Graffiti. Fleur sabotaged the apartment with ease. It wasn't hard, dabbing a little paint here and there. 'Take it to Max' was written upon the walls in a colorful shade of pink. Whatever she could have smashed with her foot, she did. Items that she herself couldn't physically break, her sword did the job just fine. In moments, the job was done. Fleur went back to Maxwell to accept her reward.

It didn't feel good, though.


The lagoon interrupted what was otherwise a thick line of white-gold sand. Behind the sand was an endless concrete jungle of apartments and hotels stretching as far as the eye could see. On any summer day the sand would be entirely obscured by vacation goers in their multicolored board shorts and bikinis, sunbathing and getting burnt. But this was the off season, and the beach was bathed in the first light of dawn. How beautiful it must have been a hundred years ago. The thick jungle met the ocean directly, sometimes with a small stony scree. Mostly the overhanging branches of the trees hid the stones from sight. From a boat it appeared to be an impenetrable wall of green, stretching as far as the eye could see in any direction and so wildly curved that the bays could hide any number of the pirates. The coastline was brilliant in the morning sun with it's chalky white ribbon of cliffs, jagged and folded, shrinking into the distance. Below the cliffs were beaches of rocks made rough by the barnacles upon them. Each beach was divided by wooden groynes that stretched out to greet the coming waves, some like gap-toothed children, were missing planks. In the distance a spit stretched out into the sea and upon the end was a lighthouse, lonely and abandoned. The foamy crests of the crashing waves were the only sound other than the cry of the gulls. A less hospitable coastline could not have been imagined. One hue of granite, gnarled and sharp, met the ocean dulled by the blanket of cloud above. The cliff rose upward with impassible overhangs, a gift for defense, a nightmare for sea-bound newcomers. Jagged, fingers of barnacled rock poking out with no discernible pattern. There were inlets where the water lay more still, a white silvery sheen reflecting back the newly bestowed moonlight. As the last vestiges of daylight failed, the rocky outline grew blacker against the orange kissed sky and the water grew darker too. Finally the boat bobbed, tugging against the anchoring chain, black water meeting black land under millions of stars. It curved as if drawn by an artists hand, the golden sands making a thick band between the waves and the vegetation beyond. Between the boats that left for fishing and the shoreline were sandbanks, snaking there way through the briny waters before sinking once more.

The day was postcard perfect, even the buses were running on time. Downtown the skyscrapers shone silver in the morning sun and the sky was an unbroken backdrop of blue. Commuters walked like shoals of fish in a myriad of directions, not one of them in winter garb. Fleur smiled, so spring had arrived in Seattle and for once it wasn't with a deluge of rain. After so many days of drizzle the weather gods had decided to send the sun. It was the promise of winter lifting, the end of grey bitter days. Ahead yawned the spring, blossoms and blooms. The townw folk, young and old, walked with a new bounce in their stride, heads held high to take in the first kiss of spring warmth.

But she is among millions in this life. This "life" is all she's known. Her face – thinner than thin – clearly carves out her sharp features, leaving the attention not on her full, cracked lips, not on her hollowed-in cheeks, but on her tired eyes. She will not go to school. She will not leave her home. She will not escape her life. A bad hand dealt to her, and a country of slaves. Slaves not to a human, but to a life; poverty and hunger their master, one which she cannot escape. She was out of money. Fleur got in and slammed the door to her bedsit harder than strictly necessary. She liked the sound it made, like it was telling the world to go to hell on her behalf. She stripped of her chef-whites and hung them on the back of the door before cracking a beer open and slamming a ready-made meal for one in the microwave and opening a family sized bag of corn chips and a shop-bought jar of salsa. Home wasn't for cooking, she had enough of that at work.

The man knocked on her door and introduced himself. Maxwell, huh? His deal was definitely tempting.