hidden clan ornament - scattering along the carpet behind her while she was dragged to a couch. And a single lobbyist followed, clutching his face.

"Get me ammonium carbonate inhalants!" someone yelled. "And a warm bath!"

Maren opened her eyes again. She gathered tan velvet into clenched fingers, her gaze rushing around, and ignored the small delicacies and perfumes that they held out to her. "Who would steal from me?" she asked mournfully, as if the possibility was unimaginable.

"Someone without a brain," the bruising lobbyist assured her.

A voice spoke up outside then, immediately lost in the night air. "Or someone who is simply very good," it countered.

Draped with darkness and hidden in lush trees, a small figure clad in burgundy watched the drama from her perch at the edge of a branch. Kasumi Goto had set the alarm in the property off on purpose, just so she could observe the chaos through the widest window. It was her first heist on Sur'Kesh and she had been meticulous to the point of absurdity.

A breeze crept against her hood in the night air while she watched, and her lips parted into a smile. "Not that I like to brag or anything," she continued cheerfully, "but you're probably not going to catch me."

She wiggled her feet in the air, smiling brighter when the branch swayed in response like a swing. No one would find her or the necklace, she knew. She lifted it up into the air with both hands, admiring the silver as it sparkled in the dark.

Maren fainted again, wailing.

Salarians loved drama, Kasumi decided. She draped the chain over her neck. She had probably done the entire backwater region of Sur'Kesh a favor, given them something to gossip about in between whatever it was they were always arguing about. And she had a feeling that in the isolated property, tucked away as it was high on a hill that looked down upon the simpler beaches far below it, the news of what exactly had been stolen would escape as quickly as possible.

She jumped and landed lightly on the ground. Then she was gone into the forest, with its ceiling of branches obscuring the starlight as she ran. The smell of tropical flora overwhelmed her and leaves rustled along the edges of her hood until she was merely a faraway shadow with a violet smile.

A few days later, waiting at a rendezvous point for the shuttle she had hired, Kasumi took a breath and looked down at a large group of people far below her on the sidewalk. She observed them with muted interest, her legs dangling over the edge of the roof she sat on.

The group eddied against the building in waves of movement, each person hoping to get a seat in the latest theater production to come through the small port city. The signs advertising it on nearby buildings were garish - and very human, despite the various species depicted in its bright colors - when compared to the sleekly utilitarian architecture surrounding them. Scandalized conversations floated upward, hushed and excited.

Now Showing: Francis Kitt's New Vision of Hamlet

Kasumi shook her head and smiled. Kitt's new vision was inordinately focused on an asari pretending to be Ophelia in a black dress. A very cute black dress, she thought. But any desire to take a peak into the theater herself, perhaps by hiding in the rafters while she admired the costumes, was overcome by her curiosity about the armored salarian who had urgently slipped through the crowd just a few moments earlier.

She had a feeling he was looking for her. A mistake must have been made during the heist, and she couldn't figure out what it had been. And while it would have been easy enough to simply run or reschedule her departure, if she left the planet it would bother her forever. She was a perfectionist at heart.

There was enough time to find out before the shuttle arrived. She waited patiently with her hands folded in her lap.

The sun dropped further in the sky. Unlike Francis Kitt's sign, Sur'Kesh's graceful evenings commanded a grand sort of enchantment. The city was full of greenery, as if whoever had designed it preferred nature to housing, and she could taste the salt air of the seaside on the wind when she breathed in.

The murmur of the crowd grew louder. The doors opened down below, ushering them all into the theater, and a pistol pressed softly against the back of Kasumi's neck.

"The Red Rose of Saitama," the salarian said behind her, offering her favorite name to her quite politely. "I had a feeling you might be up here." The pistol pressed a little harder. "I didn't think that you would actually be wearing red, though."

Kasumi didn't turn around. Her omni-tool flickered and then immediately dimmed again. "You need to work on your entrance," she said, staring out at the horizon. "I could hear you banging around before you even opened the hatch."

He continued, undaunted. "You're more accurately known as Kasumi Goto, and I'm placing you under arrest for theft and trespass."

Kasumi's mouth dropped open in surprise. No one knew her true identity, and she had developed a very lucrative career for herself by keeping it that way. She had twelve different false identities, a few of which were designed to appear as hidden and authentic. Some of them were even scandalous. But no one had referred to her by her true name in years.

It was almost nostalgic.

The acquisition of such knowledge interested her greatly, far more than any threat of being shot. Very slowly, she turned around. Her gaze lifted up past the barrel of the pistol and met his.

"How do you know my name?" she asked.

It was hard to read his face, dark as his skin was as it matched the fading evening. He was younger than she had expected him to be. A Special Tasks Group recruit, perhaps, or maybe a member of the city's police department. She had observed several uniforms matching his own wandering the city that day.

"You're quickly becoming one of the better thieves in the galaxy," he told her.

"That's true," she responded without modesty. "But it's not an answer."

The pistol was clutched tightly - too tightly, she realized - and he stared at her with a shifting expression that betrayed his own excitement. "I'm not here to answer questions," he said as calmly as he could. "Now, if you could place your hands above your head I'll be taking you down to headquarters."

He looked like a rookie cop, Kasumi thought with amusement, and he was excited to catch a robber. Some things were universal.

Kasumi placed her hands atop her head with prim obedience, lacing her fingers together as she stood up. She continued to watch him through a growing shroud of darkness. "Do you have any evidence against me, Mister Cop?"

He narrowed his eyes at that. "I'm not a cop." He gestured toward her with the pistol. "And the evidence is around your neck."

Ah, Kasumi thought. So he was an STG agent. The information didn't surprise her. The STG had their noses - or lack thereof - in everything worth nosing about in. Perhaps she should even feel flattered that they had dirt on her.

He turned her around, dragging her arms down behind her back without any resistance, and began to search her. "I expected you to at least have a weapon," he mused.

"Would you like it better if I did?" she asked, glancing back at him. "I thought STG agents liked to win before the battle even started."

He blinked, and his mouth fell into a grim line. "I'm just an intelligence analyst, actually," he admitted. She could feel his hands hesitate and relax slightly under the sudden confession. "This will be my first arrest out in the field."

She smiled. "I guess I'll have to be gentle if it's your first time," she murmured.

He pulled her hood down with an unceremonious movement and the necklace was confiscated. He tucked it into his pocket. He was close enough that Kasumi could smell the sharp scent of metal on his uniform, and see the sky reflected in his eyes as she watched him over her shoulder. They were framed by an expression of satisfaction while he bound her in a pair of omni-cuffs.

The hood bothered her far more than the necklace. "You know, you're supposed to be gentle, too," she said. Her voice dropped into an amused whisper. "You can't treat a girl like this unless she specifically asks you to."

Bau tightened the cuffs further, ignoring her. He began to lead her toward the hatch at the other end of the roof. "This isn't a date, Goto," he finally said. "You do understand that you're being arrested, correct?"

Kasumi's omni-tool flared once again within the cuffs, hidden by their light as she walked with him. "Of course. But if it was a date your name would be...?"

"Jondum Bau." His gait slowed and he was overtaken by the faintest air of pride. "I'm an expert on various xenospecies behaviors and criminalities. Mostly theoretical. No one on the investigative team believed me when I told them it was a human that robbed the Dalatrass, but I was sure of it."

"Congratulations," she told him sincerely. "It must feel nice to be right."

He glanced at her but said nothing further. His hold on her arm was suddenly more cautious.

Kasumi watched him with a small smile, and with no resentment whatsoever. Bau was very young and naive, and both of those traits threaded together into a charming enough result. The fact that he had found her so quickly was impressive, even if his tactics for trying to capture her were laughable at best. And she always enjoyed small moments such as this: the vulnerable intermissions where the opponent underestimated her and believed that they might have caught her. When they believed that they might have won.

Bau was not the first, and he wouldn't be the last. She could still remember her very first heist, a Monet languishing in a corner of Hong Kong, and the way the police had smugly shaken their heads when they found her in the shadowed art museum.

When they let their guard down.

Kasumi hesitated as they reached the hatch. "Before we go," she said, "how did you know it was me?"

He smiled at that. "There was a single flower petal in the forest near the scene. Rosa Rugosa."

Kasumi nodded, internally noting her mistake. "It's unusual, isn't it?"

He pulled her along, opening the hatch. "It's a very distinct calling card. But bringing a foreign flower to a salarian property was a mistake. It's easy enough to track."

"I know," she said, almost ruefully. She enjoyed leaving small roses at the scenes of her heists, but had hesitated and kept the flowers in her hood when she stole the necklace from Maren's room. Salarians were meticulous creatures and it would have been far too obvious, particularly after she had left a trail of roses throughout the galaxy.

It was sentimental, really, to insist on such a rare flower as her calling card. The petal must have fallen while she ran.

She looked up at him in the dark. "Well, Jondum Bau," she said, her voice dancing softly along the syllables, "I'll try to remember your name since you were clever enough to know mine."

Bau's eyes flickered. Any recognition of his own mistake was realized far too late, however. His body froze with a glimmer of light passing over his armor.

Her smiled turned into a grin.

With a small twirl that she believed to be somewhat silly and yet still entirely necessary for personal style, Kasumi pulled away from him and laughed. "This is my latest trick," she said, spreading her hands as the cuffs faded. "Do you like it? It's a reverse polarity field that uses your own kinetic shield to immobilize you right in your suit."

Bau's eyes widened and then they narrowed. She retrieved the necklace from his pocket and pointed his own pistol at him. For a moment there was no sound between the two except for the noise of the city and the ever present waves in the distance.

To his credit, he didn't appear afraid.

"I suppose you're going to kill me now," he said, speaking mostly to himself as he attempted to move his head. He was immobile below his neck. "If you let me go I'm just going to arrest you later."

"Not if you stay so careless," Kasumi replied lightly, holding up the necklace and winking at him. "You really came out here all by yourself with no backup, didn't you? Did you do your homework about me at all? I'm not some defenseless little girl."

The light swirled and shimmered along his uniform, keeping him locked in place. "Like I said, everyone else thought another clan had stolen the necklace. Maren was publicly defacing it." He lifted his chin upward, glaring at her. "Do you even know who Wenrum was, human? Or will you sell that like it's some cheap trinket?"

Kasumi's mouth opened in surprise, and then her cheeks flushed with anger. "Don't you dare accuse me of being that kind of thief. I probably know more about its history than you do." She tucked the necklace in her own pocket defiantly. "I love everything I steal."

"You sell most of your goods on the lower extranet to anyone willing to buy it," he countered. "And the credits get funneled right back to your homeworld."

She tugged the hood back over her head, feeling cross that he knew about that. "It's not what you think. I'm not stealing to make credits."

He tilted his head. "You're right," he agreed. "I'm fully aware of where you send those credits. You're an incredible thief for a nobler reason than most, but your actions still make you just like any other criminal."

"Don't dishonor me by saying something like that."

"You dishonor yourself by stealing."

The pistol trembled faintly as she held it level with his chest. "You have no idea what kind of a person I am," she whispered, glad that the sun had set long ago and darkness now hid her expression.

He snorted faintly. "Unless you show me differently, Goto, I'm going to assume you're a thief and a murderer."

"Oh, please," she said softly, still angry. "Do you think I'm going to fall for that kind of tactic?"

Bau glared at her and said nothing further.

Kasumi pressed her palm to her forehead, far angrier at herself than the salarian locked in his own shield. She had been arrogant. She shouldn't have lost a petal at the scene, nor been sloppy enough to get her flowers tracked by an enthusiastic rookie. And, worst of all, he knew her name. Her face.

Kasumi exhaled, hoping her anger would be dispelled by the air, and tucked his pistol into her belt. She pulled the necklace out of her pocket and looked at it sadly as she made her decision.

She should have killed him and moved on. She knew that.

But, with a small flourish that was always necessary, she instead draped the chain along the bar of Bau's armored chest. The roses were next, retrieved from inside her hood, and she tucked each one delicately into his STG armor. He watched her, with his eyes widening in surprise, and when she was done she patted him very softly on his cheek and kissed him there.

She stepped back to admire her handiwork. "I'll just steal it again if I end up missing it," she decided, lacing her fingers behind her back. "It looks better on you anyway."

Bau glanced down at the chain, and then back up at her incredulously. "I'm still going to come after you," he insisted. His voice was unsteadier than before.

"Yep. You'll be a very good cop someday, Bau," she replied with a small smile as she walked away into the night. "You just need to work on your methods of thief apprehension."

"Goto!" he called after her, covered in roses and silver.

Kasumi shook her head at him under her hood, and then she stepped into the abyss at the edge of the roof. She saluted him with a motion she knew he wouldn't see.

Jondum Bau, she thought as she fell and landed gracefully on the roof of her waiting shuttle, was obviously one of the good guys. Like Wenrum.

And he'd get better at chasing her once that kinetic shield wore off.