The waking world came slowly to her, as tired as she was. Elektra kept her eyes closed for a few moments, hearing the shop below her apartment coming to life, the smells of coffee brewing and pastries baking filling her nostrils.
Since the day the shop opened and for five weeks afterward, Elektra had made it a point to be the first one every morning into her shop, making sure the people she hired were treated as valued colleagues, and not minions. However, despite Matthew being back and feeling well enough to make criminals look nervously over their shoulders again at night, Elektra herself hadn't given up her own contributions to such. Apparently, she'd been a regular enough occurrence at night now for the past few weeks to warrant her own nickname.
However, this all contributed toward her being much less awake in the mornings over the past five weeks. Her employees had finally had enough, and told her that they were fine opening the shop without her. She of course protested, saying that this was her shop and therefore her responsibility to be the first one in and last one out, but one of her morning clerks put it best to her.
"Ellie, look," the woman with dyed purple hair had informed her in no uncertain terms after Elektra had dropped a bag of coffee, "We got this. Okay? You look like you got no sleep. Again. I'm not going to ask, but seriously - we got this."
Elektra evoked the stubbornness within her that had outlasted assassins, outlasted Stick, outlasted Alexandra, and outlasted the Hand's designs. "Clara, it is my responsibility to not only make sure this store fulfills its intended purpose, but to ensure that it runs as it should. I'd be abandoning those responsibilities if I were to simply treat this place as an investment."
Clara crossed her arms, and glared at Elektra through her purple bangs. "So you don't trust the people you hired to do the jobs you hired them for?"
Glaring at her, Elektra crossed her arms in return. "You know that's not true. I'd just be remiss if I were to..."
"To what?" Clara interrupted, her irritation growing. "Actually sleep?"
"No," Elektra said firmly. "Be the sort of owner who placed all the responsibilities on her employees, and accepted none for herself."
The two other employees, a small woman named Jamie and a younger man with long dreadlocks named Jwanza were busy in the back, listening to what had become a daily argument and pretending not to.
Clara of course was not going to let this go - Elektra was beginning to realize with tired dismay that she may be in fact almost as stubborn as she was. "Yeah... you know that's what most business owners actually do, right?" Clara asked her sharply. "Don't make me kick you out of your own store."
"You'll what?" Elektra asked, laughing.
Clara stepped closer to her, and glared up into Elektra's eyes. "I'll kick you out of your own fucking store, Ellie. I'll even make sure Jwanza stops hooking you up."
Elektra glared down at the shorter woman, putting the full force of the cold fury that had torn Madame Gao apart like a house of toothpicks in a hurricane into her gaze. "You'd try to prevent me from getting coffee from my own shop?"
"In a heartbeat, bitch. Go sleep," Clara snapped in return, not backing down even a millimeter, though her face softened after a moment. "Seriously, we got this. Go."
Sighing, Elektra looked around the shop, trying to find another angle to attack from. "What if someone asks for a manager again?" she asked archly. "As I recall, she wasn't going to leave until she complained at someone dressed more nicely than she."
"You think I needed you for that?" Clara scoffed. "I've dealt with that bullshit before, many times - I just made you deal with it because I didn't feel like it, and because you kept offering."
Elektra opened her mouth to argue, realized she had no more arguments, and reluctantly closed her mouth.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Clara crowed in triumph, but her face widened into a grin. "Seriously, if you lost a debate with me, you really should get more sleep. Weren't you able to out-argue that lawyer boyfriend of yours more than once?"
"Yes, well," Elektra chuckled. "That's because I don't fight fair."
"Exactly," Clara said, nodding sagely. "You've taught us well."
Snorting with laughter, Elektra finally rolled her eyes, and hung her apron on the rack. "Fine. Call me if you need anything, anything at all. I trust I have your word on that?"
"Yeah, yeah," Clara said, rolling her eyes. "We can't miss you while you're gone if you don't leave."
Walking around to the side of the building, Elektra ascended the small, spiral staircase to her own apartment, and changed into clothes much more appropriate for exercise. Quickly tying her hair back into a ponytail, she grabbed her sheathed daito, put it into her gym bag, and left.
It was only a few minutes' drive to reach the Chikara Dojo. As Elektra neared the door, she saw Colleen kneeled on the mats inside, meditating. As Elektra reached the door and was about to knock however, Colleen's eyes snapped open as Elektra's shadow blocked the sunlight from in front of her. Smiling, she got to her feet, and waved Elektra in.
"You reek less of coffee than usual," Colleen told her with a grin as Elektra bowed in respect to the dojo, and walked inside. "You finally unbent enough to take time off during the day?"
Elektra sighed. "Something along those lines, yes."
Looking at her a moment, Colleen burst into laughter. "Oh, wow. They kicked you out, didn't they?"
"Do you want to spar, or not?" Elektra asked, still annoyed.
"I think I need a minute," Colleen said, before bursting into a gale of fresh laughter. She was leaning against one of the pillars in the room, she was laughing so hard. "Well," she said at last, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes, "at least you know they agree with you about not allowing bad quality into the store."
"Are we going to spar, or are you going to continue making terrible jokes at my expense?" Elektra asked, irritated, as she got her wooden practice blade from the wall.
"You say that like we can't do both," Colleen retorted, still chuckling, as she got her own practice sword. "Like, it's only possible for the people you hired to work well while you're there, or something."
"Oh, that's it," Elektra snarled, charging at the woman who'd unexpectedly become a good friend of hers, and trying to shoulder-check her into the wall.
Colleen spun with the motion, kicking Elektra in the back as she passed, sending her toward the wall instead. The moment Elektra was off-balance, Colleen aimed a hard, two-handed overhead slash directly at her neck. Darting to the side, Elektra ducked down, and tried to sweep Colleen's legs out from under her. Instead, Colleen flipped backwards, landing on her feet with her practice sword in a ready stance.
They exchanged a rapid series of strikes, parries, and dodges for several minutes, before Elektra flipped the blade around in her right hand, the blade of it now pointing up, along the length of her arm.
Her eyes narrowing, Colleen gave Elektra a wild grin. "So, zatoichi comes out to play. Let's see how your defenses are now, hm?"
With that, the two were engulfed in a furious whirlwind of sword strikes, neither willing to let the other even have an inch. Neither even tried to retreat or back up at all, simply trying without pause to find or create holes in the other person's defenses to exploit. Elektra finally succeeded in knocking Colleen off of her feet, only to see Colleen simply side-flip back to her feet. Colleen managed to trip Elektra in return, only for Elektra to twist in mid-air and land on her feet as well.
After a number of minutes, the two paused for a moment, their shoulders heaving as they both tried to catch their breath.
"Feel better?" Colleen asked her with a grin.
"Much," Elektra sighed.
"So, what happened today?" Colleen asked, throwing Elektra a towel before grabbing one for herself.
"My late nights are catching up with me," Elektra sighed, as she wiped the sweat from her face and neck. "I dropped two bags of coffee this morning during prep time, and they'd evidently had enough of someone sleep-deprived."
"You pay them well, and have their backs if anything happens," Colleen shrugged. "As long as you keep doing that, I think you'll be okay."
"I'd be just any other exploitive would-be despot attempting to make money," Elektra grumbled. "That's not why I'm doing this."
"You're doing it for the same reason powerful people own banks," Colleen nodded seriously.
Raising an eyebrow in a very skeptical look, Elektra observed Colleen looking sympathetic. "For the free coffee. I completely understand."
Elektra promptly threw a towel at her, and Colleen managed to catch it even while laughing.
"Oh hey, that reminds me," Colleen said while putting the towels in the basket to be washed. "You're okay with being called a lady of the evening when you dress up in black, right?"
Elektra glared at her. "It's 'Nyx' when I join in on the caped idiocy at night, and I'll thank you to remember it. It was given to me by a very nice girl three weeks ago - it's not my fault it stuck."
"It still means you're a lady of the evening," Colleen shrugged.
"Nyx was the goddess of night, you twit," Elektra glared.
"Are you wearing more red now?" Colleen asked, attempting to look innocent. "A red letter on the back, maybe?"
"It's crimson, not scarlet, you stubborn ass," Elektra sighed. "Besides, if I were to wear a scarlet letter, it wouldn't be for the simple act of making men's eyes roam."
"Well, yes," Colleen said with a smirk. "The one you wanted can't see, so his eyes won't roam. I think you did that on purpose."
"Yes, Colleen," Elektra said, rolling her eyes. "I picked him out in college for exactly that reason."
"You did pick a pretty good guy," Colleen shrugged as she finished clearing up the dojo to lock up. "I mean, he's okay with you being a black guy."
Elektra slowly turned to look at Colleen, and gave her a slow blink.
"Oh - Black Sky. Sorry," Colleen said with a grin. "You know how easy those things are to confuse."
"I must have tortured kittens and kicked puppies in a past life to deserve a friend like you," Elektra sighed.
"Nah," Colleen said as she locked the doors to the dojo behind them. "it's just that your defenses are still terrible, and I'm acting on divine impulse to remind you of this."
"Oh good, and here I thought it would be something pretentious," Elekra said flatly, shaking her head.
"Nope, just reminding you that you owe me coffee," Colleen grinned at her.
Elektra rolled her eyes.