This day began like any other, with Ava awake long before the sun so as to watch it rise. Her father had always liked the sunset, but she preferred the beginning of the new day. Ava turned her hollow gaze down to the street below, where people of all sorts were beginning to stir and move about. Today was just another day in Farecia. Ava turned and walked back inside from the balcony, it wouldn't do for commoners to see her in only her black nightgown.

Ava’s room was three stories separated from the soon-to-be-bustling streets below and had cost a small fortune to acquire. Thankfully, Ava did not have a small fortune. The girl emerged from the bath an hour later, the noises drifting through the open balcony doors telling her that the day had fully begun. Putting up her long gray hair and donning her usual dreary dress, Ava walked out the door. She never bothered locking it, as her anti-theft traps would be far more effective than and simple lock.

Ava sat outside of a small tea parlor, a drop of gray set against a backdrop of bright pink. The shop's color displeased her, but its location was perfect for overhearing the most interesting of facts that weary travelers brought with them to spout at anyone unfortunate enough to ask. All she'd overheard to day had been that some too-loud woman's son was dying of something or another. Ava didn't care what he was dying of, as the dead were rarely relevant to the affairs living. Another day with nothing gained and so much time lost. Ava sipped her tea. Cold.

Ava stared into her cup of cold tea, wondering who had served her cold tea and finding that she didn't particularly care. She walked a moment later out of the pink door, a new cup of tea in her hands. Taking her seat back from a skittish old woman, Ava resumed her listening and watching. A pair of children was playing on the opposite side of the street. 

"How cute, the children playing I mean. I saw you watching them just now." A woman with unnaturally-blonde hair that had walked out of the tea parlor a minute ago decided to strike up conversation with Ava.

"Please leave me," Ava replied.

The response seemed to leave the woman confused. She obviously wasn't used to having another person speak rudely to her face. "Um excuse me, wha-" 

"Please walk away," Ava said again. There was more poison in her voice than she held on her person, and either could be deadly. The woman ran more than walked away. Ava had no interest is speaking with people like her. She’d left the world of lords and airheaded ladies on bad terms, and she intended to keep it that way.

The sound of a crowd running, closely followed by the sight of a crowd running, earned Ava’s attentions. And what was it that could have instigated this particular commotion? Her senses becoming alert for potential dangers, Ava suddenly became aware of an unnatural chill in the air. It was the middle of summer, there should not be a chill in the air. And her tea should not be cold. Ava stood and walked away with her cup of tea, leaving enough of a tip to cover the ornate cup.

The red eyes of the demon-child split the rush of people as she walked against the pressing crowd. One man was looking behind him and didn’t see her. He almost ran her down, but at the last moment he was thrown to the side violently. Ava continued walking, the powerful tail of her scorpion puppet slipping back into her gray folds unseen. She wondered if the man would die, trampled by the stampede of bodies and feet, but it was only a passing thought, gone in an instant and never thought of again.

And then the wave of human flesh had passed, and Ava came upon the scene of the crime that had made the crowd of people flee. “Oh, a corpse,” she said in a completely monotone voice, sounding almost put off that it was ‘just’ a corpse. She was far more interested in the man standing over the corpse; the man who was not holding a raven-haired woman by the throat with one hand and leveling a sword to strike with the other. Finally, something interesting was happening in this boring city.

There were others besides Ava who had gone against the rush of fleeing people; other deviants rushing towards the source of the commotion instead of away like a normal person. Despite their words and threats, the man showed no sign of compliance. And why should he? If he was confident enough to walk into a busy city in the middle of the day just to kill once, why should the cries of a select few too stupid to know when to run stop him from doing it again? But Ava couldn't have cared less about some ditz’ neck getting messed up; that man was ruining a perfectly good day, and multiple cups of perfectly good tea. Well, the tea wasn't really all that good, but it was a matter of principle. One did not waste.

Setting her now-empty cup down on the ground, Ava crossed her arms and touched a finger to the tip of each of the arrows she kept loaded in the miniature crossbows attached to the underside of her arms, hidden by loose gray fabric and shadow. A touch was all it took to plant the strings. She fired both without warning, the arrows tearing through the air from behind the other spectators. One was aimed to hit the tip of the man’s sword - if the vibrations made him cut the poor girl, then so be it – but the other was aimed nowhere near the man or his girl, instead it would collide with the wall twenty feet behind them, coming nowhere near either. The puppet string that ran between the two arrows and then back to Ava’s fingertips was set to attach itself to the tip of the sword and the man’s body like spider web. Ava had no illusions of being able to move either the man or his sword with her puny strength, but her puppet was another matter entirely. Should either arrow find its mark, Ava would enlarge her scorpion puppet in an instant to pull the man away for punishment.

Ava took an eager step forward as the arrows flew, and something crunched under her foot. Looking down, she saw the shattered remains of an ornate white teacup.