Following Peter's original idea, they circled back around to the area where things had started. The main thoroughfare looked even more busy than when he had first appeared there. Covered wagons pulled by those lizard creatures moved through the street in huge packs with only intermittent breaks between them.

Surveying the area for any clue or anyone who might be interested in helping them, Peter felt a tug on his sleeve to the side of him where Satella stood. It was odd being this close to her, sure he had been near other women before but not without knowing them for a longer time. The thing that grabbed at him the most was there was this intoxicating scent about her.

Was he imagining it?

There was a girl crying across the street from them and a little ways up. Satella tugged his arm harder now and pointed to the same girl that he saw.

"That child there…it looks like she's in trouble Peter."

Grasping for her hand, Peter glanced back to her and nodded. "We should go help her then—we can be quick so we don't take too much time from finding your badge thing."

Satella seemed to be stunned by the feel of his hand on hers but she allowed herself to be led across the street while Puck zipped along between them. The small girl had green hair, cropped into a bob. Some of the dust kicked up from the lizards drawing the carts had gathered around her in the little nook where she stood.

"Hey there, is everything okay?" Satella asked.

The girl sniffled, trying to stop the tears from coming. There was a glimmer of hope in her eyes as she glanced up to meet Satella's eyes and then the tears flowed anew. In fact, this time she seemed even more terrified.

"We're not going to hurt you," Satella said, but her expression darkened and she recoiled back and glanced around as if she expected someone to chide her.

Peter squatted down in front of the girl. "Maybe we're not the ones you're looking for, but are your parents around here."

The girl continued to stare at Satella.

"It's okay if you're lost sometimes, so long as someone find you right? And someone did. This pretty lady here and I are going to help get you home—you know I was lost one time," maybe I still am, Peter thought as he took a deep breath and offered opened his arms to embrace the girl. "But in the end I found where I was supposed to be."

The girl stepped into his arms and he hefted her into the air with even more ease than his powers would have usually allowed. Yeah, the gravity here was different for sure.

Satella jaw hung open just a bit, her purple eyes wide with shock. "You seem really used to that."

The small girl's legs were wrapped around Peter and she was resting her head on his shoulder. "Yeah, I used to help the kids back home out from time to time. It's easy, they're light," he joked.

"People might assume you're some doting father with the way she's clinging to you," Satella muttered.

"What?"

The three of them moved a little ways up the street, avoiding the alley where Peter had almost been mugged earlier. The bandits were gone along with the webs, so he wondered if the guards had come by and picked them up or if they had gotten free of their own power. He'd stuck them down pretty hard and the webs took longer than this to melt.

Peter chatted with the girl for a few minutes before he asked her name. Her light blue eyes stared at him with a kind of wonderment as she answered. "Plum."

"That's a good name, Plum. Easy to remember huh?" He joked. "I'm Peter and this is—"

"Momma!" Plum shouted and wiggled free, landing on the cobble stones hard enough that she had to stoop to catch herself with her little palms. She charged through the crowds toward a brunette with brown eyes and what looked to be the adult version of her small face. The woman wore a half cloak over her shirt and had a skirt cinched at the waist with a belt made of a fox's tail.

She scooped the girl up in her arms and hugged her close. "Oh, my little Plum! We have to be careful to keep up with each other," she said with tears in the corner of her eyes.

Plum nodded to her mother.

The woman looked up toward them and for a moment there was a look of surprise, but it passed. "Are you the two that found her."

"Yes, ma'am," Peter said.

Satella nodded. "Um hm."

"Thank you so much," Plum's mother said giving a short bow.

"There's no need," Satella said, her voice shaking.

"We were just doing the right thing," Peter said.

Plum's mother lifted Plum up into the air and bent her body so that the girl was resting on her hip. "I hope she wasn't too much trouble."

Peter shook his head. "None at all."

A short while later they were resting on the high bridge with Peter looking out over the edge at the water way down below. They had passed several rivers, most of them ran parallel to the major streets and they seemed to be the lifeblood of the place. From up here the large castle in the distance was more clear. He didn't know what time he had arrived, but the sun was past it's apex and had begun the long journey down to the horizon.

"You were so quick to help that little girl," Satella said finally. The two of them had been resting in silence after sharing a little bit of the food that she had in her pack.

Peter glanced over at her, the white hair hanging against of the smooth round skin of her cheek. Her eye flicked in his direction and her cheek reddened. She looked too pretty to be real, then again the rest of this place played out like someone's idea of the perfect little fantasy town.

"I could say the same about you," Peter said. "We lost a bit of time that we could have been searching for your thing."

Satella nodded. "Mm, and when we find it we can live without the regret that we left that little girl alone in the city."

"Yeah."

"Even so, why are you so keen on helping me-I mean I can only bring you bad luck," she said looking down as she fingered the green jewel pendant that dangled around her neck.

Peter didn't know what she meant by that. "I helped you for the same reason that I helped the little girl, because you needed it."

"There's people who need help all over the city, all over Lugunica even," Satella said.

She was probably right, there were probably a million little stories going on all across this place. If he had appeared one street over where would he be right now? Had there been a reason it was Satella he had first met?

"That's true," Peter said. He thought for a moment back to something he had said before to someone else who had asked him about why he did the things he did. "I just feel like: if you have the power to do something and you don't any bad that you could prevent happens because of you. You're the person in trouble that I knew about, so I'm going to help."

Satella sighed. "You're strange." Though she seemed to be exasperated her expression showed a hint of something else Peter couldn't read.

Then his tingle chimed in. He looked to Satella, but it wasn't from her. Guard was down too much for him to pinpoint it that quick and someone slammed into him from behind sending him tumbling to the water below where several logs were jutting up from the water.

"Peter!" He could hear Satella's voice as he went over the edge. He hadn't even had time to see his attacker in the fall.

Peter rolled over, his fall was much slower than on Earth so he had more than ample time to sling his left hand out and web the underside of the bridge. He swung under it, wrapping the web against the bottom tight so that he rocketed back around and landed on the railing opposite of where he had been standing. He just hoped no harm had come to Emilia.

This is all my fault. This is all my fault. I should have paid more attention.

Peter landed on the railing of the bridge in a squat, hands tucked down between his knees and grasping the sturdy wood of the bridge rail and what he saw next was anything but what he expected.

Satella was danced back from a dagger swipe with ease and blocked another with with a blade that seemed to be made of pure ice that appeared in her hand as if it coalesced out of thin air. What's more was Peter recognized the man fighting her—it was the knife using crook from earlier.

When there was enough distance between her and the man, Satella raised her hand and fired a ball of ice out hitting him and the shorter man that was behind him. They stumbled back, staggered by the attack and then she fired a pair more that sent them rolling down the bridge back into the street.

The third man was charing her from behind, but Peter flipped off the bridge rail and rolled in the air, delivering a kick to the top of the man's head and sending him collapsing to the bridge.

Satella stared at him stunned. "Peter—how did you?"

Puck rocketed out of Satella's silver hair and pressed his fuzzy paw pads to Peter's cheek. "Don't scare us like that!"

"I'm just glad you're okay," Satella said.

The big man still had a little fight left in him, her got up into a crawling position and scampered over the wood of the bridge, his heavy footfalls shaking the whole structure. "Rachins! Camberley! Wait for me!" He hollered as he trailed after his two compatriots.

"We had better get back to it," Peter said. He wasn't sure if he was ready to reveal his powers to Satella yet, though he had just seen hers. With the way that she used magic in brand daylight like this he didn't think it was something all that unusual. At the very least most people didn't stare when a cat flew out of her hair.

The trio made their way down to the next street and passed by the original shopkeeper where Peter had first found himself when he arrived in this world. Someone behind the shop called to him.

"Peter! Lady!" He turned to see little Plum sitting in the lap of the green haired shopkeeper. Plum's mother was behind the stand too sorting through some products.

"You know these two?" Asked the shopkeeper.

Peter and Satella wandered up to the shop, Satella waved to the girl and she waved back. "Yeah, we found her earlier lost. Are you her father?" Asked Satella.

"Yup, that's my little Plum." As he said this the man rubbed the top of her head causing her to squeeze her eyes shut.

"Look, I owe you. Really I do." He pulled out some of the fruits and began to bag them up, giving them a miniature cornucopia of foods to work through. "Take it. It's yours. My treat."

A lot of the food here looked or smelled like something that they had back on Earth, but there were subtle differences. The oranges weren't pock marked, for instance, and the apples looked a little off.

"You wouldn't happen to have seen a a thief come by here, would you?" Asked Satella. "They stole something very dear to me."

The shopkeeper scratched his head. "What did they look like?"

Satella turned to Peter, waiting for him to cough up the description. "She was scrawny and blonde, real short hair, red eyes, and I think—yeah she had little fangs"

The shopkeeper let out a belly chuckle that threatened to turn into a chortle. "Sounds like you're talking about Felt," he said. "She comes by here sometimes, always buying things with money that ain't hers," he said shaking his head. "She lives in the old slums at the edge of the city—I imagine she would take whatever she stole there."

"Thanks," Peter said.

"Hey Lady!" Plum had climbed down now and approached them from the side. She was holding something up. It was a little red flower.

"She wanted to give you that," Plum's mother said. "I told her that she needed to hold onto it until we saw you next time."

As Satella stared down at the flower in the little girl's hand, there was a part of Peter that believed that she had never been given anything in her entire life. He lip curled and for a moment it looked like she might cry, absently she rubbed the back of her hand under her eye and then reached down to accept the gift. "Thank you," she said, taking the flower and slipping it under the him of her dress's bust line.

"Thank you again for helping my little Plum," said the shopkeeper.

"Hey, don't mention it," Peter said.

"Since you two did that for us I'm going to offer you a piece of solid advice. And since you look kind of soft," he said pointing to Peter.

"Me?"

"The slums aren't any place for your namby-pamby shenanigans. Watch your backs and keep your eyes on your surroundings or you could lose more than some unblessed coins."

Peter nodded. He and Satella set off for the edge of town and after they were a little ways down the path Puck shot out from behind the silver curtain of her hair. "We're going to have to be quick about it once we make it down there," he said.

Satella looked up toward the sky. "I know. I'm sorry for keeping you out for so long today."

"What do you mean?" Asked Peter.

"A spirit like Puck can only stay out for so long," she explained.

"That's right, we're constantly using mana just existing in this plain, so if it comes to it Pete I'm going to have to ask you to look after Lia here."

Peter straightened his face, it sounded like what Puck was requesting was a serious matter. "Of course."

Puck sucked his teeth and folded his paws behind his head, floating along as if he were relaxing. "I'm sure we won't need it anyway, now that we are pretty sure of where to look this should be easy."

"We got this," Peter reached out with his fist and, almost as if Puck read his mind, he dapped him up: they bumped their fist top to paw bottom, paw top to fist bottom, and then met head on.

"Okay, okay, you got it Puck."

"Pretty cool, huh?"

Steve didn't think he had ever considered the possibility that his day would be so all over the place. After what felt like a dream where he fought a purple alien in an Afro-Punk future nation he decided that he would spend the mid-afternoon walking three prostitutes back to their part of the city to make sure that they got home okay.

One thing he had to admit to himself was that this city was massive, it was bigger than Long Island, that's for sure.

As they walked, Lily, Kaylis, and Martha were flanked around him. The women were more interested in talking with him than with each other. They picked his brain about little things and asked random questions. It wasn't until they were entering a sort of waterway intersection with a bridge that went up high into the air over the wide river below that one of them asked the question they had obviously been dancing around all of this time.

"Okay Steve," Martha started, her words punctuated by giggling. "I just have to ask, do you have a lady back home?"

"Or boy, or boy—no straight man's ever treated me this politely," said Kaylis.

Steve laughed. "Happy to be the first then, but not anymore. A few years back she passed—we were apart for a long time, but I think at the end and all along really, she knew." His tone got more serious as he spoke and at the end he realized what he had said, what he just admitted to himself. If he could do it all again, what would he say to Peggy?

"Aww, I didn't expect that to be such a sad story. I'm really sorry."

Steve gave her a little nod. "It's alright. You lose a lot of friends over the years and even with someone special you get kind of used to soldiering on."

"Yeah."

"So, I have a question for the three of you," Steve started. "If your home is this way you must go round here all of the time, right?"

Lilly nodded. "Yeah."

"Then why did you ask me to walk with you?"

"I would yuck it up and say we was trying to get you alone for just the three of us," Kaylis said cracking a smile, "But there's something more to it."

"Jem, one of the girls at work, had a client today and he had heard that there was a rumor about the Bowel Hunter lurking around the slums," said Martha.

"You know them stories where some stupid kids get knackered and lost in the woods and have to face their fears—well that woman is like the monster at the end of the book," Kaylis explained.

"I heard she tears out people's blood and all and wears them," Martha explained.

"Maybe she just eats them." Lilly said.

Steve had seen how fast these kind of rumors could spread in the past, the rumors about killers could take hold of people and change them. The year he had been born there was a woman who died that had been known as the worst woman to ever live. Lizzie Halliday, her murders had changed the city in a way that Steve could still feel. Some of the old timers talked about the times before her like there was a clear divide between the then and now. Or the back then and his then.

As they left the area where the waterway had been the buildings start to look a little more squat and run down. The uniform, almost row homes and shops and the cobblestone streets turned into rocky paths with intermittent bits of grass growing up and boxy huts. The sounds of the city died down some as they walked through a littler smaller market area where it looked like things were just dying down for the day.

"It's not much to look at, but this part of town really gets into your blood. It's part of me, at least," said Martha.

"I get that, my home, Brooklyn was kind of like that," Steve said, forgetting where he was.

"Brookland?"

"Never mind, now do we need to make any stops anywhere else?" He asked.

"Could we treat you to a sandwich?" Asked Lily.

"Aye, Dez makes a damn good sandwich," Kaylis said.

He usually would have refused them, but he was pretty hungry and he didn't exactly think that Dez would know what to do with the crisp fifty dollar bill tucked into the pouches of his suit.

"I'd like that," said Steve.