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It was unfortunate that there was a witness, and that Joy had not yet quite mastered the whole idea of magical radar. It meant that someone got to see her doing what could only be described as scuttling into the alley, although it was done with that sort of slackening of pace and easing of tension that suggested that maybe she was only running as a precaution, and not actually because she was in any danger.

Maybe it had been instinctive, this running directly towards Grieve. Whatever it was, it clearly hadn't been intentional. She noticed her with a startled little gasp, and then a stance that suggested that she was about to take flight again, and this time with a vengeance - because what else looked like a monster and dug around in a dumpster, if not a youma? But then she paused, confused.

She rose to her toes, with the air of one who is prepared to run if things go tits up, and who in fact does expect the tits to rise. She then said an extremely rude thing.

"What are you?" she asked nervously.

Her confusion grew in proportion to her uneasiness. She backed up a half a step, feeling around for the whistle hanging from her shoulder just in case.

"Pissing myself scared, if I'm honest," she said, with a little toss of her head, as if announcing your terror was somehow an act that necessitated a show of defiance at the same time. "I'm no good, anyway. Fatty. Got a lot of silicone in there."

She did not back away as she was approached, but it was a near thing.

"Silicone tastes like rank a**," she promptly said. This was not drawn from any knowledge of her own, but it was probably true. "And I'm full of it." This was also only partially true. Only her tits were full of it.

She wondered fleetingly if she was supposed to offer a hand to shake at this point. She decided that she would not do this. Eight hundred years was probably enough to indicate that someone had undergone a thorough reformation of character, but there was no sense being the one to court a relapse.

"And I'm-- it's--" oh, "it is" was so much better than "I am" - "Joyeuse Garde." The name, so incredibly French, suddenly sounded uncomfortably to her ears like some sort of haute cuisine, exquisitely delicious and drenched in some sort of butter. "Joy," she added hastily.

Joy was more in the habit of giving orders than receiving them. But Grieve was hard to argue with, for multiple reasons. She held up the ribbon uselessly, but very promptly.

"Is it a ********' weapon?" she asked. "It's really not. It's the sort of useless thing they give to people who are full of rank a**. It's a medical thing," she added, feeling that the point of her not being delicious could not possibly be reiterated enough. But then she, too, wrinkled her nose. "Familiar?" And then, in case flattery might work in her favor: "Love your hair, by the way. Really nice."

Joy's expression was one of utter bewilderment, although this was probably a step up from craven terror. She had been teetering on the edge of making a comment about how nice a whip would be when it was promptly chased out of her thoughts by the inexplicable follow-up.

"Night-night?" she asked, puzzled. And as soon as she said it, she remembered bitching that the old French b*****d's name was borderline impossible to shorten, asking him about it - remembered his expression of prim disgust and rejecting out of hand her efforts to call him "Nail." All this coalesced somewhere in the consciousness of his lectures and Grieve's own comment about not having eaten anyone in eight centuries. Surely not - it felt impossible - but she had to ask.

"Oh, Christ," she said, suddenly clutching her end of the ribbon closer to her chest in alarm. "I hope you're not talking about Gouvernail."

Well, that description definitely confirmed that she knew Gouvernail, at least. It had a vivid accuracy that could only be achieved through personal acquaintanceship.

"Like a ******** baby," she agreed promptly, not ashamed of this. She added with much more indignation than being so readily identified as new had caused: "Saying I'm more fun than Gouvernail is like saying someone's cooking tastes better than cardboard. The bar is on the ******** floor, you know?"

She hesitated and asked again, this time with rather more boldness: "What are you, for real? Are you really that old?" And then, generously: "Drop your skincare routine, girl."

"Oh."

There was a long pause, during which Elaine was apparently contemplating the existential horror of ten or so centuries of lingering. At least Gouvernail had been, you know, dead for his. When he'd alluded to other worlds she hadn't thought of them still being around and harboring people that were walking among them. This was a bit too nightmarish. Better to settle on a safer topic.

"I've done blood and slime too," she offered generously, at last, recalling a memorable vampire facial and her brief craze for snail mucin that only resulted in an aggravation of her acne. "It's working way better for you. You don't look a day over--"

She paused, giving Grieve a thoughtful once-over. It occurred to her that she did not know what the aging standards were for thousand year old yellow aliens.

"Well, you definitely don't look a thousand years old," she said.

She paused again. "I'll tell him you said hi," she said, with a certain smugness that seemed to suggest that she was going to take pleasure in this, whether it was from triumphing over him with a new piece of information or because she suspected with unerring instinct that it would not be a welcome greeting. "You got anything you wanna say? Some insults to send along? Taunts? Singing telegram about how big a stick must be up his - no, he's probably too tense to even - well. Let me know." And then, with another burst of generosity: "If you're hungry I can like. Get you dinner. No offense. Maybe you prefer the garbage, I'm not judging."