The Blue Spirit watched the exchange between the man and the woman. Paint was pretty good at this, he had to admit. Then he realized that technically she was the one doing all the work, and he scowled. He was completely capable of getting information by himself. Angrily he turned in his chair and glared at the shelf of alcohol bottles behind the bar.

"Lost your girl, have ya?" A young bartender, skinny and unwashed, leaned against the counter next to the hooded man and patted his shoulder sympathetically.

"She wasn't mine," the man growled in response, shrugging off the hand. He made no motion to turn his head to look the bartender in the face.

The bartender, however, wasn't finished. In a tavern like The Sleeping Maiden, the bartenders were an interfering, joking lot, and got away with it because of the various security mechanisms they had in place. One being that every single bartender had his fingernails tipped with sleeping poison. "Oh, I didn't seriously mean she was ever yours. Obviously she isn't. She's a lovely flirtatious vixen with locks of gold – "

"Your poetry is terrible."

" – and eyes of sapphires. She moves with the grace of a lily in the wind and her voice is the perfect catch of pearls on a crystal glass." The bartender took a breath, grinning.

"Get me a Kamikaze."

"Jeez, can't even appreciate loveliness right in front of him. Hopeless lot, these young people." The Blue Spirit gritted his teeth at the teasing, patronizing tone of the almost-boy. Who was he to be calling him young? He stayed quiet, irritably chasing the conversation around in his mind as the bartender set about making his drink.

"Hi." He turned his head, mindful to keep it lowered so that his hoodie would hide his face. Next to him sat the girl with the 'locks of gold and eyes of sapphires'. She was out of breath, more of her flowers were unpinned, her styled wig coming undone. He risked a look back and saw the Snake-band loudly discussing their card game. Apparently one of them had cheated.

"Strawberry daiquiri," he heard her order. An overly feminine drink, one that didn't fit the Painted Lady in the least, but was completely in character for this prostitute – er, female companion – she was masquerading as. The bartender smilingly took her order while leaving a Kamikaze on the counter. As he left, she shoved her stool right up next to his and draped herself over him.

Angrily he tried to shove her off. "What the hell?!" he demanded lowly, getting punched in the nose by the strong perfume she was wearing.

"Shut up, I have to stay in character." She snaked an arm around his neck, being careful not to disturb the Dao blades under his hoodie.

"Did you have to wear a perfume that'd make a Shirshu go blind?" Grudgingly, he allowed her to continue her act. "Or were you planning to knock the Snake unconscious?"

"Believe it or not, I might actually hate this perfume more than you do. At least you won't have it stinking up your nose until the next time you take a bath."

"I might if you keep getting it all over me." He took his cold drink in hand and breathed in the scent of alcohol. He didn't mean to drink all of it, he just needed something to get rid of the bartender.

"I don't like being a prostitute any more than you do." She sounded irritated. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to walk in these heels?"

The Blue Spirit laughed once, dryly. "I had no idea," he replied, feeling a slight twinge of humor enter his irritation. "Society doesn't make men wear heels."

"While we women get heels, bathrooms that are always full, periods, and breasts."

Coughing at that last part, the hood turned towards her again. The Painted Lady instinctively searched his face, trying to make something out in the shadows of his hood. There was the glint of an eye, a faint approximation of skin. His hair was dark and fell over his face in chunks. There was a sort of familiarity to his face. "What's so bad about the last one?" he then asked.

Opening her eyes wide, she leaned her face closer to his. "Have you ever tried to run with two cantaloupes attached to your chest?"

The Blue Spirit could feel the blood shoot up into his face. This was definitely out of his comfort zone. How could girls talk about that stuff without feeling weird about it? Fixedly he stared at her face, noting her lip twitching in amusement. "I can't say that it ever… occurred to me," he answered, trying to go for something neutral.

Before she could respond, the bartender brought her drink. Slightly disentangling herself from Blue's hoodie, she pulled the fancy little drink closer to herself and batted her eyelashes at the bartender, pulling a strand of blonde behind her ear. "Thank you," she smiled, her voice disgustingly sweetened. Turning back to Blue, she put on an earnest look. "Don't worry; I'm not judging your lack of femininity or anything."

"Relieved to hear it." He sipped from his drink, looking into the dull reflections of the torches in his glass. Realizing they hadn't discussed the most important part of the night, he asked "What'd he tell you?"

"Tomorrow under the River Bridge. He's probably planning to gang rape me and then viciously murder me." Blue flinched slightly at her unemotional way of putting it. "Which means we'll have to figure out a way to take down all of them," she continued more quietly, noticing his rigidness.

"Great plan," was his sarcastic reply. Miffed, she sat herself back down in her own chair and glared into her daiquiri. What was his problem? Couldn't he at least try and contribute?

Feeling slightly bare after the Painted Lady removed herself from him, the Blue Spirit nudged her foot and got up. "Let's go outside."

Plaintively she looked up at him as he pushed himself away from the counter. "But I haven't even started my daiquiri."

"Yeah, well you've already ended my nose's capacity for Shirshu-killing-substances. I'm going outside." Without looking back he headed for the door, stepping over the body of an unconscious drunkard who appeared to be made purely out of muscle.

"Fine," the Painted Lady glowered at her drink as she shoved herself up from the stool. Quickly she looked around, making sure none of the male patrons were eyeing her. There were two, hard-looking old men who did their best to smile at her when she saw them. Gracing them with a smile of her own, she ducked into the back of the bar.