"Yes," the Were said, "but I mean. Well… Shit. I said that wrong. Let me try again. Uhhh. I think," he said, "my confusion is because, devoid of context, my gut agrees with you. But, at the same time, I have done similar things as part of my job and have also known to my bones that it was right."

  Shilloh should have been mad. That was a great set-up for a cop-out. But the sense of direct, earned confusion calmed her. Somewhat.

  Shilloh sucked on her teeth and started them moving forward through the dense vegetation. "Okay. I can sort of see that. I talked to a friend, the older woman who was out with me before. She pointed out that being a Blight Bane is hard," she looked to the side, where Wade was keeping pace with her, eyes mostly on the ground as he focused on her words. He gave no visible reaction, and her nerves spiked. Predictably, her stupid mouth revolted at the first sign of tension. "and not just because of the stupid name."

  Wade snorted and shook his head. Which immediately made her feel better. "She said you probably need to be real passionate, and you probably need to push yourself really hard to continually do dangerous and gross shit. It might be a habit for you to see anything related to cryptos and just push forward. Because, to have gotten where you are, you need to be someone who does it as a reflex. Otherwise, you would have gotten mired down and broken under all the impossible choices. I don't know if that's true. Honestly, I'm much more comfortable ignoring people instead of doing all this soul-searching. But, if that is true, then I might have been too harsh. You might be working very hard to do something good and just have gotten used to, or more exposure to, the fringe cases I avoid."

  She paused.

  "Actually, that's coward shit. I was definitely too harsh. You are not dumb; I shouldn't have talked to you that way."

  There was another pause, thankfully not as long as before.

  "Thank you," Wade said softly. "Not many people take the time to think about things like that."

  She shrugged, not comfortable at all with all the super sensitive feeling stuff. "It's just decency. I was aggressive. I still think you were wrong, but it might have been for understandable reasons. Not just cause you're a massive throbbing lama dick of man."

  Wade tried valiantly to hold back his laughter, but some still leaked out.

  "Lama dick?"

  "Yeah."

  "Oh, well, thank you, ma'am. Mighty kind of you to elevate my standing in your moral hierarchy to such a degree."

  "Don't mention it. Sometimes, you've got to be the bigger man."

  Wade looked over and tilted his head down—very far down, considering their height differences—while cocking an eyebrow, "What a special occasion. I doubt you've been the biggest person in any room since kinder garden."

  Jasque made a loud, ugly hawking sound before spitting into the woods, and the mood between them collapsed. They both turned their eyes back to the ground, and Shilloh felt herself flush.

  That man was entirely too good at fading into the background.

  "Well," Wade cleared his throat, "like I said, thank you. I've taken some dumb chances that got people hurt by cryptos. It doesn't take many of those before you stop wanting to take any chances at all. Still," he said, eyes flickering once again to the man walking behind him with a certain degree of hesitance, "I think you have a point. It's like thunder falcons."

  "Thunder flacons?"

  "Yes. I almost never hunt thunder falcons unless I absolutely have to. If I get a call about one on a person's property, I'll even rent cages and relocate them if I have the time."

  "That's… decent of you? I mean, sorry, but that's sort of the bare minimum for a rare species like that."

  Wade shook his head, "See, I had thought this would bridge the gap, but I think I'm about to put my foot in my mouth now."

  "No, I'm sorry, I'm doing it again," she mentally cursed herself. All this conflict around Birch was making her too comfortable with a sharp tongue, " You made a principled decision based on first principles. Thats impressive. Please, keep going."

  "I'm not sure—"

  "Hey, it's against the Geneva Conventions to tease someone like that. You claimed this would bridge the gap. Prove it."

  He smiled at her, and something happened in her belly.

  He hadn't done anything but tilt his head up to the side, but his eyes caught the light perfectly. For just a moment, she could see the sun light them up. Faint traces of ethereal, misty blue highlights blazed to the surface. It was so light that some lines of color seemed almost white, and the dark ring around them stood out in a stark, authoritative way.

  "Fine," he said, normal again as they left that one fortuitous beam of light behind them, " the line of thought with thunder falcons is that they eat other more troublesome cryptos. They manage all sorts of little fliers that can end up becoming a swarm. So, for the sum total flourishing humanity," and as he said those very un-Wade words, his eyes flickered to Jasque, "they end up helping more than harming. I leave them for that reason. I think that I forgot how many other creatures have knock-on effects that help."

  Shilloh almost didn't respond. Her mind was going too fast. She finally, finally got it.

  That look at Jasque, plus phrases like 'sum flourishing of humanity.' He had spoken with an oft-repeated smoothness to the words that only came from phrases being repeated over and over.

  That was what was really happening. Wade spent all his time around Jasque and assholes like Jasque. Add in having seen some heinous shit and he was probably very susceptible to authority figures who might take some of the guilt and emotional load away.

  Which meant this wasn't just her talking to Wade; this was her having to indirectly address Jasque's arguments. It explained why the Were seemed like a decent dude, but had unexpected veins of bullshit running through him like sparkles through granite.

  Wade was salvageable, and her internal compass wasn't full of shit. Which immediately helped her feel less angry: having a path forward tended to. She could permit herself to like him again. Which was helpful because her hormones had never stopped. But it was extra useful because her new path was to plant a seed. She would probably stop talking to these two once they had finished their work. So, leaving some thoughts that might grow in her absence was really all she could do.

  "Okay," she said, keeping mindful of the true source of the bile, who just so happened to be walking behind them in earshot," I can see that point. I have some disagreements, though I suspect most would sound like woo-woo hippie stuff."

  Papa hooted and took off from her backpack.

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  As she spoke, a plan of attack began to form. She would skip the line of reasoning where she challenged him for being too human-centric. That was a feeling. Aside from his points all being very think-y and not very feel-y, Jasque could produce more feelings by dint of long association, not even accounting for loyalty or just the fear of annoying your partner. Instead, she would focus on the measurable. Maybe —if he started warming up— she would circle back to the idea of personal freedom and consequences.

  "Have you ever heard ecologists talk about what happened before M-Day when apex carnivores were over-hunted?" she started.

  ~~~

  The rest of the hike was surprisingly pleasant. Shilloh found three other flavors of claimed land, may have imagined a fourth, and had a great conversation along the way.

  Wade was very good at listening and asking questions—not just follow-ups, either. He would take something she said, get clarification, and then say, 'If the thing you're describing is caused by 'A', wouldn't it mean that someone could do 'B' and it would have 'C' effect?' Which just opened up more and more interesting thoughts.

  They talked about invasive deer in Hawaii. They talked about the unkillable adaptivity of coyotes as a whole, and Wade was able to tell stories about some jobs where they had eradicated swarms of cryptos threatening the local herbivores.

  It was nice. Especially since Jasque stayed in the background. Though she was convinced that he was listening. Because of that, Shilloh made sure to frame things in terms of helping humanity. Apparently, that was His Thing—though she personally felt that concept to be egocentric and doomed to failure.

  The only way to help humans was to focus on helping the entire ecosystem. A rising tide lifts all ships, and for complex interconnected systems, an indirect approach was often needed. Not just endless culling.

  It was also fun to see that Wade had genuine insights to add.

  "The real issue is that it is so hard to fight a big threat when you have a swarm of little ones. 'Cause, sure, in terms of property damage, a giant troll is more dangerous than a couple flying snakes. But that doesn't mean anything when the troll steps on a snake den, and a single bite will make you pass out and get crushed."

  "Is that part of the reason you default to killing cryptos?"

  "Yes. Honestly, when you talked about buffer species, it really got me thinking. I wonder if there is a way to promote cryptos that eat more troublesome cryptos to make them deal with that issue instead of us."

  She nodded and kept her mouth shut. What Wade was talking about was absolutely possible, but it was incredibly difficult and not something her persona would have known about.

  Buffer species were creatures that made it possible for human population centers to be near high magic areas—which were usually big stretches of particularly vivid or variable nature—or anywhere that tended to spawn cryptos. For instance, a Were would mark territory, and the magical impression drove away some territorial species that would otherwise cause issues. That made them a buffer species. A few other sapient or near human species had similar effects.

  Encouraging specific Cryptos, animals, and plants to propagate to fend off dangerous species, like Wade was talking about, was absolutely possible. But it was a complex type of magical ecology. Even in the old world, it was the sort of thing that only a genius dryad or druid could consistently pull off.

  "Who knows," Shilloh said, keeping her face blank, "sounds complicated."

  Wade grinned, "Yeah. I suppose so. But, the point about the snakes and troll is that it's one of those things that only needs to happen once."

  "Oh?"

  Jasque chimed in and told a story that she gritted her teeth through.

  It seemed like bullshit to her. Most animals fled from conflict. But, as any great sage would tell you, magic is super fucking weird. And these two spent a disproportionate amount of time surrounded by the weird and unbalanced cryptos. So, it could have some validity. Maybe. The thought made her uncomfortable. Wade's points gained more salience when she considered the sorts of stupid situations his job required him to frequently put himself into.

  "I had never thought of that," she said.

  The Were nodded, "Most people don't have to. For us, it's like Swat teams securing exits and making sure they clear every room before they'll move past it. Personally, I have never had to flee a fight only to run unto a giant spider web I'd detoured around earlier, but one of my instructors did."

  They kept talking, and Agnes proved herself right. Wade had crossed a line. Shilloh knew it, and he knew it, too. It was just taking a lot of conversation for him to look past his blind spots and see why. For Shilloh, it was revealing to see what weird sort of funhouse mirror worldview could make someone who was otherwise decent do something bad.

  She didn't push it, though. That would lead to Wade shutting down or getting defensive. Plus, just talking had already caused him to think of several more 'thunder falcons.' By which he meant cryptos that had indirect positive impacts on humans.

  Sometime around the point where they had gotten into a tangent about how terrifying bears were—even compared to most cryptos—Shilloh found the source of their original dead Mossquade problem.

  Between one step and the next, the pit of her stomach fell. To their credit, the two banes noticed the change immediately and took fighting stances.

  "What's wrong?" the Were said.

  Well, golly gee, some angry plant-based monster was coming to kill them, and it was insanely dangerous. But she couldn't just say that, could she?

  It was the sort of knowledge that came to her because of her nature. Same way she knew whenever there was poison ivy, or that Fraulein had also sensed the creature and was circling around.

  True, there was always a significant chance she was wrong. Call it one in five. But when it came to something like the presence of immediate danger, she had never been wrong once.

  That instinct was how she had known something hungry, invisible, and bearing ill intentions had been standing behind her the last time she had been out with the banes.

  But how did you explain that without outing yourself as a non-human, though?

  "Something is different," she stammered." But I can't put my finger on it."

  The thing was getting closer. Shit, shit, shit. They needed to put this together themselves.

  "Is the wildlife more quiet, or is it just me?" she asked.

  Wade turned to his friend, "Jasque?"

  "Not in my range. Any scent?"

  Wade lifted his chin and closed his eyes. She felt a sloppy surge of magical power roll off of him. It had the distinctive impression of Were magic: synesthetic sunlight mixed with some sort of musty, spicy drink.

  Jasque though, Jasque only had eyes for her while Wade searched. Every ounce of his attention was focused on her, eyes flitting as he cataloged every breath and twitch.

  It raised her hackles to feel herself being examined like gears on a clocksmith's table. It made a horrible kind of sense, though. Her excuse about sensitivity or a half-formed wild talent was reasonable enough. But she hadn't displayed this particular ability before. Witness protection had taught her that, even if she thought it was benign, any inconsistency was a clue she could not afford to surrender.

  Before she could say anything to obscure what was going on, the wind changed, and Wade sneezed violently.

  "Son of a succubus! Large incoming. West southwest. Magic, non-mammal."

  The other man continued to look at her with his dead, doll-like eyes even as he responded. "Fast?"

  "Approaching at jogging pace."

  The other man nodded, only abandoning his spooky stare after a few more silent moments of examination. "Noted, let's go back thirty yards to where those two trees fell. We'll have a firing alley for me and enough trees to impede anything truly large.

  Wade turned around and gave her a grin. Not one meant to comfort a know-nothing civilian; this was a real smile filled with adrenaline and comradery.

  "You'll forgive me if I blast it before checking the records to see if it's a threat?"

  It was a joke, but she almost cursed out loud. How could she be so dumb? Her senses knew this thing was a threat in a way that demanded it be killed, not avoided. But she had just spent the last two hours painting herself as a bleeding heart. That was a second inconsistency in as many seconds.

  Before she could say anything, an echoing shriek came from the creature's direction. It was like a chorus of human voices and snakes had all started screaming bloody murder. They cut off with a meaty crack.

  Fraulein slinked her way out of the bush, faced the direction of the encroaching creature, and hissed.

  "Well," Shilloh said, grabbing the hunting rifle she had brought with her, "I, uhhh, considered the expert testimony by Ms. Fraulein, as well as a recent acoustic incident that implies murder, and think it might be okay to shoot first and ask question never. You know, just this once."

  "Just this once," Wade winked.

  Without needing further orders, all four turned tail and ran back toward the fallen trees, ready to set an ambush or die trying.

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