The broad chested drunk stopped Marroo on his way to the bathroom at the dirty little saloon the couriers frequented when not on duty at the Iblanie tower.

“Whatchya doin here trog?”

Smoke curled along the ceiling beneath the rafters where glowing familiars threw more shadows than illumination across a murky bar and the tables packed into the basement barroom wherever there was room. The man, who was barely a man at Betmo’s age but already carrying the kind of muscle that only came from hard labor in one of the factories that made this part of the dregs the Iblanie base of power, shoved Marroo with enough force to make a normal person stumble backwards.

Marroo tilted his shoulder to deflect the shove automatically and the man frowned while Marroo examined the man’s friends behind him. His second shove wasn’t any more successful, but Marroostpped back anyways to satisfy the black boy’s need to make some space, only to hear two more of his attacker’s friends lurch from seats just behind him and glower at Marroo’s back.

The man in front of him put a finger on Marroo’s chest. “I asked you a question trog.” He slurred. “You gonna answer me?”

Marroo just looked up at him. The finger jabbed at his chest, clearly meant to hurt when Marroo didn’t answer, but he barely felt it. What he felt instead was the flicker of the icon penetrating through his veil, highlighting the knives in the three men’s pockets, the raging fires of their spirits, heightened and diffused by the liquor they’d been drinking even if they weren’t cultivators. Marroo tried to think of an answer that would put the men back in their seats, but the man in front of him shoved at him again while Marroo was looking up at the hooded and bloodshot purple eyes. Marroo blocked him, tilted the offending hand away where it knocked into the bar.

The man staggered backwards as though marroo had struck him and spread his arms out to encompass the entirety of the crummy saloon. “Woah!” He said. “Attack me in my own Saloon?” He looked around, as though for an audience, which, Marroo realized, he had now that the entire Saloon was turning towards them.

The man leaned forward until only a couple of inches separated their faces. “I don’t see none of your friends here.” He said. His breath stank of cheap alcohol and smoke. “That means you’re alone.” The finger poked at his chest again but Marroo ignored it to glare up at the roadblock. “That means, no ones gonna care if I beat the bloody piss out of you.”

For a moment neither of them spoke and Marroo glanced past him to the door he’d been headed towards, then behind him at the two who’d lurched from their chairs. When he looked at the man in front of him again the broad chested boy seemed to expect some kind of response.

“I don’t want to kill you.” Marroo said.

The drunk boy nearly fell over as he laughed, but the two behind Marroo took that as their signal and surged forward to grab Marroo’s arms. They tried to twist them behind his back but Marroo was a cultivator, and they were drunk. They never had a chance. Unaware of their difficulties the man in front of Marroo wheeled back towards him as his laughter turned to a scowl and he raised one hand in a fist and slurred; “You don’t belong here, Trog.”

Marroo tensed, not to prepare for the fight, but to keep his spirit tightly in the veil he’d practiced since stepping into the saloon with the rest of the couriers while the Sword Icon rattled at the bars of its spiritual cage. He curled his own hands into fists, and then froze as a can flew out of the darkness to bounce of the drunk man’s head.

Sound around them stopped abruptly as the man in front of Marroo crumpled to the ground.

As one, Marroo and his audience turned to find Cathay standing on a table nearby, tossing a can up and down in one hand while Ajap juggled half a dozen more behind her like a street performer.

The two men holding Marroo’s arms let him go and stepped away as she glared at them.

“Get your boots off my table!” The tender yelled from behind the bar.

Cathay ignored him, looked at the can bouncing up and down from her hand. “I’d rather drink this.” She said, then shot a glare at the two who’d dropped Marroo’s arms. She gave Marroo a sickly sweet smile. “Marroo, sweetheart, would you bring me my other drink? I think I dropped it and I’m terribly thirsty.” She looked back at the other two. “Maybe you boys should sit down.”

“You knocked out Dabmiek!” One of them yelled.

“The state he was in, one more drink would have probably done the trick anyways.” Cathay replied. “Marroo?” She raised her eyebrows in his direction.

Marroo looked at the stupefied man drooling on the floor with a growing circular bruise on his forehead, then located the can where it fetched up against the leg of someone else’s chair.

“No fighting or I’ll have you all banned!” The Bartender told Cathay.

Marroo apologized to the girl in the seat as he bent and retrieved Cathay’s drink.

“I wasn’t fighting.” Cathay said. “Just serving.”

Ajap missed one of the cans he was juggling and cursed as they clattered across the floor. Cathay jumped down as Marroo approached and he handed her the dented can.

“Nice throw.” He said.

Cathay wrapped an arm around the back of Marroo’s neck and gave him a sloppy and theatrical drunken kiss on the lips. “You’re sweet.” She said, and glared at the two boys still standing over their fallen comrade. “They’re turds.” She let him go and turned to find Dhret glaring at her.

Cathay rolled her eyes. “If you want him all to yourself you should have done something,” she said, and pinched Marroo’s cheek as she gave him another peck, “really, don’t let her keep you all to herself.” She winked an eye at him that almost didn’t open again, then fell back into her seat while Marroo turned to watch his two attackers lift the third. They argued for a minute then slumped him on a barstool while they called the bartender over for more alcohol.

When Marroo returned to his seat Dhret took his arm and furrowed her brow at him. “Why didn’t you say anything?” She asked.

Marroo looked at her, unsure what he was supposed to have said, then shook his head. “I told them I didn’t want to kill them.” He finally replied.

She gave him a strange look, but Betmo turned from the seat next to Marroo to give him him the look Cathay called his “daddy” look. “You should have called us.” He said.

“Yeah.” Ajap replied as he scurried after a can. “We’d have helped you.”

“We’re drakes.” Podmandu declared in with a slur. He banged the can he was leaning over on the table and splashed himself in the eye.

A thoroughly drunken Cathay raised her can. “Flying predatory lizards!” She declared.

Podmandu frowned at her as he rubbed at his eye.

Marroo looked around at them, then down at the glass of water at his spot on the table.

“He shouldn’t have to worry about being attacked just cause he looks like he’s from the underground.” Cathay muttered, and drank.

“What you need is a bandanna.” Pod said as he turned to Marroo. He tapped the scarf tied around his head. “People all know what these mean.” He added. “At least around here. It makes you one of us. When are you gonna get one?”

“I…” Marroo shook his head. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Here.” Pod pulled the greasy orange bandanna from around his head and tossed it to Marroo. It stank terribly and when it touched the table near Dhret she quickly pulled her drink away while Pod tried to slick back the hair intent on capitalizing on its sudden liberation.

“Don’t wear that.” Cathay said with a grimace from across the table.

“Why not?” Pod asked. “You want to waste perfectly good Bzza on some other turd next time he needs to go to the bathroom?” He smiled at Marroo. “You’re one of us,” He said, “put it on.”

“It’s filthy.” Cathay replied.

Pod rolled his eyes, but Marroo lifted the bandanna from the table and slid it over his forehead. It was filthy, and heavy with Pod’s sweat, but Marroo didn’t care.

Pod grinned and Betmo slapped him on the back.

“Thank you.” Marroo said.

“Don’t mention it,” Pod replied, “I’ve got another one.”

“One, other one.” Betmo pointed out. “And one other shirt, and one other pair of pants, and probably one other pair of everything else too.”

Pod shrugged, winked. “I’ll never tell.”

Dhret pulled her arm from Marroo’s and leaned away from him as though from the aura that must have come with the bandanna. “It will have to be washed,” She said, “I’m not sleeping in the same room as anything that’s touched Pod.”

“That’ll make more room for the rest of us.” Cathay slurred, and grinned as she winked at Dhret. “I’m not scared of a little sweat.”

Dhret just scowled at her.

Ajap stood as he found his last can and lofted them one by one into the air to begin juggling again. “I thought you were sleeping with one of the executives.” He said as he tracked the cans through the air.

Cathay’s grin flipped into a snarl and she flicked her empty can at Ajap. He flinched and the cans he was juggling spilled across the floor again while the boy whined about an unprovoked attack.

Marroo lifted a hand to touch the filthy bandanna he’d been given. He let his hand rest there as he felt, something, something he’d never had before.

He used the bandanna to wipe blood from his face as he dragged Podmandu out of the burning sub-sect’s headquarters after their ambush while delivering the Iblanie’s “message” to the leaders there. More guards appeared after Marroo ripped those who’d accompanied them on the roof to shreds. One of them used a sunlare pistol to take potshots at them down a hallway, lighting the place on fire and forcing Marroo to go through the house room by room until he’d scared away or eliminated every one of the men who’d been left behind as some sort of last defense while the sub-sect leadership made it out.

They fought back, for the most part, but it was mostly meaningless in the end.

Marroo dropped Podmandu when they reached the outskirts of the fenced lawn that surrounded the house and gave the boy’s wounds a more thorough going over than the quick look he’d managed after one of the guards clipped him with a pistol as they were going down the stairs. A hole burnt into his thigh stank of cauterized flesh but he was still breathing, if unconscious from the pain.

The manor behind them groaned as flames licked at the windows, then one wing of the building collapsed with a roar. Marroo turned to watch and saw the tail-lights of the fleeing subsect weaving through the towers beyond the veil of smoke. Nose gyros whined in the nose of incoming aircabs and Marroo’s fist tightened around the bandanna as he recognized the spirits of the men riding in one of the cars as a half dozen armored aircabs shot over the manor’s fence and swerved around the burning building before touching down in a semi-circle on the grass around Marroo, the Iblanie Family crest emblazoned boldly on their sides.

Men in black armor boiled from the cars and leveled rifles towards the smoking building while familiars in a rainbow of colors and touched by four or five different icons whipped around and above them to inspect the ruin. Athesh appeared in the door of one of the cars when no sunflare beams zipped out of the ruins and the familiars returned without finding a living soul within. He wore the same chest plate over his formal robes and the same red tinted goggles as the rest of the guards around him. He stood tall as he exited and examined the wreckage, then marched to Marroo while the two cultivators that served as his shadows trailed after him.

“You’re alright.” The big man rumbled as he approached Marroo.

Marroo felt a pain in his hand and looked down to find it squeezed tight around the bloody bandanna.

“They shot Pod.” He said.

Athesh barely glanced at Podmandu. “Someone will take him back to the tower. He’ll be fine.”

Marroo’s hand began to tremble and the blood he’d sopped up with the cloth seeped through his fingers to outline them in red. More Iblanie aircabs shot by overhead in pursuit of the fleeing sub-sect and Athesh followed them with his eyes. One of the cultivators knelt next to Podmandu to examine his wound while fires in those sections of the headquarters still standing cracked and popped as it consumed the weapons dropped by dead guards.

“How many were there?” Athesh asked as a window shattered and the flames inside roared higher.

“Fifteen.” Marroo whispered.

Athesh turned to Marroo and gave him a grim smile, but Marro’s eyes remained locked on the blood oozing from the cloth in his fist.

“They’ll regret this.” Athesh said as the cultivator scooped Podmandu off the ground and carried him away. The big man pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the sweat beading on his forehead. “They’ll regret this.”

Marroo felt the tension run out of him and he let the bandanna fall from his fingers to the ground. The blood left a red imprint in the creases of his skin. He looked up to see Podmandu loaded into an aircab that immediately lifted into the air.

“Their leadership shouldn’t make it to the ground before a Red Squad knocks them from the sky,” Athesh rumbled as it left, “but there are other safe houses and at least one barracks they kept in one of their factories. They’ll need to be dealt with to keep this from spreading.” He examined Marroo who still just looked at his hand. He nodded, then turned and walked to one of the aircabs before he looked back.

“Are you coming?” He asked.

Marroo closed his hand around the blood and dropped it to his side. “I told you I wouldn’t kill for you.” He said. He looked up at the big man framed by the door of the aircab manned by armored soldiers made inhuman by dark helmets and the red lenses over their eyes. Silver eyes met Athesh’s in a glare. “Not now, not ever.”

Athesh frowned. “Don’t you care about vengeance?” He asked.

The headquarters groaned as the wing on which they’re bikes were parked tilted backwards into the house. Half the building’s front collapsed inward with a roar and a swirl of sparks and smoke. “I’ve had too much already.” Marroo said. “Don’t ask me again.”

Nothing held Marroo here. His bike was in the flames, and the cab with Pod was gone. He turned away from the family executive and marched towards the manor’s fence.

“There will be others!” Athesh called after him. “If you don’t help us here! You’re a part of this family. You have a responsibility here!”

Marroo leapt the fence and continued on the sidewalk beyond.

“You can’t hide from what you are!”

Marroo pulled his veil around himself and walked until he lost himself on busy streets.