"Moon Fei," I said, gripping his arm, "How fast can you run?"

That was when he noticed. Taoists apparently didn't like their secrets getting out. The woman that was following us was moving with a grace that underlined her ability. I didn't know if she was going to try to kill us, or just send a message-by killing us.

Moon Fei, finally getting the impetus to move made me smile. Then he started sprinting. Not to be outdone by my contemporaries, I joined him.

"This one humbly begs the cultivator for assistance," he said,"if you can deal with this problem, then I will forfeit part of my pay for this job."

"Say less, Fam."

His confused state nearly made him run straight into a mango cart. I turned on a dime, feeling fully in control.

The woman who had been tailing us all of a sudden became a lot clearer. Blue and pink robes made me think that she was an off duty stage performer. When I squared off against her, she took notice. I had picked an alleyway as far away from the madding crowds as I could.

I softened my lower back, sinking my right leg behind me. My arms assumed the cloud hands ready position. That was when she dropped into her own fighting stance.

"Who are you? What Sect do you represent? Red Fang?" Her voice was clear across the alleyway.

"I am Unaligned. You don't need to fight me. I have nothing you want. Disregard my friend, he didn't know what he said."

"He slandered the Taoist Sect.”

I pushed my hands forward, readying a single whip. I was grateful for the first time in my life that my mother dragged me to all of her Tai Chi lessons while I was in high school. I had cursed her out in my head because my ass didn't want to get whooped, but I went for her sake. Really having to use any of it ever was one of the more surprising things that kept me safe. It looked hokey as fuck, but damn if the footwork didn't make me feel like a kung fu master.

Her punch darted forwards, and I snapped it to the right with my single whip punch. She immediately was off center, and I let her fall in a heap.

"You don't think that following innocent people who make unfounded claims might work out worse for you?"

I shifted into empty stance. She got up.

"This has to be a misunderstanding. I'm not here because someone said something. I'm here to recruit you. Why didn't you answer our letter?"

"What letter?" The dark haired woman in the pink and blue robes looked exasperated at me.

"Also I'm not ready to join a Sect. I need to get a better lay of the land."

She stood up, throwing a heavy roundhouse kick.

Empty stance intact, I stepped out of range. This time I didn't block or attempt a counter. She caught herself before glaring at me.

“You have had enough time."

"If you all fight like this, oh good kick by the way, then I don't think I need to join anyone."

She tried to sweep my legs.

I jumped, just enough to clear her legs. Then she went with a high kick which I had to block. I went into hand strums the lute and recovered, stepping back. She made an error, placing herself between me and the wall.

"I would respectfully assert that you would be an asset to the Taoist Sect. Your acting abilities alone would make you an excellent candidate to be our newest clown."

I slammed her into the wall. It would be a shame to not fix her problem. She then moved, circling away from the wall. She was limping a tiny bit.

"And I would respectfully say that what I do is none of your business. The only clown here is continuing to miss me time after time."

We exchanged another flurry of blows. Whoever this was, she had optimized her training for flair not effect. If I ever saw my mother again, I was going to thank her for the lessons. Actually, scratch that, because she would have that smug look that I hate.

"You realize that trying to recruit this way makes your Sect look aggressive."

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I blocked two punches returning to the even footing of an empty stance.

"Just join us! You need training, and the Sect will take care of you."

"Regrettably, I must decline. I will not rush you Sect. And this whole recruitment had me worried for you. Do you want to sit down and talk about how the Taoists make you feel? It seems like they don't give you the space to take care of your own needs."

There I stood, arms out ready to whip forward, when she laughed.

"What do you care about how I feel?"

"I don't, but you...what? "

She sat down.

"You're hyper vigilant," I said holding up a hand, putting fingers up one by one, "It seems like if you fail, you'll be punished. You're aggressive for no reason, and you're twitchy. That doesn't seem like a good relationship. It seems like you're in a bad romance."

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"It's like this. There's this video I keep seeing. It's a satire of porn, right? There's a milf who is trying to pay a plumber for his work, but her husband doesn't let her have access to the money. Now I know what you're thinking, where the heck is this going? Then the plumber is like, that's awful. That's financial abuse. And it got me thinking about this other mom in my group and how her husband is about their money and I don't want things to be like that in my life," Ms. Johnson, a mid thirties mother of two was in my office to take a breather. Her youngest was going to daycare and her oldest just hit preschool and as a stay at home mother she sought me out because I was a dad.

"Do you feel threatened in your own life?"

She paused to consider.

"I don't feel threatened. Matt, he is good with the kids and always willing to help out, but with her...with Jessica... I don't know what to say. Sometimes she just drops these bombs on me and then I'm there like .... Can I fix this? Do I engage? She doesn't seem to think that this is a problem!"

"And you do?"

"I do!"

"It's not incumbent upon you to fix everyone's problems."

She was in a stressful situation and I didn't blame her. Finding a circle of mom friends was one of my wife's biggest successes. Keeping it to other people we met in Los Angeles was tough, but since a lot of our friends weren't having kids, it was to be expected.

"I want my friends to be okay."

"You can't expect to fix the problems of people around you. Was it your responsibility to manage your parents emotions growing up?"

She nodded, grabbing a tissue.

"I just want to be a good girl." (And I wanted to make sure that she didn't cast her aspersions on me in some strange kink way. I had my hands full with the girls after all.)

"And you are one! If we just go by what you're telling me, you're great!"

I wasn't supposed to pass value judgements on people in session, but sometimes I bent the rules.

"You're not everyone's fixer. You can be her friend without trying to fix her. It might be hard but if she was really in trouble, would you be there for her?"

"Yes... Yes I would. I already told her to start withdrawing cash every time she gets groceries just in case."

I really loved the stories that my clients told me. They became a part of me, something that I held tightly onto at work. Hyper-vigilance, like what I expect Ms. Johnson was a willing participant in, was a way that fixers were able to try to smooth everything over. They really wanted to control their situation.

She also was hyper vigilant because she grew up with a narcissistic mother who unloaded on her. When she came through, I identified it immediately, and it was one of those things that because she was responsible for others emotional regulation growing up, she latched onto as an adult.

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"So what you're saying is that... I have a choice?"

"You always have a choice," I said.

The woman, who I found out was named Jin Xinyue, was really rushing through a midlife crisis of her own making. We had stopped fighting, instead sitting down to stare daggers at each other. Well, she was staring me down, even as I unpeeled her like an onion.

"I just have been people pleasing my whole life and not thinking things through with my own intuition-"

"It's common for people pleasers to not know who they are. Who are you without the Taoists? Take away the group and who are you?" I said. The rapport was going good and all I needed was for her to not have a case of incurable impostor syndrome and...

She blubbered.

"I don't know! They've been my life for as long as I can recall!"

"You're looking for their reaction. You have been getting something out of it. But really you need to be able to look inwards. Otherwise... you'll just end up doing things for others."

"I...I..."

I wish that we were in my office. I would have offered her a tissue. I kept a box on the side table next to the couch. Lots of people tended to use them, but a slim minority just didn't. An even worse group brought their own crumpled tissues to therapy, avoiding the ones I had. It was almost like they didn't know they were there.

She just sat there in abject existential horror for a long moment. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

"There's a better way."

She looked up. I sighed deeply.

"If you want to edit your Sect, go out on your own, you're going to need to establish some good boundaries. I can help walk through getting out of this clearly abusive relationship. Think about it this way, when was the last time that you can recall doing something just for you?"

Tears welled up in her eyes. She looked like a lost puppy. From trying to beat my head in, to now looking lost and afraid, I may have overplayed my hand. I swear that I never intended to gentle parent anyone, but there I was in my second go at life, ready to adopt a first person into a potential found family.

"You can come talk to me," I said, holding out a hand,"Provided that you don't try to fight me or my dude over there."

I gestured to where I guessed Fei was cowering.

Moon Fei recovered, his head popping out above a set of stairs down the road. He exhaled a breath loud enough for me to hear clearly without my aura enhanced senses. It was more of a huff and I was going to have to talk to him about that. No sense in showing his actual feelings in front of a guest. I liked him so far. Fei had that street smart urchin who somehow made it in the world thing going for him.

"I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything. Just leave us be. Tell your people that we outran you or something, or the trail led nowhere. Then, come meet me next time and we can talk."

"I would ... I would like to talk to someone..."

I brightened.

"Well, that is all you had to say," I said.