“My teeth?” Garina blinked, tilting her head to the side. Noah wasn’t sure if she was completely baffled or an inch from losing her cool.

“Yeah. Mine are sharp too, see?” Lee opened her mouth and pulled her cheek to the side to give Garina a better look at her palate. “But yours are way sharper. You’ve got to bite your mouth all the time.”

“Lee, don’t bother her too much please,” Noah said. “She’s trying to eat dinner, just like us.”

“You don’t have pointy teeth. You don’t understand,” Lee said. “I used to bite myself all the time until I made mine shorter, but hers are really big. Like a monster’s.”

Ferd shifted uncomfortably on the other side of the table. Noah prepared to draw on his magic – he didn’t know what Rank Garina was, but he didn’t want to find out.

But to his surprise, instead of the fury that Noah had expected, a grin passed over Garina’s lips. “You like my teeth?”

“Yeah,” Lee said with a nod.

“They weren’t easy to get,” Garina said, pulling her own cheek to the side so Lee could get a better look into her own mouth. She continued speaking with her hand in her mouth, muffling her words. “I grew them myself, using materials I gathered from one of my greatest enemies. It took years of refining before they were worth using.”

“Wow,” Lee said. And then – to Noah’s horror – Lee reached up and tugged at one of Garina’s teeth. “They feel really strong. Have you ever bit your tongue with them?”

Garina burst into laughter. Luckily, Lee removed her hand in time to avoid getting it chomped. Noah and Ferd exchanged a completely baffled look, and Garina slapped Lee on the back.

“I’m very aware of my entire body,” Garina said, speaking through her laughter. “I haven’t bit myself in a very, very long time. I’ve bit a few other people, though. And I’ve never had someone stick their hand in my mouth voluntarily, and that’s saying a lot. There aren’t many things I haven’t experienced yet.”

“Oh. Well, you’re welcome,” Lee said.

“You’re welcome?” Garina, who had only just started to get herself under control, started to laugh again. “Look at the arrogance on this little thing! She’s got more balls than the entirety of your church, Ferd.”

Ferdinand’s eye twitched, but the smile remained on his face. “She does not know what we do. Ignorance can be a shield.”

“I love it when you get scared,” Garina said, flashing a deeply unsettling smile in Ferd’s direction. “Perhaps coming to this little backwater location was worth it after all. I don’t get amusement like this often.”

Lee handed the menu over to Noah, but at this point, he was more interested in the two others at their table than he was in ordering food. He gave it a quick glance, then picked out a dish at random and gave the menu to Moxie.

“You said you were traveling through the area, right?” Noah asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from Garina’s teeth. She seemed fine with it for the time being, but encouraging Lee to poke at other people’s teeth sounded like a great way to wake up one day with her hand in his mouth. “What for?”

“I’m trying to find someone that stole something important,” Garina replied, cracking her neck. A chill ran down Noah’s spine. He wasn’t sure what it was about her, but his senses were not a fan of Garina. She, for lack of a better word, scared him.

“What of you?” Ferd asked. “Are you a local?”

“I’m a professor here,” Noah said. He nodded to Moxie. “As is Moxie. Lee is an assistant professor.”

“She seems… young for a professor. All of you do,” Ferd said. “I mean no offense, of course.”

“Who cares about how young they are?” Garina asked. “Look at the little one. She’s bold, and she actually respects the other two. That means they’re stronger than she is.”

“Not everyone you respect has to be stronger than you are,” Ferd said.

“That’s an excuse the weak give to justify their subservience,” Garina said with a scoff. “The weak respect the strong because they fear them. That’s the way of the world. I could see passing fancy for someone weaker – but if someone weak claims to respect someone strong for any reason other than their strength, it’s a lie.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Lee said.

Garina looked down at her, a frown crossing her lips. “Oh? What do you think, then? What reason do you have to respect anyone if they’re weak?”

“Well, I don’t know about weak or not, but I don’t really consider that. I’m always going to be better at some things than others. Vermil has more magic than me, but I’m faster than him. That doesn’t mean I respect him less or more.”

“That’s because your power likely balances out in other ways,” Garina said with a dismissive wave. “Relationships are transactional. The only reason to respect someone is because you get something from them.”

“No.”

Garina’s frown deepened. “No? Are you implying I’m wrong?”Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

“Yep.”

“Garina, perhaps we should move on from this topic,” Ferd said, a note of worry entering his voice. “We don’t need to start an argument.”

“Shut up,” Garina said, her eyes locked with Lee’s. “Go on, then. Tell me what I’m wrong about. What have I missed?”

“You do things for other people because you love them,” Lee said, crossing her arms and not backing down in the slightest. “Not because you know they’ll do something in return.”

Garina snorted in derision. “Because you love them? So – what, if you knew that someone you loved was never going to return the effort you spent on them, you’d keep doing it?”

“Yeah. That’s what love is.”

“That’s just weakness.”

Lee shook her head. “You’re wrong. I used to think the same thing, but that isn’t true. Loving people means you’re strong. The weak thing is to claim that you only respect strong people. Strong people can be assholes, and assholes don’t deserve respect.”

Garina’s face was like a block of ice. Noah wanted to grab Lee and redirect her attention to the menu, but it was clear that interfering now would only make things worse.

With every word that comes out of Garina’s mouth, I’m becoming more convinced that she’s a really high Rank. That attitude paired with the way she’s talking about everything being backwater… shit. Is she from outside the Empire?

“Enlighten me, then. How does giving yourself liabilities prove strength?” Garina asked.

“Because you need to be strong enough to protect them, and you if you aren’t, you push yourself harder until you can. If you only respect out of fear, then you don’t actually have any friends. You must be really lonely.”

Ferd looked like he wanted to say something, but the tension between Lee and Garina was so intense that the words died on his lips before they could ever take life. Out of the corner of his eye, Noah saw Moxie rolling a seed between her fingers, ready to call on her magic if the situation got worse.

“And what about when the people you claim to love betray you?” Garina challenged. “What happens when someone stronger shows up and you can’t protect them? What you describe is weakness.”

“And it sounds like you’re just alone,” Lee replied. “What happens when you find someone too strong to defeat on your own?”

“That can’t happen if you are the strongest person.”

“There’s always someone stronger,” Lee said. “And even if you were that strong, what’s the point? It sounds boring and lonely. What do you do, just keep practicing to make sure nobody ever gets as strong as you? I bet the weak people that are actually hanging out with each other would have more fun.”

Before Garina could respond, rescue arrived in the form of a waiter. The man that had seated them approached their table, completely and blissfully unaware of the argument going down on one of the benches.

“Orders?” he asked, his gruff voice making it clear that he wasn’t looking to spend much time speaking.

“I want whatever you think tastes the best,” Lee said, her eyes lighting up as she lost interest in her argument with Garina. “Surprise me, but make it big please.”

“Done,” the waiter said. “Next?”

Garina looked at Lee in disbelief – likely trying to get over the cognitive whiplash. Lee had gone from ready to fight to cheerful in a split instant. After a moment, she let out a huff.

“Give me the Weeping Sawtooth,” Garina said, still watching Lee.

The rest of the table put their orders in as well, and the waiter departed as quickly as he arrived. Mercifully, neither Lee nor Garina said anything else. The table remained silent for several minutes, the tension surrounding everyone so dense that it could have been cut with a knife.

Their waiter emerged from the kitchen a short time later, bearing five plates in his arms in an impressive juggling act. He slid them across the table and departed in the same motion. The food looked and smelled delicious.

Well – most of it did. Noah and Moxie both had some sort of breaded fish before them, and it was absolutely glistening with just the right amount of grease. It was served with a small, colorful salad and a speckled white sauce that looked remarkably similar to tartar sauce on Earth.

Lee had received a massive pile of beautifully cooked fish, each one seasoned and prepared in a different way. Across from her, Ferd had a single, large fish. It looked tasty, but it was, as Garina had pointed out, rather plain.

The dish that Noah’s eyes were fixed on wasn’t his or Lee’s or Ferd’s, though. It was Garina’s. It was a large, bulbous fish with spines jutting out of it in every direction. While its flesh looked cooked to perfection, there were so many spikes on the thing that it felt like it eating it would have been a massive chore.

“I think I prefer my plain fish,” Ferd said, breaking their silence.

Garina glared at Ferd. “Coward.”

“But a happy one,” Ferd replied, cutting a slice of his meal away and taking a bite. His eyebrows rose as he chewed and swallowed. “That’s actually quite spectacular. Some of the best cooking I’ve had in a long time.”

That was all it took for Noah and Moxie to dig in. The faster they ate, the sooner they could get Lee away from Garina without causing too much of a scene.

And, on Lee’s part, she wasted absolutely no time in devouring the top three fish of her pile in rapid-fire succession. They vanished down her gullet in an impressive disappearing act.

“This is incredible,” Lee said, licking her lips. She paused as she lifted the next small fish to her mouth, then held it out to Noah. “Do you want to try?”

“Sure,” Noah said, taking it from her. Lee handed another one to Moxie, who gave her an appreciative nod as she claimed it.

Noah had to admit that Lee must have won the waiter or the chef over, because her meal was definitely better than his, and that was saying quite a bit.

“You’re right. That was delicious,” Noah said. “Want some of mine?”

He cut a piece of his fish off pre-emptively – there were certain precautions that one had to take with Lee when sharing food if one wanted to keep any for themselves.

“Thanks!” Lee tossed the piece into her mouth and paused for a moment. “Mine was better.”

“Yeah,” Noah admitted wryly. “They’re both great, though.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Noah spotted Garina poking at her fish. She was clearly trying to find the proper way to eat it. Something about the scene almost made Noah laugh. He was completely confident she was at least Rank 5 if not considerably higher, so she definitely could have eaten the whole thing and not blinked an eye if she wanted to, but that probably wouldn’t have been particularly enjoyable.

For all that talk of being strong, it’s nice to actually sit down and relax sometimes. Hard to do that when your meal is actively fighting back. I guess that lives up to her ideals, though. Having the power that lets you eat the spiky fish is more important than enjoying eating it, eh?

“Your fish looks spiky,” Lee said through a mouthful of fish.

“Yes,” Garina said curtly. “It is.”

Lee pushed her own plate – still piled high with fish – over to Garina. She then snagged the taller woman’s plate and dragged it over to herself.

“There,” Lee said. “You look hungry, so you can have mine.”