Finding Illumisia turns out to be far easier than I expected. All I do is walk out of the building, look to my left, and watch as Clutter stumbles over a perfectly positioned knee-high painted dane. He yelps in surprise and flails his arms out to try to steady himself, jumps forward three steps, and falls forward as slowly as physically possible. It almost looks fake with how easy he rolls into a crouch, but from how he winces and shakes his wrists, I guess it’s real.

  I raise an eyebrow at Illumisia. “What’d you do that for?”

  “Amusement.” She answers without hesitation. “Though if you want a justification; he is a scout. If he cannot see something as large as I am, then he will not be able to see much of anything at all.”

  “Fair. I guess.” I sigh and scratch between her ears. “So what’s you run off for?”

  Illumisia grins and nudges my hand with her nose. She pushes something into my palm, then backs away with a self-satisfied expression. Whatever’s making her that… happy… can’t be good for me. I wrap my fingers around the square thing, feeling for anything familiar, but it’s airtight. Whatever’s magical about it is inside the thing.

  I raise it up so I can see, and… ah, shit. The clear plastic square, perfectly divided into three sections, is filled with colorful pills. Ones that I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with until this quest was over.

  “You bitch.” I grumble as I send the box of pills to my inventory. “You went to see Ursula without me.”

  “What? Me?” Illumisia says with feigned shock. “I would never, ever do something like that. Not to my wonderful friend-of-a-friend. Oh, and Ursula says ‘hello’.”

  “I bet she does.”

  I walk over and pat Clutter on the back as I walk by. “You feeling alright? Need a potion or some healing?”

  He stares intently down at his hands, then shakes his head. “No, I think I’m fine. My wrists hurt a little, though.”

  “That’s normal for how you caught yourself. Did you hear what Illumisia said?”

  “I did. And she’s right. I’m a scout; one that’s not good at fighting at all. If people can easily sneak up on me, I’ll just be dead weight for you on the quest. But, um, I don’t think I can fix a weakness like that in less than a day.”

  “Don’t expect you to, but you do need to work on it. Especially if you missed something as big and obvious as her.” I pat the back of Illumisia’s neck for emphasis. “I can keep watch for myself, but if you’re not going to help fight, I need to know you’re not going to make my flights harder.”

  I turn to him with as serious a face as I can manage. “Can I count on you for that, Clutter?”

  His back reflexively straightens, and he confidently nods. “I’ll do absolutely everything I can so that you won’t even have to think about me. Even if it means staying invisible until my mana runs dry over and over again.”

  “I guess that’s all I can ask for.” I smile reassuringly as I speed up a little. “Illumisia, do you think that assassin’s still with Miss S?”

  She snorts. “She should be. Or else I placed my trust in a very wrong place, and I do not enjoy being tricked.”

  A cold shudder traces down my spine. For both our and Miss S’ sake, I hope that the assassin's still alive.

  Clutter oohs and aahs as we walk through the misty gateway to Miss S’ bathhouse in the sky. Someone else was manning the desk when we got there, but they just waved us through without bothering to check anything. I guess Illumisia and I are pretty damn recognizable, all things considered, so I shouldn't have been surprised. But I’d never seen another worker here before, so I kind of thought Miss S ran the place alone. Guess I was wrong.

  “It’s so weird.” Clutter murmurs as he runs his hands through the mist. “Are we walking through clouds?”

  “You’re closer to the truth than you think.” I chuckle. “Oh, forgot to ask–you aren’t scared of heights, right?”

  He shakes his head. “Nope.”

  “Good. Then welcome to someone else’s property.”

  I step through the final barrier of mist and into the sky-high living space. Clutter follows shortly after, his jaw dropping as he takes in the sights. A smile crawls across my lips as he silently mouths words of disbelief, then snaps to me with wonder in his eyes and impatience in the rest of him.

  “I’d love to let you loose, but this isn’t my place. We’ll have to find Miss S first.”

  “Oh, no need for that, sugar.” Miss S calls from across the way. She raises a glass of something sparkling, and someone across from her tries to make herself as small as possible. “Let your little friend do all the exploring he wants. He does know what’s too dangerous around here to touch, doesn’t he?”

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  Clutter nods vigorously. “I do. Can I look over the edge?”

  Miss S waves at the railing. “Knock yourself out, sugar.”

  “I won’t!” Clutter happily responds, eagerly making his way to his destination. I watch him as I walk over to Miss S and her guest, who has the exact right body proportions to belong to our assassin. Complete with a hood and veil that completely obscures her face from view, and black fabric hiding the rest of her body.

  I motion at her as Miss S pours me a glass of whatever she’s having. “You let her keep the bodysuit?”

  “No need to make a guest feel any more uncomfortable than she already is.” Miss S hands me the glass with a smile. “Not when she could be dying very, very soon. So, my little black-clad mistake, why don’t you tell this nice woman here everything?”

  The woman flinches and looks away. Miss S sighs and shakes her head.

  “No, no, that just won’t do. You’re the one that tried to kill my guest here, so the least you can do is tell her everything you told me.” Miss S smiles again, but this time, it isn’t friendly. “Do you want me to say it for you? Because I don’t need you alive if I’m gonna be the one speaking.”

  Panic flares in the form of a sloshing drink and desperate hand-waving. The black-clad woman starts making strange movements with her hands, miming things that have no association to me as Miss S nods along with her venomous smile.

  “See? Talking isn’t so hard. But it looks like my guest can’t understand your sign language, can you sugar?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “I can’t even understand sign language from Earth. Would the system translate her movements if I did?”

  Miss S purses her lips. “That’s a very good question. You should learn sign language and report back if it works like a spoken language or a written one for system translation. Though since you can’t understand your assailant, I suppose I’ll have to translate. Directly.”

  The veiled woman nods vigorously in agreement, then turns ever so slightly to Miss S while also keeping her vision on me. Her fabrics must not be airtight, since I can kind of make out her face underneath the veil. But… it's weird. She doesn’t seem to have eyes, or a nose, or a mouth, or… any facial features, really. It reminds me a little of that shopkeep from when I first met Diane and Razi.

  “Right now she’s making excuses for why she attacked you.” Miss S says flatly. “None of them are convincing, and if she wants me to keep translating, she will stop making them.”

  An audible gulp emerges from behind the veil. I don’t know how, since there isn’t a mouth to gasp from, but it gets the point through all the same. The woman balls her hands into fists planted on her knees, stares down at her feet, and shakes. I take a sip of the wine-like drink Miss S poured for me as I wait for her to ‘talk’.

  Eventually, she raises her hands, presses them to her chest, and starts to motion once more. Miss S looks like she’s barely watching, but that doesn't dissuade the woman.

  “Her name is Shandi Jiren. She started working with Stonestep Solutions a year and a half ago to try and get a true Class, and about a week ago, she got her first real chance.” Miss S pauses as Shandi signs, then sighs. “Like I said, I’m not translating excuses. Now keep going.”

  Shandi flexes her fingers, then looks at me. As she signs, Miss S translates almost as quickly as the words leave her fingers.

  “Her assignment was to kill whoever came to that spot at the moment you did. She doesn’t know if it was supposed to be you, or if anyone would do, but she didn’t question it at all. Since she was trying to get the assassin specialization of scout.” Miss S wrinkles her nose at the mere mention of it. “Seeing as she doesn’t have any morals or hangups to taking another life, she was excited for it. So she laid in wait for someone to come by and stay there–which is exactly what you did.”

  With a nod, Shandi lowers her hands. I wait for her to continue, but… apparently that’s it.

  “Wow. I hate you.” I say flatly. Shandi flinches and looks away. “No, no, you don’t get to look away from me. You were completely willing to end my life just to get the class you wanted, so now you have to look at me and realize that you failed.”

  She doesn’t. I clench my teeth, annoyance pulling the corner of my mouth into a sneer; I was hoping she’d have at least a little information for me. But it looks like she’s just a willing pawn of Stonestep Solutions.

  “Alright, since you don’t want to look at me, you get to talk some more.” I lean in close and wrap my fingers around Shandi’s forearm. That gets her to look at me. “Did Stonestep Solutions ever bring someone named ‘Well’ through while you were there? Or anything related to a multicoloured, plastic-like substance?”

  Shandi turns and signs to Miss S. “She says no to both. But if I may say something, I don’t think she’s going to be of any use to you. The poor thing wouldn’t be able to tell a punch was coming until it broke her nose, that’s how self-centered she is.”

  Do those two statements mean the same thing? Because they don’t feel like they mean the same thing. “You’re saying she’s useless? Even after she tried to kill me?”

  “Mostly, yes.” Miss S confirms. “I would like to ask that you let her stay here with me, though. There’s something bothering me about her, and I’ll need time to root around in that head of hers to find some proof to back up my instincts.”

  Shandi’s shoulders slump in terror. She looks to me, as if I’m going to spare a single ounce of pity for the asshole that tried to legally murder me as a career path. I jab a thumb in Shandi’s direction and down the last of my drink, then place the glass on the table.

  “Do whatever you want with her.”

  Miss S smiles politely. “Thank you very much, sugar. I’ll be sure to keep you in the know about anything our new guest spills that she was trying to keep a secret–either against her will or with

  it.”

  If that sentence was directed at anyone but the person who tried to kill me, I’d feel bad for them.

  “Well, I’ve got an early morning tomorrow, and some things I want to talk about over breakfast. Do you need help making it?”

  “I do not, no. Just focus on resting up for whatever you need to do.” Miss S shoos me away with a grin. “I’ll try to keep the volume down so you can sleep. Just don’t open your rooms in the middle of the night, alright, sugar?”

  With those ominous words hanging in the air, I leave Shandi and Miss S to their own devices. Whatever happens now isn’t my problem.