A tense minute had passed between my question and the shocked reactions of the girls.

I was considering saying something to break the silence before it got any more stifling. However, I was beaten to the punch.

"Who told you about that person?" Lilac asked pointedly.

I scratched my head, wondering how to answer.

"Well, a friend of mine told me."

"Why are you digging up ancient history?"

"Honestly? I just want to be a real journalist. I worked the tabloids for over a year and had to watch my co-workers get promotions while I was stuck in the same
place. I just wanted the change of pace, and I figured this article would be the break I needed."

The girls had noticeably relaxed at the end of that statement. Carol had regained that crazy look in her eyes, Lilac had looked embarrassed about the whole thing, and
Milla still had a confused, mildly vacant look on her face.

Lilac sighed. "I'm sorry about the trouble. It's just...well, Carol and I can answer any questions you have."

"Hey, Sam, are we still doing that exclusive interview? Do I get a million bucks and a TV show about me?" Carol's grin was all teeth.

Milla just looked back and forth between us. "Who's Coral Tea?"

Lilac and Carol blinked and turned to her, apparently realizing I wasn't the only one who had questions.

"Uh, we'll tell you everything after we're done here. But you should get some sleep, Milla. It's getting really late, okay?"

"Okay..."

I smiled awkwardly.

Fifteen minutes later, the recorder crackled to life as I hit the Record button. I had found a chair to sit on, and Lilac and Carol were sitting on the couch.

"Testing, testing...Alright, this is working...can you guys say your names for the tape?"

"Sash Lilac."

"Carol Tea reporting in!"

"Nice. Okay, just so you guys understand, you're anonymous sources unless you expressly want to be mentioned in the article. I can use anything on this tape unless you say it's off-limits. But otherwise, I just want you guys to feel comfortable answering questions. Understood?"

Lilac nodded, while Carol grinned gave two thumbs up.

"Let's start with some basic questions, then. What's the purpose of the Red Scarves?"

Lilac coughed. "Er, that's a bit complicated."

"It's okay, Lilac. Nobody's gonna hold it against us, ya know."

"Uh, okay...so the Red Scarves are a criminal organization. I suppose it's common knowledge by now, but they take on a variety of jobs; protection, recovery, assassination and so on. It wasn't like that before, though."

"How's that?"

"Well, when I joined, it was about helping people who couldn't help themselves. Like justice in places where the law couldn't reach comfortably. But over time, it just changed. Carol and I didn't like the change, so we got out."

...well, that put a damper on my theory that Carol was still a member of the Scarves.

"How did you two meet before?"

"Well, I helped her out from a bad spot, and we just hit it off from there."

"And what did you guys do in the Red Scarves?"

"Well, it's real simple, Sammy-sorry, can I call you Sammy?" Carol giggled a bit.

"I guess, but I-"

"Right. So me and Lilac were thieves at first. When we were in the Scarves, we joined a bunch of martial arts tournaments and made bank that way. It was just like in the movies, except we won every single time. We didn't have to do anything illegal otherwise. Spade was nice like that, at first. And the rest is history."

"Right. So who's Car-er, Coral Tea to both of you?"

Carol's eyes lit up, apparently ignoring that I had nearly mixed up their names. "Coral was the coolest Scarf that ever lived! She was my big sis, and she took care of me when I joined the Scarves. She wasn't around a lot because she was always on some kinda Scarf contract, but the times she wasn't on a contract were the best parts of my life! She even taught me how to drive a motorbike and everything."

I shuddered internally. The memory of Carol's insane driving was still fresh in my mind, and if Coral had taught her how to drive, that could only reflect on how absolutely mental that woman was when she was still alive.

"Coral was nice to both of us and she helped me build this treehouse, but she had that crazed look in her eyes every time you spoke to her. It felt like she was considering the best way to hurt you if you spoke out of turn to her. But she was the best operative in the Scarves, surpassing even Spade himself."

"Did she ever talk about her contracts?"

"That was one of the weird things about her," Carol said. "She was really nice, but she'd get all scary if you asked her what she did for the Scarves. And she basically never talked about what she did. But me and Lilac figured that she was doing work outside of the Three Kingdoms."

The world outside the Three Kingdoms wasn't well-documented in the media. I had never realized there were places outside of the Three Kingdoms until I got hired at the Avalice Times, and even then, what I knew could barely fill up a shot glass. I suppose one could consider these places, or the Outer Kingdoms, the third-world countries of Avalice-not much was known about them, and frankly, aside from the occasional Global Events article, the general public didn't care enough, even if the article was especially in-depth. This naturally meant that only a few people really wrote about the Outer Kingdoms.

"Interesting. How did you come to that conclusion?"

"Well," Lilac was saying, "there were rumors. They weren't really confirmed one way or another, but there were whispers. And sometimes Spade would just say he was going somewhere and leave for days, sometimes weeks, on end with Coral. I never gave much thought to it when I was still in the Scarves, but I suppose it might have been possible."

"Wait, so Spade and Coral teamed up on some contracts?"

"...I suppose you could say that..."

"Ughh, that jerk never kept his word when it came to protecting Coral! Every time they came back, Coral would look all beat up while Spade didn't even have a scratch on him. And every time, she'd just try to act really cool and say it was all fine. But I knew it wasn't fine 'cause sometimes she'd come back all covered in bandages and ignore everyone, then fall asleep in our clinic for a literal day. But then one day..."

Her voice was already tinged with bitterness with that outburst, but the way she trailed off was concerning, almost as if she was on the verge of tears.

"Carol, you don't have to do this if you don't want to." Lilac reached out tentatively, as if unsure whether it was okay, and then laid a hand on Carol's shoulder. They locked eyes for a second, and Carol grinned faintly.

"'s'alright, Lilac. I can do this. So one day, I got sick of it and confronted Coral while she was alone in the dojo. I demanded to know what she was doing outside the Three Kingdoms that was getting her so beat up that she needed a lot of hospital time. She tried to brush me off, but I wasn't having it, and I kind of yelled at her. I told her that this was worrying me sick and I needed to know what kind of stuff she was doing. I think I even tried to hold her down. It just kind of happened in a blur-one moment, I was talking to her, and the next, I was on the floor with a huge, stinging paw-sized welt on my face while she was telling me a bunch of stuff. She said that she didn't tell me things because she loved me and wanted to protect me, and it was really disrespectful to pry into her personal business, and stuff like that, and then she just left me on the floor of the dojo.

"And then the next day, Spade and Coral just left. Every day made me really itchy, like when you're waiting for a movie to just hurry up and come out, or when you're waiting on the microwave popcorn. But it wasn't a good kind of itchy. I couldn't even focus on anything, not even the really cool fighting movies. I asked around a lot, even though I knew no one knew anything or would say anything to me. Even Lilac was kind of antsy.

"We were like that for two long weeks. That's kind of funny to me...the worst part of my time in the Scarves wasn't when Spade went off the handle and started acting all mean and murdery and stuff. It was these two weeks where all I could think about was if my big sis was going to be okay.

"And then, finally, after these two weeks, I saw the shadow of a motorbike zooming towards the Scarves headquarters at like three in the morning. But the only person I saw on that bike was Spade himself, with bags under his eyes and looking all sad. So me and Lilac go out to meet him, and I ask him where Coral is. He just stared at me, like he wanted to say something but couldn't. But the way he looked at me, all pitiful instead of cool, said a lot more to me than his words could ever have said.

"I got really angry, and Lilac just looked really scary. We said a lot of things we couldn't take back that night. But the worst thing I remember saying to him was that he as good as murdered my big sister. And the reason I remember that is because as soon as I said that, he went from looking sad to...I guess you could say he looked like the boogeyman himself. Anyway, he called us both ungrateful leeches who'd never amount to nothing, that he didn't help us all these years to get paid back like this. And I swear he was considering hurting me for a couple seconds, but then just stalked off.

"It scared me then. But what scared me the most about that night was the cold, hard truth."

Tears were flowing freely from Carol's eyes.

"My sister never came home that night, Sam. She never came home..."

I pressed Stop on the recorder and averted my eyes as she cried in Lilac's arms. A tear threatened to escape my eye.

-

Several minutes later, Carol had fallen asleep on the couch. Lilac had laid out a blanket and a pillow, moving with the practiced ease of one who looked far older than she should have. It was easy to forget that I was only looking at a seventeen year-old girl in that moment.

When that was done, Lilac sighed and turned to me.

"I'm sorry about all of this, Sam. It's a really touchy subject for us. Honestly, I still don't know how I feel about the entire thing..."

"Eh. Don't worry about it. This is supposed to be my job, after all; finding the information and getting the tough answers. I'm sorry you guys had to go through that, though."

Lilac tilted her head and grimaced. "We've been through worse. Saving the world isn't something everyone can talk about, let alone boast about."

I chuckled. "I can imagine."

"So what's next for you after this?"

"Well, I was hoping to talk to a couple of other people. There's Spade, Neera, maybe the Magister himself. Basically anyone who knew Coral Tea personally. Then I guess we'll see what happens after that."

Lilac's eyes widened at my mention of Spade. "Wow. You say that like it's going to be easy."

I shrugged. "I've always been good at understatement, I suppose."

"I don't know, though. How are you going to talk to someone like Spade? The Scarves headquarters is really hard to break into, and no offense, but I don't think a
couple of kind words is going to get you in the door. And then you have the Magister and Neera themselves?"

"Let me worry about that as I go. Let's say that doing things the correct way hasn't really gotten me any results so far, and I don't plan to start anytime soon."

"I hope you know what you're doing. I don't know about the royalty, but Spade was still kind of dangerous the last time I saw him. And the stuff you're getting into? Aren't you worried about bad publicity?"

I smiled. "No such thing as bad publicity in my line of work."

Lilac raised an eyebrow and shook her head. "I wish you luck on your article, then. Just try to stay safe, alright?"

She glanced at the clock then and gasped. "Omigosh, is it really three o'clock? I don't...oh man, it's too late for you to leave, but I don't have enough beds for four people...are you alright with sleeping on the floor?"

"Yeah, sure."

Lilac disappeared into the next room, presumably hunting for a spare blanket and pillow. I sighed out loud as I contemplated how much had happened in the space of a single night, including the fact I was apparently involved in an impromptu sleepover with a bunch of girls.

At least I didn't have to go to work tomorrow...