Irene was livid.

I thought I'd seen her angry, witness the full extent of a succubi's admittedly provocative ire. But as it turns out though, I ain't seen nothing yet.

Y'know, I'm starting to think that the 'S' in 'Succubus' actually stands for stubborn, leaving aside for a moment her other 'S's like 'S'eductive and 'S'ensual, it was the one distinct characteristics about her that consistently stood above all else.

Which then wrings our necks back all the way around to her next 'S' in prominence - just plain fucking scary.

One by one, the one-able-armed detective, movement flushed with indignation, flipped through folder after folder one after the other that were laid out before her.

It didn't help that there was not a single chair in the entirety of the studio lobby that had their cushions padded for customer satisfaction in mind - the two of us were squirming and writhing in our seats like we were sitting on pins and needles.

Irene hankered down on the only desk in sight, a haphazard mess of resumes and employee details scattered around her. As for me, I had a little stool cushion offered up to prop my injured leg against.

There we were, directly across from one another, this little expedition of ours costing us a literal arm and a leg, lead-less, clueless, and very much Jay-less. She continued to rustle pages, the narrowing of her lips telling of the lack of headway made this past ten minutes… meanwhile I, well I… sat there, stroking my leg.

"Let me help out," I insisted one time. "I'll take the employee docs, you take the staff turnover. If you're going to be turning pages a bunch, it's better if you got someone with a functioning pair of hands, right?"

I got her to look up at me briefly, her hazel gaze glaring into my eyes, shifting to my leg, before she looked down again and turned another page. "

"Already have an extra pair," She told me. "You just wait for your Elf."

So basically just sit tight and be extra useless. Understood, Irene… I'll set out to do my best at it.

It wasn't long before Irene's extra pair stumbled frantic feet down the lobby stairs for the fourth time counting, clutching tightly another dozen folders to rifle through close to his chest, and without wasting another second's time, made a beeline to the already cluttered desk, plopping it down as just another haphazard pile adding to the to-read list.

"That's… that's everything," Howard heaved, collapsing into the chair across from her. "The file of every person that's ever worked here."

Somehow, someway, Irene made famous Game Director Howard into her own personal secretary, having him comply with her every whimsical demand - like if she says jump off the building, he'll ask headfirst or feet-flat.

Pretty much he'll do anything at all in an attempt to try and clamber his way back up to her good side.

Not sure if Irene was even in the right mood to be giving out brownie points, but I digress.

Without looking up from her read-through, Irene spoke. "And the other thing?"

Wiping sweat from his forehead, and flipping open the nearest folder by him, he answered. "Yes. I asked. For good measure, I even called everybody else that took the day off. No one's heard of this 'Jay' you're looking for."

"Found a 'Jay Whitner' in that file over there," Irene said, pointing to her closest left. "Debugger."

Felt my eyes widened slightly, only to then immediately shrink back to disinterest as Irene further elaborated.

"Too bad this Jay's a woman."

Howard wasn't much keen for light chatter, burying his face into the mountainous pile, toiling hard to fulfill what was requested of him.

My discontent made me speak out again. "Irene, you sure you don't need my help?"

"No, stay. Howard's here," She commanded. "Howard's helping. Aren't you, Howard?"

Howard snorted, then grunted, and continued turning himself one page at a time.

Saw a lot of buddy-cop shows in my time growing up, and not a single one ever warned me that detective work involved a lot of paperwork - and the only thing worse than doing paperwork, is watching other people do the paperwork while you lounge around doing absolutely jackshit.

I haven't a clue at all what she was hoping to get out of all of this, but I certainly hope it'd end up being worth the downtime. We could have been doing something else by now…

Yet alas, Irene's the badge-woman here. What she says, goes… and in this case, that go meant sitting idly by, waiting for something to happen.

And eventually, something did, rounding from a corner in the far end of the lounge - Ash hastily made her way back towards us, and just like the case with Howard, she did not return empty-handed.

The moment Howard buzzed us back into the premises, Ash had beaten Irene to the punch in regards to inquiries, confronting him close to the point of discomfort, and insisted that he point her to the nearest place she could find the necessities required to properly mend my wound.

Howard readily obliged, "I guess… look through the janitor's storage?"

Long story short, Ash was now drawing up a chair right next to the seat cushion where my leg laid outstretched, still very much aching and bleeding.

On her lap, she propped open a compact metal box, and for a long while, she simply stayed staring at the contents within.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

She gave a muddled look. Something was wrong alright.

"These... tools," She said, slowly pulling out a glass thermometer by the fingertips. "I am… mostly unfamiliar with their intended purpose."

The hell is 'mostly unfamiliar'?

Well to be fair, she is an Elf-Knight, not an Elf-Nurse… didn't really expect her to be holding an M.D. alongside her many titles. Regardless, she's just gonna have to somehow Florence Nightingale her way through this procedure.

"This potion here looks a promising tonic," Ash said, uncapping a small glass bottle in her hand. "Though I am unsure… perhaps you'd be the better judge."

She handed it off to me so that I could drink from it. Just like they do back in the medieval days of old. Of course, I wasn't about to go chugging it down. The label told me all I needed to know.

I handed the bottle back to her, and calmly explained that Hydrogen Peroxide was no green health potion, sadly. No magical wound-healing elixir in this world, unfortunately.

Gonna have to do it the old-fashioned way.

First things first, I'm gonna need a change of bandages. The remnants of Ash's jacket tied into knots around my leg remained freshly tinged with deep dark red.

It wasn't going to soak anymore than it already had.

Ash slowly, cautiously, got to work, doing her utmost to keep any pain and discomfort at a bare minimum. But try as she might, wounds were wounds, and wounds hurt.

Took a lot more out of me than I thought to maintain a blank expression. Though in hindsight… it probably had the opposite effect. Me showing less, simply ended up showing a lot more.

It was like Ash could feel my every stifled wince herself. But of course, I wasn't the only one here showing vacant eyes...

Most of the process was done with a lingering quiet shared between us. The unraveling, the disinfecting… it was only we reached the bandaging process again that that silence finally went crumbling.

"Why did you stop me?"

It was quiet, so out of the blue that I thought I imagined it, but one look at Ash, and I knew imagination had nothing to do with it.

Not anger… Ash was never angry with me. No bitterness, no sadness. I don't even think those words held any emotions at all. It was just a simple question.

So in turn, I'd give a simple answer.

"I think you know why I stopped you."

Ash finished applying the first layer of bandages, slowly, she unrolled another.

"He was as vulnerable as he could possibly be then," Ash said, vacant eyes, vacant tone. "Had I done it, had I finished him off… had you let me. That would have been it. The Blightfall… any more dangers… the threat in your world would have ceased to be."

There was a crack forming in my blankness, a brow twitching slightly. "Then you would have also ceased to be."

Even after a second roll, blood was still staining through. Ash readied for a third.

"Isn't that how it works?" I continued. "You kill a Magus, you kill their magic. And as much as I hate saying it, you're part of his magic."

She kept quiet.

"You'd disappear from here."

Still quiet.

"Do you think I'm wrong for doing so?"

Ash shook her head, a crack in hers, perked ears going limp. "You will never hear those words from this lips. I just… wondered… if it were for the greater good, if your world would be spared, if you'd be spared… then perhaps... all along... it might have been a sacrifice worth giving."

"Now, here's where your thinking wrong, Ash," I said, hiding my winces with a half-smile. "You're part of that greater good too now."

She paused, fingers stained in my blood. "I - "

"If you really believed you sacrificing yourself would have been worth it, then why did you stop?"

"You commanded…"

"Ah! Nope, I think you forget, Ash," I said, smiling for real this time. "I don't command anything for you, remember?"

Those limp ears slowly started rising again. "Yes. Forgive me. I just wondered… had it been anybody else in your place… if they would have done to me as you have."

I squinted my eyes at her, faking a confusion I was far from feeling. "Y'know, funny enough, pretty sure we had this conversation before. I think it went along the lines of - "

Ash stifled a chuckle, a slender hand veiling smiling lips.

"Yes," She said. "You are not anybody else. How foolish of me to forget."

"Bingo."

She lowered her hand, that beautiful smile growing wider than ever. "Thank you for stopping me."

I shook my head. That thanks there didn't belong to me. "Thank you for stopping."