Warning: This chapter contains some sexual content and animal abuse.

GO WILD

Chapter Twenty-Six: 5 Million for Two Hours

Unpaved sand gives way to a dirt road and eventually highway concrete rolls smooth beneath us. I wake to the sound of the window rolling down and Shalnark's toned arm dangling out.

We stop for petrol and travelers in the lane next to us speak a guttural language I don't recognize. We wait for Phinks to finish his cigarette, a thin cloud fume clings to him when he slides into the van.

Onward we go. Judging from the direction of the sun, we're traveling West, far West.

"Where are we going?" I ask the back of Franklin's head from the third row as I wedge myself between Phinks and Feitan.

"A small speck on the map called Yorknew," says Shalnark.

"Nice try, Shal. Everyone in the solar system has heard of Yorknew." I pinch the sleeve hem of my uwagi. I wouldn't mind getting another set of clothes. "How long are we staying?"

"A day," says Phinks.

"That's it? How long are we going to spend driving there? We'll spend more time traveling there than in the city."

"You're so much more tolerable when you're asleep."

I ignore that. "Can't we at least stay for two and explore a bit?"

"We're on a tight schedule. We can't let the others wait."

Judging by the subtle fatigued sigh from the others, the only person making us stick to our miserable schedule is Phinks.

We pass pockets of towns and cities on the way. Is that Yorknew? No. Is that Yorknew? We pass it so guess not. We enter a tunnel and drive for fifteen minutes but when we emerge the sight takes my breath away. A canyon of steel and concrete, a sky consumed by skyscrapers, the adverts are as shiny as licked candy, a place where the candle burns at both ends, people as numerous as blood cells in the human circulatory system. I've heard people call Yorknew the Center of the Universe and driving through it as we arrive at our lodgings, I believe it.

Our hotel is one of the beautiful buildings on the road and as we stretch our legs and enter the marble lobby, I feel like a rube. Barely good enough to stand on the Turkish rugs beneath a glittering crystal chandelier.

Phinks discusses the plan for the evening after clearing the situation with the rooms (after being cramped in a van for almost two days I nearly cry at the thought of getting my own room). "Franklin will guard the loot until the business is finalized," he says and then he refers to Shalnark and Feitan. "We three rendezvous at 11 pm at their hostess joint."

There's a me-shaped hole in this plan. "What about me?"

"What about you?"

"Can I join for the rendezvous?"

"Rigid dress code. It's not a place you can wear your gym clothes."

"Machi lent me a dress," I say.

"Still no. You're not needed. Three is enough to finalize the deal and you'll pester Franklin if you go."

"Don't put words in my mouth. She doesn't pester me," says Franklin, in the depths of his baritone.

"Why would you even want to join?" Feitan mutters against his skull collar.

"I'm curious," I blurt out. "I want to see what the infamous Phantom Troupe is all about."

Phinks, unfazed, readies to refuse a third and final time when Shalnark interrupts.

"She can sit with me and watch," he says and his face spreads with closed-eye cat smile that apparently even Phinks can't resist.

Pharaoh glances at Feitan and Franklin for objections but neither care. I know I've won when Phinks groans with displeasure, before drumming an index finger at Shalnark's chest. "You volunteered. You're responsible for her this evening."

Zeoul is a terrible spectacle, but Yorknew is Zeoul on crack. The sun is setting but you'd never guess from streets, noon-bright with liquid neon signs, adverts on jumbo screens, and flashes from cameras with pedestrians posing with v signs. My neck actually aches from staring skyward at the tiptops of hotels, tv towers, and sky bridges interconnecting sky scrapers. The impossible sweetness of a chocolate donut I eat chases away my car-grogginess as I window-shop.

Even more entertainment than shopping is people-watching. Yorknew is diverse, even more so than Zeoul. So many races of people of so many shapes and personality exuded effortless in their style. Never conscious before, I pinch to adjust the loose collar of my uwagi. I'm forever grateful for Machi's tailored gift, but an uwagi is her style.

I return to the hotel, my imagination aflame with creativity and with a skip in my step I ready for tonight. I ring Paku and double-check with her.

"If I'm meeting the client, how should I look?"

"You'll need makeup."

I eye a ballpoint pen. Think I could risk an infection for some lid color? "Bit short on that."

"Order some from the concierge."

"I can do that?"

"Safra, you can order a full ball gown, tailored to your size, statement piece jewelry, custom shoes, a hair stylist and a makeup artist right to your door."

"Sounds prohibitively expensive. How am I supposed to pay for all that—"

"Are you forgetting who you're talking to?"

I thank her for the tip. I order from the concierge, shower and within the hour, my items arrive with a polite knock at the door. I uncap the liquid eye-liner (a rather smug item named LiquidLast) and actually pray ("Wallahae") before touching the soft felt brush to my lash line. Since Omokage adjusted my hand, I can use it more (chopsticks aren't a colossal disaster anymore) but the finesse of writing or say, the art of drawing on my waterline with unforgiving pitch-black ink? Forget it. It takes scraping motions to fix it. I waste half a roll of toilet paper trying to save myself from smeared panda-eyes.

"Waterproof? More like chisel proof."

Foundation, on the other hand, is an utter delight. In Gorteau, the stuff there would itch once it dried, this fancy stuff moisturizes my skin, leaving a pearly sheen. It fills in the uneven patches of skin and the sponge runs so smooth on my cheeks, I could stay here with my reflection, touching my flawless skin all night.

I blow dry my damp hair upside down, at a futile attempt for volume. But my hair, exhausted after being tangled mercilessly by the humid coastal air fell as bodiless as limp noodles. I settle for a half up style and pin the face-framing tresses of hair to my crown. Basic but I'm strapped for time. And the last time I wore a proper hair-do, it was Amari's wedding and the wedding girl herself had slaved over my hair. ("Every part of you, down to the single strands of hair, refuse to behave," she had said.)

Now the dress. I slip it on, and my exfoliated skin loves the satin softness of the lining. I'm sure with Machi's candy hair, the evening blue bedazzles, but the color is elegant enough with my hair and skin tone. I hang my fists at my side and compare colors; the dress doesn't clash with my gloves, right? Honest to God air blows against my bare legs. The dress length is erm...while nothing scandalous in Yorknew (if not modest compared to the street-wear with skirt hems barely below the crotch) this mid-thigh dress would, no joke, get me arrested in Gorteau. The center bow gives the illusion that I have a good waist and the support pads in the bust give the illusion I have a bust.

I tap-tap-tap foundation at a livid blue bruise on my shin— do other women have to do this? I have a difficult time picturing the effortless women of Yorknew caking makeup on their legs.

Final touches. A swipe of kiss-me rouge that takes my feminine essence from a 4 to a reckonable 7. Amari said once you need balance. They need to look at you whole so you can't have too much going on in one area. In the floor length mirror, I envision a stranger's eyes would gravitate to three points: my rouge, my waist bow and my bare legs.

Ta-ta-tap-tap-knock-knock!

"Oi! Saf, time to go."

I shut the bathroom door to hide the mess before I welcome the boy in. I ooo and awe at Shalnark in his trim suit and his hair for once slicked back with stray hairs that frame his square forehead. I adjust his slanting turquoise bow-tie, that honestly would look goofy on anyone else, but on him, it complements his eyes. "You look dapper!"

Shalnark's breathless reaction when he sees me is what every woman wants to hear when she's glammed up. "Wow, you look good."

"It's not weird with the gloves, is it?"

"Your hands are not where people will be looking," he says, his bright eyes gazing downward at my legs. Bashfulness butterflies in my chest, but I do my best to banish it. I'm sure Machi is no dainty wallflower in this dress so I best channel my inner-Machi.

For one last touch, I throw on Ging's scarf, which works as a shawl.

"Do they do corsages in Gorteau?" asks Shalnark.

"Shal, you're my chaperon, not my date."

He winks as the elevator dings and the gold plated doors open. Trim suit and silk tie suits Baby-Face. He could pass as a nouveau rich entrepreneur or an under-30 tech giant. Meanwhile, the other three, as I come to see them in the lobby, ooze gangster through the very threads of their tuxes. I didn't even know they made suits in Franklin's size. Rings glint from his overlong earlobes. Feitan, black jacket on black dress shirt, is almost naked without his collar. Those eye bags look like he's been nursing a cigarette while playing high stakes poker until twilight hours with the boys. Meanwhile, Phinks actually smokes, all Kingpin vibes in a beige jacket suit, solid gold wrist-watch, definitely one of the heartattack-from-price tag brands from immaculate 42nd street.

Before a word could leave anyone's mouth, my phone vibrates and rings in my satchel (again, thank you, concierge). At first, I don't recognize the sound because no one ever calls me.

"Danchou?" guesses Franklin.

I motion to Franklin that I would seek a private corner.

I sneak away with the vibrating phone, the chirpy ring echoing in the tiled, high ceiling lobby. I check the digital name on the ID. Why on this blue planet would he be calling me?

"Ging?"

No hello. Distance in his voice, perfectly capturing the literal distance between us, "You're short."

My mouth twists as if his whiskered face were facing me though for all I know he's on Mars. "I already knew that. Though these shoes grant me a few inches."

"Not your height. I mean funds. You short-changed me!"

Indignant at the accusation, I say, "You liar! I gave you the agreed amount."

"The rate I quoted you is the weekly rate. You short changed me by several days."

"You told me two months, right? The rate times eight."

"No, you spider-egg. There are 4.3 weeks in a month. The rate times 8.6."

I pinch the bridge of my powdered nose, hoping it's a few hundred or at most a few thousand. "How much?"

"I'll be generous and give you an even number. 5 million jenni."

I nearly choke on spit. "5 million?!"

"You balk now? Over some loose change compared to what you wired me before?"

"I don't exactly keep 5 million jenni in my coin purse."

"I don't know if you know how much human smuggling costs, but it ain't cheap! Especially from the Hermit Kingdom."

"All my costs were in house remember?"

I imagine his caterpillar brows droop down with his harrumph.

"Listen," I say. "I don't mind paying you the 5 mil, but I don't know how fast I can wire it to you."

"Get a real job?"

"Undocumented migrant remember?"

"Take the Hunter exam. Even you could pass the exam on your first try. Go legit, or stay undocumented, when you're a Hunter it doesn't matter."

"We're on a very specific time table."

"Borrow it from your boss. Shouldn't he be loaded? Or take your pick, they should all have stuffed accounts."

"And go back into the red with the Spiders? Or should I say deeper red since I'm still technically paying them off?"

"Fair point," he says, sounding distant as if he were talking away from the receiver.

"Where are you anyway? Still in Turkei?"

"Where are you? Doesn't sound like Meteor City."

"Ooooooiiiii!" Shal's voice calls from the other end of the lobby. "Time to go!"

"Enjoy Yorknew," says Ging.

Before I could ask how the hell he knew the line had already cut.

"Danchou?" asks Shalnark when he extends a helping hand as I climb into the van.

"Smuggler. There's a problem," I say. "The smuggler needs five million more."

"So?" says Feitan.

"So? I don't have five million and Danchou has finished paying me for the landmines."

"You broke," says Shalnark.

I bristle as I lock in my seat belt with a hard click in the mechanism.

"If you need it so bad just steal it," says Feitan as if the number and action are trivial.

"I'll message Danchou and see if I can get a loan."

"Danchou isn't a bank," says Phinks from the front passenger seat. "Danchou is still earning back his losses from paying you. Why do you think we're in Yorknew instead of heading towards West Gorteau with the others?"

"Nor do we lend," says Franklin. Not a royal We, but a conceptual We, the Spider.

"I would if it were an emergency," says Shalnark.

I dare not ask what would constitute an emergency... "Seriously? None of you will help?"

"Have you learned nothing?" says Feitan.

"We are thieves," says Franklin.

"What we want, we take," says Feitan. "You want the five million? Then take the five million."

"We meet with the buyer and then we can figure out what to do with penniless Safra," says Shalnark, not leaving me too hopeful.

We arrive in a slick wet alley adjacent to a swanky establishment aptly named in magenta lights: The Flower Girl.

Franklin cuts the engine and we file out into air that smells of piss, booze, sulfur, and like an old clothing factory.

We're late," says Phinks.

"You show more power if you're late," says Feitan. All this time I blamed his collar, but Feitan's voice seems to always maintain some croaky huskiness.

"I don't want to stay long." A spun spark-wheel and flick goes Phinks' lighter as he puffs a cigarette. "Who are we meeting?"

Shalnark's thumb scrolls through messages on his phone. "Odara."

An electrified grimace ripples through their muscles as if they were all connected by a single cord. A rare sight to see genuine disgust from them and I'm instantly curious.

"Read that again," demands Phinks. "Maybe you misread," he says, more wishing than anything else.

"Definitely Odara," says Shalnark, almost running a hand through his styled hair before catching himself.

"He's so fond of you," says Feitan and Phinks' skin looks ready to crawl away.

"Who's Odara?" I murmur to Franklin, but before I can get an answer, Phinks squares on me.

"Newbie," says Phinks. "You back-up Franklin. Stay with the loot."

All my momentum of dressing up, and jumping out the car all for naught. I pan between them to regain my foot in what just happened, but somehow they were all on the same page and I wasn't. "Why?"

"Change of plans. Stay with Franklin."

"But why all of a sudden? You said it yourself, Franklin doesn't need me."

"I'm Sub-Team Leader, therefore you do as I say." His face, clenching into something snake-like with his engorged brows and smoke slithering like a serpent's tongue from his pursed mouth, brooks no room for argument. "Stay with the loot."

Their backs turn and that's that.

As a trio, they leave, and Phinks' cigarette smoke ghosts around me, offending my nose before I bat it away.

I land my behind in the van with a huff, negatively buoyant and transparent about my displeasure. "No offense, Franklin."

"None taken," he says.

So much for inner-Machi, but I know what Safra would do. She would go forth heels clacking the tarmac, with a satchel at her hip, beam a coaxing smile at the door guard and mosey on into the hostess bar, without permission, which is exactly what I do.

Hostess bar is a very polite way of saying girly bar where men come to feel like men. The working girls, their dresses colored and reflective like exotic fish in a tank, giggle at their patrons' jokes, keep every sweating glass on the table full of bubbling alcohol, and occasionally lock eyes with their patrons and place an intimate hand on their shoulder. A professional show.

And the men buy it.

I spot a single hallway for bathrooms, then guarded double-doors, but duck when I spy Phinks and Shalnark's blond heads (takes a second longer to see Feitan, how he bleeds into the shadows). Between ducking, the music and the fact I can't read lips, I have no idea what is being said. Two sour looking guards survey them head to toe before opening the double doors.

The trio file in and the doors lock behind them, the working business none the wiser.

I sigh and step aside for a waiter carrying a tray of rainbow drinks, so saturated they were witch potions.

So much for that.

I'm about to rejoin Franklin with the loot when I hear a round of claps coming from a lower deck. A microphoned voice and then the opening pop beats of a song. A singer on a platform, singing along with words projected back to them on a screen.

I flip through the songbook larger than an encyclopedia, collections of songs in languages. They even have Gortese, though most of them are modern Z-pop songs from West Gorteau (popular music from Zeoul, hence Z-pop). I run my fingertip down the list and recognize none of the titles, bar one song I know. Every breathing Gortese knows it. Should I though...? Well, Franklin did say music is Emission practice and far be it for me to refuse an opportunity to practice.

I add the song to the queue. What the heck? I'll stay for one song.

They find Odara sucking on a woman's bare breast—and Phinks is surprised there isn't a second woman straddling his lap.

His mouth pops off the woman and he greets them while adjusting his half-moon shades. "I'm so glad you could come," he says, without segue from breast to conversation. He takes a drink from a glass of amber whiskey.

The trio sit on a couch, slightly stiff in their spines, not wishing to get too comfortable.

His sight rests on Phinks, his nostrils flare. "Do I detect...Sauvage cologne?"

Phinks already wants to leave and have a shower. Everything about the place is greasy to him, Odara, his men with greasy hair and foreheads, the women with semen greased teeth.

"I know you want to wrap your lips on that," says Odara as a tray of drinks arrive, but none of them touch their glasses, ice cubes melting even though the open ballroom, absent of heated bodies, feels so cold.

Odara slaps the woman's ass hard enough to leave four possessive red marks on her peach cheek. "What's your favorite part of a woman?" he asks but the three don't answer. "Mine is not her breast or ass, but rather that long elegant neck and gentle slope of shoulders. I burrow my face right there as she pants, pleas and prays oh my god into my ear."

"Entertainment aside, let's get right to business," says Phinks.

Odara's paunch expands as he sighs. "My men are unloading the landmines now and are doing count." One of his foot soldiers returns with a jotted list and Odara licks his finger with a wink at them as he turns the page. "Everything is all here. Perfectly accounted for. Though I've been told you must turn a switch at the bottom. Do a demonstration for me, please."

One foot soldier with a sweaty sick face, greenish with bile in his throat delivers one landmine.

He places it in front of Shalnark but Phinks takes it by gripping the plastic by the side. He and Feitan had been lectured from Safra, who had made a show of clanging on the cursed things with her screwdriver. "These can take a fair amount of abuse but do NOT even breathe on the rubber X on the front."

He turns a plastic dial on the underside and feels a tiny jolt at the plastic click!

Phinks sets it on the table, next to the sweating glasses of untouched whiskey.

Odara motions, "I said demonstrate. Will one of you do the honors?" A few beats of silence pass and he cracks a grin. "I'm playing."

A pair of foot soldiers haul in a cage. Four legs, and fur circle the metal enclosure.

"I've always hated the yappy thing," says Odara.

In a food bowl, the nauseated foot soldier carefully sets the landmine and with outstretched trembling arms delivers it to the cage.

A scamper of nails against metal—unconscious or not, Phinks blinks the ugly moment the ordinance detonates. Too fast for the beast to even cry out. Singed fur, charred gamy meat, the reek remaining metallic ring submerges him in the memory of detangling Safra from the garbage and prying the bits of shredded finger into a piece of his robe.

A man with no weak stomach, he now swallows against his gag reflex.

"Splendid! Stay, won't you?" says Odara. "For drinks or entertainment?"

The trio hastily refuse and free themselves from the couch.

Polite to the last, Odara doesn't turn his back on them, watching them with pleased eyes, as they leave.

I order water after my song to cure my swollen vocal cords. I haven't hummed so much as a tune in so long, but I swear on my life I didn't crack once. Even in a tall stool, I couldn't stop moving. Restless energy tingles through my legs.

In the midst of drinking my icy water, among the perfume of pleasurable company, a charred fetor sluices through the fine hairs of my neck.

Franklin?!

As I twist around, a figure with half-moon shades saunters down the stairs and in the same way I can sense Nen emanating off a body among a crowd, I sense how the gory reek sticks to him like powerful cologne.

His gaze tears through the crowd to me, compared to the hostess girls I blend with the dark suits of the men, and he sees only me.

"Good evening," he says in a fluid, cultured voice. His clear eyes hold me whole. "Your name?"

I hesitate a moment too long. I hadn't expected to converse with anyone.

"If you're going to give me a fake name, don't bother," he says. "I can give you one."

"And what's your fake name?"

"Aren't you cheeky? Only one name, dear, Odara." He delights in my recognition of his name as I turn to his face again to note his features. "Your accent, mind if I try to place it? Say my name for me, please."

"Excuse me?"

"Go on, give it a spin," he says with a tiny lip pop at spin.

"Odara," I spit out.

"All wrong. Say it again, but nice and slow." He leans his face nearer mine, lifting a jewel-adorned hand to cup his ear near my lips. "With every natural inflection of your mother tongue."

"O-da-ra."

He lifts his face and his nostrils flare as if he's sniffing me and my words hovering in the air. "Hmmm, Southern Yorubia, no, not with that imprecise D that sometimes sounds like a soft T, all tickle at the alveolar ridge in the back of the mouth," he says, accompanied by an arid gulp in his throat and a thrust of his pelvis. "You're equatorial aren't you?"

He surveys my features, rarely blinking as he moves his nose over the crown of my head, the ridge of my brows, and even to the bow of my mouth. "Blood from ancient Chinese ancestors diluted over half a millennia on the...Balsa Islands. Am I close? Now which Kingdom from the Mitene Union? The Republic of Hass?" He asks with a hiss at the double S. "No, you're far too delicate boned for that." He says at my bare legs folded on my stool, my heel wedged on the metal footrest. "Not enough nutrition for bone length in childhood?"

"Even if you guess right I wouldn't tell you," I say, but he purses his lips to tut-tut against the back of his teeth. "Something about me interests you."

"That's a bold assumption."

"Is it? If you had nothing to keep you here, you would have left and yet you haven't."

So I tell him. "You smell of burned TNT and charred flesh, yet there's not a speck of blood on you."

My bluntness provokes a tiny slip in his composure, an aversion in his gaze, half a beat taken off guard, but he likes it. Odara peers above me at someone he recognizes, "Gentlemen."

My eyes almost bulge as a presence—three to be precise—pours viscous like lava over me. The causticity of the anger (from one in particular) behind me could corrode precious metal. My throat dries again, with remarkably slowness I face them—Phinks, Feitan, and Shalnark.

Faster than I can see it is Phinks' very familiar vice grip at my right bicep. Even as his lips are in a tight frown, more a ridge than a mere frown, and his grip says all he needs to: you're dead for this.

"Oh?" says Odara, not to be forgotten. "Is she one of yours? How much for her company?"

We all stop cold.

"What?" Shalnark is the first among us to react.

"Call it a nightcap. A cherry atop a sweet bed of cream for our successful transaction. How's a figure of say...two million? For two hours?"

"No," Phinks' single note could slice glass like Nobu's katana.

"Three million?"

"Five million," I say to the astonishment of the three spiders surrounding me. Phinks' fingers dig into my bicep, threatening to separate muscle from tendon, but you can't tell from my composed face at Odara.

The jewels of Odara's rings glitter as he moves my curtain of hair away from one shoulder to the other, nearly exposing my neck but for Ging's scarf. "Four," he attempts to haggle, but he and I both know he doesn't mean it. He can't deny his downward desperate longing.

"Five million, final offer, take it or leave it," I say. I give him half a second to consider, then let the stool feet loudly scrape the floor as I push back to leave with the Troupe.

A tug on me from the glossy wooden counter—Odara catching my gloved hand.

"Five it is."

He takes my hand into both of his. His thumbs work against my glove with distaste. One index finger tries to worm its way under the Nen fabric and a fingernail ekes the skin of my knuckles. He hooks the glove to slip it off. "Take these hideous things off—"

A jolt in my arm, but it comes from Phinks capturing Odara's wrist, freezing him with my glove pulled to my mid-knuckles. Odara unhooks my glove, and I immediately rewear it, guarding it against my chest. Nosy onlookers steal furtive glances, some energized with sick excitement and others willfully rounding away from a scene they had witnessed in The Flower Girl a dozen times before.

"We were just leaving," says Phinks.

My gut squirms from Odara's nastiness and yet, I refuse the generous departure from this situation. "You go ahead. I'll return after two hours."

I don't know Phinks well enough to decipher the complete storm on his face: concern, derision, disgust?

"Do show her where to go," Odara says like he's ordering a bellhop to move his luggage and with hands clasped behind his back, he leaves.

Phinks hasn't yet released my arm and in a severe voice that makes me want to shrink, he says, "What in the hell are you doing?"

"Doing what you've repeatedly told me to do!"

Feitan sighs and shrugs his arms into his trouser pockets. "Cracking a deal to put out for some mafia slimeball isn't what I advised."

One remark and I'm instantly reduced to garbage.

"Hmm," hums Shalnark. "You ended the bidding too soon. He would have easily gone for seven million. Come to think of it, that means I have to stay behind since I'm responsible for her tonight, right? I wonder what Danchou would have to say."

The sound of Phinks' knuckles cascading like piano keys, all the warning in the world necessary that the fairer blond better zip it.

A bead of sweat on Shal's square hairline betrays the smile he had just cracked.

"No Shalnark," I pipe up. "What would Danchou say if he were here?"

"Don't drag me into this..."

"What would Danchou say if I called him right now?"

"Well...you're not technically a true Spider so he would say it's not against the rules because what you do in private is your business."

"It's not private," says Feitan. "We're in the middle of a job."

Shalnark flips through his phone and I spy a nine-digit number reflected across the whites of his eyes. "The business juncture is complete. The land mines unloaded, according to Franklin, and the money has been wired."

"All this embarrassment to the Spider for a measly five million?" says Feitan.

"Fine." Holding up an open palm in mock surrender, Phinks says, "You win, Safra. I'll lend you the five million."

I remember how I asked earlier and was dismissed with a callous 'so what?' "This isn't some joke to me."

"Do I look like I'm laughing?" he says full of wry. "Since you don't care who you get the money from, take the 5 million I'm offering you and be done with it already."

More pressure on my arm to haul me off the stool, his assuming I had agreed, but I writhe against him.

"Shove it, Phinks. If you're feeling charitable out of the blue, there are more than enough people that are worse off than me in Yorknew and Meteor City."

Red at his cheeks like I had slapped him and when I believe he'll actually kill me for this, his vice grip on my arm goes limp. He calmly adjusts his beige jacket lapels and begins to leave.

"Oiii, Phinks!" says Shalnark.

"I won't waste another second of time trying to dissuade her," he says in an eerily cold tone that could put Machi to shame. "Let her do exactly as she wants. Fei, take her as Odara asked, will you?"

A protest bubbles in Feitan, but he squashes it anyway. Shalnark pays me one sympathetic look but follows Phinks.

I check my bicep and gape at the red marks, possessive and personal, that are already discoloring into livid bruises.

Fei takes me past the single hallway for the bathroom to the guards keeping the double-doors. Fei himself unlatches the door and pulls for me to enter Odara's ballroom. He says, "At least you're wearing gloves so you won't get dirty."

I don't have enough time to acknowledge him one last time before the door slams shut.

AN: So Odara is without a doubt the most absurdly nasty character I've ever written. And FINALLY, some CRIME in a story categorized as CRIME, though at this point I should probably change it to adventure, but CRIME. The Troupe aren't squeamish and have met their abundant share of nasties, but I wanted to make Odara...memorable in their eyes. Don't discount Safra yet is all I can say for now. She's armed with her wit. I keep forgetting this chapter was half Safra trying to look cute, and the girl is in serious need of a wardrobe overhaul...

Thank yous to AwkwardBlackCat, LinIsSleepy, loop2, cleansingcream18 (I WILL find some way to check out that fanart! Please check your private messages :D), and xSiriuslyPadfoot for reviewing the latest chap. Extra thank you due to LinIsSleepy for posting another FANART of Safra, this time in full Machi-Uwagi-gear and it's PERFECT *all the tears* ;_; CHECK IT OUT on DeviantArt under MaoIsSleepy and give some love to another artist.