"We really must stop meeting like this," the young man said as he emerged from the shadowed corner of the room, a sword swinging gently against his right leg. The woman to which he spoke stood with her back to the door, the only door mind you, making it so that either he had her trapped or she blocked his escape, which case was true had yet to be discovered.

"Like what?," the young woman asked with an innocent tilt of her head, a sword of her own resting like a tamed venomous snake against her left leg. Any innocence she had, the man could see right through, the woman before him was anything but a naive fool.

"Oh you know, in the dark back room of a tavern, on the precipice of battle," he said nonchalantly, matching her actions and moving towards her.

"Who said anything about a battle?" her words sounded sweet but her hand still rested menacingly on the handle of her sword, he knew perfectly well that she knew exactly how to use it. Her innocent taunt elicited a devilish grin from her opponent,

"You're right Jones, there are so many far more interesting things you and I could be doing," his eyes flickered dangerously across her body and back up to her face. On the surface she appeared scandalized at the action, but anyone who knew her well knew that if she wanted him to stop, she was perfectly capable of stopping him.

"Mind your words, you forget I am a lady," she replied with the feigned offense and a slight curtsy to punctuate her sentiment.

"Oh please, you, my dear Jones, are hardly a lady," he was close enough to her now that he could kill her if he wanted to. What exactly he wanted with her was somewhat unclear.

"How dare you, I am always a lady," she stepped away, once again running her fingers over the hilt of her sword. If you looked closely at the young woman's other hand you could see a tattoo adorning it; the distinct shape of a hook snaking up from the end of her sleeve across the back of her hand.

"I suppose you're right, if I recall correctly, your mother is a princess. I always forget that detail," he paused and drew his sword, "Probably because I strongly suspect you hold more of your father's attributes,".

She smiled and drew her own sword, a shining silver blade with a golden hilt, a ribbon of pink wrapped around the handle.

"What makes you say that?" again her voice full of innocence, but her body less so as she raised her sword to the man's neck.

He grinned again and ran his sword along the length of hers,

"Well he was a pirate was he not?"

With that their battle began, the clash of steel ringing out across the room. Both participants were talented with a blade, that much was certain, but the girl fought like a demon. Every step was flawless, it looked as if she was dancing, her skirt twirling as she did and her hair flipping across her shoulders. With every cross of blades, she had a planned next step and every time it looked like she might lose the upper hand, she had a counter measure. And best of all, or worse I suppose if you are the one she is fighting, she did it all with one hand.

"You know what I find interesting Jones?" the man said as swung his blade at her left arm and she deftly blocked the blow.

"What?" her voice now lightly laced with anger as she focused on the task at hand, pushing her blade against his in an attempt to knock him off balance.

"That you wear skirts, seems a bit feminine for you," he dodged a swipe from her as he said so.

"I can't be feminine?" she asked as she planted a well placed kick squarely in the man's chest.

"Well you fight like a man," a smile danced across his face even as he attempted to bring the wind back into his body. She stepped back and pursed her lips in a "matter of fact" sort of way,

"No, you fight like a man, I fight well, there's a difference," a smirk of her own crossed her face as she advanced on her waning opponent. But he was certainly not going down without a fight.

No sooner had she reached towards him, had he seized her wrist and pinned her own sword against her neck as he pulled her back flush against him.

"I assume your pirate father taught you to fight? How disappointed he'd be to see you lose," he whispered his taunt into her ear. She'd certainly never admit it, but such an act sent a slight shiver up her spine. But otherwise the taunt didn't phase her, a smile returning to her face.

"My father did teach me most of what I know about fighting, but not everything," quicker than a flash, she had dropped her sword, grabbed her captors wrist and flipped him over her shoulder, pinning him to ground with her knee on his chest and a suddenly present dagger held at his throat.

"For example, my mother taught me that," she said smugly, her victory now very apparent.

Before the young man could even plead for his life, she removed herself from his chest, retrieved her sword from the ground nearby, placed it back in its sheath and then returned to stand over him with her hand outstretched.

"You aren't going to kill me?" he asked as he hesitantly took her hand and let her pull him off the ground.

"I won fair and square, it would be terribly bad form to kill you now," she said sensibly before beginning to take stock of herself.

"I have been chasing you for nearly a year, you could have put an end to all of that by killing me," he said, placing his own sword in its scabbard.

"You have been chasing me for a year William, and every time we have fought I have bested you, in wits, in drinking and now steel. I hardly see a reason to kill you." She maintained her sensible air as she tied her hair back and began to walk towards the door.

"Then I suppose I will have to keep chasing you," he said, mirroring her sensibility. She turned to face him,

"Yes I suppose you will,"

"You are a strange woman, Jones," bewilderment at being left alive still very clear on his face.

"I get that a lot," she smiled once again and strode out of the room, her sword and hair both swinging confidently behind her.

She kept walking confidently as she exited the tavern and began to think of where she would go next, she had scarcely begun to think when she was interrupted.

"Excuse me Miss, are you the hero they call Jones?" a girl stood outside the tavern, Jones couldn't be certain but if she had to guess she would say that she had been waiting there a while.

"Well I can think of several collections of kingdom guards who might disagree with you on the hero bit, but yes I am known in this realm as Jones-" she was fully prepared to ask what the girl needed but she was quickly interrupted.

"And did you really slay a Yao Guai in the Northern provinces?" she was very eager to ask, her eyes alight with curiosity.

"I didn't slay anything, Yao Guais are cursed beings, I merely freed a poor man from a monstrous form," Jones recalled the event well, she was incredibly thankful that the villagers had asked her rather than another freelance adventurer who would have killed it without a second thought. She was more well versed in magic than most in this realm, it was far rarer there than it was where she came from.

"But you saved them?" the girl asked again.

"That village is no longer being attacked by a Yao Guai if that is your question,"

"Oh good, you see, my village lies just south of here and just north of a beanstalk. For years we lived peacefully but a few months ago the giant started coming down. He's broken our homes, killed our people and no one can stop him. He's back up his beanstalk now, but it's only a matter of time before he returns. Is there any way-" now it was Jones' turn to interrupt the girl.

"Well lucky for you, I am in between jobs right now, and I have always wanted to climb a beanstalk," This was very true, Jones had been dreaming of climbing a beanstalk since she was a little girl. As a matter of fact, one of her favorite bedtime stories when she was a child was about a beanstalk.

"Oh thank you so much!" the girl threw herself at Jones, who gladly accepted the hug. After all, this was what Jones liked to think she did best, helping those who needed it. And she struggled to think of a person who was better suited to climbing a beanstalk and dealing with a giant than her.

"How can we ever repay you?" the girl asked as she pulled away suddenly, she had evidently forgotten that Jones may not work for free..

"We can sort that out after I have stopped your giant," Jones never accepted payment until she had completed a task and even then she always ended up taking less than was offered.

"Thank you so much, we desperately need your help," the girl said as she turned to retrieve her horse which was hitched up around the side of the tavern.

"Wait a second say that again," Jones asked abruptly.

"What?"

"I wasn't looking at you," Jones said as if that clarification made any sense.

"All I said was that we are in desperate need of your help," the girl was now quite confused, this time Jones looked the girl in the eyes as she said it. When the girl had finished talking, Jones nodded as if that time had satisfied her.

"As I mentioned before, I am not always on the right side of the law, and as such I kind of have to be on my guard and make sure I'm not being tricked into a trap," Jones said casually as she went to retrieve her own horse. She refrained from mentioning to the girl that she had stolen this horse, from an abusive owner, but she had stolen it nonetheless.

"I can assure you my intentions are just to help my village," the girl said, still confused but moving to mount her own horse.

"Yeah I know, you were telling the truth,"

The girl furrowed her brows at this curious assessment from Jones, but pushed it aside as she began to lead Jones back past her village and to the beanstalk.

The village was indeed "just south" of the tavern, for they reached it on horseback within the hour.

Sadly, Jones was not much for conversation on the ride there as she began running through everything she knew about giants and beanstalks in her head to formulate her plan. She had always been a planner, probabilities and plans of action had always made sense to her. It was why she was a good sword fighter, because she could calculate the attack with the highest success rate in a split second. In another world, she might have been considered a genius that way.

Jones left the girl in the village, insisting that everyone that was not herself stay as far from danger as possible. She merely asked if the villagers could point her in the direction of the beanstalk and promised she would return when she had ensured the village's safety. The villager's obeyed (though only after really trying to get her to accept payment), and Jones set off on her adventure alone as she always did.

The beanstalk was everything Jones had imagined it would be. It looked straight out of a storybook, which she supposed it was. It towered before her, a mass of vines and coils wider than her wingspan. She stared up at it uncertainly, she had spent her life dreaming of climbing a beanstalk and yet finally confronted with one, she found herself wondering if she was worthy of it.

"Scared of heights?" a voice came from behind her, she whipped around with her sword drawn, fully ready to maim the voice's owner.

"Now, now Jones, I thought we agreed there was no sense in killing me," William said with a smile, a black horse stood behind him (his mode of transportation she assumed), he made no move to draw his own sword or even put his hands up. She groaned and put her sword away, William's grin only increased.

"I don't remember inviting you," Jones said somewhat angrily.

"Well that is because you didn't, I fully intended to let us part for a time, give myself a challenge in finding you again, but when I heard you agree to kill a giant, well I just had to come along," evidently it was his turn to be smug, as his Cheshire Cat-like smile never left his face.

"I never said I was going to kill the giant," Jones deadpanned, for it was true, she didn't have and never would have any intention to kill anything.

"So you intend to what? Reason with it?" William approached her now, he asked sarcastically, she gave him nothing but a sweet smile in return.

"Yes, that is exactly what I intend to do,"

"You cannot honestly think you can convince a bloodthirsty giant to stop killing," William now moved to stand between her and the beanstalk, in another situation she might have laughed at the idea that such an action could stop her from climbing it, but William's face was wracked with concern and anger. As far as he was concerned, his brilliant nemesis had gone absolutely mad.

"He must have a reason for killing, he may not even mean to, regardless of his intentions, I do not like to kill things unless I absolutely have to. There is no one that is so evil that they cannot change," she said her last sentence with conviction, as if it were a mantra. To her, it was law, to William apparently, it was insanity.

"Are you truly that naive?" he asked genuinely, questioning if the brilliant woman he kept losing to truly was as brilliant as he knew.

"It's not naivete," Jones looked back up at the beanstalk.

"Then what on earth is it?" William asked as he continued looking at her with an absolutely scandalized look on his face.

She shifted her gaze back down to William and laughed slightly as she answered him,

"Hope,"

"What are you laughing at?" William was confused, concerned and a number of other emotions, but most importantly he couldn't think of a single funny thing about Jones being brutally murdered while trying to empathize with a giant.

"Nothing, it's just that you have been chasing me for an entire year and you don't know my name," Jones pushed past him to examine the beanstalk (without touching it of course).

"I know your name, it's Jones," William said from behind her, his usual playfulness returning to his voice.

"Jones is part of my name, but it isn't my name name. Like my parents don't call me Jones." She turned back to look at him with her hands placed firmly on her hips.

"So tell me your name." He stared right back at her with a smirk.

"Oh no I can't do that, no one in this realm knows my name," she said as she shook her head.

William looked at her quizzically as he considered her statement, she was probably exaggerating. But still there was the lingering connotation that there was another realm somewhere where her name was known. But such a thing was impossible.

"There's power in a name, you can't give it to just anybody," Deals had been struck over names before, Jones surely wouldn't be giving hers away easily.

"Well then I'll have to earn it while we climb," William declared.

"Oh you are not coming with me," Jones looked at him with an absolutely horrified expression.

"Oh but adventuring alone is no fun," he put on a fake pout, "besides, I can be useful if your plan to become best friends with the giant goes awry and you can't stomach killing it," he finished his sales pitch with a small smile.

"The giant is a 'he' not an 'it', and I never said I could not stomach killing you pompous fool," Jones was visibly angry now, her eyes maintained constant intensity while her voice grew sharper with each word.

"Well you seem to be in a foul mood, so I think I will start climbing without you, give you some time to cool down," William teased as he moved to grab the beanstalk, and he would have, if he was not suddenly frozen, his arm felt as if it had been wrapped in a sleeve of stone. Confused, he turned his head to look at Jones, her arm was outstretched with her hand flexed and though she wasn't doing anything other than standing, there was clear effort on her face. It suddenly dawned on him what was happening, the woman he had been chasing for a year, now held him in place with magic.

"When giants go up beanstalks they cast protective enchantments to repel intruders, you touch that beanstalk you'll be knocked out for days," Jones explained before he had a chance to address her magical abilities, she quickly released his arms as soon as she finished.

"You wield magic?" William asked, vastly dumbfounded at this revelation.

"No your arm froze on its own accord, OF COURSE I wield magic," Evidently she wielded sarcasm just as well as she did magic.

"So you could have magically defeated me all this time?"

"Using magic on an opponent who has none would be horribly bad form," Jones recited as if she had said such a thing a million times before. Clearly, this was a sentiment that she lived by.

"But you could win every fight," William was an intelligent man but he was not sure he considered himself to be, at heart, a good person. His history of crime would probably attest to the contrary. And so he struggled to believe that if the roles were reversed, he would not use magic to thwart every inconvenience he faced.

"And I wouldn't know how to win any if I lost my magic," she stated clearly.

William considered this for a moment before a volcano of questions erupted in his brain about Jones and her newfound (to him anyway) magic.

"Well now there is no way I am not coming with you, I simply must know more about your magic," though he said it in a silly way, the sentiment was genuine. And Jones knew it, well she knew for certain that he wasn't lying about wanting to know more about her magic. And while normally someone wanting to know all about her magic was a red flag, she considered William to be, at heart, a good person. She also knew that his first statement about coming with her regardless of her consent was true as well.

"You are relentless, you know that?" She rolled her eyes in annoyance and anger. If there had ever been a person she did not want to climb a beanstalk with, it was William.

"Oh I do," he smirked triumphantly, and somewhat flirtatiously which she actively chose to ignore, this choice only increased his feelings of success.

"So if the beanstalk is enchanted, how do we plan to get up?"

"I am going to cast a counterspell on us if you must know," she seemed to grow more reluctant with every word. William's eyes went alight with curiosity, Jones scrunched up her lips and exhaled in annoyance at him but then righted herself.

Jones closed her eyes and pointed a finger at a green-jeweled ring on her non-tattooed hand. The ring glowed with a white sheath of magic for a second before returning to normal. She opened one eye to look at William before closing it again and pointing at his right foot. William watched in awe as his right boot too glowed white before returning to normal.

"There, now we can both climb the beanstalk," she nodded curtly, she seemed very confident in her abilities. Being new to the whole idea of magic, William was less so.

"You are sure that will work?" he raised his foot off the ground and rolled his ankle in circles as if he thought the boot would react if he did so. Jones didn't laugh, she knew magic could be jarring to those who were not familiar with it.

"I have been performing such counter spells since I was 12, It will hold, I promise," this was the first sign of kindness since she relented to him coming with her. Her anger having faded a bit, not a lot, but a little bit.

"Alright then, no use in dilly dallying," he retrieved her bag of belongings from her horse and his from his. She snatched her bag from him a bit harder than she meant to, but she didn't apologize, she was still sort of reeling from the idea that she was climbing a beanstalk with a somewhat morally gray, and arguably handsome criminal with whom she had a combative relationship. Such an idea was mildly horrifying to Jones.

They stood together staring up at the beanstalk, the difficulty of the task at hand now wildly apparent.

"First beanstalk?" she asked, her annoyance being temporarily bested by her childhood dreams.

"How many people do you know who have climbed a beanstalk?" he asked incredulously.

"Some," William was coming to learn that a woman known only as "Jones" may not exactly be what one would call open, pretty much every answer she gave was either vague or had confusing connotations. "So you have never climbed one?" she asked again.

"No, I have not," he answered, attempting to give an example of a satisfactory answer.

Jones smirked and tightened her ponytail of long, dark curls on the back of her head,

"Well you never forget your first,"

And with that, they started to climb.