The young woman fell from the sky and hit the ground with a very loud, very painful sounding whump. The sidewalk cracked like plasterboard beneath her. Ed winced. That had to hurt. He resettled his glasses on his nose and poked her gently in the ribs.

"Erm, miss? 'Scuse me, miss? Are you okay?" There was a small crowd gathering around them; most people just walked by, unconcerned, but a few tourists were snapping photos. He tried again. "Miss, you're blocking the thouroughfare, do you think you could maybe..."

She groaned and shuddered, then slowly pulled her arms and legs beneath her and rose to her feet, a little undsteadily. Ed helped brush the concrete dust out of her clothing and led her to his cart. The tourists wandered away. She blinked at him, more than a little dazed.

"Where am I?" Her voice was a little slurred, which wasn't entirely unsurprising. It looked like she'd bit her tongue on impact.

"Lynna Falls, miss. The market district."

"Lynna? Oh. I'd hoped to end up in Radrezyria." She sighed coughed up some cement dust. Her face froze. "Wait a minute- who am I?"

"I'm afraid I don't know, miss. You fell out of the sky and hit the pavement pretty hard." This was a little odd; it wasn't every day that people fell out of the sky, but usually they remembered who they were afterwards. You don't go falling from high altitudes unless you know you're going to walk away with nothing more than skinned knees, after all.

"My name is Emmy, I think." She looked up at him with wide green eyes. "Who are you?"

He smiled his best professional smile. "The name's Rex, Oedipus Rex, I could kill my parents for it but they'd expect that. You can call me Ed. I run this fine establishment, Ed's Waffles, Espionage, and Tax Evasion." He gestured broadly to his cart. "Would you like a waffle?"

She sat down on one of the folding stools outside the cart. "I think I would, thank you."
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Leo was waving his arms and having a hard time of it, as the room was barely large enough for one of them to stand up, much less for both of them standing and one of them waving his arms. Quinn was just glad the other man wasn't able to draw his ridiculous Freudian sword; Leo was hysterical enough to start hacking at things, and, antiquated or not, that thing was still sharp.

"There are crazy people with big henchmen and bigger guns chasing after us and it's all your fault!"

Leo's voice had risen three octaves since he'd started shouting. Quinn rubbed his temples wearily, and decided he'd had enough. A flying tackle was a difficult thing to manage under the best of circumstances, and even more difficult in a seven foot by seven foot box with two beds and two adult men, but he pulled it off anyway because he was just that tired of listening to his accidental companion. They hit the opposite wall with a spine crunching thud and ended up on the floor. Leo finally shut up, most likely because Quinn had his elbow jammed in his throat.

"Okay, golden boy, we're going to do two things now. You're going to shut up, and I'm going to think. Okay?" He'd perfected his gravelly intimidating voice six years ago on his younger sister; Leo squeaked and nodded. "Good."

He left Leo sprawled on the floor and sat down on one of the beds. He thought. Leo remained sprawled on the floor. He kept thinking. His elbow hurt. Thinking did not cease.

"So, what's your name, anyway?" he finally asked.

"Adonis Marco Angelus Isidore Valiant Leocadia the seventh." Leo finally sat up and stretched, his joints crackling. "Who're you?"

Quinn snorted. "No wonder you prefer Leo. 'Adonis' is such a wuss name. I'm Quinn Sheridan Zelindo Frances Aubrecht Mallory Democritus Drinda the twelf."

Leo stared at him with wide gold eyes, completely and utterly shocked. Quinn rolled his eyes. The kid was probably severely inbred and mentally retarded. That happened a lot in the middle nobles- and he was pretty, too pretty. Kind of like show dogs, or something. Really pretty, really stupid, and really useless. Silver. People weren't supposed to have silver hair unless they were sick or really old or really vain. Leo didn't seem like the type to indulge in that kind of vanity, pretty or not, which meant that he was a natural silvertop, and that was just wrong.

Quin tossed his own impossibly golden ponytail over one shoulder and rested a foot on the other bed, waiting for Leo to recover from his shock.

"Y-you're a Drinda? That's like, in line for the throne, cousins to the emperor..." His big golden eyes had glazed over. Quinn half expected him to start drooling. Silver nobles. Completely useless.

"Second cousins twice removed, actually, and I'm all but disowned from my family, but yes, I am the eldest Drinda heir right now, even if I am just giving it all to my sister. That's not really important, though. What's important now is that we're stuck in a Sanctuary with the mob after us for no reason, I'm hungry, you're annoying, and I'm stuck with you and you probably won't taste good. So, you tell me how I'm going to solve these problems." He crossed his arms over his chest and looked expectantly at Leo.

Leo shrugged. "It's your fault we're here! You solve them."

"You're just like my ex-girlfriend, man- you expect me to do everything! Fuck, I don't even know where we are, or how we got here."

"Don't look at me- one minute I was at Cade's party, the next I was in the middle of an alley with people trying to kill me." Leo pouted.

Quinn gritted his teeth. "Right. Let's come up with a plan that will keep us from getting fried, then. Can you actually use that frog-sticker of yours, or is it just for show?"

There was a blur in front of his eyes, and then a very clear image of a very large, very sharp sword held at his throat. He reacted on instinct and the next moment they were both standing there, Leo with his sword at Quinn's throat and Quinn with his rifle jammed between Leo's ribs.

"I dunno, I'm pretty good at sticking frogs." Those big golden eyes suddenly seemed very dangerous.

Quinn tried very hard not to swallow. "Okay then. Maybe we can get out of here in one piece." He began to rethink his previous plans.
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Dreamscape. Do they ever amuse me.