Ren reached Leblanc Cafe just as Sojiro was leaving for the night. The old man opened the door to leave the darkened cafe, glanced at Ren, and jerked back in obvious surprise; Then came a look of recognition; then one of frustration.

"Don't do that!" said Sojiro.

As Ren had done nothing but stop so as to not collide with Sojioro in the doorway, he remained silent.

Sojiro sighed. "Whatever. Just lock the door when you get inside, will you? I'm going home."

"Yes," said Ren.

Sojiro wandered off down the street, mumbling something to himself. Ren paid him no heed. He was getting hungry; Enough so that even Sojiro was beginning to seem somewhat appetizing, in a disturbing way. Which meant the quarter-meal he planned for himself this evening was going to herald a terribly difficult day tomorrow. And Makoto wanted him back at her house for training? Damn. Could he afford to ignore the rationing and just have a full meal tonight? It was foolish, but there didn't seem to be a real option…

Before going into the cellar, Ren appropriated a glass of water from the cafe kitchen. He reached into his waistband, drawing out the leather pouch which contained his dwindling food supply. He'd taken it with him today, for fear he'd need to have a quick drink at the Niijima manor- just something to steady himself around Makoto and Ann. But Ryuji's lightning bolt had been bracing enough, it turned out

Ren reached into the pouch, his fingers finding nothing. Alarm ran through Ren's body, and he swirled his fingers around the pouch again, and this time found a hole. He turned the pouch over. A scorched scar traced its way along the underside of the pouch. The lightning! He'd been struck by Ryuji's errant persona blast, after all. And who knew where the remaining capsules had fallen- or if they'd themselves survived the electricity.

Ren hurled the useless leather pouch to the floor. Fuck! He was completely out of food!

There was only one viable option nearby…

Ren's gut roiled in sudden nausea. Just thinking of it was making him sick.

Takemi Tae's chin was beginning to hurt from the table top, but she barely noticed. She needed to keep her head extremely still, as she was in the final stages of focusing her examination spectacles. It was an awkward, heavy contraption which pressed down upon her forehead in a somewhat painful way, but all that extra forward weight was from the dangling, spider-leg-like appendages which extended out in front. At the end of each leg, a lens of glass; and Tae was gingerly pushing the final lens into alignment with the previous five, so that all six lenses would be between her eye and the vials of blood on her desk.

One final tap, and the red blur before Tae's right eye suddenly came into focus. A dense mass of circular red objects. That was what she was expecting, so now it was time for a difficult, but time-saving maneuver. She twisted her half-bent body in an awkward way, pivoting around the single point of contact her chin made with the table, reorienting herself with her left eye to point the carefully aligned examination spectacle at the second red vial on her countertop.

Another dense mass of circular red objects. Yes! Success!

She stood up, satisfaction running through her body. Yet even as she removed the examination spectacles and placed them carefully back in their proper place, her mind was beginning to examine the next step of the process. She'd finally replicated the proper end-result, but how to achieve the desired point of stasis? How to turn this type of specimen into a-

*!

Tae head turned towards the back door of her examination room. Was that a noise? Or was her mind just playing a trick on her? It was so faint she wasn't sure. She waited, frozen in the bright bubble of light from her kerosene lantern. But her intense focus on her own hearing only rewarded her with the faint ringing of silence and her own pulse running through her ears. She decided she'd imagined it, whatever it was.

Tae turned back to her work and stared at the two small red vials, glowing like dull rubies amidst the light from the lantern. These samples were liquid. She needed them to be solid. How does one turn something liquid into something solid? Well, one may freeze water and it will turn solid; but, of course, that state only remains so long as the temperature remains low. Mr. Amamiya carried his pills around in a simple leather pouch, so they certainly were not frozen in there… in a somewhat reverse process, one could add sand and gravel to water and thus turn it to mortar, but that only became solid when it-! When it dried! And what happens when plants dried? They crumbled to dust! And those capsules- they were filled with red dust. So… she didn't need to change the liquid in this vials… she needed to-

Thump.

Tae whirled around towards the back door again, her heart rising into her throat. That had been no trick of her mind, no question. Something was moving around in her chill storage. She briefly entertained nightmares of the corpses stored there rising to life, seeking revenge for her experimentation. But that was insane superstition. Once something was dead, it was dead. Any contrary experience was simply a failure of the observer. Someone was in there. Or something.

She moved towards her writing desk, keeping her eye warily on the closed door, behind which something was certainly creeping. Tae quietly opened a drawer and withdrew her small revolver. She opened the cylinder, made sure it was loaded

Well, then.

Tae cocked back the hammer and pointed the weapon at the closed door. Its silver form wavered in front of her, her hand shaking, her finger already caressing the trigger. Get a grip! Whatever wasn't dead in there, she would just have to make dead.

Steeling herself, Tae moved quietly to the door. She put a hand on the handle and paused, listening hard in the night silence.

...hurk…

A guttural sound. Whatever it was had a mouth. It was a person or a dog, and there was no way a dog could have gotten in there past the back doors to the building. And whoever it was, it certainly was no friend. Tae briefly considered fleeing out the front of the clinic, but what might the intruder do to all her work? All her research materials? No! She would rather die than leave them! The best thing to do would be to attack this person quickly, before they were aware Tae was there.

A final breath. It was time.

Tae jerked down the handle, shoved open the door. Light flowed into the cold storage, a dark form was kneeling in the center of the room, an overturned waste bucket spilled over the floor. Tae aimed at the dark form. Tae was half-startled there was actually something to aim at. Her finger jerked instinctively.

POP!

Her eyes closed themselves against the sound and flash, her arms jerked upright from the recoil. She reopened her eyes immediately, but the muzzle smoke obscured her view. Did she get it? Did she miss?

A dark something slammed into her. She yelped as she fell to the ground. But something softer than wood came between her head and the wood floor. Her skull bounced softly against it, but a heavy mass crushed the rest of her body to the ground. She was stunned a moment, then tried to scramble to her feet, but the soft thing behind her head vanished, and then her wrists were seized. She kicked her legs, but something shoved against her inner thigh, separating her legs and removing her hope of leverage against the ground.

Tae's chest filled with the air of an impending scream.

"Dr. Takemi!" said a familiar voice. "Stop!"

The scream paused in her chest, she looked into the face of her attacker. A grim visage, pale and stern- but not malevolent. Eyes with a haunting reddish glow stared at her intently. As her gaze connected with those eyes, she felt the instinct to fight leave her. Suddenly, she felt like she was exactly where she wanted to be. She no longer feared not knowing what was happening to her, she was excited to find out.

"Mr. Amamiya," gasped Tae, her voice husky.

"Yes," said the dhampir, breaking eye contact with a frown.

Tae's mind cleared. She realized she was supine under a man with her legs held open. Instinctive distress shot through her gut like ice, but before she could vocalize her desire to get up-

"I'm going to get off you now," said Amamiya. "Please don't shoot me again."

And with that, the weight vanished from her arms as Amamiya straightened up. Then he pushed himself back and stood. Tae was still breathing heavily from the excitement, but she immediately realized her bare legs were exposed from her skirt and spread apart. She quickly pulled in her knees and pushed herself into a more modest sitting position, the revolver digging into her palm.

"Sorry. You startled me," said Tae. "Did I hit you?"

Amamiya grimaced. "Yes. But it is not in a critical area."

New excitement instantly replaced Tae's embarrassment. She shot to her feet, her eyes running over Amamiya's black armor.

"Truly?! Where is it? Where is the wound? It will heal quickly, will it not? I must watch it."

Amamiya took a wary step back from her. "What?"

He was trying to escape! Not this time, Mr. Dhampir. I've been working too long and too hard to be denied.

"This was our deal," said Tae, "I make your pills, then you become my guinea pig. Not to mention you just knocked me to the floor!"

"You shot me!"

"You broke into my cold storage to- to-... what were you doing in there, anyway?"

Amamiya's eyes shifted away from her. He looked embarrassed. "I was… taking some of the blood from the bucket."

Disgust shot through Tae's mind. He was drinking that stuff from the bucket? But before she could think of something to say, Amamiya's expression darkened. She realized that her facial expression had likely just betrayed her thoughts.

"My food supply is gone, Ms. Takemi!" said Amamiya, his voice tense. "Like you said: the deal is pills first! So since you do not-"

"But I do," said Tae. Time was wasting! Even as they spoke, whatever wound that Amamiya had from her gunshot was vanishing. If he wanted the pills first, then so be it! "I've made progress, Mr. Amamiya."

She turned from his surprised look and then snatched up one of the two vials from her examination table. There was a jug of water on her writing desk, as well as a large clay mug. She poured a mug of water, unpopped the cork of the flask, poured it in.

Suddenly, a tall presence was against her shoulder, hot breath in her ear. She turned to find Amamiya almost pressed up against her, his eyes fixated on the clay mug in her hands. Startled by Amamiya's sudden proximity, she offered the mug to him and said, lamely:

"Here."

He almost snatched the mug from her. She watched him bring it to his face, sniff eagerly at the rim of the mug, swirl it, sniff again. He took a sip. His eyes lit up. He drank in earnest, his adam's apple bouncing with the effort.

In a matter of seconds, Amamiya made a satisfied sighing sound, gave Tae an appreciative look, and then offered the empty mug back to her. She looked at the red-stained rim of her mug.

"Keep it," said Tae. "And how was it? Was it right?"

Amamiya frowned and stopped offering the mug. He seemed to hesitate, then said: "It was right. But it was no pill."

"I haven't figured out the pill part, but I have some ideas."

"...the vials, then. How many can you make?"

"As many as you need. Times are hard, and people need money. I have more trouble keeping people from donating too much." But while they were talking, Amamiya was healing. "So, I learned how to make your meals, yes? Now, honor your agreement, and let me see your wound. Quickly!"

Amamiya looked away from her, again seeming embarrassed. Then he glanced at the empty mug in his hand, sighed, and set it down. A determined expression appeared, and he began undoing his belt.

Tae felt an instant of surprise, but then realized he was fulfilling her request: She must have shot him below the waist somewhere.

"Here, Mr. Amamiya," she said, patting the top of her examination table. Then she turned from him and reached for her examination spectacles. If she was careful, she would not need to realign the lenses.

Spectacles settled on her head, Tae turned to find a black-armored dhampir laying prone on her examination table. He was holding up his upper body on his forearms and giving her an uneasy look, with a bit of embarrassment mixed in. And further down his body, two pale-white pillows of flesh were sticking out of his half-removed pants.

She'd shot him in the ass! Perfect!

The flesh of the gluteus maximus was robust, so it would make observation of the healing process much easier! There was a reddish hole in the side of the nearest white cheek: the obvious gunshot wound- already looking like it was several days healed. There was almost no time left!

Tae sat in her wheeled stool, scooted over to Amamiya's lower body, and then used both hands to carefully palpate the flesh of the unwounded portion of the patient's buttocks. It seemed human, though incredibly firm. Probably the firmest buttocks Tae had ever touched. The increased muscle density would be interesting to observe inside the wound. She leaned her head forward, adjusting her spectacles slightly to focus on the interior of the healing area.

Amamiya gave a long, distressed sigh- but so intense was Dr. Takemi's focus, she didn't hear him.