Through the thick crowd, the woman’s hysterical voice was clear in Claudette’s ear as though she was flailing directly behind her. “Oh my god! Is that Raina?!?”

Claudette was in the middle of passing a shy young man a cup of chicken and rice soup, but his head whipped around so fast that it dragged his hand a small distance to the left; when Claudette let go of the soup, his hand was not in place to catch his food. There was a brief moment where Claudette was seized by the horrible fear that the dropped pottery would shatter on the ground and Neveah would be so disappointed in her, but then her hand moved so fast that it left afterimages. She plucked the handmade piece out of the air, earning only a ripple from the soup.

“Sir-” Claudette began, but her voice was drowned out by another scream of pleasure from this mystery woman who had ensorcelled the surroundings. Suddenly the crowd was rustling and shifting, pulled inexorably to follow the shouts. The young man hurried away without a word, leaving both his soup and his money on the counter. Most of those that had been waiting and enjoying their soup nearby availed themselves to the sudden current of bodies, unwilling to be left out. The excitement on their rushing faces was weirdly uniform.

Meanwhile, Claudette’s eyes locked onto a figure moving against the flow of bodies, weaving a path through them and approaching their stand despite the stampede in the opposite direction. The air around the figure rippled and blurred; she was using an illusion-based Skill to hide her presence. As the figure neared, she suddenly noticed Claudette’s observation.

The woman’s strong features went briefly blank, then she flashed Claudette a rueful smile. There was something instantly intimate about that smile, like the two of them shared all of their most precious secrets with each other in a single exchange of expressions. Like Claudette could trust this person. The illusioned woman had shoulder-length blonde hair with pink highlights and wore brightly colored makeup around her eyes that made her resemble a mythical fire bird.

Claudette pressed her lips together, despite the warm butterflies in her stomach. There wasn’t the slightest hint of a Skill activation in that implied connection between them, but she had spent far too long with her father to miss that this was just a person who had grown so capable with her own charisma that she didn’t need to use a Skill or an image to make you like her.

And compared to her father, this individual was slightly lacking in execution.

The figure had to step to the side to avoid a stream of teenage girls whistling like overdue tea kettles in a mad dash toward the churning source of the disturbance and mimed that she wished to go back to the kitchen. Unsure of how else to respond, Claudette gave her a tight nod.

I know this is their home planet, but Randidly and Neveah are surprisingly popular. To her own surprise, Claudette felt a weird flash of jealousy as she glanced over her shoulder. Then she straightened and looked down at the cooling chicken and rice soup in her hand. So many men approached me to flirt and get closer to my father, but when it comes to people who actually wished to know me-

She didn’t allow herself to finish the thought. The illusioned charmer slipped unnoticed into the stand, leaving Claudette to look helplessly at the bodies in front of her. Most of the soup line had shifted, dragged along with the movement of people even if they didn’t originally intend to be. So Claudette could only put a lid on the cup of chicken and rice soup and neatly stack the money, for when the young man returned.

Honestly, it was a welcome distraction when two men stepped forward to the front of the counter, pushing their way through the people rushing away to see this ‘Raina’, even as the rush cooled. Customers gave her purpose, let her fulfill the task that she had been given. It allowed her to forget about the strange pulses of her newly stabilized image.

Claudette greeted them with her most dazzling smile. “Welcome, what can I get for the two of you?”

“We would like-” The tan, sharp-featured man began.

“How do you know Raina?” The other snarled at the same time. The two turned to look at each other, the former reproachful, the latter hostile.

In order to give nothing away, Claudette stared straight forward and kept her expression serene. So, that illusioned figure was Raina? She created a distraction and then proceeded toward the back… clever. But more problematic was the situation now. Some of the people moving past heard the name Raina and stopped, craning their necks to look at Claudette.

Claudette tasted the air with the smoky blade of Clarent, allowing her image a brief moment of freedom to understand the two in front of her. The sharp-featured man seemed vaguely apologetic, but the second, with his oily hair and heavy eyebrows, looked at Claudette like a bulldog eyeing a juice steak at the edge of the table.

Claudette tapped her nail against the wooden counter, waiting. Her expression remained inscrutable. As she expected, the men gave in first.

“I am Pan Cortez,” The more reasonable young man said, pressing his hand dramatically beneath his collar bone. From his expression, he expected her to recognize the name. Claudette raised a questioning eyebrow and Pan faltered for a second, before pushing forward. “And this is-”

“Izzie Fountain,” The other supplied, still with a snarl. Really, Claudette wished she had a bone to stuff in his mouth to shut him up. “Now, I don’t know what your relationship is with Raina, but I’m heading back there to see her. I have something that I need to say.”

Claudette felt something vindictive and sadistic stirring within herself. Clarent whispered how pleasant it would be to slide into this young man’s body and suck out everything, blood, soul, and image. His life would become another fading firefly within the smoky confines of her weapon, albeit a dim one, compared to the others. His withered husk of a body would collapse, never to bother her again.

But she suppressed that impulse. Instead, she simply allowed her smile to sharpen. She tried to keep her voice low because their conversation was attracting more and more attention. “You must have misheard; isn’t the woman you seek further down the path? But either way, I will not let you pass my counter. Because if you truly knew her, why would you be skulking after her like this?”

“I’m not skulking,” Izzie hissed. His eyes were beginning to redden, but he finally seemed to focus on Claudette, no longer narrowing his eyes at the door to the kitchen like he could burn it down from a distance. His eyes flicked across her body and then he snorted dismissively. “Do you even know who I am? I was the second-runner up in the combat competition today. Now, don’t you dare pull this jealous routine, or I’ll start to lose my temper-”

“Iz, this is a lady, treat her with some respect. She’s just trying to do her job,” Pan Cortez cut across his companion and flashed Claudette a charming smile, but if anything, the sudden and pointless move to ‘protect’ her infuriated Claudette even more than the complete disregard from Izzie. This sort of behavior she knew. This was the sort of man that she had dealt with all her life.

In her chest, Clarent began to hum. It drew frigid winds from the surroundings and began to create a tight cyclone of ice and cutting air around her heart.

Izzie completely ignored his friend and jabbed a finger at Claudette. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard; everyone is talking about how intense the combat competition was this time around. And she and I had a moment at the opening ceremonies. I was so moved by Raina’s song that I rushed onto the stage and professed my love for her. And I promised that when I won the whole tournament, I would take her out on a date-”

Claudette released a breath. Her heartbeat was slowing as the organ became more and more thoroughly frozen. She could almost feel the Lizakh, the people she had believed to be made up until she saw D’min, dying and fleeing from the building storm in her Soulspace. “And yet you didn’t win. And I’ll bet that Raina didn’t bother to give you an answer at all. Yea, I can see so from your expression. So. Leave. Better luck next year.”

“Actually, Donnyton’s competitions are held every six months,” Pan interjected. Claudette’s fingers flexed and her image began to leak out and radiate frost out across the counter. Neither of these two idiots appeared to notice.

“I have to tell her that it was never about the tournament. My feelings-” Izzie licked his lips, seemingly ready to launch into an impassioned speech on the spot. More and more people drifted closer to the soup stand to listen, as disappointment wafted out from the direction where the shout over Raina originally sounded; it seemed like these people discovered the first call was a false alarm.

You don’t know her at all, do you? Clarent began to sing a song of desolation and need out from her chest. The whirlwind of ice ballooned outward to become a coast-crusting storm. You’ve only seen her and imagined what she could mean-

Suddenly, it was all too much for Claudette. She raised both of her hands and released the barest pulse of her image, the pressure in her body forcing a hint of Clarent’s power into the air. At the very least, it got both of the men’s attention. “Let me be clear. You will not be heading to the back of the stall.”

Suddenly, Izzie’s expression twisted into something ugly. He eyed Claudette again, his focus lingering on her curves underneath her uniform, a smirk twisting his face. “Do you think someone like you can stop me?”

“I will not allow you to harm her,” Pan interjected before Claudette even had a chance to respond. And somehow, he found time to flash her a white-toothed smile as he leaned between them.

Izzie shrugged at Pan, ignoring her entirely. “Do you think anything’s changed in the last few hours, mister fourth-runner up?”

“I saw no need to go all out against you before,” Pan countered. He raised his hand and clenched it into a fist. “Now that I’ve met this vision of loveliness-”

BOOOOOOOM!

The counter, including the carefully stacked money and waiting chicken and rice soup, were flash-frozen as Claudette’s control shattered. A howling gust of wind knocked the two men sprawling. They probably would have smashed and rolled across the ground, had they not run into some of the other spectators. The crowd hastily backed up, pushed away by the rapid drop in temperatures.

Claudette hopped over the counter and brushed off her uniform. Ice condensed into tinkling diamonds across her head, ears, and neck. She waved a hand and the crooning and desolate blade Clarent manifested in her hand. “Fine then. Do you want to play? Let me entertain you, in Raina’s stead.”

*****

Within the back kitchen area, Raina made an apologetic expression at Neveah and Randidly, seemingly unsure of who she should be addressing. “I’m really sorry about this.”

Randidly continued to check the oven, monitoring the biscuits within. In the far corner, Delilah meekly mixed more flour for the next batch. D’min stood rigidly by the door, watching the action develop and Vye sat and happily tucked into her soup; the two were a study in contrasting reactions.

Neveah brought Raina a cup of her favorite seafood stew and patted her shoulders. “Oh, don’t worry about it. She’s needed to blow off some steam for some time. This saves Randidly the trouble of serving as a punching bag.”

Ugh, I wish someone would come to challenge me to a fight, Randidly thought wistfully and shook his head. In a way that was so intimate and didn’t emotionally destroy him, he missed Helen and her constant desire to challenge him. He looked back at the oven and sighed. Today was a day of biscuits.

He pushed his Hierarchy of Burden up another few layers but resigned himself to remaining in the kitchen all day. The burning light radiation at least allowed him to feel something other than envy.

Biscuits, Randidly sighed again.