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"Been worse," the Outlander replied with a shrug. Isaac noticed he wasn't even bound.

Joe and Paul glanced at each other uncertainly; Isaac got the impression that they were not at all accustomed to being bowed to.

"Of course!" Joe responded immediately, smiling.

Paul looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "You didn't even think about that before answering. We'd have to get very lucky to take her down. She's Abaddon's homegrown killing machin-"

Joe voice said, "Paul," and his tone continued, What the hell are you saying that for?

"What?"

An unspoken message passed between them in their facial expressions. "We could do it. Phase bullets. Cyphers. Maybe pull in one of our Zero-Sum archsages. We totally could."

Paul shrugged, refusing to say anything either way. He rolled his eyes the second Joe looked away.

Joe stared.

"You what?" Paul half-exclaimed, half whispered. "You saw that? We... oh, s**t."

Isaac looked at them, confused. "What...what is it?" He grew nervous. Very, very nervous. Like, steam-coming-out-of-his-body-in-sporadic-little-bursts nervous.

"Well, thank you for the support," Joe said, speaking slowly and gauging Isaac's reaction with his eyes. "But what you saw in there...Isaac, " and here, Isaac brightened at hearing Joe say his name, "What you saw in there is not something you should ever repeat. Do you understand?"

Isaac nodded vigorously.

"Good. Again, thank you for your support. And thank you for rescuing my friend, Sai. He and I...have some talking to do."

Joe smiled, and Isaac figured that he had been dismissed. With a huge smile and a bow to Joe and Paul, Isaac waved to Sai and went to look for Carlyle.

Carlyle took his cigarette into a corner, angrily inhaling lungfuls of nauseous smoke, trying to calm himself down.

It's not his fault, it's not his fault...

The boy looked at Cassandra over his burger, somewhat confused. That was how battles were supposed to go, right? Whenever he had play-fought with his sister, they had both ended up cut and bleeding and usually bruised, but then their parents brought out bandages and/or antiseptic and/or gauze, depending on how rough they had gotten, and everything was better. That's how a fight goes, and you learn to fight by playing. He had always somehow known that when he fought someone for real, that person would die and he would live, or that person would live and he would die, or he would die hanging onto their throat by his teeth, or something like that, and none of this had ever bothered him in the slightest.

"I can't say I understand how you feel," he said. "For me, it's what I learned to do, you know, what I was trained to do. They wanted to kill us, we wanted to kill them, and one team came out on top. Well," he amended as he took a bite of his food, totally unperturbed by what they had just gone through, "kind of."

He swallowed before continuing. "That's the only way it can work, right? You did get a little bloodier than everyone else; I'll give you that." He sniffed, totally forgetting for a moment that his senses were far enhanced over those of a normal human being, who wouldn't have detected the scent at all. "You still smell like it a little. You looked pretty awesome with it. All warriors from the past. Rites of the elders. If we had been fighting anyone but Tyrg, you could have used it to scare people." He grinned, trying to dispel her discomfort. He didn't really understand discomfort. "Stupid blood mages."

He watched the shivering with interest. This may not be the safest person to hit on; not that he was trying now, but she would definitely be a challenge in the days to come. He still wasn't quite sure whether it would be worth it, anyway. At least she kept him from getting bored. For now.