As hard as Ruvle trained in the monastery, it was a vacation compared to the notary workdays that followed. Every branch of government had new axes to grind on her. Citizen Identification Bureau dropped an audit in her lap about not being able to confirm that she used to be Mielo and thus her name change upon becoming a notary might be invalid, which could break some more important documents. Flood Protection Management wanted to take a look at her building’s foundation and then complain at her about cracks in the concrete, which she silenced by digging up paperwork dating back to her father that showed that they were present on the last inspection and deemed fine then. A Child Safety Official didn’t like the dartboard in the lobby; the sharp points might stab a kid. None of the fun departments bothered her—just the annoying ones, ones looking for an excuse to shut down her office.

And because she was a notary worth her ink, they bounced off her. Entire back rooms full of records saved her skin many a time before, and would many a time in the future.

Investigators kept conveniently showing up just before closing, too, to discuss her participation in the raid. There was little to discuss, open-and-shut—but she could present the form proving that Othek bequeathed the genetics kit to her. (She’d spent her spare moments researching what genetic changes to make, taking the Thoughtful approach and exploring; she had to get this one-use boon exactly right.) No one wanted to lock away a person whose public space they could rely on to meet new people and have the important moments of their life recognized as such—but the negotiations were still difficult, even with common lawmen. She scraped her way out of life-ruining legal trouble, but the verdict for how to punish her hung unnamed.

As for Chain’s scarf? One of the foam insulation panels lining her attic was loose and bulky enough to fit it.

After a few more days of work, one of her regularly-scheduled closed days came around. Ruvle sat underneath the dartboard, in her black-and-white notary suit, cross-legged and manipulating a pair of tweezers between two fingers. She peered through a magnifying glass, focused intently upon it.

Chain, across the room, thumbed through piles of documents she’d set out for him in boxes—he’d moved them to the table, so he could eat his meal and look through paper consecutively. Having to go through old filing cabinets over and over had turned up some records of true citizens that she thought he might like to study. “Yeah, situation hasn’t changed. None of these guys are remotely vulnerable. It’s true citizen vs. true citizen out there,” he said, with a sigh. He’d straightened his hair, washed his clothes and turned his shoes back on since the start of hiding. “This one guy has a steel mecha-colossus piloted by a bunch of brain-in-a-jars in his place. And another has a door that won’t open unless you’ve Consolidated with at least eighty-two other people, but this is an old paper so it might be more by now.”

“Doesn’t have to be a raid…” Ruvle mumbled, trying not to expel too many air currents from her breath.

“Yeah, but. Then we’re talking actually fighting a true citizen.”

And fighting someone above Othek’s level, with competence, felt intractable. She continued twisting her tweezers.

“We just gotta train more, I think,” he said. “I don’t know how much. The bar is so high that I don’t know how high it is, or how long it takes to get there.” He idly grabbed a piece of the roast on the table, with brass one-handed tongs, and took a bite. “Learn new skills until one of them makes something look not impossible anymore.”

Ruvle pinched the tweezers closed. “That’s what I’m doing. ...if you’re eating now, are you done with the documents?”

“No. Why?”

“Because I don’t want grease on them.”

He shrugged and took another bite. “Then I’m done with them. Dang, this is good.”

Ruvle smiled. “Thanks. It’s really easy; you unroll a Mt. Radius water snake, add the spices Dad always uses and bake it. It’s great every time.”

“Are you not gonna have some of this?” he asked, pointing at her with the tongs.

She sighed and looked back through the magnifying glass, to the tweezers. “No, I need to be losing weight by this point,” she explained. “I can’t have extra body fat for higher hyperdexterity; there’s no muscle in it.”

“Wow, that sucks. Don’t tell me you’re gonna starve when you’re at the top.”

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“I won’t. Elial is a twig, but she’s...have you seen her? She’s healthy, and she’s at Fine.”

“Haven’t met her.” He clicked his tongs together a few times. “I dunno, it just sucks that you’re training so hard and don’t get to at least eat like it.”

Ruvle examined the scratches and wear grooves in the tweezers again, looking for another angle of approach. “It takes sacrifices.” Hyperdexterity had declined for a reason, in this age dominated by Dye, wealth, and Consolidation. “I can’t reach Fine without losing a part of my body. Elial is more precise than you can possibly be if you still have a pulse. It’s just so big, the pressure oscillation, your skin expanding and contracting…” she could see shades of that in the magnifying glass; as still as she held her hand, the pump of her blood jostled her muscles on sub-millimeter scale, the beat of flowing life vibrating the drum that played it, never truly still, lest the music coda and never play again. “I need an artificial heart, the old kind that flows constantly instead of beating. And until then, I’m not ready. My nerves can’t phase transition.”

Chain chewed on the snake roast, thinking. “I don’t wanna say I don’t like it, because you’re in charge of your own life and everything. But that’s a big bet. I just hope it pays off for you, you know?”

“It will.” She smiled.

“You gotta be pretty close to Fine then, right?” He grinned.

“...No, not. Not at all, we’ve been over this. Chain, come here.”

He did, his light-up shoes blasting the floor with blue shine with each step. “Something wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong, I just have something to show you. Here.” She held up the tweezers, keeping them a hair’s width apart. “See what I’m working on?”

He squinted at the tweezers. He leaned in. He tilted his head left and right and left again. He got closer, then stepped back, then crouched and gave it one more look. “...Nah?”

She handed him the magnifying glass. “Now try it.”

Chain went face-to-face with the tweezers, one eye filling the glass like a fish from her view. “I still don’t...oh dang, there it is. Is that a puzzle cube?”

“Three by three by three,” Ruvle said. “I’m not Fine. Fine could solve this with fingers. I’m not even close!”

Chain whistled.

“I’m having to twist it with tweezers.”

“How? It’s a lot smaller than the tip.”

“There’s a scratch under the lip of the left tip, and I can get one end sort of stuck against it, and if I rub in a certain direction with the other tip to turn a face—”

“Aw no.”

“It’s called needlework; it’s what I was working on before we started all this,” Ruvle explained. “Getting more precise, moving small distances, controlling myself tightly enough to solve this, it’s what that ‘plucking atoms’ is really called, needlework.”

“Whoa. And that’s how you got those locks open at the spire?” He lowered the magnifying glass. “...oh, cool, now that I know what I’m looking for, I can see it.”

“It was a little needlework,” She thought back to it. “Gross dexterity can still pick really good locks. Needlework was how I could open them the first time with just the directions you were giving me. I’m still practicing, and I’ll get a lot better when I’m Fine.” She could probably ask Elial for a second skill recommendation to work on, too. Flydodging and gentle steps had been valuable additions to basic Coarse hyperdexterity, and now with only improved needlework as her next target, the imaginary space for a second training goal had nothing in it. (Losing weight didn’t count.) Running her office and training at the same time had kept Ruvle in multitasking mode ever since initiation.

“Aces, so am I waiting for you to be Fine before we try something? How do we know when you’re there? It sounds kinda subjective, like a title.”

“It’s not. I’ll know.” ...Oh, wait, she knew what he was getting at. She set her tweezers aside, the scratch on the left tong facing up, so the puzzle box wouldn’t bounce away. “It’s not a political label; it’s not like job titles or something you take a test for. Elial says every level of Exaction is a big jump. It’s more obvious the higher up you go, she tells me? There’s a test for Coarse but you sort of already feel it; it was like I broke through a ceiling when I got there and I knew I was ready for the test. No one ‘barely’ passes or fails by a few seconds. Fine is going to be...I’ll get hypervoluntarism. I won’t miss that. And I think when you get Ultrafine, everyone around you can tell right away, too, but I don’t know what’s involved in that...are you okay, Chain?” she added.

His pensive, faraway expression tipped her off. He slid his mask back over his face, deliberate and slow. “...you’re a way harder worker than I am. I’m good. I just gotta take how you do things to heart.” She smiled as he spoke. “It’s not like I’m doing anything else lately. I gotta be spending way more time wrangling tislets.”

“Yes. Do it when you’re part of your scarf all day.”

“I kinda do, but not enough. Heck, I resist the alcazar, I should be exploiting the heck out of that for more testing time. Yeah, that’s how we’re gonna train more.” He snapped his fingers after the insight. “Okay, I’m gonna finish eating and tomorrow morning, we’ll roll.”

“You’ll roll. I have a notary office to run!” She threw up her hands in protest, and Chain cackled.