Private Finished If you wanna soar with vultures, you'll have to swallow bone

Yoka's wrist jutted out at an awkward angle and when she tried to move the fingers of her left hand, they refused to respond. The kitsune was in a different guise today, that of a bottom-heavy brunette with a wire frame pair of glasses wearing a slinky red bra with beadwork that fell partway down her abdomen and a pair of red lace panties that left just something to the imagination.

That was the whole point of this job. Leave just enough to make them wonder what was beneath.

Her smile was a lot like that.

It was late when Yoka texted her healer, asking very politely to please come to the club as soon as possible for a non-emergency injury and for a meeting. Yoka's wrist throbbed, but she'd experienced much worse, and right now it sat in a bucket of ice. The club was empty, it being exceedingly early in the morning. She was at the bar, sipping a Shirley temple in her good hand while she waited.

There was a request hidden behind her text message. Just enough to make Yoka wonder what was really beneath her own intentions.


@Der Lampman

"It's, a...private matter, of sorts," Yoka said, waving the woman's jacket away with her good hand and a smile. She said, "I appreciate the thought, though. I'm afraid I anticipate I will be working here this evening as well."

Really, Yoka was used to wearing an awful lot less than this, so she was quite comfortable. When she was asked about the non-emergency, Yoka pulled her other hand out of the bucket of ice.

"Dumb injury," Yoka admitted. She would rather not explain how she got it, though it did give her the opportunity to see Andy's powers in the flesh. It was a simple break, or at least Yoka assumed it was. She wasn't a doctor or a healer. In her five hundred some years of life, she just never got around to it.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" Yoka asked, and then laughed, realizing the time. "Or for breakfast?"

Yoka watched Andy work with astute interest. Her amber eyes followed the timer on the phone for the first second, then watched the process. She wasn't entirely sure what happened, only that it was fast. Beautifully fast and terribly efficient.

When Andy was finished, Yoka flexed her fingers, and then picked up her drink with her newly repaired hand. She took a sip and lifted her eyebrows, impressed.

"You are good," she said, but of course Andy was good. That was why Yoka hired her. She didn't mind shelling out money to someone who had the talents and capabilities to keep her employees sound.

"Andy, I have a few questions for you, about your skills," Yoka said, and they were questions similar to the ones Yoka asked during the interview, but it was clear that Yoka now had a purpose in mind for them. "Do they work on injures of unknown causes?"

Yoka took this information in with a nod and another sip of her drink. The explanation made sense to her. As a creature of magic, Yoka was regretfully aware of the limitations of it. There were too many variables. What worked on one creature might not work on another.

At present, Yoka did not have any pressing concerns, but she was always looking ahead for the future. It's how she stayed alive.

Now, Yoka was faced with the task of keeping someone else alive. Well, she wasn't exactly faced with that task--she couldn't control life or death. She wasn't a god--yet, she reminded herself. Yet. But Yoka was very much someone who prepared for the worst.

"Alright, I have another question for you," Yoka said. "Presume someone has a deep laceration....here, for example."

Yoka drew her fingers across the inside of her arm.

"And I could tell you that the laceration was caused by a stainless steel blade, like...I don't know, a kitchen knife," Yoka said.

It was difficult to determine if she was making this up on the spot or if she had a scenario in mind. Her face certainly gave nothing away.

"I could give you more specifics, like that it happened 30 minutes ago, we attempted to stop the bleeding using sterilize cotton swatches, that sort of thing," Yoka said. That would be best case scenario, she figured, knowing the specifics.

"But if there was something wrong beneath the surface that we were unaware of--say an infection or maybe even pre-existing damage to the tissue, would your skills take care of that? Or do we need to know about it before hand?" Yoka finished.

Yoka simply shrugged when she said it was far too detailed and lifted her eyebrows. It was a non-answer, one that Yoka specialized in, but in her defense, Andy's statement hadn't been a question.

She uncrossed her legs for a minute and shifted on the barstool, hooking her bare foot beneath it so she could swivel back to the counter. Yoka picked up an ice cube from the bucket that she previously had her hand in and popped it in her mouth.

"Very interesting," she said, and it was indeed very interesting to Yoka. She had other healers on staff, but none as effective, and the one that might pose a rival was painfully underage and thus unsuitable for what Yoka had in mind.

She was many things, but a corrupter of youth was not one of them.

When she asked what she would be working on, Yoka just smiled.

"This is just hypothetically speaking, of course," Yoka said.

The word demon almost came out of her mouth but Yoka faltered. That had been her intention when she started this conversation. It was to know what she needed to know to keep the demons keeping her alive, well, alive. A body guard was only really useful so long as his--or her-- body was.

Another word replaced demon.

Human.

Yoka picked up her drink and took another sip. It was almost empty and she would have to make another. It would be much easier with two hands now, at least.

Her lover was human, and though he was remarkably resilient, now that he was hers she was loath to have him suffer.

This put her into two different mindsets and a rare frown crossed her face as she considered it.

Yoka lifted up her fingers in what could have been the peace sign.

"Two more questions," Yoka said. She checked them off her fingers as she went.

"Let's go back to broken bones. Say I broke my wrist today in, I don't know, a bar fight," Yoka said. "But my wrist was broken-and healed--previous from...a pole dance injury. Only when it healed from the pole dance injury, it healed incorrectly."

Now that Yoka had explained the scenario she outlined her question.

"Would your skills heal my wrist back to the state it was before--healed, but healed incorrectly--or does it default back the original, correct state?" Yoka asked.


She still had one more question but she waited on Andy's response before she would ask the next one. Yoka rested her elbow on the bar and then rested her head in her hand, her newly-healed wrist flexing comfortably.