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Summer in the city meant cleavage, cleavage, cleavage. As soon as the thermometer hit eighty degrees, sleeves got shorter and necklines got lower. This was especially surreal in the Scene, where all manner of tattoos and piercings and scarifications came out to play when people traded their cargo pants for cutoff shorts and sweaters for halter tops and bikinis.

Every little hole in the wall bar magically transformed into a sidewalk cafe, at which you could smoke a cigarette, eat a hipster sandwich, and watch the flesh parade walk by.

Fish took a long sip from his soda and rolled his eyes. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. A pair of girls in skirts barely larger than belts walked past, giggling to each other and texting on cell phones.

He put his soda down, looked over at his dining companion.

"Who the ******** do they think is looking?" he asked.

Fish: setting new records in cynicism every day.

Fish groaned something unintelligible and rolled his eyes at Quinn. "It's not that," he said, picking the lettuce off his sandwich. "I swear to god it's not that."

He inspected the lettuce. Limpid, dull green, probably grown in a vat or constructed from algae. He flicked it onto the sidewalk, where it was promptly trod on by a platform sandal. "It's just, am I the only person who thinks it's indecent for a bunch of fifteen-year-old girls to walk around with their vaginas hanging out?" Never mind that he and Quinn were both, more or less, on a purely technical level, fifteen years old as well. Or that most of these girls probably weren't quite that young. <********, that does sound like whining, doesn't it?" he asked, and drank from his soda again. He chomped on the ice thoughtfully. Most of his brain power went to being bitter and broody these days, it made it easier to not pay attention to more important issues.

"I keep thinking about going back to the Harbor and seeing how my parents are," he confessed conversationally, rattling the ice in his glass.

He interpreted Quinn's bored look as a 'so what.'

"And then I chicken out and smoke another joint," he concluded.

"I wasn't asking for that," snapped Fish, in a way that was less snapping and more laconically opening and closing his jaws in a mildly aggravated way. "******** it, fine, I won't talk about parents or family anymore. We can play that game. We can not talk about our problems and pretend they'll go away-

He hesitated and looked at Quinn quizzically. "I do not remember there being penguins," he said, absolutely baffled. "When were there penguins?"

Had there really been penguins?

"My parents are career fisherpersons," said Fish, electing for a politically-correct gender neutral phrase in light of present company. He looked at Quinn with narrowed eyes. "We lived in a shack."

"Besides," he said, dragging his finger through the ring of condensation his glass had left on the table. "It's more complicated than what you're imagining. I was twelve last time they saw me, remember?"

He was about to say more, but then he just stared pointedly at the penguin-shadow instead. "What the hell is that?" he asked.

"I would really rather honestly not," replied Fish. It was not because Quinn was, well, Quinn, he assured himself. No, it was because if he was going to actually go home he was going to do it on his own terms and not because someone who he wasn't even certain he was friends with thought it was a good idea.

Wait. No. It was because Quinn was Quinn.

"Allow me to apologize for savoring the deepest depths of an exquisitely bad mood," he replied sourly, crossing his arms over his chest. "But, I mean- you would look weird in a suit, anyway. And," he gestured to the penguin, "What the hell is that thing?"

"Weird," said Fish, feeling unsettled. This was probably more from the creature's association with Vale than from the creature itself, but either way he didn't entirely like it. (This was much the same way he felt about Quinn.)

"Some days," he said, "I wish for an explosion, or a raid, or for the rapture to arrive, because at least then I'd know what I'm supposed to be doing."

Being a prophet got old fast when the gods stopped talking.

"We could always go try to kill each other."

This was unlikely. They liked each other too much.

"You keep suggesting that and I'm just going to keep saying no," said Fish. To be honest, the way he had spent the last several months, if this prophet thing didn't work out he could always be a monk.

"While I appreciate your skills at knocking blacksuits unconscious, we're not meant to be."

His sandwich got picked at some more, but he didn't have much of an appetite. And offering it to Quinn seemed decidedly less thoughtful when he'd been pushing it around his plate for the better part of fifteen minutes.

"Are you still with Vale?" he asked.

"You take the fun out of everything," replied Fish wryly. He pushed the plate away in resignation, finally admitting that no amount of prodding would make him want to actually eat what he'd ordered.

"No," he shrugged. The name Tepin didn't particularly mean anything to him, although he could agree that Vale was insane. "If I... If I could have it my way I'd never have to see him again."

"It's been way too quiet around here, though," he said, "You know what I mean? Since we broke in, they haven't done practically anything, have they?"

Well, there were the roadblocks. But those were just an everyday hazard.