TTT: Standoff - part 3

"Now what?" Neon demanded, as they strode down the center of South Street, as if they were out for a casual stroll.

"Now, as I just said, we walk," Jasmaby replied simply. "Pay attention, Kit." Neon opened her mouth to protest, but Jasmaby added before she could: "And don't let your guard down."

"I never do," Neon said insistently.

"Likeways," Jasmaby responded, looking straight ahead.

Neon had been mulling over some possibilities. One finally seemed solid enough to propose, so she started in on her plan: "We could break off into the alley up ahead on the left," she whispered, eyes darting about for any glimpse of Charthur or Shizu. "If we move quickly, we can lose them. Then, with Chip, I can..."

"No," Jasmaby said flatly.

"You don't know what I was going to say."

"No," Jasmaby said again. "No, I don't. But that's not how I do things."

Neon fumed. "Just because..."

"And because Shizu will surely overhear whatever your plan was," Jasmaby added. He tilted his chin up slightly, addressing the nearby roofs. "Which one is it, sweetie? Little Sir Veil?" He flicked a mote of flame from one finger, sending it towards a suspicious patch of shadow. The tiny flame briefly illuminated the velvety corner, revealing nothing, before winking out once more. "No... Spy-Spy Spider, I surmuse?"

There was a sound so soft, Neon had a hard time believing she heard it at all. But if she had to describe the nothing she heard, she would have said it sounded like the soft scuttling of slender legs from somewhere on the rooftops.

"If she's watching us," Neon urged, "Then all the more reason to get out of the open."

"No," Jasmaby repeated.

"But why—"

"Because, as I just said, that's not how I do things," Jasmaby cut her off. "Pay attention."

Neon lapsed back into silence, driving her seething down into her hooves with each step. 

They turned off of South Street, headed down the somewhat more narrow Market Road on a direct route to the Old Town Plaza. The empty stalls were packed more closely together here; their shadows more menacing, their promise of an ambush lurking all the more looming.

Neon didn't exactly feel like talking; but the silence, punctuated only by the steady rhythm of her own hoofsteps, was growing to be unbearable. "Alright," she ventured, "I know you're not trying to tire us out faster." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "So what's your idea?"

Jasmaby seemed to ignore this. It was only when Neon was about to ask again that he whispered back, "I don't have one."

"Are you serious?" Neon asked, exasperated.

"I don't have an idea," Jasmaby answered. He raised an eyebrow, and gave her a look out of the corner of his eye. "This is your speciality, is it? How do you resolve a hopeless situation?"

Neon considered this. It was, inarguably, an interesting question. Readily, an answer came to mind. "If the long-term situation is hopeless... then you need to upset the short-term situation. You have to figure out what the enemy wants. Figure out what they'd take a risk for. Present something the enemy wants so badly, right now, they expose themself."

"Interesting," Jasmaby mused. "And what is it you want, Kit?"

Neon blinked, and spluttered, "I'm not the enemy!"
"Obliviously! Neither am I!" Jasmaby shot back. "Obliviously."

Neon fought to regain her focus, recovering from the bizarre tangent. 

What do they want? Time is on their side. But... they'd still want to take what looks like a guaranteed victory if the opportunity arose, right? So... how could she and Jasmaby make it seem like...

"Listen," Neon whispered urgently, "about what the enemy wants—"

"Charthur wants you," Jasmaby interrupted.

"Excuse??" Neon bleated back.

"If she finds the approtunity to pick you off, she'll take it," Jasmaby explained. "That would leave me alone against those two. I would stand no chance."

"Right. Yeah. Of course. Yeah," Neon muttered, coming back down from a dizzying moment of hope. There was still conversation to produce, and her mouth was having to do most of the work her brain would normally handle. "So, uh, we'll have to make sure that doesn't happen, then. Because that would be bad."

"Mm," Jasmaby agreed.

With that, the two lapsed into silence once more. They were past the Old Town Plaza now, heading toward the fashion district. The stalls here had a more diverse character, each attempting suggest through the shape of the stall itself how very unique its proffered goods were. This made the march even more wearying — instead of an endless procession of similar hiding spaces, the pair now needed to identify the unique hiding places each stall concealed as they passed.

Maybe it really was hopeless. Maybe they'd march around like idiots for a few hours until the collapsed in the street. And that's when Charthur would strut up, victorious grin on her face, looming over them as she...

...that wasn't it. That wasn't how it was going to happen. Neon had a moment of clarity. Excitedly, she began to speak again: "We're just going to keep walking, is that right? Moving forward, regardless? Because that's how you do things?"

"Mm." Jasmaby's voice was passive. It was clear how little attention he was sparing her.

No matter. She continued on: "Well, letting us march ourselves to exhaustion? This isn't how Charthur does things."

"Mm!" There it was. Now he was listening. 

Neon pressed forward with her thought: "She's impulsive, quick to—"

Jasmaby cut her off. "—seize upon any potential advantage without weighing it against the opportunity cost of not delaying her attack," he recited.

Neon's gut turned to ice. It had been nearly verbatim. It couldn't have been a coincidence, as desperately as she tried to believe that. Her brain locked up, leaving her mouth totally on its own. "Uh. Yeah. That's, uh..."

"She is my girlfriend, you know," Jasmaby said calmly, not a hint of emotion slipping through. "So of course I'd already know that about her."
"Yeah, uh, but..." Neon checked, but her brain was still emitting nothing but dead silence.

"And," Jasmaby went on, lining up the kill shot, "...of course she'd show me your site."

"Ah," Neon managed. 

There was a hideous, horrible gap in the conversation. When Neon couldn't wait any longer for the fatal blow to come, she prompted: "So, uh, did you happen to read—"

Jasmaby was ready to reply. "I found this line on my profile intriguing: 'Distractible, due to his inability to devote himself to tactical thinking, stemming directly from his egotism,'" With that last word, the emotion started to pierce through his voice, forming red-hot cracks. "'Utterly incapable of treating War as anything other than a means of resolving conflicts and grudges. For Jasmaby, War is nothing but personal.'" 

"Uhhh. I just meant..." Neon trailed off. She had hoped to come up with something on the fly, but the sentence had nowhere to go.

Not that it mattered. "It's clear what you meant," Jasmaby said, his voice like steel. 

Okay. Denial was out. Jasmaby had dibs on Anger. Time for Negotiation. "If you don't like..."

"I'm not a fan of your site, no," Jasmaby snapped. But then he sighed, and the heat in his voice evaporated with it. "That's fine. It's as if not you're a fan of me, either," he said, suddenly neutral in tone again.

"I... okay, listen. Listen to me." She felt as if her brain were pressing up against the front of her skull, but she still had to try to salvage this. "I understand that there are technical accomplishments underpinning certain elaborate fashion styles, and the ability to predict consumer trends, or more accurately, generate consumer trends while maintaining the appearance of mere prediction, is certainly worthy of..."

Jasmaby cut her short with a hand gesture. "Kit. Enough." Neon had been expecting the same anger as before, but instead his voice carried an edge of annoyance that was somehow strange. There was no edge to it — it was a tired, blunt annoyance, lacking hostility. "We don’t have to be fans of each other. We could just try to be…"

Jasmaby trailed off. Neon didn’t feel like filling in the blank, so she stayed quiet as well. 

She had been expecting her own anger. She had spent enough time being angry at a distance. She had assumed it would be impossible to bite it down now, when she actually had to deal with him. 

But there wasn’t anger. There was just a weird, uncomfortable sadness that seemed to hang between the two of them.

Something was wrong. About everything. Nothing about this scenario was right.

She shook her head, trying to dispel the fog that was setting in. Focus, Neon, she told herself. Pay attention. This will be over before you know it. She resumed scanning the crannies and corners of the deserted street, ready to defend herself against any sign of movement. Things will go back to the way they were. The way they’ve been. Don’t forget what you want. 

They were approaching the limits of the old town now. Ahead, Quill Plaza beckoned. The wide open area, with the serene "pen fountain" statue in its center, was normally one of Neon's favorite places to take lunch outside. At the moment, though, the empty space reminded her of nothing so much as the gap where her stomach should be.

They walked. They watched. And still, nothing moved.