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She wasn't even powered up when she saw it.

Emmy had gone to her favorite coffee shop a block down the street, since she'd wanted a change of scenery while she edited her most recent video. She sipped at an iced latte at a bistro table on the street, enjoying a little fresh air, while she tried an audio effect or two.

Glancing around between files, she could see the manicured garden beds by the street. She could see the neon lights of other businesses begin to stand out as night began to fall.

Then there was the sleeping bag, visible in the alleyway between the ramen restaurant and the hair salon.

Really? Usually the homeless were able to tell that this part of the city wasn't for them. If the hostile architecture didn't discourage them, most of the people would. The most logical explanation was that someone had made a mistake, though, either by not saying anything at all or by doing something worse like offering them food.

Now this was going to get out of control unless someone did something right away.

Closing up her laptop, Emmy finished her coffee quickly and walked down to the next alley over, where she powered up. Immediately she teleported straight to the sleeping bag, sticking her hand into the person's chest before they could do something inconvenient like screaming. She didn't often starseed on a whim, but she'd make an exception for this.

She didn't need an entire camp starting.

With a single motion, the gem was in her hand and the person laid still.

A squire. Of course. She'd been so focused on speed and if the people at the restaurant had eyes on her that she hadn't been thinking about auras. She sighed, even as she used the moment that he wasted on insulting her to pop the starseed safely into her subspace pocket.

She wasn't going to let someone like this make a scene and ruin her effort.

"There's nothing in our rhetoric that says this is an even fight," she said, and she summoned her axe to her hand, running a thumb parallel to the sharpened edge for dramatic effect. "We're going to win."

Her smile was cold.

"See it as a necessary sacrifice, or don't," she told him. Her job was to get the public on her side, not magical men in oversized parkas who, judging by the way he was talking to her, had been involved in this for long enough to form his own opinions.

"Either way, I suggest you leave me be."

This one had bluster, even in the face of illogical odds in his favor, and a battle that had technically already been lost when she'd tucked the starseed away. It was either charming or stupid, depending on how you looked at it.

Given that he'd just thrown some kind of heavy clay pot at her and it had hit her right in the ribs, she firmly decided that he was stupid.

That hurt. That was going to bruise.

She'd been working on biting back her squeaky hisses so that she didn't embarrass herself in situations like this, and so she dug her teeth into her lower lip, fingers going white-knuckled against the handle of her axe.

She didn't want to overly draw this out, but she did want to show him some of the dangers of dealing with a General.

She swung the axe towards him.

She might have hit coat and not skin, but Jadarite still saw the way that her axe got close to him.

He seemed to have some idea, though, and she squinted at him as some kind of magic activated. It was like his visuals were flickering, and she couldn't quite see him against the brick wall.

She was interested in this, but not interested enough to see if there was a more dangerous side to the magic. There had already been enough annoyances and interruptions for one night.

"You're trying," she told him, her smile thin, "But I already won."

With a nod to the body next to her, she vanished into the air.