"Blue? Again?" Kai sighs, picking up a strand of Xena's now slightly darker blue hair. It was originally a dusty baby blue, Kaidence seeing her with the look in the morning and coming home to the fourth colour change of the week.
"It's pretty." Xena defends, pouting comically.
"How do you even get the money for this?" Kai drops the weekly shopping and starts pulling and playing with Xena's hair.
"Oh, y'know, money." She shrugs, grunting when Kaidence yanks on a piece of hair particularly hard, mumbling about how her hair isn't crumbling to bits.
Dismissing her friends suspiciously healthy blue hair, Kai starts unpacking groceries.
With a strained 'hup', Xena jumps up from the couch and makes her way across the dingy city apartment to her room.
The narrow hallway to the bedrooms is bare apart from the scattered pieces of photography and art that the two had collected over the years, mixes of desert landscapes to war scenes.
The hardwood floor creaks under Xena as she shuts the door to her room. The floor is strewn with papers and other important documents of a case that Xena had been working on.
Stepping over the literally priceless, irreplaceable documents, Xena yanks on a pantsuit and flicks on some light makeup. She had a court case in a half hour.
Her client was accused of murder (but from what she had said (and thought), she wasn't) and came to her begging for help.
Finding her honorable, Xena agreed to help.
Today was the third of six hearings Xena was required to be present for, although she would appear at all of the nine.
The past two sessions had been about discussing evidence and other legal boundaries with the clients and speaking with the judge, handing over papers.
The rest of the week would require Xena to present her evidence in a bid to deem her client innocent. However, because of the scarecrow evidence, Xena would have to twist this case slightly, bending the court laws.
Stepping out of the apartment and saying goodbye to Kai, who lay lazily on the couch watching some garbage trucker show, Xena makes her way to the subway.
Darting into the toilet to change her hair from a deep sea blue pixie cut to jet black bob, Xena mentally preps for the hearing.
"That was brutal," Xena's client sighs, eyes wide, brows furrowed.
"I know." Xena shakes her head, eyes sore and jaw slack. She had questioned her opposition with as much force as she could allow herself, asking harder and harder questions until the judge had to ask her to refrain from making the client cry.
They were dismissed from the courtroom for a recess period, Xena letting her plan fall into play.
Heading to the vending machine, she jams in a couple of dollar coins, producing a bottle of water. She couldn't break the seal, so she would need to be quick.
Tapping the bottle twice, the water goes a cloudy, sandy colour before clearing to become just like regular water.
With her new strategy, she searched the crowds for the client she had just grilled.
Upon spotting him, Xena jogged over and called him out, "Hey, sorry for being so rough back there," she apologises, giving him a tap on the shoulder.
The body was mutilated, the ass and thighs eaten.
Dragged through the woods and buried six feet under a dead dog.
The ring finger still in freezer in a bag of peas.
The visions of brutal murder flood into Xena's mind as she has to cough to cover up her gasp of horror.
Case confirmed, she pulls out the bottle of water, "take it easy. I won't grill you as much next time. Sorry again."
She apologises, handing him the bottle of water, which he greedily uncaps and guzzles. Xena smiles and leaves.
This was why she loved her job.
