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Khaesho found a nice park bench, crisp autumn air ruffling his hair pleasantly. He sat cross-legged, Kalokin gripped in his left hand, Nikolak entwined around the fingers of his right. It wasn’t a firm grip, mind you, but a gentle and careful, the way a woman might hold her wedding ring. He whispered to them softly in his native tongue, needlessly; both could read his thoughts, but speaking thoughts aloud helped shape them, solidify them. *Dear friends. Why have you come apart? Have you some quarrel I did not notice?*

Both answered negatively; one with words and one with emotion. *That is good. I so hate to see you fight. What divides you then? Nikolak?* Kalokin was many things, but ephemeral was not one of them. His spark was solid as if carved from a block of ice, calculative and immutable. Nikolak, on the other hand, was effervescent, as easily swayed as a flower in the breeze. Something had radically shifted her, and if he knew what, he could help align Kalokin to her, but discerning her moods was an artform, far from precise.

By way of answer, he sensed dissatisfaction and hope, disappointment and faith, concern, and celebration. Multiple conflicting emotions, complex enough that they might have any source. He could guess one of them though. *I’m sorry that I tried to go home the other day, Nikolak. It was reckless and I was drunk. Thankfully, Kalokin talked me out of it, and for that I am grateful.*

That assuaged her, but there was still a lingering buzz of excitement about her, one that kept her just a bit too jittery to really resonate with Kalokin’s demeanor. That meant they had to resort to plan B.

He rather preferred plan B. It was easier. And more fun.

*Come, faithful guardians, guide this vessel’s footpath. Lend your souls unto me as I walk this razor’s edge.* It was an adaptation of the thieves’ prayer, adjusted to fit his status as Vash, and it was one of his little rituals that helped both of them fall in line. Nothing helped them resonate better than the routine, than sticking to something they both knew, and Khaesho was guessing that Nikolak’s excitement at being in the city, and the absence of their daily routines, were at least partially to blame for her recent shift. So, he recanted his thieves’ prayer, to indicate that he wanted to resonate with them so he could safely put his life on the line.

As expected, the trio didn’t quite get to true resonance. If they could, then Khaesho could just directly link Kalo and Niko together. Instead, they reached a point where Kalokin was firmly rooted in his grey matter, having taken control of nearly all his subconscious actions, and Nikolak was suffused through his body, warming and stretching muscles in anticipation of what was to come. Out in the mountains, the best they could do was rock climbing, but since they were in the city, he was going to run in the way only thieves were taught to.

“I believe the Trader word you’re looking for is parkour. Or, rather, it’s a Francois word adapted to Trader.” Kalokin’s trivia interested him little as he turned and started jogging, leaning forwards into a dead sprint. He was still new to this city, so adapting his movements on the fly would be difficult. Dangerous even. Good. They needed a little danger.

---

Perhaps an hour later, Khaesho stopped to rest atop a towering signs that marked one of the local fast food restaurants. The owners had come out to start screaming at him, but he paid them no mind. His heart thundered in his chest, beating strong and clear, and his mind was still hyper active, scanning the landscape around him as he continuously charted his route. Of all his experiments with cajoling Kalokin and Nikolak back together, this had always been his most successful.

Parkour required acute mental focus to chart the terrain, pick a path, and determine how to best traverse it, as well as what flair to add in doing so. On a good run, he reached a kind of meditative state of focus, an oddly similar mood to the focus gained in intense logical contemplation. On the other hand, the movement, the risk, the thrill of putting both life and limb on the line for some of the more daring stunts thrilled Nikolak to no end. She thrived on fear, and while Khaesho certainly wasn’t afraid of heights, it was impossible to look down over the edge without feeling his stomach lurch. As he started to come down from the runner’s thrill, he felt his charges begin to coalesce into a single being again. In their natural element, in close co-operation, it just worked better than anything else he’d tried.

And then it didn’t. A massive shockwave of fear ripped through Nikolak, mostly her own, but parts of it were foreign to him, and then she vanished, jettisoning herself from Khaesho’s body and arcing out over the concrete like greased lightning.

*What in the molten hell?!? We were so close!* He’d spoken louder than he meant to, and it reminded him that he had an audience. The people below had gathered into a crowd, all of them on phones; some recording him, some no doubt calling the police. Time to leave. He simply shrugged forwards, falling into empty space with just enough time for a few people to scream in terror before he hit the ground. He glanced off of it, rolling to distribute the force over a longer period of time, and bounced right back up to his feet, face to face with a few of the now ecstatic onlookers.

“Show’s over, go home.” He muttered before he turned and took off running. “Kalokin, find her. What is she scared of?”

A momentary ripple, and his answer returned. “Not what, who. Shouyousei is in grave peril.”

Khaesho had put a decently strict pace for the exercise, anything less and it wouldn’t have worked. Now, he was grateful that he’d taken the luxury of a full night’s rest as he turned his heels towards Nikolak’s trail and positively scorched a path towards the outskirts. Belatedly, he wondered what the Olympic sprinting record was, and how badly he was surpassing it.