Ana had a nice, long class during the morning. Occupying much of the training yard the way she did wasn't explicitly allowed under Bluesky Guild rules — the yard was for everyone — but she wasn't charging, and she didn't turn anyone away. Besides, other than the Stolen, anyone who hadn't seen her fight knew someone who had; no one wanted to be the one to tell former Marshal Cole that she couldn't use the training yard to train people in how to hurt each other.

After two hours of open class, she had another one-on-one with Jisha.

"I want you to reset, and take Fighter," she told the girl bluntly, and she wasn't shy about putting her Skills and Perks behind the suggestion.

"Uh, I… I'm not sure," Jisha said, stumbling over her words. Ana could see the surprise and uncertainty in her; she'd only ever been on the receiving end of a determined Ana once before, and that was in a life-or-death situation. "I was… the money…"

"How much are you making? A silver here or there? Can you make it for a day or two?"

"I have enough for a few days…"

"Then you'll be fine. Jisha, we're going out. Tomorrow morning or the day after that. You'll make more than enough money from that. The important thing is that while we're out there, you need to be as little of a burden as you possibly can. And until we go, I don't want anyone getting it into their head that they could somehow use you against me."

"What? Burden? Use me? What do you mean—?"

"I mean that many of the Stolen, our fellow Earthlings, are scared and angry already. Today, I'm going to piss them off even further. Hopefully I'll scare them enough that they won't try anything big, but that doesn't rule out them trying to lash out at me. You're associated with me already, just like Messy is, but she can defend herself. People probably saw you going to warn the guards last night, so if this all goes to shit, they're not going to see you as one of them. They're going to see you as a traitor. Understand? And they'll have no qualms about hurting you to get to me. So do us both a favor and do what we know you're going to do anyway."

"I… okay," Jisha said, determination and then excitement replacing the confusion and doubt that radiated from her. "Okay! I'll do it! Let me just… um, Dil told me how to do this…"

Out of curiosity, Ana focused her Inspect on Jisha and saw the moment she went from [Human Apprentice Scholar (1)] to just [Human]. She'd wondered about that. The Stolen, between when they were cured of the void plague and when they were initialized in the System, couldn't be Inspected at all. The same was true of the changelings, which had freaked a lot of people out. But Jisha was part of the System already, so she had a Summary and all, just no Class.

Ana wondered if this was what it was like to Inspect a kid. People expected anything sapient to have a label, after all.

Then, so fast that Ana might have missed it, the label blipped to [Human (3)] before becoming [Human Fighter (3)].

"Congratulations," Ana said, giving Jisha a satisfied smile. "How does it feel?"

Jisha's eyes were a million miles away for a long moment, before she focused on Ana and grinned. "How does it feel? It's incredible! I get Endurance and Vitality every two Levels! My Strength, Vitality, and Dexterity are all more effective while I'm fighting, and all my fighting Skills get better!"

"Oh yeah?" Ana asked, letting her curiosity shine through. "Show me!"

And show her, Jisha did. She was noticeably stronger and tougher, and her movements were just a bit faster and more coordinated. She still couldn't land a hit or put Ana on her ass unless Ana let her — the gap in skill was too big, never mind Skills and Attributes. But she was definitely better than she had been during the open class, and that told Ana everything she needed to know.

Less than an hour later, Ana stood before the Waystone. She was almost getting used to it. Before her stood a crowd comprising a fairly representative sample of humanity as it existed on Earth, geographically if not in absolute numbers. Most looked confused or surly. A very few looked curious as to what was going on; most of the Stolen who'd attended Ana's class were among them. And another group, Misters Belov and Liu among them, were downright hostile.

None of them, Ana imagined, were happy about being ordered out here in the middle of the day, no matter how fine the weather.

Around and among the Stolen were at least as many locals, here to grab lunch or just curious what was going on. Even with them it still wasn't anywhere near the largest crowd Ana had addressed in the last month, but many or most of the crowd were talking to each other. And so, as per usual, Ana had to raise her voice to silence them.

"Attention, please!" she called, first in Inter-guild, and then in English. And when that inevitably failed, she raised her voice further, to a truly ear-splitting level, and put her Skills behind it to roar, "I said, 'Attention'!"

The square fell into stunned silence, some people covering their ears.

"Thank you," she began at a more reasonable volume, and in Inter-guild. "To anyone who's not among the Stolen, you're welcome to stay. But I will be speaking in languages completely foreign to you, so unless you find someone to translate you won't get much out of it. Sorry."

Then she switched to English, and began her real speech. "I'm only going to say all of this once, and you all need to hear it. For those of you with friends and acquaintances who don't speak English, I suggest you translate for them, for their own good." She paused to let people work that out, and for the what-did-she-says in a dozen or more languages to peter out, before she continued, "Many, probably most, of you know what this is about. For those who don't, thank you for being the more reasonable fraction of this new community. The rest of this message is not for you, though it would probably be good for you to listen anyway.

"To recap: last night a mob gathered, right here, with the intent of lynching those of the prisoners who were involved in stealing us all from our homes. From what I understood, those of you who were in that mob didn't care much about what you might have to do to get at them, up to and including assaulting the guards. That would have been absolutely idiotic. Not one of you stands a snowball's chance in hell against any of them."

She stopped to let the indignant murmurs die out.

"Leaving that aside, it would be not only immoral and ungrateful to a community that's done all they can afford to help you; it would also be extremely disruptive. This community was very nearly mortally wounded just weeks ago. The regular system of deliveries still isn't stable, meaning that we still haven't truly secured our food supply — especially with a hundred or so extra mouths to feed. So, to prevent you from doing something even nearly as stupid as what you planned last night, Captain Falk, the top cop in the outpost, has asked me to talk to you. He's given me carte blanche in how to get you to fall in line. So, here's what you need to know."

Ana fell silent and looked out across the crowd. She used every resource she had, her Acting, her Intimidation, and her own, hard-won skills from before she'd ever heard of the System, and she let her tone and body language both scream at them that she was not a bitch to be crossed.

"My name is Anastasia Cole," she told them, letting her voice drop to a growl, "and I am a high-functioning sociopath."

She gave that a moment to spread through the chain of translations, meeting any eyes that dared search for hers.

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"I used to work for a man who sometimes fed people to his pigs, and that man was my favorite person in the world. I don't know how many people I've killed at this point, but it's over a hundred. Believe me when I tell you that I can and I will kill any one of you that does anything to hurt this community, and I won't lose one wink of sleep over it. Do you understand me?"

Ana paused again to let the message spread. There were two emotions lying thick over the crowd that she could see. The first was shock. A few people were crying, and even those who were still visibly angry looked far more wary than they had the previous night.

The other was utter confusion, from those who didn't understand English and hadn't had anyone translate for them yet. They alternated between staring in bewilderment at the people around them, and at Ana.

"I'm telling you this because I'll be going on a little trip," she continued. "I'll be gone for the next few days. When I come back, I don't want to hear that one of my fellow Earthlings did something that reflects poorly on the rest of us. If I do, I will come for you. You will not be able to hurt me, and you will not be able to stop me. You will have a chance to explain yourself, and if I don't like what I hear, you will die, and that will be that. Have I made myself clear?"

She gave them a few seconds, then roared, "I asked you a question!"

There was a hurried, shocked chorus of "Yes!" and "You did!" and "We heard!" and a lot of other things that Ana didn't understand literally but which were clear enough. A few more people started crying, which was good enough for Ana.

God, she hated this. She absolutely hated this. But after spending so much of her life trying not to be perceived as a monster, it was, if nothing else, freeing to just take the mask off and lean into it.

"Good. Any questions? No? Then I'll thank you for your time. And if any of you, alone or ten or twelve of you together want to test me, I'll be in the yard behind the guardhouse. That, or you're welcome to join my afternoon class. We'll be focusing on striking. Good day."

She descended from the plinth, and the crowd parted before her like the Red Sea.

She may have overdone it a little, she thought. She was acutely embarrassed over how edgy she'd let herself become, and the whole "high-functioning sociopath" thing wasn't entirely true. For one, she wasn't sure that the terminology was even used officially anymore. Besides that, she'd never been formally assessed or diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder; her therapist had recommended it, but Ana had never gone through with it. But her whole "killing without remorse" and "seeing people as objects" fit her understanding of the condition well enough, and she needed to get her point across somehow.

And she couldn't argue with the results, neither in the crowd's reaction, nor in the notifications that intruded on her vision.

Congratulations! Your Skill Intimidation has improved to Level 10! You have been awarded: Growth Crystal (Major). You have gained the Perk One Against All.

One Against All: One or a hundred; you will stare them down all the same. When using the Intimidation Skill while outnumbered, your Charisma Multiplier is treated as though it were 2 Steps higher. Value increases with Intimidation Skill Level.

Now that, that was a useful Perk. She could have used that at just about any point in her life, but better late than never. And she couldn't argue with another 800 Experience Points, either.

"My god, Ana," Jisha whispered as Ana passed. She detached from the back of the crowd and followed Ana to one of the food stalls that would never, under any circumstances, fail to be open around midday. "Did you mean all that?" she asked after they grabbed their food, and as Ana led her into the guardhouse.

"Yeah," Ana said.

"You're a psychopath?"

"I don't think professionals like to use 'psychopath' anymore."

"Oh, uh… cool. I'd heard, you know? About you fighting. I thought you might be, uh…"

"Crazy?" Ana asked, turning to look at the girl.

"A little, perhaps?" Jisha admitted.

"And that doesn't bother you?"

Jisha shrugged, pulling out a chair at a free table. "You're not bad. Not to anyone who doesn't deserve it. And you helped me, without asking for anything. I think you're pretty cool."

"You know what?" Ana said, sitting down across from her. "Thanks."

Nobody took Ana up on her offer to test her, but there were a few new faces at the afternoon class. She even thought some of them might come back in the future, which was nice; she was really getting into the whole "Instructor Ana" thing. She had a whole character that was slowly taking shape and everything.

Captain Falk did ask her to come up to his office, where he asked her to please be proportionate with any response, should one be necessary. Many of the Stolen had joined the guild, and had certain rights under the charter. Ana promised that she would. They never discussed what, exactly, that meant.

Then, during their evening meal — not at Petra's for once; you could only have stew so many days in a row — Kaira confirmed that she'd really like to get going in the morning. Things moved quickly from there.

From the moment Kaira had said "two or three days," Ana had been dead sure that it would be two, if not earlier. Kaira had been talking about going out together since before they got back to the outpost — hell, since before she left with Falk's ill-fated expedition — and that woman was not one to sit still longer than she had to. Ana was sometimes amazed that the Evoker had even survived the weeks she'd been stuck with the others in what everyone now called the Trap Delve; not because of despair or anything, but because Ana half expected her to have blown herself up or something, or just spontaneously combusted from pent-up energy.

Although, seeing Kaira and Brosden together sometimes it was easy to tell where that energy had gone. They hadn't been good for each other the first time, from what Ana heard, and they weren't good for each other now, even she could see that. But gods below, were they bad for each other enthusiastically. Ana could only hope that none of Kaira's blowups would become literal.

Ana tried a few more times to convince Messy to come out with them. She asked when they went to the baths; she brought it up again at dinner. She suggested it as they went to bed, and she practically begged over breakfast. Every time the answer was the same: Messy wasn't ready, and Ana needed to learn that it was safe for them to be apart sometimes.

As they had breakfast outside their neighbourhood eatery, Messy took it one step further. "Angel," she said, and Ana knew immediately that this was something she didn't want to hear, and Messy didn't want to say. "Honestly, you're worrying me. I love you. I love that you want to be close to me as much as you do, but… there's your Ability, right? And I know that 'devotion' is in the name, but I can't help but think…"

Messy sighed and rested her face in her hands. Not crying, thank God, but clearly not wanting to continue.

But Ana had to know. She had a good idea of where that sentence was going, but she had to know. "Think what?"

Messy took a deep breath and lifted her face again, and there was so much pain and doubt in her eyes that Ana's stomach twisted. "I wonder how much is real, and how much is the Ability. I've even considered dismissing the effect; to make myself not your 'object of devotion' anymore and leave the Party, to see if you still want to be with me. Remember what you said? 'Until the crisis is over,' or whatever? Well… it's over. I wonder if I should just…"

"Please don't!" Ana said, reaching across the table and taking Messy's hands. "Not now, at least. I know that I'll still want to be with you, with or without that damn ability, but if I'm going to be away for a few days I need to know that you're alright. Okay? You need some distance, or you think I do? Fine. I get it. But if we can't be close enough for me to protect you, I need to at least know that you're safe while I'm away. That won't change if you dismiss me and leave the Party. I'll still worry that something might happen; I just won't have the comfort of knowing that it hasn't. Don't take that away from me. Please?"

Ana didn't need her high Perception to know that people were looking at them, but she didn't care. Messy was her person. Her one person that truly mattered, that she couldn't just replace. She couldn't lose her. And maybe Messy was right. Maybe part of that was her Devotion Ability messing with her head, but this was not the time to test that!

She also knew that Messy had been abandoned by the woman she thought was the love of her life, and in a fashion that was so painful that Messy still hadn't told her the whole story. Even before then she'd been shunned by her family and her community for loving a human girl. She had some serious trauma surrounding abandonment, and issues with her own worthiness to be loved and cherished. Ana could definitely understand that, and Messy's fear that the only reason Ana was still with her was that Ana had somehow trapped herself with her own ability. But, again, the day that Ana was leaving was very much not the time to work on that!

Then the obvious solution came to her. "We can try it when I get back, okay?" she said. "Once I'm back, when we're both here in the outpost together again, then you can dismiss me. We'll give it a week, two, three, however long you need to see that I'm not going anywhere — that I still want to be with you every day and wake up in the same bed as you every morning. Okay? When I get back. But not now."

"Okay," Messy said, with a small smile and a light in her amber eyes that Ana read as hopeful acceptance. "Okay," she said again. "When you get back."

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