[h3][color=darkorange]I. High-ena[/color][/h3]
	The Confiance she knew was all silence and smoke at nighttime. Moonlight was mythical; the sun clicked out and the slums were finally swallowed by the unobstructed shadows of the uppermost cityscape and, finally, they took on that attributed insidiousness, physically now, not entirely figuratively. With one great light put out, all others followed. The Confiance slums were in blackout mode; no cop cars, no sirens singing tonight. The only cacophony came from break-ins and drive-bys and violent confrontations scorned by daylight, the "throne-sitters'" enforcement of justice. But equity was the streets' decisions now. At night, they could run their kingdom, and that meant going out at night was a gamble. It was unpredictable whether things would turn from placid to panicked in a matter of minutes. The only things you could ever confirm: the brevity of chaos—it would always be quiet before daybreak—and that the night would always smell of smoke. 
	Regardless, if you knew no one could find you, nothing mattered. There were probably plenty who wanted to; she wondered if she'd be able to recognize anyone. Her hideout that evening was a scrapyard wrapped with an unsound chain-link fence whose lock had been popped open and left dangling by some dark-skinned girl with a head teeming with dreads. She'd forgotten how she'd gotten here and why she'd chosen the derelict place in-particular—she irrefutably had, and she put a hand to her mouth in an attempt to keep from laughing. She was leaned back against a brick wall doused in images of big-headed cats and rats and aliens, bug-eyed fish that swam around her, all psychedelic pinks and purples, weaving in-between loops, clouds, stars, abstract 3-D constructs. She had no idea how any of it had gotten there, what any of it meant—someone had put their full, capitalized name in a scintillating orange and it half-plotted out the face of some ogling toad-looking creature. She was [i]crying.[/i]
	Her cackling sizzled from her throat and, in her mania, she fought to steady herself on her skates. A surfeit of spray cans tumbled out of her lap and she sacrificed the nearly-dead roll of paper in-between her fingers to stoop down and pick them up. It was a struggle to strap them to her sides as she couldn't quell her laughter, no matter how hard she tried, as it kept spilling out of her throat until all she could do was throw back her hair and guffaw as the paint cans inevitably fell back into the dirt again. Eventually, she was forced to shove a drove of them underneath her arm before stumbling across the yard. Her other arm was wiping tears from her grinning face before being pressed against the same brick building, and with her balance assured, she skated around the corner and found herself in the wake of the painted-over warehouse. She clenched her teeth together so that the giggling sputtered past them. Her movement was gradual, less than graceful, as she slowly shuffled her feet, and seconds before her hand landed on the door handle she found herself screaming with laughter again. And once that outburst was over with, she turned and apologized 
	"Ohhh, I'm sorry! I'm—[i]thh-hh-hhhh—oh my god[/i]—Imma just go inside... get out of your way...!" The door was half-open now—she exploded into giggles—and immediately let go of the knob as she doubled over. There was a bang as it shut behind her, and she continued to laugh to herself. A conversation unfolded before her, a man's voice hard and monotone. She let it and its impending response play out like a record as the laughter slowly, surely, died away. Hyena finally pressed a palm against her cheek, straightened up, applied the other, let out a deep breath. An equally deep exhale, and then she slipped a hand into the front pocket of her shorts. She wordlessly drew forth the black envelope, its emblem projected forward at the men in the masks.