"Mingdu, after all this time..." Her glaive over one shouder and her helmet under her other arm, Kyang took in a deep breath of the fresh, summer air from underneath the town gate. This place looked less like a city than she thought it would; relatively quiet, surrounded by ponderous grey mountains, dryer than up north, sparse. In a word, peaceful.

Townsfolk wandered in and out around her, but unlike most isolated settlements she had stopped at, they gave her and her Daeyang-Gug style guard uniform no heed. However small this place was, it was a crossroads for all kinds of people. With all the fame that flows through the place, it would be perfect to blend in and hide away from her family.

The next phase in Kyang's plan was in action as she began walking forward, spying the various signs down the main street. She had no idea where the prefect or the mayor or whoever the head person in the town would be, but she surmised that would be the person to talk to about a desk job. Instead of finding anything resembling a governmental building, she spotted - or rather smelled - something that gave her an idea. Two ideas, in fact. It was a restaurant, the perfect place to ask the locals for information and to fill her road-weary stomach. The excuse to ask for directions was the perfect reassurance that she wasn't purely getting sidetracked by her hunger.

There were two major features of the restaurant that caught Kyang's attention immediately as she walked inside. The first was how hushed and whispered everyone's voices were. There had to be some reason, but Kyang couldn't quite put her finger on it. The second was the brightly dressed, pink-haired young woman sitting alone, save for next to a sword made in Rikoku, at least as the shape suggested. Well, everything about her screamed Rikoku, except for the way she was slurping down soup at an inhuman rate.

Kyang stepped up to the woman without a hint of recognition, despite the fact that everyone else in the place was clued in. "Hey there. This seat taken?" Kyang didn't wait for an answer before she leaned her weapon against the table and sat herself down, "You seem to be the only one doing any talking in this place. How's the soup here?" Realising herself, Kyang straightened up and extended a hand, "Oh, my name's Kyang. I'm new in town. What's your name?"

A sideways glance at the onlookers connected the dots in Kyang's mind. This woman they had been steering clear of this entire time was probably the reason they were being so quiet. In fact, this woman had a worded description that seemed familiar. It was strange, Kyang would normally be able to recognise such things in dangerous situations.