Art therapy did wonders to calm my nerves and we parted not soon thereafter. I was restless that night in the wired but tired way that you get when you don't know what's going to happen.

I finally overslept my time waking up when the sun glared it's soft deathly rays into my poor face.

Xueyie had let herself in, shortly after I woke up. Thankfully I had tea ready to go but my stomach was telling me that it was time to eat soon. It wasn't the normal hunger, getting stronger had changed it. It was a hunger from a distance away, with some of the essential parts removed.

Like, I could eat.

I gave her a grin.

"Do you have time?"

"Of course, just let me get my shirt on," I said, stretching.

"Good. I have to rehearse in the afternoon, but for now, I wanted to talk."

"Do you want to vent, or are you problem oriented right now?"

"Let's start with venting. That might take us down a productive path."

There have been times that someone went into a crisis and I had to push an appointment back for them to accommodate. It didn't come up that often, but it happened, especially around holidays. I was super happy to be able to video chat with my patients, but now? With nothing holding me back except keeping out of trouble and the Red Fangs eyesight, it was good to have a focus. It would serve to keep me out of a crisis at least.

I gestured for her to get on with it, the local equivalent a small one handed gesture that she mirrored.

"I'm getting tired of hearing that I have to be this person that my parents want me to be. This is a ridiculous waste of my time," she said,"Not this as in therapy, but the whole 'replace your cousin who just do happened to be murdered on short notice' just hurts."

I pulled a gi hoodie over, aware that she was looking at my abs. Those hadn't been so pronounced a few weeks ago and I was happy that something was looking up. Or poking out or whatever.

"You're still going to do it, though. You'll be surrounded by powerful cultivators. You'll be safer than we can make you," I said.

"I... what is safety without me being able to make a meaningful choice in my own destiny?" she said, her perfect hair shimmering under the direct sun,"If they say jump, I have to jump for the good of the clan. Or as mother says,'For the love of the stage'. Ugh."

I had to hold a hand up to block the shimmer briefly. One day I was going to have an in depth conversation about the amount of time this culture dedicated to it's perfect hair.

"Xueyie, you let them talk you into this. You agreed to be an understudy and they had an altogether understandable expectation that you would hold up your end of the bargain. You getting what you want from them is predicated on your continuing to do what they want. Additionally, this might be to our advantage."

"How could this possibly be to our advantage?"

"They're not going to be able to make a move on you, even if they wanted to. You're going to be under a lot of scrutiny yes, but you'll be protected by third realm cultivators. Surely that can't be a problem for you."

I had taken some time to develop a devil's advocate position for her and this felt like the strongest argument I could muster. Unless she absconded to the Moon clan compound under a heavily armed escort, she wouldn't get the same level of guard.

"I don't - look it feels like I'm a prisoner. Recruiting new people largely left me to my own devices, yes but I wasn't utterly beholden to the families schedule. I did my understudy work, politely sat around and then it was done. It's only because my cousin and I are so nealy identical that I even got her understudy role."

I wanted to pause there to have her think about that but another thought occured to me.

"Nearly identical?"

I had never seen her cousin and I didn't want to say that all cultivators looked the same but if you have seen one you might have seen how a bunch of them look(with a pallet swap of course).

"Yes... we are-were so close in age and looks that we were often confused for sisters. I never had a sister, but we were close."

"This-today is a little soon and I think a lot of what you're saying is valid, but I think that we need to talk about *how* nearly identical you were."

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"Why would we need to do that?"

"They were willing to kill a girl that looked just like you for whatever reason. What if they killed the wrong girl?"

Now I'm going to tell you that I'e seen damn near everything in my office, but Xueyie nearly throwing up everything that she had eaten in the past two days was a bit much.

That fact that they could have been looking for her started my wave of nausea. The tone of the recent 'recruitment drive' went from Tea party to Donner party real quick.

The Germans have a term that translates roughly to grief bacon and it's one of those things that you never understand until you're there present in your grief and you just want a tray of food. No, a cart of food. Some people withdraw into themselves after such a traumatic event but most are hungry and don't even know it.

Sadly it looked like all of her grief bacon had run its course. If I had more, I would have started cooking or something. I missed my fridge with all of the accompanying photos. Or more accurately, the ease with which I could turn something cold into something edible. That was something that I could import to here if they hadn't already figured out a better way to do the same thing with qi.

"Well, what if they did?" I whispered, not knowing where my mouth was taking me this time, "if they were looking for you, they will realize that you were the wrong one and come after their target and...were you followed?"

A loud creaking sound from below the safehouse and we were both on edge. I held up a finger for quiet and pointed for Min to head off the outer stairwell.

Xueyie, her eye makeup smeared all to heck, took up a window and looked out. Her face was now unreadable. Screw anyone who says that theater makeup doesn't run. Her brand did.

I could potentially outrun most of the red fangs enforcers. Xueyie probably couldn't say the same, despite our first meeting being the same sort of running from the recruiters thing that Min had chided me about multiple times. Of course, her I fought to a stand still and then recruited for my own nefarious purposes.

Ever so slowly, I creaked open the door for Min to slip out and then looked at the second level stone floor. Whoever it was would have to go up the stone steps and then turn on the outdoor area. I had suspected that they would be on to our location at some point in time, as they had harassed Fei.

I thought I had prepared well, working on hiding my cultivation. It had the distinct sense that nothing I could have done would be enough as two enforcers turned the corner.

My pulse slowed as I intentionally moved into a sprinters crouch. I was going to bowl and these two were my pins.

With a calm even hand, I motioned for Xueyie to follow as I ran straight as the two short haired men, attempting to clothesline both of them.

The wrestling move appeared to be completely unexpected as though both were strong, neither had expected it.

Both of them fell on their asses and in a moment, Xueyie was on the left one, jabbing him in the stomach in a flurry of blows.

I could see the breath and life fly out of the man as she pummeled him.

My short haired enforcer tried standing up but I stopped him, holding his throat with my palm.

"Who sent you?" I barked.

The only sound was Xueyie beating the piss out of the poor guy she had gotten to first.

His reply was a wan smile.

"The Sect of the-" I slapped him hard enough to hurt his mother and his now unconscious body flew down the stairwell before rolling into several unnatural contortions.

"We have company-Oh you went and had fun without me," Min said from behind us.

"How-fucking-dare-you-interrept-my-therapy," Xueyie yelled, her punches punctuating the mans chest and her speech.

"He's unconscious."

She kept hitting him, harder now.

"Xueyie! HE IS UNCONSCIOUS!" I yelled, "And we have to move. Min can you handle this?"

"What do you mean, handle this? I'm not in the habit of killing men in cold blood."

"No...not that can you get them in the dream state and glean something from them? Oh fuck. Where's Xiru?"

I bolted down the steps, taking them four at a time and then turned to see Fei crumpled against the walls.

"I did it sir," he said, smiling, "I held them off..."

"No! No-no-no-no," I said, frantic.

Xueyie was immediately beside me.

"Xiru! Oh heavens, Moon Fei!" she said, sitting down to console the man.

To the world, it looked like he had almost been shoved into a wall but the marble stone had held leaving a man shaped dent behind him. He almost certainly had internal organ damage.

"If they sent two, they may have sent more," Xiru said from the door, handing me a large empty sack.

I looked at him in puzzlement. This was just a bit too much to take in such short order. We had developed contingencies but we hadn't had to act on them. This was the first time that Fei had been back in a week and they had probably just tracked him here.

I fumed.

"It's for their bodies," he said, "Cart is out back. If I were you, I would take them outside of the border and dump them once you got enough information out of them. Or dump them into the canals and feed the great beasts of the sea. Either way I think that my visit to my cousin is long overdue and the Tea Brokers union might want their safe house back."

"I... thank you for this. We'll send word once we're safe."

What I didn't say was that if they could find us here, they were probably already tracking Moon Fei and Moon Xiru wherever they went so it might be that we needed to accelerate our plans.

"Here's the bug out bag you asked for, and it will do well with the bulk tea moving cart that just happened to become available," he grabbed another sack, handing it to Xueyie, then pulled a rickshaw type cart out from the side of the building.

I grabbed the man that I had knocked out, quickly checking his pulse, before stuffing him into my sack. Xueyie followed as well. By that time, Xiru had gotten Fei up and the two had begun hobbling away.

"I'll send word to my auntie as well. She'll be interested and she has a summer home that you may find amenable."

His familiar usage of pronouns was something that took my by surprise, but no more than the two men who were now lying in a rickshaw that I picked up.

"Are you coming with?"

"It appears I have no other choice. Thank you Moon Xiru, and Moon Fei stay out of trouble," she said as we began to run in a direction that I hoped would be safest, towards where I had come into this world, one hand on each arm of the cart.

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