"No, Serah, no pay. If you come with me, we'll see to your orders -"

Schwack. His ears ring, and the ground lurches in seasick memory that the demon wasn’t all that long ago. This is the last time - and sure, he's said that before, but this is truly the last fucking time - that he doesn’t fetch a helmet.

It’s late afternoon, and as the evening trickles in, a crowd collects: Heads thrust out windows, laughing with a bottle at the end of the lane. A show's a show. Someone shouts for them to shut up. The baby just went down,

Abrupt, the mood shifts. Mouths tighten, words quiet, in the wake of some tall-shadowed Shem.

(In the scarred thing behind him, Orlesian, and angry, and dressed far too flash to not spell trouble.)

"Get ‘im, Marge!" A girl whoops, and is shushed by another, tugging at arm’s length toward tenement door.

"Reggie saw her wandering, took her here. Someone sent her," Cedric's drawn himself up, taking all his four inches on Marge for their worth. Better that she catch a shoulder. As she's doing, repeatedly. "Dunno who. Get answers when we get - Ma’am, if you don’t stop with that, you’ll ruin your bag -"

He sounds a deal less patient than this began, eyes pinched against the light.