On earth, if you had asked me how long I could run at a near dead on sprint with a rickshaw, I would say go into depth about the air speed of a coconut laden swallow until one of my daughters cut me off. They didn't appreciate what they called 'late 1900s works' and I called 'the classics'.

Here? On this new world? Faced with the stark reality of having knocked out two men who had to be convicted felons just based on the length of their hair- men who had every intention to kill or capture me or my friend- I would tell you about ten blocks, give or take a minute. That was when I slowed down, trying to align my breath and steps.

Xueyie for her part had stuck with me, which was probably the most fatherly thing I had ever felt after changing endless diapers.

You know how you sometimes remember things that you did a while ago and cringe? Sidenote: I could never get into the office and it's cringe humor and it's one of the things that drove me and Maxine apart. Anyway I have a strong memory of being a rebellious teenager and commenting obliquely at someone being a father and how that wasn't manly.

He took it in stride and commented that the manliest thing was taking care of his kids. I turned that moment over and over again when Maxine had the girls and though I never apologized since it was clear that he had forgotten, it are me up years later at the strangest times.

So yeah did I think that protecting the weak was manly? Teenage Joe did. Did adult Joe get off on protecting women? No, but my inner child was happy to see her safe.

I say all this to explain that I really didn't want to have to deal with these two idiots. I especially didn't want to murder them, but I especially didn't want them to report back to their boss. That would send a message but I was generally against killing people. Call it a moral code if you will, but this whole experience had changed me. Maybe the game later would give me a skill point and I would get better at something, but more than likely it would take me down a dark path and I like to stay on the lighter fun side.

All of this was rushing through my head as Xueyie deftly turned me around a blue robe check point.

The slight differences between the different neighborhoods were now becoming a bit more familiar to me. We passed through the route that Egiya had taken me on, crossing over it several times to avoid blue robes. I didn't have anything resembling papers for this delivery but if watching years of improv and playing the storyteller did anything for me, it was to instill the value of acting like I belonged.

"Do you think they'll answer questions?" I asked Min.

Min had curled up on my shoulders, her touch just a bit more than a feathers weight.

"No. If the Red Fang are going to send hardened criminals to you then they are operating beyond anything normal. We should assume that these men were meant to confirm your location before a second team perhaps would be sent in for an ambush."

My whole body tensed. I hadn't been thinking like a criminal or a mob boss.

I wasn't a gang leader, I just played one in social deduction games when the situation called for it.

"That makes a lot of sense but these guys were sloppy."

"They might have been working off information only they knew but that is highly doubtful. Better to think of the safe house as compromised and move."

"Are you getting anything from their dreams?"

"At service level... Do you know about the leviathan mines?"

My ears peeled up at something that sounded incongruous.

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"I haven't. That's on the map somewhere?"

"North of the governors holdings. It's ...not a nice place."

I shuddered. In this world of kung fu wizards if a spiritual beast considers someplace not nice that was probably code for 'actively harmful'. I filed that away for later.

Something twinged in the back of my brain as we crossed over into the mainland and so was certain that Min had come out of a trance state.

"It's bad," the moon spirit in the shape of a cat said.

"How bad?"

We kept going past several larger buildings, made more because they had space on the mainland than for anything else. The buildings began to give way to larger clan compounds as we got closer.

"It's about as bad as it can get," Min replied as we passed what seemed like the last street vendor before the crowds were beginning to die down.

We had been moving down the central street at a clip.

"Bad as it can get? Alright, have your secrets. Tell me later."

I stopped us at the last street merchant selling foods because any port in a storm, getting us a pair of fried tentacles on a stick. Xueyie accepted hers with a curr nod while she held onto the cart to keep it from tipping over.

I kept a sedate pace as I walked next to her alternating between looking around and chewing on the rather salty skewer. When I was done, I changed out with her so she could eat. I like to think of myself as equal opportunity feminist and despite being nearly two realms stronger than her, she could hold her own. Real feminists haul their own trash and the way she laid into that one guy, yeah she could help.

"I don't really have a concrete plan to do anything with these men and you seem to know their dreams already, Min, so now that the crowds have died down substantially, would you care to fill us in?"

Min purred.

"These men are monsters and I wouldn't feel bad killing them myself. They-they are demonic cultivators. They need to kill people to get stronger."

"Doesn't everyone?" Xueyie asked.

"No. They need-there is a ritual they do with the dead bodies and they-they have killed so many."

"Oh. OH. Well, fuck," I said.

We kept going back to the pastoral landscape that had drawn me in before. It's hard to have a breakdown while you're in such a calming environment, but one was dawning on me.

I had never killed anyone before. I had gone to Tai Chi and learned some self defense because my mother had dragged me to one, but this was far different. It would be easier if they were faceless goblins but these men had done terrible things.

It's not that I'm a fan of the prison system, though I am a proponent of rehabilitation, but if there ever was someone that deserved death, then these men were probably high on the list. Probably almost as high as whoever had sent them.

"We have to assume that the safe house is compromised. We further have to assume that they're watching Moon Fei, so he is compromised. Xueyie, I don't want to kill these men, but," I said, taking the handles, "I guess I don't want to kill anyone."

"I can take care of that," she said, walking beside me.

The frantic pace had dissolved with our exit from Western Jewel proper. We were now far from the canals and tenements, getting closer to the barriers that kept worse things out.

"Min?"

"Your sense of justice is strong, but these men would just as quickly have killed you. This world is a harsher one than yours and you may need to adapt your thinking."

I soldiered on perhaps because that thought was not on a path that I wanted to be on. I didn't think that criminals were beyond redemption because sometimes the system set up people for failure but this was beyond my normal set of parameters.

Could these men turn into productive members of society? It was doubtful. The mere mention of the script that other demonic cultivators had left at the scene or perhaps placed as a red herring had been enough for Xueyies family to recoil in horror. I could turn them over to the authorities but that would raise a lot of questions about where I had come from. Questions that I didn't have a ready answer for. Sure, I was strong now but I could see them pulling in someone to use me as a science experiment or something. Or, if Min was correct as some sort of living meal for them to advance their cultivation. So not exactly vampires but close to it.

"You know that you can go to the blue robes with these men, right?" Xueyie said.

"That would raise a lot of questions. The first of which is who I am, and why we were able to overpower these first realm cultivators."

"What else would we do with them? They're still breathing. I should end them."

"That's rather forward of you. Min are you absolutely certain that there's nothing good that you can glean from them? Their dreams or nightmares have told you what you needed to know?"

Min held up a paw from the cart. She didn't weigh anything and had done nothing but sit on top of them as we exited town.

"The blue robes would have a lot of questions, but they're equipped to deal with this kind of problem. I don't know how we're going to-what are you doing?" Xueyie said.

I picked up speed. I could see a cultivator approaching our vector at a rapid pace.

"Company is coming."