1.19

As the woman turned and van­ished out­side, Doro leaped out of his chair, send­ing his chair back with a screech. He chased her, weav­ing his way through star­tled servers and cus­tomers, his boots thump­ing on the café’s ugly, black-and-maroon vinyl floor­ing. The door chime rang as he bust­ed out the entrance, and he skid­ded to a stop sev­er­al feet in front of her on the side­walk. He spread his arms out. City-goers passed them by with­out a sec­ond glance

“Woah, woah, woah,” he said, breath­less­ly. “Where are you going, friend?”

A pained expres­sion flick­ered across the wom­an’s face as she stopped--bare­ly. She arched her brow, speak­ing in a curt, polite tone.

“I’m not oblig­at­ed to share that with you, stranger.”

“But aren’t you here for the meet­ing?”

Doro spared a glance back at Car­nelia. She was still at the table, wear­ing a trou­bled expres­sion that shone through the glare on the win­dow. The woman fol­lowed his gaze but remained sto­ic. He took a step for­ward.

“We both saw you look right at us. You’re here for the meet­ing.”

What she was doing was try­ing to run, as unaf­fect­ed as she was try­ing to sell it. Part of Doro was gen­uine­ly ticked off. He’d served on a damned car­go tanker for six months to get here, and she could­n’t take the time for a short sit-down? Who did that?

The woman did not answer. Instead, she point­ed­ly swept her gaze away from him and towards the end of the street. Doro scowled as she side­stepped past him and start­ed mak­ing her way there. He hat­ed being ignored.

He reached out to grasp her arm.

“Hey--ugh!”

Doro nev­er even reached her sleeve. All he felt was a hard tug on his arm--a shoul­der forced in the nook of his back--a quick heel ’round the back of his ankle--then his world got flipped. With a painful thud that forced the air from his lungs, he found him­self cheek first against the side­walk, a knee press­ing heav­i­ly into his back.

The woman spoke calm­ly in his ear as she lev­ered his arm in a direc­tion it did not want to go. Ten­dons and lig­a­ments twist­ing and pulling.

“We don’t know each oth­er. Don’t touch me like we do.”

“Ow! I get it, I get it!” The rough stonework scraped Doro’s cheeks as jerked use­less­ly. “Let me go!”

“Good. Bye.”

She released her grip and lift­ed off his back. Doro groaned as chill relief entered his joint. He heard the wom­an’s foot­steps reced­ing, mix­ing in with the rest of the street.

Damned if he was going to let things end like this. Grit­ting his teeth, Doro hauled him­self back to his feet and scram­bled in front of the woman. He raised his hands. Her pierc­ing gray gaze made him feel like an ani­mal wran­gler or some­thing.

“I can’t just let you leave with­out answers,” he said with a weak laugh.

She cocked her head.

“Can’t you?”

“What am I gonna tell the kid? That you just didn’t like the look of us?”

“That sounds like as good as rea­son as any.”

As the woman side­stepped him a sec­ond time, and Doro could only stare. The nerve. Who the hell did she think she was, obvi­ous­ly think­ing she too good for him and Car­nelia?

Doro blinked. Who. That was the ques­tion.

Though the woman’s form was dis­ap­pear­ing into the midst of all the strangers pass­ing by, it occurred to Doro that the woman wasn’t one her­self. She was one of a dozen or so peo­ple that he’d spent the last year and a half cor­re­spond­ing with and get­ting to know. He just didn’t know her real name.

So which one could it be? Which one had been this tightlipped, this cold?

“Are you real­ly going to leave like this, Eleven?”

Eleven had been the founder of their lit­tle meet­ing group, the one who had orig­i­nal­ly post­ed the thread. They had called her that because her user­name had been a ran­dom­ized string of let­ters and num­bers that coin­ci­den­tal­ly start­ed with two ones. And most of her con­tri­bu­tion to the thread had been sin­gle word respons­es. It had to be her.

The name hung in the air. And for just a moment, the woman’s calm stride fal­tered. A dogged grin spread across Doro’s face.

He dashed in front of her for a third time. And this time, he almost laughed at the pained expres­sion he caught on her face. Her irri­ta­tion looked most­ly aimed at her­self, though she still had plen­ty to spare for him.

“Per­sis­tent, aren’t you?” the woman said, eying him bale­ful­ly.

“It’s me, Eleven. Green­backs! Aren’t you glad to see me?”

When she did­n’t respond, Doro crossed his arms and let his smile fade. He pressed her.

“Say some­thing. It’s you, isn’t it?”

She pursed her lips. “I sup­pose there’s no point in deny­ing it now.”

“Then explain to me why you’re try­ing to leave. The kid and I have been wait­ing. The oth­ers will be too.”

An idle hand on her dress was twist­ing and fix­ing a fold in her dress. She clenched her teeth.

“Do I real­ly have to explain myself? The Can­di­date’s Chal­lenge is not so easy that I can afford to take on dead weight.”

“Dead weight? You’re the one who post­ed the damn thread. Don’t pre­tend you’re all of a sud­den not hurt­ing for help.”

“There is a dif­fer­ence between an alliance of equals and… what­ev­er this would be. Best to kill it before it starts.”

The woman’s casu­al deri­sion had Doro’s head puls­ing with hot blood. He turned his head away, the sight of her was begin­ning to make him feel ill.

Fine, he fumed to him­self. Like he want­ed to work with a knife like her. Let her go at the Chal­lenge alone. Let her fail, and cry in regret for hav­ing ever walked away from them. They didn’t need her--

Doro snapped his head back as a bolt of chill real­iza­tion hit him. She was doing it again. Clever woman.

“No.” The word was out of his mouth before Doro knew it. He plant­ed his feet in front of her. “I don’t care what you think. You’re sit­ting down, and you’re say­ing hel­lo.”

“I--”

“Shut up. Are you com­ing to the meet­ing or not?”

The woman glared.

“You real­ize even if you forced me to that table, that isn’t going to con­vince me to join your lit­tle team, right?”

“Who said we even want you, at this point? But you start­ed that damned thread, so you’re gonna take respon­si­bil­i­ty for this damned meet­ing.”

“Or else what?”

The wom­an’s sud­den­ly bared teeth took Doro aback. Glanc­ing down, he saw that she had tak­en a step towards him, like she was ready to fight.

He thought it a bizarre over­re­ac­tion, until he noticed a few glances aimed their direc­tion. They, by and large, were watch­ing him. He sup­posed to them, a strange large man was accost­ing a woman on the street. He sup­posed it might feel like that to her as well.

The fight drained right out of him. He shrugged.

“Or else noth­ing. What am I, a brute? I’m just giv­ing you a piece of my mind, Eleven.”

The woman, too, seemed to recon­sid­er over­ly hos­tile stance. She turned away, retreat­ing to mere cool dis­re­gard.

“This con­ver­sa­tion serves no pur­pose oth­er than to waste both our times. No mat­ter what user­name you claim, I am well with­in my rights to walk away from this meet­ing. We owe each oth­er noth­ing. I owe you, noth­ing.”

Doro wished he could argue against that, but what was he? Just some guy. And for all he’d intro­duced him­self by his user­name, he had been a late­com­er to the thread. What had they done, exchanged one or two replies? That was hard­ly con­nec­tion to be relied upon.

How­ev­er, he was­n’t the only one here, was he?

Doro grinned and thrust a thumb back in the direc­tion of the cafe.

“You might not owe me any­thing, Eleven, but I think you do owe her. That’s Rocky sit­ting there by the way.”

The woman stiff­ened. The girl was still in the same exact spot, watch­ing them with a con­tem­pla­tive expres­sion as she munched in some more dates. The woman’s gaze flicked back to him, the ques­tion appar­ent in her eyes.

“Yeah, that’s real­ly her,” Doro answered. “Younger than you expect­ed, right?”

“Quite.”

“Well, she might be, but with­out her, no one else would’ve joined that thread of yours, or shared a sin­gle clue or hint. Alliance or not, I think that at least mer­its a hel­lo.”

The rush of passers­by over­took their con­ver­sa­tion as the woman con­sid­ered his point in silence. Car­nelia waved a friend­ly hel­lo through the win­dow.

The woman frowned. She turned to Doro and gave a curt nod.

“Fine. Let’s meet.”

---

“Car­nelia. This is Eleven.”

Doro called out the kid’s name over the din of the cafe as they approached the table. The expres­sion of con­cen­tra­tion broke on her face, and her smile at the sight of a new friend was like the sun crest­ing over thun­der­clouds.

“Hi Eleven! Nice to final­ly meet’cha!”

“Like­wise, Car­nelia. And please, you may call me Yaeno.”

“Ooh, that’s a cool name. What’s it mean?”

“It means arrow shaft. It’s derived from…”

Doro watched, dis­be­liev­ing, as that walk­ing ici­cle beside him took the girls hand into both of hers and dipped her head. Her voice car­ried a note of respect that she’d not offered at all to him.

What­ev­er. As the intro­duc­tions com­menced, Doro col­lapsed into his seat and start­ed fan­ning the sweat that had built up beneath his jack­et. He sighed. Skies above, he’d bet­ter not have to repeat this with the oth­ers or he’d die from a heat­stroke before the Chal­lenge even began!

“Doro? I fig­ured out my answer.”

“Hm?” Doro jerked up. He turned to see Car­nelia lean­ing over to him while Yaeno was order­ing some tea from a serv­er. The girl’s fur­rowed brow had returned. It seemed to be some kind of reocur­ring con­di­tion.

Doro rubbed at a scrape on his jaw that he’d got­ten from being flipped out in the street. He hon­est­ly had no idea what she was goin’ on about.

“What the hell are you talkin’ about, kid?”

“Your ques­tion from ear­li­er. About what I bring to the table. I know my answer.”

Car­nelia nib­bled at her lip.

“…and?” he asked impa­tient­ly.

“…it’s gump­tion. Sor­ry if that’s not enough.”

Hah. So this is what had her look­ing so wor­ried this whole time. Not him being bor­der­line assault­ed by a stranger.

Speak­ing of said stranger--his gaze slid past the girl towards Yaeno. Appar­ent­ly the woman was very par­tic­u­lar about how she took her tea because she was still order­ing. She must’ve had sixth sense or some­thing, because, despite hav­ing her back turned, she imme­di­ate­ly noticed his gaze and shot him a sus­pi­cious look over her shoul­der. She nev­er would have sat down with­out Car­nelia here.

Only gump­tion. Doro threw his head back and began laugh­ing with­out a care at who looked. He knocked the con­cerned look off the girl’s face with a hearty slap to her back.

“Trust me kid. You bring so much more than that to the table.”