After crawling under a table and staying there for what felt to her like hours, her heart roaring in her ears and head pounding with dull pain, Amy finally got her mind and body working together properly. She checked herself for wounds, first gingerly moving her arms and legs to test mobility. Equally panicked as the little red panda, she had turned to run, and her legs had brought her straight into the wall beside the doors to the mess. The left side of her face, left arm and left hip all burned and ached from the impact with the whitewashed brickwork.

But I can still move everything. She looked down at her chest and legs. I can still breathe fine... She undid Tails's belt and her tunic to check herself over. No blood, no sucking chest wounds, nothing to the liver, stomach, thighs... There were two places the bullet could have gone, that would have made her panic: the lower belly, where all the germs that helped the gut process food and drink could rapidly infect the bloodstream; and the groin, where the aorta splits into the femoral arteries that supply the legs with blood. As she'd had time to think it over, Amy was now certain that the strain of birth had somehow ripped Vanilla's femoral split apart, which would have caused such a massive bleed. No holes but your belly button. Relief washed over her then, and she sent a quick prayer of thanks skyward.

Satisfied that she would not suffer Vanilla's death nor a slow, septic death, Amy realized that the sounds of battle had ceased. As there were no more Boxers coming over the walls to kill her, she concluded that the defenders had won. Just as she'd crawled out from under the table and stood to cover herself, Tails burst into the mess hall, covered in dust, smelling of cordite, sweat, and blood. Their eyes met, and his sky blue eyes grew huge with shock and concern. He rushed to her. "Amy! What happened to you?"

"What do you- OW!" She roared a curse when Tails touched the left side of her head, and threw a punch on reflex.

Tails danced away from the first punch, caught her wrist on the second one, then caught her other wrist on the third. He firmly held her wrists together, over her head. "Your head is covered in blood," he informed her calmly, "What. Happened?" Gently, he lowered her arms and let go.

All the fight Amy had left, had gone into those punches. She now felt almost as tired as she had the day after the Boxers burned down the chapel. "Boxers," she said, more hoarsely than she'd expected, "they, they got out."

"Got out? What-" He stopped. "You mean the prisoners?"

"Yeah," Amy said, the words now tumbling out of her, "they were all naked, a boy was with 'em, he shot me, I ran into the wall, they were running, and-"

Three other soldiers burst into the room. "Herr Leutnant!" Smygwie called, "The lockup's empty!"

Tails looked back to Amy. "Did you see where they went?"

Pain was beginning to set in as the adrenaline ebbed away. She pointed crookedly. "To the wall, I think, back that way."

Tails barked his orders. "You heard her, sweep the entire legation grounds, laus, laus!" The enlisted soldiers departed precipitantly. Tails turned back to Amy. "So, you ran into a brick wall. Do you feel dizzy?"

"No," Amy answered.

He gently lifted her chin, so that their eyes met. Is he.. is he about to kiss me? She swallowed, a shaky smile growing on her lips.

"Do you feel nauseous?"

"N-no."

"Are you seeing double?"

"No."

Tails lifted a finger in front of her face, then said, "Follow with your eyes."

Oh, Amy realized, concussion check. It made sense, but she couldn't help feeling disappointed. Slowly, steadily, he moved his finger from side to side, critically studying how her eyes tracked it. Then he relaxed, but didn't immediately release her chin. Her heart skipped. Maybe now?

He let go, and took her hand instead. "Come. The infirmary's this way." He began to lead her outside.

While the mess was open to the outside air, it was least cooled by the lack of direct sunlight; outside, she could feel the blood drying and cracking on her scalp and quills. "It's that bad?"

"You'll recover," he said, "it looks much worse than it actually is."

"I want a mirror." She gingerly reached up to touch around the spot Tails had tried, and got such a sting that it made her shout.

A familiar voice ahead of her. "Amy?"

Amy looked ahead of Tails and beamed, despite the growing throb of the wound. "Sally!" She suddenly felt light on her feet again, and promptly bolted past the young fox.

When Sally saw Amy, she'd gasped: from near the top of her head, past her left ear, and down her neck, Amy's quills were matted and sticky with coagulating blood. Whatever had caused that wound, however, Sally was relieved to see the alertness in the girl's eyes as she ran to her. No concussion, at least. Sally caught Amy in her arms, ignoring the ache in her own shoulder. "Did one of their rocks get you? I saw they were throwing-"

"Oh, this?" Amy said, waving a hand over her head, "No, it's..." She trailed off as the events replayed in her mind. She saw the little red panda's horrified stare, the yellow flash from the pistol, the shine of sunlight on steel as it trembled violently in his hands, the smell of gunsmoke and the thud when before he'd dropped the gun and fled. Amy felt herself make a very strange sound, something between a laugh and a sob; a noise that simultaneously expelled the terror of being shot at, and expressed just how damn happy she was to see Sally again. She took a deep breath and began again: "A kid shot at me, and I ran into a-" Giggles threatened. "Then I ran into a fucking wall, trying to run away!" Then, the giggles seized her.

In the musty, tobacco-stained atmosphere of Clemens von Ketteler's office, the little red panda's arms and legs trembled against the hempen rope that bound them to the chair. Ketteler glared down at him, a broomhandle in his fist. He turned to his interpreter, a lanky brown rat in puffy green-and-blue silks. "Ask him if he belongs to the Boxers."

The rat translated. The boy, wide-eyed, hesitated before nodding.

Ketteler gritted his teeth. "Ask him what he knows about Sugiyama's death."

"My lord?" the rat asked.

"Sugiyama, the minister from Japan. He does what I do. He was found dead this morning."

The rat paled. "Good heavens! Why?"

"Ask him."

The rat asked. The little red panda looked confused. Ketteler waited for the rat to translate the boy's response. "He says he broke in to free some friends," the rat said, "He doesn't know any Sugiyama."

Ketteler looked thoughtfully at the boy. "Ask him who these 'friends' of his are, and why anyone would stage an attack to free them."

As he sat in the afternoon shade of the abandoned Italian Legation's walls, it finally registered to Chu that he'd done it: he'd gone into the foreigner's lair, and come out again without a scratch! What's more, he'd brought his men out without a scratch as well! It was too easy; surely the foreigner had seen him and Ping at some point, or planned some kind of trick or magic spell or something to thwart him as that demonic witch-woman had, but if there had been a trap, it hadn't sprung. The thought made him chuckle. Too easy, he thought fiercely. If the foreigner could be so thoroughly deceived, clearing them out of the Quarter- out of all China itself- would be far more simple than he'd ever dared to imagine. He began to chuckle.

Liu was grinning like a madman, his blunted tusks and crooked teeth showing white between his lips. He was now clothed, in a new set of the Fists' crimson robes. He gave Chu a friendly shove on the shoulder. "That was the last thing I would have expected," he said, "Clever, absolute genius, my young friend!" He stood, nodding up the offices behind the walls. "We should celebrate! Maybe the foreigner left a few bottles behind in there?"

Chu made to stand, then looked around. "Not yet," he told the old Manchu boar, "the boys should be here any minute." Last night and this morning, he'd told Ping to meet back here if all went well. He'd also told all of them to scatter as they went over the wall, to hide in the crowds and make their way here. Ping would've been the last one over... Chu realized that, in the rush and excitement to get out of there, he'd failed to perform a head count like he'd planned to. The kid's a thief, he thought, if anyone could get out without being spotted, it'd be him. He wasn't running for his life in his underwear like Liu was. That did not staunch the unease he suddenly felt.

Liu noticed. "What is it?"

Chu waved the question away. "Nothing."

Liao-dao's voice up the street made both men turn their heads. "I swear- he- a gun- her- left!"

Wen's voice joined in: "Swear all you- no way-"

The two otters rounded the corner, arguing heatedly. They were still in their underclothes. "I'll keep swearing," Liao-dao insisted, "'cause it's the truth! I saw him do it!"

Chu threw them a set of robes like Liu's and let them dress before he spoke. "What happened?"

The otters glared at each other, but it was Wen who spoke first. "Liao says that Ping went back and killed the pink witch!"

Chu blinked. "Tell me what you saw," he ordered.

Liao-dao looked smugly at his twin, then began to relate his tale. "I was coming up the ladder after Wen, and I looked back and saw Ping, standing there in the street with his gun up, and there she was!" He shook his head in wonder. "She saw him too, all of us!"

Chu's eyes widened. "Did she say anything? Did you hear anything?"

Liao-dao grinned. "This is the best part: before she could so much as piss herself, the kid blew her head off!"

"She's dead?" Chu cracked a gap-toothed grin at the otter's affirming nod. "What happened after that?"

Liao-dao scratched the back of his head. "He ran left down an alley; maybe he saw someone else coming. I didn't see him come down after us, but he might've later."

Wen rolled his eyes. "More like you saw them both piss themselves, she fainted, and he panicked. The guards probably caught him if he's not here by now."

Chu's grin slowly faded into a thoughtful frown as he absorbed what the twins were saying. "We'll wait another hour," he decided.

Ketteler didn't only see the little red panda in that chair: he saw the colonel who had surreptitiously usurped the authority rightfully invested him by the Kaiser; he saw that damnable half-breed bastard the colonel dared to call "son"; and he saw the corruption that half-breed inflicted on the Kaiser by prancing around in the Kaiser's uniform, calling himself a Prussian officer.

Thwack.

The boy grunted, and spat out another tooth. He'd lost three already.

The rat blanched. "My lord, he-"

Thwack.

"Ask him again."

Meekly, the rat obeyed. He got the same answer. "He doesn't know anything."

Thwack. Thwack.

Ketteler gritted his teeth. His fists were growing sore. "There's no way he doesn't." He went around the back of the chair and tipped it over with a loud clunk. The boy moaned. "Listen to me, boy. I want to know who your leader is, what he looks like, and how many of you he'd sent to kill me." He glared back at the rat. "Translate, damn you!"

Swallowing hard, the rat repeated the question in softer tones. Ketteler waited for a reply. "Well?"

"He says..." The rat trailed off.

"What? What did he say?"

"He says he wants to go home, my lord."

It was not the answer Ketteler wanted. The porcupine aimed a savage kick at the boy's chest. This time, the boy cried out. "Tell him that he forfeited that right when he threw in with those red-robed bastards. Tell him that if he doesn't tell me who planned the attack, I'll hang him from the Tartar Wall."

The rat hesitated.

"Tell him!" Ketteler roared, "Or I'll find someone who will!"

Shaking, the rat relayed Ketteler's message. Slowly, the boy wheezed out his answer through bloody bubbles of sputum. The rat nodded. "He says a man named Chu planned all of it," he said quietly.

Ketteler brightened. "Now we're getting somewhere."

The rat was green with nausea. "Please my lord, he just-"

Ketteler kicked harder. Cartilage and bone broke under the impact. The boy began to sob. "Ask him who this 'Chu' is."

The rat knelt beside the boy, and did as he was instructed. The boy shook his head, crying. "My lord, if he knew anything of substance, he would have already told us."

"He just told us something of substance," Ketteler replied flatly. He aimed another kick, this time at the boy's stomach. That turned his sobs to fishlike gasps. "Ask him what he knows about-"

A fist pounded the locked door to Ketteler's office. "Herr von Ketteler!"

Ketteler sent one final kick to the boy's solar plexus, stood the chair back up, and wiped the blood off his hands with a handkerchief. Sourly, the porcupine answered: "What is it, Herr Hauptmann?"

"I have an urgent message from the Qing, your ears only."

Ketteler looked around. "Meet me in the lockup. There won't be any other ears to hear there." He gestured at the rat beside the boy, whose sobs had turned to rapid hiccuping noises. "You stay here. I won't be long." With that, he left the office.

Once they were alone in the lockup, Sonic rounded on Ketteler. "Mein Herr, have you lost your fucking mind?"

Ketteler crossed his arms. "You haven't extracted a single piece of useful intelligence from any of your prisoners, and you lost all of them because of your subordinate's negligence. I've also gotten more out of my prisoner in an hour than you have in an entire week: it's time we do things my way, Herr Hauptmann."

It took all of Sonic's military discipline to stop himself from hitting Ketteler. "Mein Herr, I got a lot of intel from them, but you didn't seem to want any of it."

"The boy says their headman planned that attack to free them, and to kill me if possible. You saw the casualties they took; why risk it, if these prisoners weren't valuable?"

Sonic considered. "The old man might have held some senior position, but the other two? No."

"Then why stage a rescue?"

Sonic took a breath to calm himself. It didn't work. "These people don't think in conventional military terms, Mein Herr. They think in terms of tribe."

Ketteler frowned. "Tribe? Like the ones you dealt with in Africa, I presume?"

Sonic nodded. "Yes. They have chieftains and headmen, but they don't see their subordinates as pawns on a chessboard; they see everyone who joins them as extended family."

Ketteler tisked with impatience. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because they see us, the whole Quarter, as a single tribe." He shook his head. "There's sixty-thousand of them on our doorstep. How do you think they'll react if it gets out that we beat a kid to death?"