“This is simple,” Ember says. She has folded up her bright silks, her colors; her scoutsuit is pale black and grey, the color of shadows under a starless sky. “All we have to do is buy time until the Shepherdess shows up. This is exactly the sort of time she does, and— yes?”

Dany’s hand politely lowers. “Um,” she says, a little bashfully, as if she’s just been asked a question about housing development strategies. “I think she’s busy fighting the lion?” Her cheeks flush perfect rose red.

“…[i]oh,[/i]” Redana breathes. Her Auspex continues tracking everyone under the starless sky, distracting her as she tries to think through the implications. “That… no, if the Nemean were to show up…”

“She’d kill us.”
“She’d hate us.”
“We’d get [i]divorced.[/i]”

“We would defend her,” Skotia says, and Ember nods at the assertion. It’s the sort of truth that comes most easily from behind his mask. Out of the four of them, he is perhaps the one most honest about his love, though that’s hardly Ember’s fault. “I would die before I let her touch Bella.”

“Again,” Ember sighs, and peeks back out over the balustrade. There’s only one path to infiltration here; she’ll need inserts in her shoes to pass as anything other than a gangly passing-awkwardly-through-puberty Bella.

“Well, I guess that means it’s up to us,” Redana says, smacking her fist into her palm. “All we have to do is figure out what divine device is powering this phantasm and then switch it off!”

“Do we have to?” Dany asks, squinting at her older, even more impetuous self. “She wants to play house. I think we have to play by the rules of the event, or we’ll get a penalty.”

“You’re right,” Skotia says with a chivalrous nod. The shadow of Ceron in the future he helped create is clear. “We can’t fight our way out of this, because she’s right— eventually, even the adventures have to end.”

“But this isn’t home,” Ember murmurs, slipping pads down her new blouse, blinking the contacts into place. “Not for us.”

“Why would she want to come back?”
“There was nothing for us there and there was even less for her.”
“No, this is where she can have what she did [i]not[/i].”

Another nod of agreements at Skotia.

“How about you, Captain?”

An adventurer, a girl, a dashing youth, and a Ceronian scout adjusting her new feline proportions look to Captain Dolce of the Starsong Privateers for his sage wisdom.