That next morning I woke up extra early. I was giddy with energy.

First off I was going to look at my list, make some notes and then see about next steps.

(1) Get established

(2) Find a safe house

(3) Find a way home?

(4) Make enough money to support 1 and 2

Looking at it with fresh eyes, I could see that getting established would require a safe house and that would require money. It was either that or join a Sect with their own lodging. Moon Xiru probably knew a guy.

I set out to the front desk of the hotel, once again looking for Moon Fei. I hadn't seen him in a day and I was getting nervous. I was happy to see him sleeping behind the desk.

I was less happy to see the amount of bruises and cuts he had on his face and arm.

He looked like he had been mugged for Taylor Swift concert tickets.

"Moon Fei. Who did this to you?"

He startled awake.

"Oh! Elder Brother... This one is-"

"Cut the crap, Fei-I was looking for you yesterday."

"-apologies..."

He bowed so deeply I could swear I heard a vertebrae scream.

I gave him my best dad look. The one where you get really silent and you just stare at them. They know what they have to do, and you just will them to do it.

I have been told that mine makes me look a bit constipated, but would you trust the word of my ex wife? Either way he relaxed. His head left the floor barely a hair as he addressed me.

"This one is unworthy of your consideration, Elder brother. This one will endeavor to keep his wits about him from now on."

"You got jumped, didn't you," I said flatly.

His face told me all I needed to know.

The large white marble desk that noted the name of the Green Air Inn was between us or I would have gently patted him on the shoulder.

"What did they want? Was this about me?"

"Really, Elder Brother this-"

I bit my lip back. His head jerked up.

"-this one apologizes for any inconvenience his being away from work yesterday may have caused. This one had to attend to personal matters."

"Moon Fei. What. Happened."

Another bellhop rounded a corner and saw the two of us locked in discussion. He took a brief glance and noped out of it.

"They want me to pressure you to join. They... Were trying to find a way to make me recruit you for their cause."

"Moon Fei, listen carefully...who?"

___

"I'm fed up with her. Do you know what she told me this week? Her rat bastard husband got her pregnant! Pregnant!"

Ms. Johnson was pacing around again.

"This is your mom friend correct?"

Today she had called me for an emergency session. I hadn't understood what she wanted, but I was prepared for anything.

"Her being pregnant," I said, "How does that make you feel?"

She stopped pacing right by my box of tissues.

"I'm mad at her husband for being so shitty. I...if I was her-"

"-which you're not."

"If I was her I would have left him a long time ago. She does every thing at home. You know he has never changed a diaper? My husband said that he took pride in it. Ugh."

I tended to look down on men who decided to have children and then let their partners do all of the emotional and physical labor that it took to raise them. A divorce lawyer I was friends with later that day told me about this epidemic of divorces that had been started by women realizing that they had been working moms who did everything at home and realizing they were married to grown up man children, left.

"That's ridiculous," I said, "and also how exactly? Babies generate a mountain of diapers."

She shrugged.

"I wish I knew what she sees in him, but apparently it's his dick game. Explains how she got pregnant. I just think about how she... She you know she hasn't seen her primary care doctor since the last one was born."

I gasped. She was going on about this woman and I was thinking I finally got it.

"This reminds you of your father, doesn't it."

She stopped pacing and sat down next to me. Our seats were at a diagonal so our knees were nearly touching.

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"You know you grow up thinking that adults are brave and king and smart and they think things through, and then you're an adult and you realize that it's not so simple. Then you think, surely some people are nice? Surely it can't be like this for everyone. And you're -I'm- hoping that it's... That it gets better. I need it to get better. And it got better, for me. But."

She paused contemplative, sitting back in the chair.

"But...I want my friends to not be attached to misogynists and I feel like that shouldn't be such a huge imposition."

"That's a reasonable boundary."

I really hoped she could do something to help herself. Her friend was probably a little beyond us. But we got her pregnancy out of the way, and once we got that done we returned to our normal topics.

She had finally realized that she could safely bitch about her life here, but I was going to ask her to work on herself as well.

"So you want to help. That's admirable. But she hasn't asked and you can't just impose yourself into someone else's relationship or life. Even if she did ask what help you could give would by necessity be limited since you have your own things to worry about."

The first couple of sessions she had had difficulty accepting that other people could watch her kids while she was here. We had to work through that. Once her childcare has said no last minute and she was forced to bring her toddler and that was fine because she was mostly pre verbal, but she already had a lot on her plate.

"I suppose that's right."

"If she comes to you with a problem, you have to ask her if she wants to bitch about it or if she wants a solution. You can be supportive in that way."

She brightened.

___

"Moon Xiru," I said, addressing the man with the most gorgeous hair around,"a moment of your time if you would."

Moon Fei and I had walked down to the tea broker's holdings.

He didn't have any customers and his sacks of tea looked to be in the midst of an inventory.

Fei still was shaken up. They had tried to pull information about me from him. This was personal now and we were going to have to do a little meeting.

"I have been to the tea shop multiple times. I find it to be a rather mundane affair. I can go over what I have seen of their operation, and it looks like they depend on volume of throughput. They need a lot of customers to be viable. That or it's just a front for something else."

Really it was boring exactly how normal the shop was, if you took into account that it was a first of its kind shop.

Moon Fri nodded his ascent.

"Elder Brother is correct, cousin. I believe that the tea house may have the backing of the Taoist Sect or their protection. This is due to how often they have a presence there. Whether a deterrent or just someone posted there to be a security measure, they thought it was important enough to keep someone there."

He explained how we had been chased by a Taoist evangelist two days prior. I may have omitted the part where she was my new client.

That could come later.

"That is troublesome. They may cut into our profits if they're allowed to grow."

"Is that likely, elder brother?" Moon Fei asked.

I doubted that it was likely. A big box gym opening was a threat to the other big box gyms, but a Pilates gym opening up?

The clientele was different.

"Are you sure that the same people that buy your product are the ones going to the tea house? This seems like a bit of a leap."

"How so?"

Moon Xirus raised eyebrows told a story of the endless war between the elder generation and the younger. It said something about older men and women thinking they knew better and then getting dug in, fighting the good fight against progress and change.

"That may be so. We cannot treat them as not a threat though. The Tea brokers union is very invested in this endeavor, and they made me their point man on this. We're willing to spend a lot to keep ourselves where we are."

The tea brokers union sounded like a cartel, but I wasn't going to bite the hand that fed me. Moon Xiru sighed deeply and handed me a pouch.

"For services rendered. We hope that this will continue to be a fruitful relationship."

I shook the bag, pleased with the sound.

"Does this mean that you'll let me speak to one of the Moon clan cultivators? I have several questions that I want answered."

"Naturally. The clan can have them sent to you or you can go there."

"Do... Do you have any other jobs?" I said, scratching my head a bit.

"We may. Let this one send a runner to the clan headquarters. The Tea brokers union will pay for you to continue to monitor that abomination."

Moon Xiru walked to find a young man in a sleeveless worker's garb across the way and gave him instructions in a whisper. He ran off with a start.

They knew I needed work. I knew that they needed a cultivator for some of it. They had training, I had what? Some therapy to deliver them? A healthy sense of boundaries?

Some people look down on sex workers because they 'sell their bodies'. But you know who also sells their bodies? Construction workers. Day laborers of all kinds. It's just in a different way.

I was thankful that my mom dragged me to Tai Chi so many times to give me the martial foundation, but yeah it I was going to survive in this dog eat dog world? I would need power. Both the physical kind as well as the political kind.

In the back of my mind, I was still trying to find a way home to my girls, but I had already been gone for four days. Someone would have called in a missing persons report, probably almost immediately after my missed appointment. There had to be a way back. Even if it took a while, I needed to get back to Rachel and Courtney.

"Elder brother Pidge, is everything okay?"

I realized that my face was giving away the funk.

"Moon Fei, I will be okay."

"Is elder brother thinking about evaluating that Taoist woman as a source? The Taoists have access to a lot of important people and their connections are one secondary to the mandarin and the purple robes."

Purple robes meant that the person wearing them represented the government in some capacity. The official state was in deriving power from the emperor on high. The higher ranked, the darker purple. Those in the royal family or local line of succession had fringed gold on arcing up the sleeves of their arms.

"Their theater acts frequently have gold fringed nobility in attendance. It would be worthwhile to get to know her better."

You had got to be kidding me.

I was already thinking about using Jin Xueyie as a client. Perhaps she could find a way to pay for information. The tea brokers union seemed powerful, if mundane.

On the other hand, it seemed like Moon Fei was a soft target. He was still reeling from yesterday. People in power using their power to extract what they need? Check.

I wasn't going to white knight him and take them out on his behalf, but if we were aligned, then this meant a battle, if not a war.

"I think I need to find new digs. The hotel room? It's well known that I frequent there. I need to move somewhere new. I need a safe house or something."

Moon Fei and his cousin exchanged looks.

"We can arrange something," Moon Fei said, "if elder brother Xiru is amenable?"

Xiru grunted acceptance.

"'If Brother Pidge is that concerned, then perhaps we should figure out a long term situation on his behalf. There might be something in"

I needed to make a move, if they were going so far as to abduct the people I had in my employ. I would need to talk to Egiya and Xueyie. If I was going to have to stay off the Sect recruiters radars, then I would need to make certain that it wasn't public knowledge where I was.

On cue the young man with bare arms that Xiru had sent returned bearing a sealed envelope.

"Can we see that trainer today, then?" I said.

Things might be looking up.

Xiru opened the message and nodded.

"It shall be so."

___