"That's the way. Tasìa keep that arc inside of a thirty-five degree angle. No more than forty-five. Bend the elbow towards you. Keep it tight."

Annebél had the RokumSokums adjusted to count a strike 4.2 ACD and higher as a successful hit. Anything else, the blue robot was programmed to laugh at Tasìa with a random insult thrown in.

Finally, Tasìa hit the final blow that popped its head up loose from its springs.

It cursed as it walked to its side bench while it pulled the head back in place.

Annebél stretched.

"After we give my boyfriend some salutations and instructions, I have a little joy ride planned for us," Annebél stated. "Are you interested?"

"Are you talking about blowing up the Alfa Romeo HybrClydis?"

Annebél snorted and laughed as Tasìa's voice grew weaker and weaker with each passing syllable. She nodded, with an affirmative stride, "Uh, huh."

Tasìa was mift with the teasing tone and laughter directed at her. Tasìa's back drew up, set prickly. Her little fist drew up into tight balls.

"Oh, you bet I am interested. All I can say to that is," and without any enthusiasm backing the claim, "hell yeah, I am."

Annebél chortled, amused at the discomfort the idea of wonton destruction administered to the aesthetically perfect machine caused the good, little thief.

"It'll do your soul some good to let go of a meaningless, material possession."

I am not going to give her the satisfaction. I am not going to give her the satisfaction.

"Sure, why not. I've been in the acceptance phase of grief for some time, now."

"Right. Hey," Annebél's voice breathed slow and coy. Something entirely different occurred to her.

"I have a certain friend who went missing. Would you know anything about that?"

It took Tasìa a good moment to catch on.

"Ah... Yeah. I think I know the guy you are talking about. Claims to be some sort of magic man?"

"He's my personal trainer when I am a lonely girl in the big city. Keeps me in tip-top professional condition. Hope you didn't hurt him."

Tasìa nodded.

"Yeah. I put a hurting on him."

She wasn't expecting Annebél back so soon, at least for another day. So Tasìa had not bothered to put the Sportive Magician back where she found it.

She led Annebél back to her guest bedroom. The brawler shook her head, glanced sideways, and smirked.

"It even has its own side of the bed now, I see."

Annebél tapped an app on her PA and read it. Her eyes widened as she gave Tasìa a fearful look.

"Holy shit. I'm going need to take him back to the shop for a tune-up."

"Yeah.. sorry about that. Hey, you know what else? I kind of got laid last night. Not really kinda, more like, absolutely plowed."

Annebél beamed with pride as she sat down on the bed.

"So, how did it go?"

Tasìa spread her arms out.

"Boom! Beautifully. Didn't crap on him, even once. And I pissed on him just enough to let him know that I care."

Annebél gave her shoulder a playful punch.

"Well, I was expecting this to take much more time, but you have officially graduated."

"You know something? Since Jún-Jún and I had a little dalliance, I haven't given any thought to Short Stuff and his wondrous staff of the serpentine. After a real man, he seems too - fantastical for my taste."

Annebél nodded.

"I'm not surprised. When you are back in the wilds of the Quadra, you should avoid nanospore entities as much as you can.

"I only got close because I needed them for my own evolution. I had no one to help guide me at the time. We Harvested don't exactly come with an owner's manual, you know?"

Tasìa's eyebrows crossed, curiously.

"Being in such close proximity to them, how did you prevent yourself from becoming Manifested?"

Annebél looked Tasìa squarely in the eye to show she had nothing to hide.

"Those neighbors of mine helped. Before Maestro Sol and his cult became paranoid shut-ins, they were merely spiritual thrill seekers. Well, you know that. But they were also pretty mellow, helpful, and cool, back then. At least to me.

"They showed me how to control my temperament so the prodding of the nanospore entities never seeped into me. I developed a feel for where the edge lay."

Tasìa chuckled, nervously. She considered telling Annebél about the current neighbors a few miles up the street. That changelings who could Hide-Amongst-Us were considered in polite society to be a paranoid superstition of the pre-Salvage times.

She had so much to explain it seemed an unfathomably complicated task to unravel her encounter with the local spooks.

Where to even begin with the phase cat?

Tasìa decided to change the topic instead to something else that scratched at her curiosity.

"I have been meaning to ask you, Annebél. There are certain gifts that I can trigger. Do you, or the other Harvested have anything similar to that?"

Annebél nodded her head.

"Yeah. My blood has an extra dimensionality to it that makes me buoyant in normal atmospheric conditions. In effect, without weighing even an ounce more, of course, since that would be an ex nihil impossibility, I can add density to my muscle and skeletal masses. Also, I have hyper-increased cardiovascular control. What would make someone else's heart explode from overstimulation, barely even tickles my own.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"It was explained to me once in depth by a biotech who worked in the lab district at a former university that got its endowment seized. But, I'm not a biologist, just a French literature major, so I would have a difficult time explaining it better than that."

Tasìa wasn't aware before then what Annebél's highest level of educational achievement happened to be. Besides her obsessions with Baudelaire and French Expressionism, Tasìa made no assumptions about Annebél.

College became near-universal after the Cull Spore Invasion, and the Salvage instituted certain reforms to that effect. Near Universal Higher Education kept a population, that had every right to feel manipulated and controlled, more docile and less aggressive than would have been normal under the Apocalyptic circumstances that they were forced to endure.

Annebél bent her head forward and spoke out of a tight little puss.

"You look a little surprised."

Tasìa waved her arms. Her hands flapped in denial.

"I made no assumptions!"

Annebél rumpled Tasìa's hair as she chuckled.

"Just fucking with you, mon petite démon."

Tasìa squinched her nose above a wide grin.

"I merely assumed by your poor life choices you were a graduate student at one time."

Annebél shoved Tasìa's face beneath a pillow in a faux attempt to smother her. Tasìa's legs squirmed from side to side, but Annebél demonstrated the buoyancy effect of her triggered state. For Tasìa, it felt like being stuck under a gelatinous blob.

After Tasìa begged for mercy, and as Annebél laughed to the point of hoarseness, Annebél let go.

Tasìa wheezed to catch her breath.

"Sorry, sister! I will never compare you to a graduate student, ever again."

With a nod of satisfaction, Annebél jumped off of the bed.

"Do you have anywhere you need to be, presently?"

Tasìa considered voicing her anger over Felicité's betrayal, but she decided to keep it to herself for the time being. Felicité was her problem, and she was already overextended in her debt to Annebél.

"I have several leads on my itinerary," Tasìa thought of Aunt Tatiana's message to Val and she thought of Val's unknown status. "But mostly they are things that I need to ruminate about before acting on. Get me back before dark, and we'll be good. I have some skulking around to do later on this evening to find out where I stand."

Annebél's route was a secure but circuitous one. She wasn't merely going on a sightseeing tour through the Centre Plaza of the old town. No, she wanted to avoid being recognized in her old haunts, at least just yet.

She wore a flora print hood over her red locks with brown tinted aviator glasses that covered her eyes. She wore a pretty, floral sun dress that matched it.

"A girl, as pale as me, kind of stands out," she mentioned in passing conversation. "Don't worry. You stand out, too. No one forgets a skinny, short girl with big boobs."

Tasìa detected a little envy in her gorgeous Franco-Spanish best friend. Annebél had nothing to envy from anyone whether or not she knew it.

Finally, they parked at an abandoned overpass that curled up the side of the hill that emerged into an unfinished bridge.

It was part of a construction project for a heliport that came to a halt when the Cull Spore Invasion occurred. When the SkyTether project was announced a few years later, the initial project became redundant.

Tasìa and Annebél got out of the jeep. Annebél removed a duffel bag from the back of her Jeep.

There were remnants of a shanty town that was once built up on both sides of the double roadways. Structures made of tin, milled boards, found wood, and pallets remained slanted in place where the pieces collapsed together but still held erect.

Many of the people seem to be merely sunbathing with carry-around media centers, baskets of food, ice coolers, and bottles of wine.

Dozens of vehicles, greatly varied in makes, parked in the median between the roads.

The makeshift community treated the scenic ridge as if it were a public park.

Near an ATV tank-sized vehicle four mechheads blew smoke together under a tin shelter improvised into a makeshift opium den.

Tasìa stopped for a moment. Annebél looked back.

"It always breaks my heart. A little, when I see that."

"I know," Annebél commented. "I once knew Gael-Sebastian years ago. Sachmilli used to fly his boys into Asunsión to watch the fights years and years ago. It broke my heart when I saw that metal mechanism on the side of Gael-Sebastian's lovely head a few years back when he came up to visit. He was so disruptive, though, Ferenzi had to kick him out."

It was the first time Annebél ever mentioned Gael-Sebastian Cuervo. Likely her familiarity with the Cuervo family was one of the reasons the big redhead brawler chose Villa Marrón as her hometown when she retired from the fighting scene.

But, were Annebél and Gael-Sebastian Cuervo lovers? Why would they not be? She was a rarified beauty, and it was not like Tasìa was capable of giving Gael-Sebastian any satisfaction at the time.

Tasìa nodded along. It was best not to think about such matters. She followed along and picked up her pace until she noticed several tents made of motley stitched canvases that stood on the half-built bridge proper.

These denizens seemed quite apart from the others who recreated along the roadway.

Thirty yards ahead in front of the entrance of the first tent, a lady in an old-fashioned ruffled Eastern European dress watched Tasìa, in turn. She was tattooed over the entirety of her body in a snakeskin design.

A raven-haired beauty rarely stood out in Paraguay where they were well in abundance, but this one did catch Tasìa's eye.

The stranger's brows raised in curiosity at Tasìa's gaze. She leaned her head toward a flyer on the post board she stood against for Tasìa to inspect. It was a nice bit of artistry done in acrylic.

Thrice the size of a standard sheet of paper.

On the left was a rose shaped like a woman reaching up as if to climb a wall. The other side contained the words -

The Sigrid Rosa. Come see the Danseuse Enchantress! TONIGHT Mysteries will be REVEALED!

"Carnival is in town," Annebél stated, helpfully, "hey, what happened to you, just now? You alright, Tasìa?"

She nodded her head.

"I'm fine."

"We need to keep going, okay?"

Tasìa nodded her head once more.

"I'm alright."

Annebél kept walking up the road, but she swung a right into the shanty town ruins and away from the tents.

Before Tasìa followed along, she used Val's PA to take a picture of the lady and the poster. She forwarded it to Demona with a question mark posted for her text message.

Annebél stood waiting for her by a tin housing structure with a well-built back-in patio visible before they entered.

"Come on. Don't be chicken. It hasn't collapsed on anyone, yet."

Tasìa entered but she paused. A couple on the floor engaged in an oddly sloth-slow screw. At their speed and motion, it did not even appear very sexual, or appealing.

As Annebél stepped over the couple, she glanced back to Tasìa with a wink and a nod.

"Those two must be on Ecstasy," quipped Annebél.

"We ain't sharing," a gruff male voice arose from the coupling.

Tasìa leaped over them and fell into Annebél's arms. The brawler promptly let the little thief down.

"You know. They're kind of cute in a.."

As Annebél politely hesitated, Tasìa finished her sentence.

"... lived out in nature so long they've melded with the Earth sort of way? Like an obscenely shaped mushroom."

The woman of the coupling raised her head.

"Piss off, already!"

With laughter flowing from the both of them, Annebél led Tasìa down an uneven set of stairs to the thankfully uninhabited patio. The brawler doubled over a hooded barbeque grill as she laughed once more uproariously. She pointed up the highway to the next shanty over.

Someone covered a pre-existing large canvas advertisement sign with one of their own.

Welcome to Sanchez's Wasteland Kingdom. Come for the Scenic View. Stay because you are fucking lost with nowhere else to go.

"Man'o'man'o'man! Is this the life, or what?"

Tasìa squinted at the scenery below them.

Annebél answered the questioned posed on Tasìa's face.

"Come here, and I'll show you what this gives us a vantage point to spy on."

Tasìa leaned on a rail. There was an upscale neighborhood in the immediate distance beneath them.

"So what are we looking at?"

"Over there. Do you see that yard with the expansive golf course behind it? That's the Javierra compound."

Tasìa crouched beside Annebél.

"It doesn't appear to be much going on over there."

She dug through her fanny pack and found the tiny 4x28 mm x7 pistol scope.

Annebél shot a jaundiced eye her way.

"Is there anything you don't have in there?"

"Once I tried to fit a nuke, but it wouldn't fit into my little bag of holding."

Annebél's eyes lit up.

"Did you hear about the prison that got nuked?"

"Uhm, Annebél," Tasìa cleared her throat. "That's where I was incarcerated for six months. I got out just a few days before we met."

"Really?"

"You never made that connection?"

"Your friends at the Daga Chicas mentioned it before, but no, until now, I've never made the connection."

"Funny world," Tasìa said while she studied the grounds through the magnified lens.

"Hey. That's very odd."

Tasìa pointed to the grounds.

"You see that cart tipped over there by the utility shed?"

She handed the scope over to Annebél.

Annebél answered back as she surveyed the yard in the diction of a navigator in an old French nautical yarn.

"Now that I can see it with a greater degree of detail, some manner of things within the vicinity of our survey are beginning to appear oddly trashed in that yard."

Tasìa chuckled.

"Okay, Jules Verne."

Annebél swiped the air with a grand, commanding gesture.

"It is time to disembark the Skydog!"

Annebél handed her the scope back. She opened up the duffle bag and revealed a three-foot-long drone and a hand-held console that controlled it.

She set the drone loose while howling, "Woof! Woof! Woof! Onward my hunting hound!"

The drone circled them, smacked its whip-like tail in the air, and flew on its way.