If you were to walk the streets of Kew City after midnight, you would see very few women. Perhaps, if you knew where to look, you'd find a drunken prostitute tripping through a back road. She'd look at you with a sideways glare, wondering if you'd pull a wad of cash for her services, or a gun for the same. You'd carry on past her, and, if you managed to stay in well-lit areas, you'd survive to find one of the only businesses open at such an unholy hour—a bar. In here, you could get a hold of whatever you needed, be it a drink, a drug, a beating, or a bounty hunter. But, you'd still find no women. Except, perhaps, one.

In a certain bar on the far southern side of town, a violet-furred vixen walked through the double-doors, a fearsome air of confidence and complacency about her stride. She walked straight past mobsters exchanging packages, through clusters of idiots crowded around con artists, and around addicts clinging to the card table. Her hair was bound in a single, long, flowing ponytail and dark sunglasses adorned her pointed face. A heavy jacket hung loosely from her shoulders, opening infinite possibilities for weapon concealment. When she approached the bartender, a darkly colored lizard, he put the four bottles he was carrying down on the bar.

"You're the new barkeep, then?" he asked, seemingly amused by Krystal's gender.

"Unless you want to stay here all night, then, yes, I am," said Krystal without a trace of any accent she'd had previously.

The little man looked reproachful of Krystal's sarcasm, but replied, "I'll be finished in a moment," motioning to an empty table nearby.

Krystal took the seat, and looked around the bar with a keen interest, imagining things as they would be ten or fifteen minutes in the future. The bar had only ten seats. This was good—less to keep track of. One seat had a homeless dog in it, and he'd likely leave soon for lack of funds. Two liquored-up mobsters were having a ball in seats three and four, rocking back and forth in a piercing fit of laughter. There was an odd little ape in the sixth seat, and he appeared to be drinking a tall glass of milk (although Krystal suspected it was something far more sinister). Seat eight held a dirty dog in a disheveled suit, and he kept his head low to the table while he nursed a small glass of ale. Seat ten, however, was empty. Krystal made a mental note that this barstool would be the one to keep an eye on.

Her keen study was broken by a dishtowel that came flying at her. When she'd pulled it off her face, the bartender stood in front of her, saying, "Good luck, miss," clearly not expecting to see her alive again. Krystal suppressed the urge to stuff the dishtowel down the lizard's throat, and took her place behind the bar while the man swaggered out the doors. Krystal cracked her knuckles and prepared to serve drinks for the first, and probably last time in her life.

The few uninterrupted minutes went by quite easily. For the most part, the folks at the bar just asked for more of whatever was in their glasses (the ape, as it turned out, was drinking a malt beer stirred into melted ice cream). Krystal had the pleasure of telling one passerby to shut up upon his snide remark about a certain one of Krystal's body parts, but, other than that, no one really spoke to her. She just went back and forth between the bottles and the glasses, carefully watching a clock on the opposite wall all the while. But, just as Krystal was contemplating the winds of time, they blew something through the bar's door that Krystal had not expected in the least.

When he sat down in seat two, Krystal's mind froze. She watched from the other end of the bar as he yawned and looked with tired eyes at the colorful bottles behind the bar. Krystal diverted her gaze, thinking to herself what she should do next. Run? If so, to him or from him? But it occurred to her that he was expecting her to take his order, so she gathered up faith in her disguise and walked over to him.

"You have an order?" she asked, hoping her heartbeat wasn't as noticeable to him as it was to herself.

"I think…" he looked up at her, and, just when Krystal thought he'd seen through her, "I'll take anything."

Krystal turned away to hide her sigh of relief. As she poured vodka with her back to him, she tried to calm herself down. She wondered why she was pleased he hadn't recognized her. Wasn't this the day she'd dreamt uneasily of for five years? But, as much as she wanted to pour out her heart for him just as she poured out the liquor, she found herself immensely comforted by the fact that he had no idea of her identity.

Turning back, she saw him looking at the table with a heavy head. She placed the glass in front of him, and took in his image with greedy curiosity. His hair was matted, his ears drooped, and his eyelids were drowning in exhaustion. He sipped his drink absent-mindedly, looking this way and that, as if a seraph brandishing a flaming sword would at any moment burst through the door to free him from his own personal hell.

Krystal walked away for a moment to distract herself with other patrons, but found herself pulled back to seat two. As she refilled his glass slowly, she asked him without looking up, "What brings you here tonight?"

He looked at her strangely, as if she had done something quite unorthodox. "I was… thirsty. Why do you ask?"

"Sir, I hate to point it out, but any one of my other customers could kill you with their bare hands. On top of that, most of them are armed," Krystal said, looking him in the eye.

He looked at her with furrowed brows, but didn't say anything.

"What I mean to say is," she leaned a little closer to him, "you're not the usual type that we get in here. At least at this hour."

"Well… I don't think you'll mind my saying the same to you," he said.

"No no, don't change the subject. My interest is piqued now. Who are you?" she asked quietly.

The man chuckled, but answered, "Fox McCloud, milady. At your service," with a polite little bow of the head. Krystal laughed, her mind wanting to cry, and put on that she disbelieved his words.

"Well, Mr. 'McCloud,'" she said, straightening up, "Enjoy your drink."

And he did just that over the next few minutes. But as a man in a dark trench coat stepped through the door and sat in seat ten, Krystal scribbled something onto a napkin and folded it neatly. She eyed this shadowy figure closely, clutching the note in one hand. Laying the napkin down next to Fox's drink without taking her eyes off seat ten, she began to walk toward the other end of the bar.

She stopped in front of this man, looking down at him with an ill-masked malice, and said plainly, "Can I take your order?"

A low voice replied, "Yes, I'll have a…" but he trailed off as Krystal let her hair of the ponytail. It fell down around her face, and the man watched stupidly while she took off her sunglasses. She reached into her jacket and said to the man, "My name is Kursed, and I've been hired to kill you."

Right then, everything in the bar came to a halt. A gun, held by Krystal's frozen hand, stood pointed at this man's nose, other drinkers waited with glasses halfway to their lips, and cards hovered over tables after being thrown down. Nothing stirred the chill, stock-still atmosphere. If anything moved, it was either Fox's face, which was lifting into an open-mouthed realization, or Krystal's eyes, which darted towards Fox for an instant. Then, as she redirected her immensely powerful glare back at her target, she pulled her trigger.

Time burst forward, making up for what it had lost. Motion surged all around the bar, stirring up a post-catastrophic chaos within the walls. People stood up, fell over, and sent chairs flying while Krystal, clutching her weapon, broke for the doors. Stumbling as she went, she wrenched them open, running out into the stormy streets of Kew City.

As she tore through the darkest alleys she could find, water was sent flying with each of her hurried, percussive steps, almost as if they remembered the chaos of the now distant tavern. Rain fell in large, angry handfuls of wetness, and they mingled with Krystal's tears as they unremittingly assaulted her lonely form.