"Of course I mean Lady Maria," Josephine snapped a little more venomously than she had admittedly meant to.  She shook her head; honestly, sometimes Kael's density was utterly shocking, even after the past few years.  He was so hard-headed...  Of course, so was Josephine, but at least she wasn't rash.  Being able to fight from a distance had made Kael spoiled, in her opinion, and if he had more experience up close, he might not be so quick to engage a beast.  Be that as it may, there wasn't anything she could do about it anymore.  He was right: maybe Maria would turn them away...  Perhaps she would put an end to their miserable lives, if she knew that it had been their fault that their master had perished.  But what else could they do?  A Huntress, and a Master Huntress with access to the Hunter's Dream no less, had told them to seek her out.  The pair didn't stand a chance out here alone for the rest of their lives, they had no home to return to, and if they were likely to split up for fear of killing each other were they sent out with no guidance.

The woman snatched her father's journal up and reattached his Chikage to her sack before throwing it over her shoulder.  The pair put out their fire, fanning the smoke for a moment to make sure it wouldn't reignite and to disperse the possibility of a signal.  She looked at Kael as he spoke...  She wondered if he knew he was barely talking above a whisper, as though the very strength of his former voice was sure to break her bones.  For only the most fleeting of moments, one could see a flash of sympathy flash in her eyes...  Or rather, it was more likely that one would see pity.

"You know, Kael, just because I hate you, doesn't mean you have to be afraid of yourself.  If we're going to make it to the clocktower, I need you to be the cocky asshole you always are.  Once we get there, you can have the luxury of a breakdown," She stated coldly, draining the previous moment's empathy from her voice without a second thought.  Josephine would never admit it, but her advice was exactly what she was planning to do, even if nobody saw it.  She drew her Rakuyo from her hip and held it loosely at her side, drawing her pistol from the other hip and twirling it once.

"Rest?  I'm not likely to be able to sleep until I am literally on the verge of passing out.  The luxury of controlling the time that we sleep is hardly ours anymore, don't you think?"  She asked, eyes peeling through the streets of Yharnam.  The streets were surprisingly empty, come to think of it...  The fire was a bad idea - it could have attracted something.  And yet...  there weren't any beasts here.

The pair of apprentices walked along, stepping around wrecked carriages and carcasses picked apart by crows.  The city was so saturated with their stench that it wasn't even overwhelming at this point.  This was the smell everybody lived with, all throughout Yharnam and the surrounding towns - just death and poison all the time.  It was then that Josephine heard the third set of footsteps, another pair of boots tapping the ground with hers and Kael's.  The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she spun on her heel without breaking stride, firing a quicksilver bullet as soon as she saw the figure.  It was quite a way down the road and she didn't have a chance to hit it with her pistol, but at least it stopped.  Oh god, it was a human.  A real person...  And they hadn't even had to fight anything yet.  Maybe they could help!

She was about to apologize for brazenly firing her weapon when the figure let out a guttural laugh from deep in its throat.  Josephine froze and readied her weapon, realizing that he must have been following them for at least a little while.

"Heheh...  Sure did take you two a while to turn around, didn't it..?"  He, for the pair could certainly tell by his voice that it was a he, asked, practically cooing at them.  "Oh such young... naive hunters...  Walking [I]my[/I] city... trying to kill [I]my[/I] brothers and sisters!"  Josephine furrowed her brow... brothers and sisters..?  "I've been following you, you know... and... I gotta say...  I don't like it one bit how your friend wasted...  [I]wasted![/I]" He repeated the word, though it was clear that it was more out of anger than anything, "All of that... precious blood, just to kill some beast.  Wouldn't it be better to have just died?  Or to have slit his wrists..?"

He couldn't possibly be talking about Edmund...  Josephine prayed he wasn't, but knew better already.  Before she could speak, he continued, taking a few staggered steps toward them...  "Waste, waste, waste, waste...." He repeated the word over and over, quieter each time until he was mumbling it to himself.  "It could have been refined and used... for health, to make us better.  I can feel it already...  These beasts aren't monsters to be hunted...  They're the next step.  They are what we must become to grow stronger.  The blood speaks to me...  It tells me things...  like how it feels to sink your teeth into fresher flesh.  To drink it as it flows, rather than from a phial..."

Josephine glanced and Kael and her lip curled back in contempt.  Was this what Lydia had talked about when she warned of the dangers of the blood phials?  She wasn't ready to find out as she slowly began to approach, wanting to give Kael time to make his own move or prepare one.  This guy wasn't moving fast, but he clearly needed to be killed - or stopped in some way.  However, he wasn't violently charging yet, so that was at least one upside.  Josephine had little hope that it would last as she holstered her pistol and split her sword into a singular curved blade and a dagger.  Kael couldn't afford to hesitate...  She took a breath and looked back just one more time, giving him a firm nod; please, she begged in her mind, don't fuck this up, we don't have a safety net anymore.