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"Methinks," Don Quixote starts slowly, "perchance we did commence with a misunderstanding."
"I U.E.P.," gloomily answers the woman sitting on her and tries to press her knife even further against Don Quixote's throat. But luckily her right dagger keeps it from cutting through it. Her left is buried in the woman's thigh, but she doesn't seem concerned with a wound. Or more precisely, she is far more concerned with Don Quixote getting wounds. And if she can judge by wrathful red eyes, it won't end with only her throat. "You steal my meat, you B.M.M."
"Verily, good lady, to steal doth imply I did gain possession of some object, yet I must observe that since our meeting, I have acquired naught save but fresh wounds!" She didn't think that trying to cut her way through backstreets would lead her to this situation. She heard about chefs stealing people from streets, but she didn't expect the situation to be so dire!
What was she supposed to do? Let poor souls to get slaughtered like a goat in a butcher's shop? No, she couldn't allow such brutality to happen in front of her eyes. She has plenty of gore in her life already. So, she did the only logical thing and jumped in, dragging the man away from the knife way. A guy, to his credit, took only a few seconds to comprehend the situation and started to run. She expected it to be the end of the story. The murderer noticing her uniform and daggers on her waist and deciding that provoking a conflict with Feather isn't worth it. She didn't expect a knife flying into her head!
Don Quixote wasn’t also supposed to lose in a battle like this.
But she was caught off-guard, and it turns out local chefs are surprisingly skilled in a fight. Or maybe she is lucky to get a single one who is.
"Yet, I am still without the meat," the woman growls, cutting away Don Quixote's excuses.
"Well, mayhap thou shouldst not try to render flesh from humans?!" Don Quixote hisses, trying to raise her knee.
"You don't understand anything in high cuisine," gloomily declares the chef, and without looking, catches her leg, pressing it down to the ground.
"Perchance if 'tis a sacrifice so grievous, I shall- what the hell thou art about?!"
A palm that kept her leg in its place a second ago started to travels around with a pressure that definitely doesn't suit atmosphere around. The chef doesn’t care about her yelling and continues her touch sliding up the inner part of her thigh in a highly inappropriate manner. Her fingers dig deep into Don Quixote’s flesh, causing an uncontrolled shiver.
But before she can start to struggle with a double effort, the chef turns to her with a horribly disappointed look on her face. "Do you have A.M.O.N.?" She hisses and, as if making a point, squeezes Don Quixote's leg again, causing a surprised yelp from her. "I thought Feathers lived in abundance in their little Nests. Why are you leaner than a stray dog?"
"I doth possess a great physical form, fit for an Agent of the Warp Train!" She snaps at the chef's audacity. And then she twists the dagger again and finally pushes the knife away using woman's distraction. The chef curses, and then Don Quixote raises a leg and kicks her in the stomach, finally escaping the hold
"W.D.Y.E.?"
Don Quixote, who had just gotten on her feet and raised her dagger preparing to fight, freezes in confusion.
"I asked, “What do you eat?”," continues the chef while straightening up. Don Quixote’s second dagger is still stuck in her leg.
"I perceive not its relevance to our present circumstance!"
The chef looks at her like she's an idiot for thinking that her food preference is rather unimportant in front of the chance of being eaten herself. But she also doesn't move, still blocking the exit, so she answers properly. "Twice daily doth The Wing furnish its laborers with repasts of great nourishment, at a moderate price."
The chef looks at her strangely. "And that's all you eat?" She asks slowly.
"Yes?"
The expression on the chef's face slightly changes, and to her shock, Don Quixote recognizes pity. For a second she doesn't believe her eyes, but before she can do anything, the woman in front of her goes to her pocket.
Don Quixote immediately gets into a fighting pose even if it feels weird with only one knife. She awkwardly raises her left hand trying to recreate captain’s position.
But it turns out to be useless because instead of a new weapon, the chef gets out a piece of paper.
Don Quixote blinks in confusion.
Then, to her surprise, the woman takes a knife buried deep in her flesh and tugs it out with a surging sound, allowing blood to flow freely and stain her white costume with red.
Then the chef throws a paper in the air, and Don Quixote jumps away, not out of fear but out of very smart instinct, and sees how the dagger thrown after nails the paper to the wall near her.
She doesn't dare to move closer, but the chef stays quiet and unmoving, so Don Quixote makes a few careful steps back until the text becomes readable.
The Agent squints. "Ryoshu's Bistro?"
"My restaurant," says the woman with pride in her voice.
For a moment Don Quixote thinks about bringing this flyer to the authority, but the uselessness of this action hits her in the head.
"Why," she asks instead, lowering her dagger.
"For you to V.A.L.U.E. good food," The chef says with the same conviction in her voice, looking at Don Quixote annoyed.
"Thou didst attempt to slay me anon and transform me into carrion. My humble apologies, yet I am uncertain I should survive a visit to thy establishment!”
"That was before I figured out that you're nothing but S.A.B.," the chef, or rather Ryoshu, as she assumes from the restaurant name, says dismissively and Don Quixote wants to snap, but woman doesn’t give her any moment to speak. "And despite you being a dirty meat thief, I think everyone deserves a good meal in their life."
"Thou wouldst have me consume human flesh," repeats Don Quixote slowly, not sure if she is going insane or the woman in front of her.
"You eat P.L.," Ryoshu says with such a raw disgust in her voice that Don Quixote steps back, not sure if it would be another excuse to try to murder her. "You can stomach a bit of unusual ingredients." She continues nonchalantly and then her gaze falls on the still open wound and she goes to another pocket this time getting out a syringe and pokes herself in the thigh, and after a few seconds, Don Quixote can see how her bleeding stops. Despite the woman in front of her being a murderer and a cannibal, she feels a bit easier.
"I feel, lady-" there is a heavy cold glance that forces her to stop in her tracks, "Chef Ryoshu,” she corrects herself and sees how woman immediately relaxes upon hearing a proper title, “that thou hast misconstrued my abhorrence of human flesh as mere fastidiousness, and not a matter of morals. 'Tis known that the consumption of one's own kind is bad." She adds without any hope, and memories of one particularly annoying cart flash in her mind. Usually, passengers avoided cannibalism by not being able to feel hunger and severe parts from other people properly. But in the one she remembers passengers didn’t let it stop them, and it took their group almost six hours to separate meat strips that they cut off from each other from the tangle they formed in stomachs.
"Any person?" The chef asks in surprisingly soft tone.
She doesn't answer, instead directing the question back at her, hoping that meaning somehow changes in a few seconds. "What?"
The chef looks at her annoyed but starts to explain.
"There are plenty of bad people roaming these streets," Ryoshu says, twirling her knife, and Don Quixote slowly nods because, well, there is an example right in front of her. "Do you think you C.E.T.T.?" She tilts her head to the side, looking way less intimidating despite the meaning of her words.
Don Quixote's first instinct is to yell “no” proudly, but it sticks in her throat. There is something in this woman's convictions that shakes her own. “Cannibalism is bad,” seems such an easy and logical conclusion. But what happens on the Warp train cannot also be called good. And at the same time, human meat is so prevalent in backstreets that people can't think about Thirteen without imagining it.
So maybe eating bad people is actually a good point?
"And pray tell, how might I ascertain that 'twas a knave whom thou hast killed?" Don Quixote demands with more confidence than she actually feels.
Ryoshu looks at her with a strange expression on her face, and Don Quixote gets ready to continue the argument, "If you are so worried about it, you can bring me meat yourself." She says instead with a smile, her gaze theatrically falling on the wound on her thigh before sliding back up to meet Don Quixote’s eyes. “You seem to be not that bad in hunting.” She murmurs raising her palm to the face and licking blood from it.
Don Quixote wants to argue that she would never, but she wasn't against killing Ryoshu before in the fight. There is always a chance that something similar will happen, and isn't it better to bring the corpse to someone instead of leaving it to feed the sweepers? Who she prefers to get her body if she dies on the streets – humans or sweepers?
Too tired of waiting for Don Quixote to finish her thoughts, the chief finally starts to move, barely limping. "You have an address. I will wait." Her voice calm and doubtless as if she already convinced that Don Quixote will pay a visit.
If she was just a bit pettier person, she would throw flyer away just for this.
Instead, Don Quixote stares at the white figure before it disappears somewhere at the corner and only then goes to the paper and the dagger. Digging the blade out of the wall, she cries a bit, seeing some scratches.
The paper in her hand is of good quality and readable despite a hole in the middle and drops of blood. It seems like Ryoshu’s establishment doing great despite her needing to hunt people herself. Then Don Quixote thinks about it again, and Ryoshu definitely feels like a person who would do it out of the love for the game.
The Bistro is surprisingly far away from this spot, but Don Quixote guesses it makes sense. No one wants to kill their regulars by accident. Maybe if she actually visits this place Ryoshu won’t try to kill her again. Maybe she suggests a meal to everyone who she fails to kill.
She still isn't sure about the whole thing and just folds this flyer, hiding it in the pocket. Don Quixote's already getting late to work so she doesn't have time to think about it right now. But perhaps she could do it waiting for a train to park.
Even if her job doesn’t have the most appetizing atmosphere.
Ryoshu could argue, probably.