Finale was talking a mile a minute, one arm around Caryatid, who was trying to brush off the dust and soot that the explosion had put on her costume, which wasn’t an easy process with Finale hugging her.

Withdrawal had his attention divided between the two girls and Five. He turned his head. “I should scout for any seeds it put down on the way.”

“Okay,” Sveta said, quiet.

Five took the paper, and he scanned it. There was pay, enough for him to get settled. Not that money was ever a problem. There were some contract terms, expectations for his moving forward as a hero.

It was signed by some of the Wardens, and by some of the local government here in Gimel. By Jeanne, with a little ‘1234’ intersecting the tail end of her signature. His power told him the ‘4’ had been a little more reluctant, later in its application, slower for the pen to drag across the paper.

“Did she say anything?”

“You’re welcome back anytime. They won’t try to keep you.”

He nodded.

“Any catches, stipulations? As Kurt, we were the devil in so many deals with the devil…”

“No. Just so long as you aren’t a devil anymore, Five. Come along on my next road trip, maybe. That’s all. I’d like help in finding my home this summer.”

He nodded. When he looked up, the Majors were looking at him, expectantly.

He penned his signature, securing his place, at least for a little while.

Last 20.e4

“Please don’t get blood on my car seat.”

Riley looked up from her work, the surgeon’s end of a twenty-four inch set of complex dilators pinched between her lips because her hands were full. The working end of the dilators were set in the open surgical site of her own thigh, where she had cut past skin, muscle, adipose tissues. She’d also had to cut and-or use the dilators on prior alterations she’d buried in her leg, including the subdermal ‘skin’ she’d grown around the maille sheath she’d set around her femoral artery some time ago, and three spherical eggs she’d implanted in her thigh, in case she was ever in an emergency severe enough to literally cut them loose.

Or, she supposed, if someone caught her off guard and did enough damage to her that they got loose on their own. Either way, her inner thigh would be cut open from hip to knee, or it would be obliterated in some other fashion, these critters would be free and awake in seconds, and the threat would be regretting his or her existence, unless that threat was one of the fourteen individuals she knew of that should survive the attack. Three of those fourteen individuals would at least be distracted, potentially buying her time, and there were two more she had other countermeasures for.