"I'm proud of you."

After losing the throne, Cressida returned to Japan in disgrace. It was late at night in Tokyo, dressed in her casual attire but substituted her typical black shorts for cargo pants. She checked her phone to read the text from her father again, "Mission successful, with him out and her off my case, you have done well..." and scrolled down to read a text from later that night, "I'm proud of you my daughter, you handled yourself truly impressive even with the end result.".

For years all she wanted was her fathers approval, she endured harsh training, scars, and scandals as a child to try but fail. Now all it takes is a morally questionable deed to get his approval, she felt conflicted from the childhood desire and the honor she held. Eventually she put her phone away as she sighed and continued through the city.

Eventually she heard the familiar sound of a hollow, while browsing a food stand. Immediately turning towards an alley ran towards the source, only to have to find a fence in her way. However, even though her composure was as tough as a cement wall, anyone could see she was clearly agitated. She jumped over the fence only to see a construction site across the street from the other side.

"Really? that far?"

She was about to pass out of the alley when she noticed a shadow underneath her in the streetlight that was not hers, she looked up to see a hollow jump down towards her. Barrel rolling out of the way, she reached her arm out gathering reishi as she analyzed the red cat like hollow in front of her. It looked towards Cressida with an alarming expression as it jumped back after seeing the reishi gathering.

"A Quincy? Great I thought me and the locals were done after that blue jacketed Quincy, but another one?! C'mon!|

Alarmed by the reference, Cressida using hirenkyaku flash stepped behind the hollow, amputating all four of it' legs and half the tail in a single strike, while increasing the gravitational pull of the body. As it roared in pain she walked around to face it's hollow mask. "Blue jacketed Quincy? What color were it's shoulders?"

After silence, Cressida started to slowly shove her spirit weapon into it's mask, but stopped once it spoke. "Okay okay, I give! It was yellow, yellow things on his shoulders! Just spare my life!"

Cressida gazed at the miserable soul, trying to feel pity as she quickly pulled out her blade releasing a hielig pfeil in the process, eradicating the hollow. After dispersing her spirit weapon she walked off trailed in thought as she tried to process the information. "Blue coats, yellow shoulders, Americans? In Karakura, why? Better yet how am I supposed to find them..."

Eventually Cressida saw a pillar of light appear on a skyscraper, putting two and two together started to traverse towards the skyscraper. Eventually she stopped, and looked around to make sure no one was looking before flash stepping up towards a rooftop, climbing from roof to roof she participated in a little parkour exercise as she jumped unto the tallest building close to the skyscraper.

Gathering reishi beneath her feet, once more she ran off the building and jumped towards the top, and in three consecutive flash steps she found herself at the other edge of the roof, staring at the laying figure on the other side of the roof. She recognized the figure from documents she read up on the American spiritually aware, there were a notable clan with militaristic uniforms, headed by one particular Quincy. Before speaking she carefully noted the uniform and face and tried to put a name to them, and drew a disturbing conclusion.

She stepped unto the roof walked towards the man.

"This is the last place I'd expect a Lightner, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in America chasing fullbringers?"

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Absurdly long, green hair, dark, blue eyes, and a very thin body. These weren’t the traits that Lucas expected of the Quincy that climbed through the air to greet him, face to face. Especially for someone with the considerable Spiritual Pressure that she possessed. He still found himself more use to larger men and women, though she was hardly the shortest girl he had seen since coming to Japan—far from it.

Power, he realized because of Freyleif, came in all shapes and sizes. When you reached the level of a Quincy, it became less and less about the body you had on the outside, and more and more about the body you had on the outside. He could appreciate that; it possessed a real, poetic quality. Nature, Lucas figured, was probably like that in many ways when you got to the root of it all.

What he never expected, even less than her girlish appearance was the name that came out of her lips: His own, Lightner. A family name that no one outside of America really had any business knowing. How could she possibly have heard it in the first place?

More curious that that: She knew he was a Lightner just at a glance. The uniform might have given away his affiliation with the Alliance, but his family? Maybe she knew that Lightners almost exclusively held the three-star and four-star ranks in their organization? Even this young woman would qualify for at least one, and she wouldn’t have to have lived in America to learn about their existence. Regular communication or not, the rest of the world had a general idea of what Quincy organizations were actually out there.

“Yes,” Lucas answered and let the surprise show plainly on his face. “Yes, I’m a Lightner. And I’m out here looking for you, actually. I have no idea where you got this idea regarding Fullbringers?”

Lucas tilted his head at her when he brought that up. The Alliance didn’t care much for the other Spiritualists, but it did support them when they were approached or asked for help. Just like the Alliance valued the respect it had, it didn’t wish to trample on what dignity that other flavors of Humans that had reached spiritual awareness.

Yet she thought they did. Where had she gotten her information?

“But it looks like you know about my family, and about the Alliance already, so I’ll save that aspect of my introduction,” he went on. “I’m here today looking with Quincy, because I’ve got news that might interest you. If you’re like the other Quincy I’ve met tonight, you’ll want to hear this.”

After he took a few steps back from the edge, he beckoned for her to join him. He never felt steady on his feet when he stood in the air like she did, it was always difficult for him. Of course, he could do it when he needed to, but he preferred stairs, elevators, or just jumping really high, when he could.

“I’m here as a Knight of the Order of the Quincy,” he started, his smile a bit wider. More and more, he took pride in the good work he was doing. “I work under Freyleif Jökulsdóttir, the Queen, and she’s interested in finally uniting the Quincy across the globe. I’m here to spread the word, and to bring in as many Quincy as are interested. I think this is a good opportunity for our people.”

One of the variations on the pitches and introductions that he had worked out, sometimes the hard way. It started with Luna, and now it was this young woman’s turn.

“But you’ve put me at a disadvantage: You know my my name, but I don’t know yours.”

*****

625 Words

Cressida walked causally as she was more or less relaxed; but her body language signified she was annoyed by being given the standardized speech to any quincy presuming they did not know of the new organization. She rested her left hand on her hip as she stood within four meters of Lucas, making sure not to get too close. After Lucas was done she rolled her eyes as she couldn't help but snicker. 

Bringing her focus back onto the militaristic young man before her, she spoke in a soft, laid back tone. "My name, how fascinating, you seem to be up to date on Quincy politics and the new system, but I can't help but be offended that you did not know one thing. Who came before Freyleif? Before you say Weylin Von Wolfstein, your drastically incorrect. There was a Queen between Weylin and Freyleif, who held the title of shortest rein. Someone who Weylin passed the throne down to before slipping away in the shadows. I suppose you weren't their, were you?"

Cressida bobbed a curtsy, as in tradition since she presumed that she was in the presence of someone who was higher in family status. "My name is Cressida Therese Schade, excuse my lack of introduction." As she stood up, she reestablished eye contact with the young man. "My family make it our business to know and keep a record of many Quincy, and to some a degree spiritualists fullbringers. Our American files are vague, only details of alliance activities that couldn't be easily covered or top families that lower members foolishly mention in front of waitresses after a few drinks. America has the second highest population of fullbringers, and most of them abuse their powers. I figured that your alliance would've been active to keep them in line and protect the cover of your fellow spiritually aware humans."

Eventually she stretched out as she gathered a block reishi behind her. "Don't worry, I'm just making a seat." Eventually the reishi formed into an armchair as she sat down, crossing her legs while letting her fingers glide past her chin up to her temple as her elbow rested on an arm rest. She looked up to Lucas with a light expression, as if she wasn't taking him seriously. "I know about the Quincy organization, I was there when it was born, and even before, I was there, when Freyleif took the throne from me. I was there when Freyleif threatened to kill me like a merciless beast before I had a second to accept pointing her blade at my throat."

Eventually she looked towards the the boundless city. "So, like the miltary dogs you are, you took it upon yourself to use ginto flares to gather Quincy to recruit them? It might have worked, but your making the local hollows fuss around, Japan is the spiritual epicenter, hollows are drawn here. I'm surprised the shinigami aren't on your ass by now, or your smug mug is on a pike or mounted on a wall. Why not just use hollow bait to look from this point and see if any Quincy put up a fight, that would be more discrete. The Quincy around here often don't know about a second life so they already risk blowing the cover and letting regulars know of our existence. If you really are a knight, shouldn't you be more careful about risking exposing Quincy to human experiments and risking the entire race. What would your father say about that?"

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Before Freyleif? At first, Lucas wasn’t sure what she meant. Of course, he knew that a woman—Cressida Shade, or something like that?—had taken the crown from Weylin first, and then Freyleif accepted it from her in turn. Of course, if it wasn’t for Freyleif herself bringing up the name, Lucas wouldn’t have even known enough to ask about it in the first place.

So why, his mind started. Does she seem so upset?

“Oh,” he answered, caught completely off-guard when she introduced herself. The pronunciation was a bit different, he’d remember that, but it was her. In the flesh, complete with green hair and overflowing youth. This woman couldn’t have been a day over twenty, if that, judging from the extra-girlish features of her face. Freyleif was even younger, which simply astounded him further. As much as he hated to admit it, these two suddenly made the crown look like a battle between children.

Though, just as Freyleif’s great power demonstrated for, Cressida’s attitude and sharp words proved that she was hardly a child, even if she was a teenager. And the more she told him, the more interested he found himself in what she had to say.

Her family made it their job to keep track of other Quincy families?

This whole time and he had never, ever heard about that? It seemed unbelievable. Did they have spies in the various Quincy organizations, clans, and families? If so, for what purpose? Wouldn’t simply talking openly serve their needs better? The total lack of awareness and communication between Quincy proved to be one of their biggest problems, but there was a family doing this, all along?

As much as Lucas wanted to chime in, right there, he managed to refrain. He bite his tongue and listened to the rest of what Cressida had to say, even as it turned more and more bitter and sour. By the end of her little speech—a rant, really—he found himself ready to lash back with countless derisions, to poke holes in everything she brought up and sink her like the little kid she was.

Instead, he took a deep breath and smiled.

Diplomacy, he reminded himself. It rarely begins with mockery if you want it to end well.

“Well, Cressida, let’s start with the most important part first,” he began, and couldn’t help but setup that little jab. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I heard about your courage from Freyleif herself, and who spoke no ill of you. I didn’t think I’d be so lucky tonight as to find someone who’s now so famous.”

A good start, he wanted to believe. But the smug, condescending manner with which she looked at him from her glowing chair just frustrated him all the more. He wanted to let some of it free, to really tell her what he thought, but again, he held himself back.

Best not to ruin things after such a reasonable beginning, he decided.

“And for what it’s worth,” Lucas continued, his voice slow as he shifted the subject. “My spell can’t be seen by regular humans, nor is it powerful enough to stretch too far past downtown. If anything, I’m concentrating Hollow attention on me.”

Then, he looked around. Besides the flying Hollow from earlier, there had been no further attacks.

“Luckily for me, it seems to be a slow night,” he smiled at her. It wasn’t purely a polite one, either. “And my father is quite proud of the spell, thank you for asking. He was never talented with either branch of Gintō, so he gets to enjoy my success vicariously.”

It was that, final comment about his father that really strained him the most.

He wondered if his father really would be proud that he bit his tongue, or would he rather Lucas had swung a hook and caught her in the temple for such disrespect? Attitudes like hers wouldn’t help the Quincy unite, which was the whole point of things.

“Which brings me back to why I’m up here, doing this,” Lucas went on, and a little impatience and frustration leaked into his voice. He had endured her attitude, now she could reap what she sowed. “If you’re done insulting my family, and my competence, I’d like to know if you’re interested in being part of the Order? I can’t speak for her, Cressida, but I can say that Freyleif seemed to harbor you no ill will. A Quincy with your courage, like I mentioned”—he regretted that just a bit, now—“would be beyond valuable to us, and the rest of our people.”

*****

770 Words

As Cressida paid attention to the stereotypical 'Join a cause speech' given by Lucas, she rolled her eyes. To think that she'd abandon the throne is extremely idiotic, she came so close to her ancestors goal, at the pinnacle of her quincy career. She sat up, no longer leaning on her arm, but her arms crossed as she looked at Lucas tensely. "Does he really think I am distant from the Quincy after losing the throne so quickly?"

Her eyes were regal, and her tone spoke as if she was above Lucas, her spirit never fated and her confidence is no where near shot. "You sell me this boy scout speech, thinking I just abandoned the throne? The bloody Queen herself recruited me. I had to be tested by the grand commander to prove I was not corrupt like my family and prove my skill despite the Queen herself once trained me. '
"

She stood up as the chair of reishi dispersed into the air. She walked to the edge while her expression suddenly changed from a serious regal to a more relaxed and laid back tone as her posture softened. She looked down upon the nightlife of the city. "Have you been here before? This is my second year in this town, but pretty soon I won't be able to stay here for long periods of time. With the tides changing, I'll be stationed in England for patrolling, plus with the plausibility of my future knight commander wanting all areas covered it is more likely. Plus I most likely will be responsible for the order members that need a roof in England given my influences and manor. Not to mention my contract is running out."

She sighed as she took a step forward, bending reishi under her feet as she walked a few steps over. looking down.

"The spiritual life is amazing here, it's a mix. In England, your lucky if two base hollows show up in the same month some years. My brief time in America, east coast, was rather dull as I encountered more fullbringers than hollows. Not really my forte explaining the spiritual world, especially when there's an organization already their that can do it. As Shinigami go, I hardly see them anywhere, just busy in their 'paradise' I suppose."

She turned around slowly to gaze back at Lucas, with eyes of curiosity, yet a flirtatious smile."so Boy scout, did you pack a tent or are you winging it for a place to stay around here?"

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“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Lucas insisted and waved his hands in front of her, urging her to stop. “I think you’re reading too much into this, Cressida.”

How had she taken his words and assumed that he believed she just abandoned the throne. He knew that she had passed it on because that’s what she thought was best—that was the other half of her courage. Now here he was, again, being berated for things he hadn’t said or meant.

This girl wasn’t easy to talk to.

“I wasn’t told you were part of the Order, so my suggestion wasn’t meant to imply that you had abandoned anything,” he explained as best he could. “Only that, if you weren’t part of the Order, we genuinely would have liked to have you. That’s all I ever meant, and I’d appreciate it if you stopped assuming I’m your enemy.”

No one had told him that she would be in Tokyo, either. Of all things to happen tonight, he didn’t expect to run into this person. More than that, he didn’t expect her to be barely older than Freyleif—if she even was. Although there was a slight air of maturity about her, between the girlish face and young features, he doubted she was a day older than nineteen and maybe as young as fifteen. Wouldn’t that have been something? Freyleif becoming the Queen at sixteen would have passed the crown to someone older.

What a world, Lucas told himself.

“But I’m glad to hear that you are,” he admitted, his expression softening into something more friendly.

Then, Cressida changed the subject, relaxing a bit herself, “Sadly, no, I haven’t been here all that long. It’s been quite the experience, though, you’re right. I’ve seen more spiritual activity on a single night in Karakura Town than I ever did back in New York. The state, though, not the city.”

Not that she would necessarily know much about how States worked.

When she brought up Shinigami, though, Lucas couldn’t help but laugh. “I wish I had your luck,” he told her. “I’ve already had a Shinigam try to kill me, though he kept insisting that he wasn’t.”

Underneath his blue sleeve were the bandages wrapped all around his right arm. Even now, it was still sore; but the doctor insisted that he should keep moving it around, so everything healed naturally. Just don’t overdo it, he was told, and Lucas did everything he could to not roll his eyes at the suggestion.

So far, he hadn’t been given much choice in the matter.

“And, no, no tent,” he chuckled at her suggestion. “Call me too American, but I enjoy the comforts of a proper hotel—nothing under four stars, if I can help it.”

To finance this trip he had actually sold his own house. He could enjoy a little luxury, here and there.

“But I’ll admit, Cressida, I don’t know anything about your family,” Lucas backtracked a little bit. “I don’t know much about any Quincy family other than my own. American isolationism is alive and well with my family, you could say—or, it was. Regardless, I’m not going to judge a young lady by her last name, and her last name alone. Just don’t try to take my head off again!”

He smiled a little bit more with that last sentence. He wanted to move past that rocky start, caused mostly by her own jumping to conclusions. But, he was starting to think, it came from a good place. She seemed genuinely concerned with the issues and complaints she brought right up to him, even if she was more haughty than she should have been in doing it.

At least, he told himself, she had a personality.

“But now that I’ve got the rapt attention of a celebrity”—he let the sarcasm show; he knew he wasn’t that interesting—“I’d like to hear about you. There’s still quite the buzz with the Quincy back in Germany, over what you did, and I really am quite impressed. What inspired you to do something like that?”

*****

683 Words

As the topic changed back to what happened in Germany, Cressida felt honored to be recognized, but at the same time she felt like a one hit wonder as that was the only thing people would like to know for a long time. Her face grimmed as her tone shifted a saddened direction while she made sure to look at Lucas in the eyes. "In England, I've met a few Quincy families, small ones that want to live in quiet but followed the throne for protection, and out of fear. One day, when I was about thirteen, I was visiting one of these families that work under my family, and when the risk of power stripping was mentioned, everyone of them was terrified. The thought of that sight, it angers me to no end. A true king is one who has an army and people who follow him out of loyalty, not out of fear. For a quincy, losing powers is equivalent to a death sentence or worse. As we're still high reaitsu souls without them, practically hollow-bait."

Cressida stretch out her arm as she formed her Hielig Klinge in her hand as she swung it outwards in a slashing motion, stretching out her muscles, before stabbing it into the rooftop, looking at Lucas.

"Growing up, I prefer the blade as apposed to the bow, I've idolized swordsmen and swordswomen as a child, even a matter of honor. I want leaders to rule with the trust of those under them, not tyrant. Weylin used fear and his above average strength to keep him in the throne, I was the voice of the silent, I wanted to wait until I had the strength to defeat him."

Her grip on her blade tightened as the reishi began to destabilize while rage clouded her thoughts, as she was about to black out she appeared to instantaneously lose her conscious thought as her expression resorted to a blank expression as her blade lost its sharp form and looked more like a mass of barely stabilized energy. Cressida quickly through the blade in the distance, towards an uninhabited demolition zone as it exploded, dispersing back into reishi.

Internally, she locked up before her rage took over, she didn't move for about fifteen seconds as her thoughts were stilled. Looking back at Lucas, she felt a little ashamed as she blushed for a mere millisecond before regaining her composure.

"So sorry bout that, anger management problems. Harder to keep a straight face when it's not business."

Taking a deep breath, Cressida ran her fingers through the side of her hair as she continued her story. Speaking in a tone of pride, as she stretched out. "Someone had to oppose him, he may be one of us, but he had to go. He was the gap that kept the quincy oppressed, it wasn't the Shinigami, it wasn't the hollows, nor the pathetic Shinigami immitators, arrancar if I'm not mistaken. I pointed my blade not at a king, but at a monster, a monster that kept the quincy on the brink of extinction. Now look at us, we are finally moving forward."

Cressida walked around, pointing her hands around in a circular motion, gesturing the world around. With a slight smile on her face and a cheery tone. "If you call me insane, than so be it. It was this insanity that chipped the dam of evolution and brought the Quincy out of the era of Weylin Von Wolfstein by releasing the flood of change. There is a lot of change on the horizon, all I did was enable it. One girl who foolishly pointed her sword at a god, seems like something you'd find in fables or the bible."

Gathering reishi at the bottom of her feet, she disappeared in a split second and appeared on the other side of Lucas, facing away from him but appearing quite playful as she giggled.

"Tell me, what is it your after, what motivated you to leave your fast food capital of a country and rejoin the world, there must be a good story behind that."

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For one reason or another, Lucas still expected to get thin, insubstantial answers when he asked someone what “inspired” them to do one thing or another. So when he asked Cressida, he hardly expected her to pull out the kind of story that she ultimately did. Given how everything was going so far, he didn’t think he would really be able to relate to anything she brought up or mentioned.

Which meant that he didn’t expect the story about her family, and about her own scares when she was younger, due to ineffectual leaders. Lucas tried to imagine what it must have been like, to be as young as she was, worried that someone might strip her of her powers—his father had mentioned the loss of Quincy abilities here and there—and leave her helpless in a dangerous world. More than that, she alsodidn’t fit your standard Quincy, something he could relate to. How many used close-quarters combat like Lucas and his own father? He certainly couldn’t name many.

“Cressida?” Lucas interrupted her story, hesitantly, as she got more and more upset as she described the ways Weylin brought to life the worst of what she saw, growing up. He could understand that, too. How would he feel if he had gone to Germany only to find just as much apathy as he found in the younger members of the Alliance back in the States? It’d have hurt him, crushed him, and he would definitely have been angry!

‘How could these kids abandon the Quincy ideal!’
‘How could someone like Weylin be a man like that!’

Like him, it seemed, Cressida desperately wanted to believe in their future as a people.

“Hey, no judgement from me,” he smiled genuinely when she apologized. “I get it, really. Trust that, if nothing else.”

But her story wasn’t done, not quite. How she had, despite how crazy it was, decided to stand up against a tyrant that she knew she had no chance of defeating herself. Instead, she had managed to muddle her way through, only to have her bravery and her luck rewarded by having the throne plucked away from her because she, herself, didn’t have the strength to support her own claim to it.

Lucas understood that too, he did, but it left a bitter taste in his mouth. It didn’t satisfy his heart, which was beginning to see this short, angry girl with lovely, green hair as someone who had been a victim far more than her fair share of the time. All she had wanted was to make a better future for the Quincy by freeing them from someone she felt was an oppressive dictator.

Perhaps embarrassed by her story, or maybe just wanting to show off a little, Cressida vanished from view. Lucas knew the sound, and immediately spun his gaze around to find her smiling—as if that entire, sad story hadn’t happened—as she stood on the roof behind him.

He just rolled his eyes at her, but smiled the whole time.

“That’s a fair question to ask, after you shared so much with me,” he answered and hummed a little as he thought. “I suppose my story is similar to yours. I grew up hearing the legends of what the Quincy did in the past, before the culling, passed down through the generations before my family emigrated to America a couple generations back. I saw how much my father really believed we could be something great, that we could—how did he put it?—restore the ‘pride of the Quincy’?”

That was definitely his father. Beginning his twilight years and looking back, wondering what could have been, what could still be. In this day and age, with the technology and communication they now had, he really believed in Quincy unification and what their people could.

Risen from the ashes of their genocide to find their place in the world yet again. He’d say something like that, Lucas figured, and it would have lit up his eyes with stars, just like all the other childhood stories he heard.

“I’m not so sure if I believe in anything quite as grand as he does, but I believe in that idea,” Lucas nodded. “I believe that we can come together. I believe that we can make a difference and that we can stop being held underfoot by the Shinigami. I believe in Quincy independence and that, yes, there is value in standing on our own two feet. I want to make that dream come true.”

*****

758 Words

"Held under foot by the Shinigami? You make the Shinigami seem, unjustified."

Cressida carefully noted how he moved and responded, militaristically and well kept, sharp, she enjoyed how things were playing to her favor but never hinted a word. However she hated his attachment to the ways of the old, that was another thing that bothered her, what the quincy needed was not pride, or the old ways.

"Shinigami fear we disrupt balance, which is their sworn duty to protect, while we say it's not real, they believe it is. Wars used to be raged on conflict of beliefs, there is no point faulting the victor for defending and fighting for their beliefs. You believe in the pride of the quincy, that's a foolish mistake that lead to the culling."

Raising her arm gently a sphere of reishi formed in her hand and her fingers softly moved downwards, the sphere lengthened and narrowed but either end was left longer, then on one end it molded into a cone shape with a sharp tip while the other spread out and formed right angle triangles loosely, pointed width wise towards the tip of the other end. grasping the thin rod part gently between her right index and middle fingers Cressida stared at it as if it were a relic, even though she had formed it not a hour before.

"It was pride that came before our fall and the culling. Why restore a knife to a killer and expect him not to kill. It is not pride that must be restored, but the honor. Pride is one of seven deadly sins for a reason, it is true, as a younger race we may have overstepped boundaries, and the Shinigami did what they felt necessary. Quincy are just humans who obtained a power beyond what they should have, I can't hate the Shinigami for their actions, but I am not supporting them either. ironically enough, like the Shinigami, we are still living in the past. Even with modern life, we still preach the old ways, in some many broke free or never taught, others received the same expectations. The hielig pfeil is an example, nowadays it's a quick burst of energy, but it used to be energy carefully formed into an arrow."

Clenching her hand into a fist she shattered the arrow as it dispersed back into the air. Unsure of her assessment of the man, Cressida felt it was not necessary to trust him immediately.

"Your goals conflict, to have the race stand, and to have the pride of the quincy restored are two things that can't ever happen again. As an Echt quincy, if I can say the old ways need to change, that says a lot."

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Lucas blinked at her next words. Once, then twice, before he raised a single eyebrow at her.

“Wait, I make the Shinigami seem unjustified?” He asked with the tone of a man who genuinely might have misheard her. Worse, he hoped he misheard her. Was he truly about to argue with another Quincy about the deplorable behavior of the Shinigami over the centuries? Especially with how they treated others in the present day?

That’s exactly what he listened to.

By the end of it, his head spun and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep speaking with her, or just bend her over his knee and spank her like a parent did a child that said something vulgar.

“You think the Quincy got killed over their pride?” Lucas repeated after a dozen seconds of slack-jawed silence between them. “Yet you act shocked that I think the Shinigami were unjustified in their actions? Don’t you see the disconnect here? Is murder, to you, something so insignificant as to make it okay to do over something like pride in who you are?”

Lucas squinted his eyes at her, trying to tell if this was a young lady’s game that she was playing on him. She was socially strange, of course, there was no denying that. But worse than that, if she was using this sort of subject to make jokes and play games? Who did that? Who joked about this subject, especially when it pertained to her own people?

Then, to make it worse, she tossed in some nonsense about Quincy arrows and a comment about ‘Echt Quincy’—whatever those were.

“Are you okay?” Lucas asked with a tilt of his head. “I’m sincerely asking. It was one thing to think that you had no social skills, but now you’re talking downright crazy. Our arrows are still arrows, and there’s nothing mutually exclusive about the pride of the Quincy and reuniting them.”

Flabbergasted, Lucas shook his head and then lifted an arm. He pointed his palm to the sky and, quickly, flashed a foot-long blue spike into existence.

“See?” He looked between her and his arrow repeatedly, eyes wide with disbelief at what was coming out of her mouth.

Just after those words, he closed his hand and his arrow disintegrated into a shower of particles that evaporated.

“If you don’t want to be involved, that’s your business,” Lucas put his disbelief aside and got back on track. “But don’t waste my time by spewing nonsense at me just because it gives you some laughs.”

*****

424 Words
3,876 Total Words