Ibuki and Agata led Sabine through the streets of the Back Alley Market to the Shishigumi building, and the reindeer-red wolf had to admit to herself, she was impressed. This was not the shabby place of only a few years, and maybe even months, before. The exterior was gussied up, not only by Back Alley Market standards, but would be considered nice by even middle class standards. There were plants on either side of the entrance, which was barred and locked, the greenery flourished with life, obviously cared for and protected from the rougher denizens of the area. The building was freshly painted and unstained, the canopies on it untorn and unfrayed. It stood out like a jewel among the derelict and unkempt real estate around it.

"The shishigumi are doing well for themselves," Sabine said quietly to Ibuki.

"Our new leader knows how to keep the books," Ibuki replied with a proud smile.

"That I can see." She nodded as Agata unlocked the gate in the front of the door, then door itself, allowing them to enter the building.

While the inside of the building didn't look like she remembered, it was much neater and cleaner, the smelled exactly like she remembered; lion, liquor, silvervine, and musk. To the right was a common area, where several lions were gathered, playing a game of some sort. They looked up when the door opened.

"Hey, Sabine!" called one of them, through a scarf over his mouth.

"Hey, Sabu!" she called back, her tail wagging at her old classmate. She ran with him in her youth, when they were both still in school. She remembered when his face was smooth, when he didn't sport the claw scar above his eye on his cream furred face, and the reason for the scarf around his nose. She even remembered when he didn't wear his dark brown mane in a mohawk. But then, he would be able to say he remembered her when she didn't even have antlers.

"We've been expected you," he said, turning back to the game.

"So I hear," she muttered, starting to feel a little uncomfortable. She hadn't brought a weapon with her, counting on the goodwill of relations to get her through. Besides, if a fight happened, she'd be done for, there was no way she'd win against so many (though she'd take a few down before she was finished, she was sure). Was this a set up? Please, don't be a set up.

She did a body check, kept her ears forward, to indicate she was interested in her surroundings, not to show any anxiety by having them back or to the side. Her tail was slightly lifted and while it was no longer wagging, it wasn't drooping. She made sure that her fur wasn't raised at her long ruff or at the low of her back, as Ibuki knocked nonchalantly on a door at the end of the hall. She didn't smell any deception, all of the lions displayed a laid back body language, almost happy.

They waited a moment, then a voice called, "Come in," from behind the door.

Agata opened it and poked only his head in, "A representative from the Haiburiddogumi is here to pay their respects to you, boss," he said softly.

"About time," the voice grumbled.

Sabine did not stifle the loud huff that she let escape her caribou lips. Ibuki just smiled, as if it were a theater act playing out just as he was anticipating. Shit, I have been set up, she realized, only not in the way she'd expected in the way she was afraid of only a moment ago. She reached over and pinched Ibuki on the waist again, just as she had in the restaurant.

He batted her hand away and chuckled. "Best not keep him waiting in his own house," he purred.

"You haven't changed a bit," she replied with a smile.

"Neither have you," Ibuki countered as Agata opened the door fully and held his hand out for Sabine to enter.

Sabine expected a deer, but what she saw sitting behind the large desk in the old fashioned office shocked her to the point where she stopped two steps into the doorway. The deer was a young elk, with large, dark round eyes, slight of build almost a caricature among the burly lions of the Shishigumi. Sitting down in the large velvet chair that almost engulfed him, he looked up at her with a smug smile, the large round eyes filled with an unsettling satisfaction as he looked her over.

"The boys have been expecting you," he said.

Her head had to be playing tricks on her. For some reason, her brain was taking a memory out of her subconscious and placing it on top of another red deer's body for some strange reason. Maybe it was because she was in the Back Alley Market and it was bringing back painful memories that she'd shoved to the back of her mind years ago. But his voice was the right voice, she'd heard it when he'd performed at school, even if he didn't know she'd come to see him.

She probably took in two breaths before she was able to say, "Louis?"

His smile spread over his muzzle, though it didn't grow in warmth as it did. He stood from the desk, leaning on it, toward her. He looked so small and young behind the desk, her heart ached for him as he smiled in confirmation of her saying his name.

"It is satisfying to finally see you in person, Sabine-san," Louis said, the look on his face still predatory. "I am pleased that you hold up to your ghost stories."

"You two know each other, boss?" Ibuki asked, his deep voice soft and no longer jovial.

"In a way," Louis said, moving around the desk, "this is a little bit of a family reunion. Sabine is something of my…" he paused, searching for a word, "godmother."

For a brief moment the austere office disappeared from Sabine's view and all she saw was the face of the young new president of The Horns Conglomerate, Oguma the red deer, sitting at her little kitchen table at her middle class apartment. In her mid-twenties, Sabine owned more than she ever thought she would in her life. She had two beautiful sons, an apartment bigger than anything she ever thought she would have, friends who adored her, a man who loved her, she had no doubt, sitting next to his boss, whom he had brought to his mistress's house after work.

He'd told her about the gossip going around the office when he came their apartment to have lunch each day. No matter what her schedule was, the caribou vice president of the Horns Conglomerate, the father of Sabine's children demanded she be home at 1pm for their lunch. It rankled her like nothing else in the world, to be

told what to do, but she did it, for the sake of The Plan. The young, new president, "Who is quite the buck, let me tell you," the old man had told her, was about the same age as her. "I don't know what it is about your generation, that it produced such powerful people." The young president's wife had left him and had their arranged marriage annulled under the reasoning of 'marriage under false pretenses.' It turned out that Oguma was infertile, and that wouldn't do for her family. As Oguma's father's best friend and both his and his father's vice president, her penehusband felt he needed to do something to help.

He didn't have the slightest clue how he could help, but he knew very well that Sabine could.

Sitting across from her, Kenzou a baby not even walking on his own yet, resting on her belly and reaching for the silverware at the table, Oguma looked into her eyes much in the same way most deer species did, his eyes trying desperately trying to ignore the canine aspects of her features, which were mostly at her back now that she was grown. But her eyes were canine eyes, not the round, beautiful, soulful eyes of an herbivore. She turned her head while keeping her eyes on him, in traditional herbivore fashion as he leaned forward, a determination coming from him that was almost not sane.

"No," he replied. "He has to be a toddler, so we know that he's strong. With a baby, we won't know that he's strong or not." He learned farther forward, and Sabine tried to mimic the gesture, but she wasn't able to do much with Kenzou blocking her way in he

r lap. Takahiro nuzzled into his father's side, who sat next to Oguma at the table. "Do you understand? He has to be strong. He has to change the world."

She did understand. She understood the desperation in his voice, because she'd felt it. She understood the desire to change the world, it was something she thought of every day since she discovered a single beast could actually do it. "Yes," she said solemnly. "I understand."

"You can find a child?" Oguma asked, skeptical.

"I know where to look," she corrected, feeling shame creeping on her that she had such knowledge in such company.

And look she had, until she'd found what she was looking for.

And now he was all grown up, standing in front of her, in a den of lions.