Evening crowds bustled around the outdoor patio, an eclectic mix of shapes and forms in all the colors describable (and some in colors not). Aphrodite and Mikael stared at each other, ignoring the curious onlookers in the rest of the patio. It took a second for Brock to realize that Mikael's shield being up for that entire conversation probably wasn't a normal Chad's Chiving Chais experience.

"I know why I need a drink," Mikael started, rolling his shoulders in a manner that indicated stiff muscles. "Holding a level three containment barrier for that long is exhausting. Why do you need a drink?"

Aphrodite gave him a long look, pulling out a hand mirror and grimacing at the streaks of dried blood below her nose.

"...really? After all that?"

"Uhhh, I could use a drink too?"

They both turned to Brock, and it was Mikael who spoke first, mouth twisting into something resembling a smile.

"The kid and I are heading to the Unsavory Unicorn. Not sure if you want to join us. You know what the clientele there can be like."

"Fucking Hardick," Aphrodite breathed out, shuddering. Brock felt a twinge of dismay, then found the appropriate words.

"Wasn't he banned? For like, uhhh, a month?"

Aphrodite's sudden smile matched the disappearance of Mikael's.

"I think I will join you two, then," she purred. "Just give me a minute to freshen up and change in the bathroom." She got up from the table and pointed to a vending stall that had appeared on the opposite street corner. It featured an animated sheep trying to jump over another sheep from behind, both their eyes bugging out as the one on top failed to make it over. "I'll meet you at the Wet Dreams cart."

"...the what cart?" Brock asked, but Aphrodite was already making her way inside Chad's Chiving Chais. Mikael gave him an unpleasant look as they both stood and walked away from their table.

"Why'd you invite her?" he asked quietly. "This was our chance to get away."

"What do you mean, 'why did I invite her?'" Brock replied belligerently, stepping into the empty crossing. "Aphrodite's my friend. Why wouldn't I invite her?"

"Because she's a fucking Sekk-"

Mikael was interrupted by the surgical strike of a truck weaving into the tiniest gap of pedestrians crossing the street, the clipping impact of its front grill sending Brock cartwheeling towards the vending cart in a neat arc that had only one possible destination.

Brock landed hard on the roof of their rendezvous, but not as hard as he was expecting, cushioned by an unexpected layer of soft wool. Before he could catch his breath, he felt something cuddly soft, yet extremely hard, land on him from behind.

"...uhhh-"

Cheers rang out from below, a bevy of magiphones flashing like twinkling stars in Brock's confused vision. Distantly, he noticed Mikael slashing pinpoint strikes at a boxy vehicle that always seemed to be where the detonation of force wasn't as it tore away in screeching rubber, neatly weaving through traffic. The cheers escalated as the pressure on his back increased, and then it disappeared as abruptly as it began, leaving Brock free to roll down to the sidewalk below. He looked around, panting, as people rushed up to invade his personal space.

"A new Bridgebuilder!"

"What's your sysocial? Definitely gonna tag you in-"

"Can you sign my magiphone? Just swipe here-"

"You get fucked by one sheep and-"

Mikael was suddenly there, creating a bubble of tranquility through the simple application of a murderface and barely unsheathed sword.

"Official Cat Squad business. Please disperse."

A bevy of early evening catcalls answered Mikael's announcement, along with a small smattering of non-lethal thrown objects which he didn't bother to deflect. The crowd kept pressing in, and Brock was about to panic when an icy presence smothered the raucous atmosphere like a lead blanket on a lump of uranium.

Whispered voices cut through the air in frozen slashes, their words a discordant mix of sibilant screeching, and bloody icicles grew on the eyelashes of the closest ring of onlookers.

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"Disperse," Mikael ground out, as if he was fighting something clawing at him from the inside, hilt shuddering out against his trembling hand, sheath revealing another fingerwidth of vibrating unsteel, "now."

The gathered crowd decided that this particular piece of street theater wandered a bit too close to personal consequences and wafted away like smoke beneath Brock's blinking gaze. Soon enough, the only movement in their general vicinity were the two sheep and a snickering 'baaaah' that vanished as soon as Brock looked at the cart's roof. In between eyeblinks, something happened, and the top halves of the two animated creatures slithered down the side of the cart in a disturbingly realistic display of meat and entrails. A somnambulistic man with rolling eyes eerily similar to those of the bisected mascots leaned sleepily out of the cart's only opening, a high-collared jacket framing his saturnine face.

"Yoooo, heeeey, that's not-"

Brock stepped in between a visibly vibrating Mikael and the unwitting cart manager.

"Uhhh, I think you should go? And not say anything?" Brock looked over his shoulder at the barely controlled swordgeist. "We probably shouldn't make his day any worse."

"Gonna report this to the System, maaaaaan," the shopkeep bleated, reaching for his magiphone, and Brock slammed the sheepman's hand on the splintering wood of his cart counter, pinning it in place.

Mikael's good people. Even though he's a sociopath. I'm not letting him get punished for the weird shit that happens around me.

Naturally, Bindy chose that instant to fly out of Brock's coat pocket.

"No intimidating people, Brock! Even if they're interfering with an ongoing investigation! Let's make you the best you you can be! Hipthrusts!"

Brock grimaced at the sudden sexually gyrating apparition, but the proprieter of the Wet Dreams cart was the one who flinched.

"Okaaaay," the shopkeep cowered. "Didn't see nothing." One wildly rolling eye stopped its lunatic spin to fix Brock with a piercing gaze. "You know, you caaaaaan chaaaaaange your settings in-"

"If you say it," Brock breathed out, every muscle tingling with lightning impulses, "I... might do something we both regret."

They stared at each other for a long moment, surface appearances bleeding away to the bitter truths within. Brock's eyes caught on the brief glint of metal flashing beneath the shopkeep's high collar, and madly rotating pupils reflected his own recognition.

"...uhhh, sorry. Sorry. We're supposed to meet a friend here. I'm not trying to make trouble. Neither of us are." He flicked his eyes towards Mikael, still trembling against the sword trying to unsheathe itself. "I promise."

The sheepman sucked in a deep breath, eyes spinning even faster, and Brock tensed, preparing himself for the violence that seemed to accompany him every time he tried to talk someone down in this weird new world.

"Dominique?" An unfamiliar voice intruded, accompanied by a statuesque figure sliding up to the cart's counter between Brock and the shopkeep, wild mane of black hair framing a delicately chiseled face that wouldn't have been out of place in history books. "Are you on one of your moods again?"

Brock goggled at the ravenesque reaver beside him, momentarily at a loss for words, but his befuddlement was nothing compared to the confusion roiling the sheepman. Mikael panted behind them, all his concentration on his hand keeping the vibrating hilt of his sword from inching out further. The intruder took her opening and ran with it.

"Oh, Dominique, Dom, you must forgive my friend and his friend, they've only just arrived," she winked, "in the city and they've no idea how to conduct themselves appropriately. Perhaps you have something that will settle their nerves?"

The sheepman, Dom, had nothing to say, but it was a different kind of silence compared to the previous one, bewildered instead of hostile.

"...and you aaaaaare-"

"Oh, Dom," the woman smiled coquettishly, "we've known each other for ages, you know, the uppers at the Upside, and the dives along the Downside, you know."

The sheepman's spinning eyes slowed, caught in some sort of counter-rotating current.

"I... know?"

"That's right," the woman cooed, "you certainly do. Now, me and my friends here are heading out to an ultra exclusive get-together, one of the primo clubs that I might be able to get you an invitation to in a couple days but only if you don't make a fuss now because you need to make sure you're taking care of your livelihood, right?"

"I... aaaaaaam?"

"You absolutely are," she agreed cheerfully, grabbing Brock by the sleeve, while simultaneously slamming Mikael's hand down on the hilt of his blade, vanishing the worrisome sliver of unconstrained steel. "There's nothing to see here other than some tourists that you won't remember tomorrow morning, right?"

The man with rolling sheep eyes tried to fix them with a suspicious glare but couldn't muster more than a half-hearted squint.

"...get out of here if you aren't buying anything, you pikers. A mansheep needs to make a living."

"Absolutely, Dom, and can I say how good it was to see you again, send my love to the family, hugs and smooches, give baby Bertha a kiss for me."

The imposing woman Brock had never seen before dragged him and a still vibrating Mikael away from the bewildered vendor, around a corner into a deserted alley, then leaned in close with a fierce expression on her face.

"Seriously!? I leave for one minute to fix myself up and you two," she glared at Mikael, "are three seconds away from starting some shit right across the street?" She pursed her lips like she wanted to spit, looked at them, then turned away and spat. When she turned back, her face was hard, and her hand was already on Mikael's, hovering over the grip of his sword. "What happened to professionalism?"

"It's been," Mikael groaned, fingers twitching toward the sweat-stained leather at his hip, "a long day. I thought we were getting a drink."

The black-haired goddess encompassing Brock's world flared like a late-stage sun, then visibly banked herself.

"We were supposed to be doing that!" She turned to Brock, and he flushed under her piercing attention. "Why did you feel the need to get fucked by a sheep in front of a hundred people?"

"...whut?"

"Don't you 'whut' me! I told you and your psycho shadow to wait across the street. How could you possibly screw that up?"

"...I got hit by a truck?" Brock gulped. "Also, who are you?"

"You," the woman drew herself up, posing in the grimy squalor of the alley, "can call me Venus."

Brock sighed.

"Hey, Aphrodite. So that's what you meant about getting changed."