I am not one for crowds. I first discovered that aspect when Senna unveiled my presence to the local small business owners around our block as "a cape that I hired to get rid of our Merchant problem."

The battery of thank-yous, small gifts, and questions about my previous work experience was enough to make me yark. In my mask. I need not mention that it was far from a pleasant experience.

A toddler walking astride his parents pointed excitedly at other hand, linked with his mother's, flapped up and down in a blur. I caught something close to "Look! Look! Doggy!". Directly ahead, three girls loitered around the front door of Journeyman's Flapjacks and Crepes. Maybe it was in my head, but I could feel them tracking me with their eyes, even as I walked by. Another girl with dark blonde hair and a fox-like grin sat alone in the patio area with nothing but a mug of coffee and an open notebook. Her cellphone was trained on me. When I glanced in her direction, her smile grew and she waved.

I sheepishly returned the gesture. A bubbling sensation sank its claws into stomach, relenting only after I ducked into an alleyway.

With the internal justification that making it easy for any Merchant affiliates to track me, and consequently, Senna, down was inadvisable to the nth degree. I stuck with backroads and less traveled by areas. Five or so minutes added to the trip was a small price to pay for security.

See? Perfectly justified.

If the main streets of Merchant territory were in disrepair, than the side streets were a step away from complete destitution. Many buildings of the same conditions that I held my "negotiations" with the protection money collectors loomed overhead. Houses with sunroofs and points of ingress provided courtesy of decay were the most common of features. Here and there, plywood or some other poor quality plugging material made them more livable; squatter or ganger were few and far in between, but I opted to steer clear of them.

The last hide I passed before drifting back into the more civilized sector emitted a haze that had no business coming from a fireplace. I got close enough to note its building number for future reference. Whether it was a drug lab, a drug den, or just a single vagrant with a stash of contraband, it wouldn't do to have their presence within the area destined to be cordoned off. That was a problem for later, however.

One needs to understand that Brockton Bay isn't necessarily an ugly city. The talk on PHO about it being a cesspool is only applicable to some broad yet very specific areas. The good parts, however, were rather discordant. Apparently city planners came and went like hero teams. They either get caught up in corruption plots, leave for greener pastures, or are asked nicely to consider another job when they don't accept bribes.

Senna's residence was a two story affair made of wood, next to another home of concrete, next to yet another built with some kind of semi-artistic grey organic rock pattern with little white lines between each head-sized stone that I had the urge to trace with my fingers every time I walked by.

Between the street and the residential district, a small park complete with rainbow hued swings, seesaws, and benches lay. The street ebbed into a footpath that cut through its center, leaving incautious passerby vulnerable to being kicked in the face by children traversing the intricate jungle gym that wound around the entire ensemble.

No one was there, though it wouldn't be much of a problem were that not the case. Everyone on the street knew about Senna taking me in. Journeyman's kids were nice, too. Even if his youngest, Bennie, favored my tails over his teething ring.

Approaching Senna's front door, I pressed my finger against the deep bronze keyhole. First, a gel-like form to fill in the shape, followed by hardening and a grip extension. With a click and a push, the door creaked open.

I neglected the light switch in favor of a soft glowing globe of pseudomass about the size of my closed fist. This was supposed to be Senna's day off; she often fell asleep on the couch after binge watching Earth Aelph movies. Low and behold, I could hear the tell-tale musical cues of a horror or suspense flick further in.

On the counter separating the living room from the kitchen proper, no less than forty Armsmaster figurines stood guard. They held their halberds in the "at-ease" position, halberds oriented blade-up so that they looked like a small platoon of pikemen awaiting marching orders. The sharp off-metallic smell of freshly applied blue and silver paint penetrated my mask. Each of their die-cast spartan-abs glistened with the faint glow of the artificial lighting. I frowned, they hadn't been there when I left.

I couldn't tell Senna not to do anything, but I could whine about sleep deprivation only being staved off if she actually slept during the days she didn't have to set foot inside her shop.

"Aha!"

From behind, two hands lifted my gas mask with practiced ease. A soft thunk was made as it found a place on the counter. Another, softer clang reported the death knell of Armsmaster # 13. He will be missed.

My ears snapped upwards, warm blood rushing back into them after hours of being cramped. Before I could so much as utter a word of startlement, Senna turned me around by the shoulders.

At five feet and eleven inches, she was quite tall for a person of Japanese descent. Her height was even more apparent when one considered her willowy frame. Raven hair that was long yet well kept snaked over the right side of her collarbone in a neatly braided ponytail.

"Hey. Should I tell the guys to buy some champagne?" She gave me a broad smile full of expectation. It made me want to squirm away and shove my head the sand of a beach far far away.

I shook my head. "Sorry. They ran away without agreeing to anything."

Senna floofed my ears until they perked back up. Her hands were a tad cold.

"Don't you worry about it. Appearances count for a lot. You're making everyone safer by just being here." She pulled me into a tight hug. Right around the arm that was still throbbing from earlier.

I yelped. Senna un-clinged, muttering apologies all the way. She threw the light switch, asked after the cause of my woes and proceed to roll up my sleeve with supreme care.

"I'm fine, really. They got got much worse than me."

Senna didn't lift her grimace. She chewed on a sentence that wasn't forthcoming, breath starting and stopping before she finally gave up.

"Can't tell you to not get banged up with what I'm asking you to do, can I?" She asked, retreating to a glass cupboard above and to the right of the old gas-burning stove. She rummaged through various pill bottles and a single model glue dispenser that definitely did not belong with the medicine before returning with a tube of bruise cream. She placed it atop my head, giggling when I went cross-eyed trying to look up at it.

"You might want to shower first, you smell like a zombie."

After a cursory glance at the souvenir sampling of all Brockton Bay's best had to offer hitched to my tails, I couldn't agree more.

Bathing was quick and efficient. Substituting pseudomass with water until my reservoir started to burn allowed me to wash my back without looking. Taking a hair drier to my tails was another matter.

It was embarrassing to ask for, but it beat having them laden and soggy for half an hour. That felt like having two extra arms wrapped tightly in a cold, damp towel that you either had to keep raised, or drag across the ground where it would pick up all the dirt and detritus that you just rid the things of.

I applied the medicine to my arm, trying to balance "liberally" as the tube suggested with, "don't waste Senna's money, you ungrateful wretch". The throbbing was still there but it didn't hurt nearly as much.

Seeing as I was unlikely to go anywhere else for the rest of the day, I donned a set of fox-themed PJ's. Senna said that they looked cute, my opinion on the matter meant nothing because I didn't pay a dime on the excessive wardrobe she deemed me fit of having.

The woman in question peeked upwards, as I made my way back downstairs. She patted a spot on the couch besides her, a small table placed between the small flatscreen and the couch proper had two cups of vanilla ice cream loaded with an inordinate amount of chocolate chips.

My mouth watered as I tossed Senna a glance. "Thank you very much!"

"No prob." She smirked, as though what she offered me was but a small favor.

Reserves unsatisfactory. Initiate consumption of available fuel source.

Sweets, chocolates and the those little powdered sugar packets especially, were a great weakness for me. I snatched up the bounty, almost compulsively. A single spoonful was enough to send my tastebuds to Nirvana. I had to tie my tails around my waist to keep them from waving about. I accidentally battered Senna with them the last time.

A brownish-tan ceiling fan spun lazily above, casting inordinately long shadows over moderate blue and white flashes coming from the tv. The dvd player in a nook under its stand read forty or so minutes and counting in neat digital numbers.

The screen itself offered a grisly bird's eye display of a skiing resort. Spiders the size of a small bear bounded after a crowd of unrealistically attractive teens fleeing in an even more unrealistic ordered line.

"Jhonathan?"

And so it begun. Senna thought that I might figure out my name if she were to shoot off enough of them. A kind gesture, but not a necessary one. I honestly did not want to know who I used to be. Rather, I was afraid of finding out who I used to be. Why open a possible can of grief if the status quo was beyond perfect?

"No, sorry."

"Gerald?"

I shook my head.

"Sam? "

"Why do you keep trying that one?

"Dunno, you look like like a Sam to me."

"Senna." I said, allowing my spoon a respite amongst the surviving flotilla of chocolate bites in their sea of melted ice cream. "Call me anything. I won't mind, really. It doesn't matter if I recognize the name or not." I could, of course, just lie and say that she got it right, but that would lead to further inquires about my lost identity. She was too nice to me.

Faintly, I registered a shrill cry of victory. A glossy green-grey arachnid burst through the roof of the lodge at the top of the ski resort's tallest hill, caught a poor sod with a broken leg, and not-so-cleanly traced its oversized forelimbs through his guts.

"I was alone when you found me, and there were no missing child reports on the news. I don't know how long I've been away from home. I don't know if this city, or this country isevenhome

Is at."

Again, she tilted her head to the side as she considered it, sighing as she'd done every time before.

"So what? A lot of Case 53's have it the same way, but you're not totally mutated. Maybe there's a better chance of you regaining your memories than some other guy. If you give up on your past you might not get it back. Don't you want to see your parents?"

"What happens if they don't want me back?"

Senna gave me a most serious frown, complete with over exaggerated pouty-lips "Then they're stupid stupid heads who are stupid!" She said. "Who wouldn't want you?"

I didn't answer. Whenever I voiced simple truths, Senna would blow me off or get angry. Even if she never hit me, or yelled, I didn't want to impose on her mood. Instead, I focused on staying awake through the film.

It was much more difficult in practice than in theory. There was still ice cream left un-devoured, but tiredness, the comfortable wafts of cool air from above, and the squishiness of the couch made fighting the sandman rather difficult. My eyes drooped, I sniffed as I grasped at whatever cords of vigilance remained. Senna's hand smashed through my defenses with contemptuous ease, delivering the coup de grace via head pats.

I felt myself sinking.

The blanket Senna draped over me was thick. Its weight just enough to provoke my joints into yowling complaints of their soreness. I should have expected it, jumping from roof to roof like a loon for an extended period of time. An orange and white striped pillow lay on my stomach, unused.

Groaning like a troll with a migraine, I rolled off the couch and disentangled myself from the resulting human-burrito. Odd. This predicament was usually reversed for the two of us.

The overhanging scent of garlic and cooking oil permeated the air. probably liver, the most abundant choice of meat in the freezer.

I raised myself up with outstretched arms and a yawn.

Only to choke halfway at the sound of a dropped dish against marble floor tiles, Senna shrieked.

"What are you doing here?!"