Yin looks up to the familiar sky of this high-altitude climate. There's just a slight chill in the air, but nothing that should bother anyone in their current attire. Usually it's really nice to be home...she still appreciates it, it's a gorgeous city, but now there's just a dul dread. A light shadow passes over them. A large, full-form dragon flying overhead and enjoying the sunny day, light glinting through its amber wings. "Well. Welcome to Okarthel."

"Wooooooow...!" Troix gazes at the thing, spellbound. "It's so pretty...!" She takes a deep breath, coughs once. "Alou, I think my box is broken." Looks at them both, pitifully. "It's pretty but my chest hurts and I wanna go home."

"The air is thinner up here," Yin acknowledges. "So most people have more trouble breathing until their blood has time to adjust. Our first stop is a doctor. He's a nice guy, a half-dragon, and should be able to fix it so that you can breathe up here no problem."

"You'll just have to tough it out for a while, Troix."

She glares a little at Alou, but her quirky little smile returns in a moment. "Mkay! Let's go to the doctor, but I hope he doesn't have needles. Needles hurt."

Yin smiles at Troix...is sure they're being watched. Looks around. Mmkay. Yes, someone is unabashedly keeping an eye on her. She needs to send word to her commander, and quickly...still, for now, Troix is first priority.

The city strikes a balance between a good many regions and time periods. The architecture is something like Rome meets Singapore. Fountains or sculptures dot this or that area, and the ground is paved with a cobblestone-like patter that's been laser cut for perfect finish. What's most interesting, though, are the people...or reptiles, as the case may be.

"There are three kinds of dragon-ish people running around Okarthel," Yin notes to Troix as they walk along at an intentionally easy pace, mostly to give the girl something specific to concentrate on. "Some look similar to each other, but once you've lived here long enough, you can tell the difference at a glance." Looks at a young fellow walking by in some armor. "There are dragoons, who can be any race...some of us have draconic qualities, some pronounced like mine or most of the people I work closely with, but we're all different races at our cores. There are half-dragons--even if they're say, three-quarters or one-quarter or whatever, we still call them half-dragons--who are a mix of some race and dragons. They vary a lot...they can look like small, humanoid dragons, or, more often, actually look a lot like I do, another race with draconic traits. They're considered a step above dragoons. And at the tip-top, there are full-blooded dragons. Many older ones can shift between their draconic forms and humanoid ones, lot of them choose to take the forms of other races most of the time. Sometimes they look the least Dragon-like of any of the people running around here--they can put any or none of their own dragon-form traits into their appearances--but you can always tell from the look in their eyes if they're Dragons. It's very unique."

"What do they look like?" Troix, curious about everything, almost doesn't notice the strain on her poor little lungs. Alou does, though, and he's quite antsy about her already despite the grandeur of the place.

"Old." Yin nods a bit. "And...hm. It's hard to describe. Imagine the eyes of a wild animal. Now make those animal eyes as smart and wordly as the wisest elder's you can think of. Those are a dragon's eyes." A little bit farther, a couple more minutes. She's keeping careful, concerned tabs on the girl's breathing.

"Hum. I've never seen a wise elder." Troix pauses to breathe, and the little light on her respirator blinks towards red. "They all seem too cro... hm. Cro..." pauses again.

"Crotchety?" Alou ventures, grinning at her.

"That's the one! Too Crotchdedy to be wise."

Yin grins at her. God Troix is cute. "Yeah, forgot that. I guess it's something long-living races notice a little bit more...since elders have a chance to get wise before they get unbearable." She snickers.

"Some of the spiders are pretty old, actually, Yin. Kaz is about two hundred, but he won't admit being older than one ninety."

"Kaz," Troix notes with a serious tone, "is not good at dodgeball. He's great at knitting, though!"

"I stand corrected. But Troix raises a good point. Dodgeball is important." She smirks.

Troix smiles brighter. Coughs, though, as her respirator begins beeping. 

"Are we almost to the doctor, Yin?"

"Next corner. One more block."

"Hold up." Alou pauses to look at the box. "Okay, Troix. Hold still, I'm just going to--"

"Never make it where you're going in one piece." Alou looks up. Blinks.

The person behind them stands dressed in armor that Yin ought instantly be pissed about. He's almost certainly either a dragoon, or emulating one. Either way, the bright, fiery red of his mail does little for subtlety.

Yin narrows her eyes. She doesn't recognize him or his armor, even slightly, and she's already suspicious as all hell. "Name, rank, unit, and business."

"Brandt. Higher than you. South side morgue. I'm here for you, Yin."

The vampiress is silent for several moments. Listens to a certain amount of ragged breathing. Finally looks over to Alou with just her eyes. "Hey. Take Troix to the doctor, right? It's on the next corner, you really can't miss it."

Alou looks to Troix, who looks... confused. Of course she doesn't understand this sort of posturing.

"Hey," she calls to Brandt, whose shifting eyes settle on her. "Can you come back in an hour?"

The red-suited dragoon smirks a little at her as Alou drags her away, headed to the doctor's office. "Cute. Don't worry, though. I'll kill her after I bring you back."

"Leave them out of it," Yin growls quietly. "They were promised sanctuary."

"I already killed Tuleau. She knew too much, too. You were supposed to die in an explosion." Brandt glares at her. "You're making this harder than it's supposed to be."

She narrows her eyes just slightly. "You're welcome. Turncoat. What the fuck is this all about, anyway?"

"We can do this here, or somewhere less crowded. Tell you what. Kill me and I'll tell you all about it."

"Piss me off and make your counter look like self defense against the rogue Aovbi," a slang term for members of her unit, "who flipped out and tried to kill one of the graces. Am I warm?"

"Oh, no. I just don't like you."

"That works too." Yin shakes her head. "So are we just going to stand here and do this all day, or what?"

"You haven't told me whether you want to die here, or somewhere private. But if you need me to hold your hand and make the choice..." Brandt, armed unsutblely with a decorated bec-de-corbin polearm, pulls his weapon into a neutral position. "Fire dragons are fun, Yin. They like to cause chaos."

Yin narrows her eyes. Her blank, leather-wrapped staff, a bit over three feet long, snaps down and back, mist and a few crystals beginning to wind over it. Fire...damn. She'd hoped that obvious bit was wrong. "Ice dragons prefer to shut down assholes like you in time for tea."

A passerby on the other side of the square notices the impending fight. Narrows his eyes in curious apprehension. His stare is, of course, followed in short order by those of other bystanders.

Yin narrows her eyes when one of her opponent's elbows begins to shift. Tenses, blade rapidly building itself. Her broken is burning just to remind her that she's short one. Grits her teeth...just before an crossbow dart with a brief contrail of shadow elemental magic goes zipping over her shoulder, straight for one of red-mail's biceps. A warning shot.

His reaction is to turn his arm so the dart tongs off his armplate. His polearm moves back, and his free hand drops to his back where an MP5-style weapon sits.

"Cheating," he cries, half amused, but looking around anyway. "I can cheat, too!"

The shooter is making no secret of himself, running towards them as quickly as he can manage from about a block and a half down. It had been a hell of a shot, anyway. Large, thick black horns curl back from his brow and then back down, and his attire is mostly black with choice pieces of steel armor etched in black. Yin's superior, the Aovbi's commander. "Yin, get back!" She's obviously hurt. She never defends and favors a side like she's doing right now, and something else about her familiar stance isn't right.

Arux...! Oh, thank the gods. Not that it's time to relax. Yin's hand snaps back, trying as before to fill the mechanisms of his gun with ice...while trying to keep it hidden so he won't figure out the problem fast enough.

He's not firing right now, but the aura of heat surrounding him is enough to stymie Yin's weakened power for now.

"Neat. The cavalry. Hey Yin, tell the kid I'll see her later." Brandt winks at them, and bolts at a speed that belies his heavy armor.

Yin narrows her eyes. Arux pauses only briefly to make make sure she hasn't already been shot--about one seconds, actually--before pursuing...but the head start is too great. At least he knows that, from the direction the ass had taken, there's no quick way to double back. His expression is blank despite bothered, conflicted eyes as he heads back towards his suspended second-in-command. "Yin. Are you alright?" Steadies her by an arm though she doesn't need it all that much.

She nods slowly. Pretty much collected...there is at least a little bit of perturbation involved with having been about to die, though. She's still human. Ish. "Yeah. I'm fine. We have to get to the Doctor Iunxen."

"Are you hurt?"

"Not by him...but the spiders went ahead that way, the girl's breathing isn't functional enough for the altitude. Whoever that was was threatening her, too. Not Alou, interestingly."

---

Meanwhile, Troix and her father and just getting in to see the doctor. A minute or two later, the halfdragon shows up. His aristocratic and unnatural features are distinctly draconic, vertical brow ridges wrapping up towards very small horns, but his skin is entirely human. Well, mostly...it does display a purple tint here and there. Far from being venerable, though, his facial expression is...goofy. Borderline dumb. "Hey, creepy crawlies! We don't see your ilk up here much, at least not ones being open about it. So which of you is Troix?" The one with the breathing apparatus.

Troix smiles at him, but they'd rushed to get here and, despite Alou's efforts, her respirators's limits are being pushed. Her whooshing and hissing is thick with wheezing, now.

"This is Troix," Alou answers for her, hands on her little shoulders. "Yin called ahead?"

"Her boss did. They are an information unit, after all." The half-dragon winks. "I'm Doctor Iunxen! Nice to meet you both. So, Troix..." kneels beside her. "We'll just have to get you fixed up. Hey, dad, what can you tell me about this cutie's medical history?"

Troix stares at him, chest heaving. "He's not... my dad... he's Alou."

Alou squeezes her little shoulder a bit. "She's been wearing that respirator for at least two years, and probably three or four months. Her lungs collapsed when she was a baby. Don't really know why, doctors back home were conflicted about it. Other than her lungs and all the resulting affects, she's in good health. No serious allergies, good heart, strong bones, and she's as smart as anyone I've ever met, including me."

"Hmm..." Iunxen rolls a colorful little ball around on the back of his hand as he ponders this. Looks back down to Troix. "Catch!" It rolls off, towards her hands. Meanwhile, he wanders over to grab a piece of paper, scribbling something and humming.

Out in the waiting room, Yin and Fiexnah, neither in a great mood, wander in. It's immediately assumed that they're here for Yin, given her current appearance, so they have to talk the nurse into not dragging the doctor away from the spiders.

"You need a shower in the worst possible way," Arux assures once they've won and Yin's sitting.

Troix catches the ball, of course, but just sort of stares at it. No comments, this time-- she really hasn't the breath for it. 

Alou kneels next to her and fiddles with her respirator while they wait. Not much he can do there, but still, it's keeping him busy.

The doctor ponders a bit...finally draws something from a little bottle into a syrings. Taps the side with his claw, still humming, for over a minute, still humming to himself. "Okay, kiddo. I'm going to have to give you a shot. But once I do, you'll be able to breathe normally within a few minutes. Okay?"

Troix shakes her head vehemently. "I don't like shots!"

"I don't either! Can I give you one if I promise you can kick me in the shin after? And that you can breathe and all?"

Troix's eyes cloud up. Her chest really hurts. "I don't want to hurt you," she sighs, wheezing heavily. "I'll take it, okay?"

Alou blinks a little. Wow... that does not sound like something a child Troix's age would say.

If the doctor notices the discrepancy, he doesn't give any indication. "Sounds good, then!" Wipes the spot on her arm--just with his thumb, actually. "Okay. This actually shouldn't hurt much at all. I just wanted to give you a heads-up, is all." Sets the needle carefully to her skin...and, for all his quirkiness--he's humming Yankee Doodle Dandy as he works, except the lyrics in his head involve gay porn and a rabbi--he's actually damned good with the need. "Slight pinch" isn't an understatement, for once. "There you go! Take it easy, sit still for a few minutes. What this is going to do is increase your red blood cell count a'fragging'lot so that it will carry almost two and a half times more oxygen, so it'll make the absolute most out of what your lungs are doing and they won't have to work as hard. Not a perfect solution, but just dandy for a visit oh, say, four years or less."

Troix doesn't even flinch when the needle goes in, though even she'd expected her to. She smiles a little for the doctor, her winning smile... the cookie-before-dinner smile.

"Thank you," she rasps, coughs, and repeats more clearly.

"What do I owe you?" Alou looks at him, not really sternly so much as, "Great job! If something goes wrong, you'll be eating that pen!"

"No problem! And I dun't know. My nurse handles that stuff. You know. What are they called. Numbers." Grins. "But yes. Should work. The respirator bothers me, though. You guys going to be here awhile?"

"If there's something you can do about it, we'll be here as long as it takes." Alou glances at Troix, who has finally lowered herself to the ground with her knees tucked against her chest and back, and is simply sitting quietly.

"I'll think on it a bit. But, probably! Medicine's like a game where everyone's happy if I win. Instead of TPing my house. Except once. But that was a long story." He blinks. "Hey, dragoon company! Busy day. And yes. Sit still for, say, four more minutes, okay Troix?" And the dragonblood wanders out into the front room.

"You okay, kiddo?" Alou kneels next to her, watching her breathing. It's calmed a little, but that could just be because the littlest Spider is resting.

"Fine," Troix nods. "I wanna go home, Alou. I don't wanna stay here for four years. I want Mommy." 

He's seen that look before. Troix's cute, and smart, but damned if she's not a child, and this is about to be a somewhat deserved tantrum.

---

Yin really wants to just go home and sleep some more...but they're at a dragoon installation. In a fairly lounge-ish room, mostly for Troix's sake, but...still. Sequestered. This is the first time they've been away from other ears, so a lot remains to be said. Yin's arm and injuries have been re-treated and bound, though she's not yet sporting a cast since some injections need to take the swelling down first. She's sitting. Arux, not in the mood, is standing nearby.

"You look like you're breathing much better, Troix," Yin notes carefully..."are you feeling better?"

Troix nods some, looking up from the ball the doctor had tossed to her. she's been trying to roll it on the back of her hand for the better part of half an hour. "I feel better. Do you better, Yin?"

"Much, Troix, thank you." Yin smiles at the spider. Some well-placed little anesthetic spells finally have her arm and side bearable. She's still tired and generally weakened, but is concentrating marginally better.

"That said...what happened just now, Iejir?" Arux puts forward.

Yin shrugs a bit. "He confronted the three of us in the street. Claimed higher rank than me. I asked Alou and Troix to go on ahead, they did. He claimed responsibility for what happened in Tarantella and Grace Tower." Pause. "For Tarantella." Glances briefly to Alou, before leaning back again. "Involvement in the Tower thing was stated, but role was only implied. Then noted that he was going to kill me."

When she doesn't expound... "why?"

The vampiress shrugs. "'He just hates me.' Also, said I was already supposed to have died in the explosion back at the tower."

"there's strong evidence that an fourth party has turned members of the three races' various information networks rogue. We were fed a false line about the whereabouts of a dragon's egg from the beginning, leading to casualties among my colleagues and the bombing at Grace Tower." Alou looks at Troix, who isn't listening. Much. "This screams of a publicity stunt, though. He must have done a lot of talking, for wanting to harm Yin so badly."

Yin nods a bit. "He may be telling the truth about wanting to...but in my current state, a precision strike shouldn't have been hard. And if he is related to those grey 'mediators' we ran into earlier as they claim, he had it in his capability to do it efficiently. I will note, though, that we shouldn't take this as absolute...it's not outside of a fire dragon-infused dragoon's average personality types."

Arux's attention had immediately and obviously grabbed by something in her statement. "'Mediators'? What mediators?"

She sighs inwardly, and explains this. By the time she finishes, he's glaring tiredly at her, but consciously biting his tongue for the moment.

"There wasn't much Yin could do in her condition, but even in full health she would've been hard pressed," Alou admits. "Troix was onboard, as well as the crew, and in that enclosed environment, against two armed, apparently heavily trained assailants, casualties would've been inevitable."

"That's how we're going to spin it," Arux assures. "It may or may not work...for reasons I'm hesitant to explain lest things seem worse than they really are. In any case, hopefully the girl will be good for her word. I assume we'll know soon, considering what happened earlier."

Yin blinks. "Hey, that's right. Publicity stunt indeed...maybe that was intended not to get the public's attention, but to get those mediators'."

"It sounds plausible, at least." Alou tousles Troix's hair a little. "I can't fathom why he would've threatened Troix, though."

Yin shakes her head. "Can't pretend to know. Still...she did manage to see those stealth suits ealier. We already know that she's special, but they may think so, too, for some less biased reason."

Alou looks at Troix again, analyzing her. "Well... there's an off chance that she is, actually." Coughs. "Tuleau wa... uh, she might have potentially ordered some other modifications along with Troix's respirator. Hypothetically."

Yin raises an eyebrow.

"'Hypothetically,' what would those be?" Arux is quick to inquire.

"Hypothetically, I wouldn't be at liberty to go into details unless I could both trust you all and be certain that no recording devices existed anywhere in the vicinity. You'd probably have to be naked and endure a cavity search in the desert somewhere. Hypothetically." Alou smiles a little bit. He can be withholding, too. "Just trust me when I say that Troix will grow up to be very good at whatever she ends up doing."

"Fine," Yin cuts in before Arux gets the chance. She is his second in command, after all, and one who acts extremely closely with him at that, so she can get away with it most of the time. "But we do need to know what we're dealing with. So tell me this: just how badly will someone want to get at her if they found out about this long string of spy-hypotheticals?"

"The alterations are hardly double secret," Alou answers back, slightly annoyed with having brought this up. "Next-gen, cutting edge for certain, but nothing that's out of the reach of modern medicine when properly funded and motivated. Unless there's something Tuleau never mentioned, and I never found out on my own." Looks at the floor. "She kept a lot from me, but I found out a lot of Troix's secrets on my own time. Bottom line, is that there's nothing in Troix that they might want except potential."

Yin nods a bit, considering. "That's good..." smiles at Troix. "Means you're still cool, but it's a lot easier to keep you safe."

Arux watches the vampiress's face intently through this. Yeah. She's too attached to Troix to be objective in decisions concerning her. There's a reason that he tries to keep his chief field officer separated from children whenever possible. "She is right. If that's the entirety of it, just making it simply difficult to get to Troix would likely be enough to keep her safe." Looks back to Yin. "You can't stay in the same place, though. You're a different target, and if you're a higher priority for whatever reason, it could indirectly endanger Troix."

"No way!" Troix looks up, breaking her ball-induced silence to look at Arux. "I'm staying with Yin. She was nice to Edgar."

Yin tries not to smile. Says nothing. The dark-eyed dragoon blinks. "It's really not the safest thing for either of you, Miss. And it's only for a few days."

Troix tilts her little head over. "Hey. You're Arux, right? Arux. I bet that has an X like my name, only mine's silent and you don't say it. Aroo?" She giggles. Blinks, and comes back from her tangent. "My Mommy'll be mad if I stay with strangers. Yin's not too strange, she said so."

"Troix, I don't think your..."

"...going to be staying alone in any case," Yin cuts him off abruptly, "since you do have Alou." Meaningful glance at Arux. Troix doesn't know, leaveitaloneorIkillyou.

Alou breathes out. He'd have cut him off if Yin hadn't been so quick. Troix seems to consider this for a moment, and lifts up and down on her legs.

"Yeah, but men are stupid. That's what Mommy said. And Alou's a man! She said he wasn't stupid. But he's a man, so maybe she just forgot."

Yin snickers. "Woman after my own heart." Smirk-grins at Arux. "There are exceptions. Alou's not stupid. Neither is Arux, which is why you and I grace them with our presences."

"Well... if you say so, Yin."

Alou grins at her a little bit more. "She got in a fight at school when some boy made fun of her respirator. Tuleau had to explain why men do stupid things, like ask for shiners."

Yin smirks. "Sounds a lot to me like you won that fight, Troix."

"Nobody wins that kind of fight," she quickly answers. "I had to be nice to him for a whole year, Mommy said so."

"So..." Alou quietly begins, hoping to lead Troix off track, "... where would we be staying, then?"

"A more secure part of this installation would be ideal. We're fairly safe now, but there are a few holes that could be cracked with some work."

The captain shakes her head a little. She's not disagreeing about the spiders, but... "Arux, I want to go home. I know the potential risk, but security isn't bad, anyway. I need to recover and I'm just not going to rest as well here."

"You have to be alive to recover," is the immediate and unhappy retort. The very prospect of otherwise is too deeply disturbing to even entertain. "Yin, we have beds here, you know."

"I can help keep watch. I am a spy, you know. I'm so good at surveillance I know that I'm going to know everything you know before even I know it." Alou shrugs a little bit. "And Troix can watch for creepy stealth suits."

Yin smiles at Troix. "Think you can handle that, kiddo?"

"Yeah! It sounds like fun. I'm gonna stomp their butts! Hi-ya!" Troix bounces back on her rear feet, kicking out playfully with her front feet. "Like that!"

She has to smirk. "Well, I'm reassured."

The commander is shaking his head. "Triple-teamed. Fine. I'll assign some guards on top of your normal security."

Yin's face softens a bit. He hadn't really had to give on the matter. "Thanks, Arux." Smiles faintly.

He brushes it off. "Just give me a minute to arrange an escort back and set up shifts." Nods to the company, and sets off to do that.

Before too long, the four of them, along with two members of their unit and a couple of well-ranked dragoons from outside it, start through Okarthel to Yin's House.

---