All the gold a shallow grave can promise

"I got a finger telling me what direction to go, but it seems inappropriate to take small children to fight cartel members, even though they could probably be used as shields..." Elaine thought longer than any other human would about that. "...No the bullets would go through them, and the they would haunt us long after their deaths. We need to be realistic about this, Skull." In all fairness Elaine needed to use tact and the perfect use of words to explain to the children that they could not accompany her. "si usted no se va el chupacabra comerá su alma, porque es una desilusión y el desaguadero sobre el mundo." Tact goes a long way when dealing with children.

Dissatisfied children ran away from duo, scurrying back into their impoverished surroundings. "We should buy them all something on the way back. What do frightened Latino children like?" Blocks faded into the backdrop of Mexico City. The air remained heavy with the misdeeds of evil men. Rancid activity came over Elaine and her senses sat accosted by the loud booming of wretched music that competed with the ill screaming of domestic violence that permeated through the streets.

Music acted as the cover for the streets that ran thick with violence. Elaine turned to see two men standing over a downed old man. By connecting the clues of human nature, Elaine discerned that this store belonged to the old man who struggled to get back to his feet. With their backs foolishly turned to Elaine, a man dressed in loose khaki pants and a white shirt kicked out the arm of the old man. Gears clicked back in the chamber of the pistol. Even with the loud drowning of music, the chamber rang out to the men.

"¿Quién el carajo es usted?" The man with no problem attacking a downed old man spoke in a ribald fashion.

"No importante." Her eyes diverted to the man, telling him to get inside the store. The two thugs obliged to let him leave the fight. Bravado filled them with laughter and cocky movement. They found something funny enough about Elaine to laugh, while allowing their limbs to move about as though a puppeteer with Parkinson's disease controlled them.

"Escuche, perra..." A bullet flew into the man's chest sending him back into he arms of his partner in crime. Elaine moved her thumb up the handle of her gun and pressed a small red button. Explosives burst from his chest cavity, and send scraps of metal into his friend. Elaine walked over and spun the chamber of the gun. After firing a round that left one chamber empty. With no fear Elaine took the pistol to her head and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Her arm moved from its position next to her head, and directed the barrel to the man's forehead. Blood poured from his lacerated skin, mixing with sweat for a gushing cocktail of failure and defeat. "¿Sentirse afortunado?" She cocked the pistol. "¿Bien hágale punk? "

”You were probably absolutely serious about what you just said, which slightly frightens me and also gives clues to the type of person you were.” Frankie twisted on the rope and laughed gently. Everything was feeling pretty surreal. The upside down world, walking from New Orleans to Mexico City, children being used as human shields. And all Bones wanted was his god-damn body back so he could hunt down a crooked landlord. ”If they've been drinking milk though, their bones should be strong enough to deflect some of the shells. How about you lasso some of them together? Put a pair back to back, then put a second on top of them.” Bones idly chatted as the Cowgirl shooed the kids away. Frankie didn't like seeing poor kids; they reminded him too much of his own childhood running around Orleans. The Cowgirl wasn't a complete monster; she seemed to want to make it up to the kids after scaring them away which meant she had a conscience. She was turning out to be something of an enigma. Maybe her morals were as messed up as her memory. Great, more work for the skull. ”Call me Frankie if you want, Cowgirl. And I think frightened Latino children like nice things. Throwing money at them will be plenty fine.”

As the Cowgirl turned, the skull twisted on the rope until it was forced against her leg. He could watch the action like a five year would, if he was holding onto the back of her leg as she fired bullets into the men. It really was something violent, and ended the lives of the men needlessly. ”What did you have to go and do that for?” He muttered as he twisted in a wind furrow left by a passing car. There were kids watching, having followed like little morbid dogs. And they were watching with wide eyes.

”Aw, god-dam it.” He muttered, looking out at them. ”Princess, how about you stop shooting up people in public.”

"That's why you respect your elders, kid." The tragedy of the situation faced the children, but the children probably saw worse than this in their life. At least this incident of violence came at the hands of a vaquera against thugs, and not thugs perpetrating violent acts against women and the elderly. "You need to chillax homefry. We're doing good. We're pilgrims in a city of evil men, and I reckon if I shot every person I saw right not, at least six out of ten people would deserve it. And given the amount of people that die when I'm around, six out of ten ain't bad, no siree bob." The pistol slid back into her holster perfectly. Smooth leather welcomed the return of the prodigal pistol. Today she would do good.

The streets opened before her like gates to the abyss. Discarded newspapers thrust themselves through the vacant streets; no one needed to know the news here. It was all bad. Chain link fences wrapped around properties that ran flush against weed infested sidewalks. "Only children offered a welcome to this world. Born of poverty and indoctrinated in violence, only the meek shall inherit this Earth." Her eyes rolled down and brought her left brow up. "IKR?" She spoke down to the skull as they passed by the remains of a jewelry store. It seemed they garnered a great deal of traffic, but not the type that would keep you in business. If this store gave an anomaly of the landscape it would seem fine, but the mirroring scenery proved otherwise.

"I feel like I remember this place..." A distinct smell of cinder arose from the backroom Elaine stared at. "...I don't remember ever going to Mexico, but I think I started there before I walked to New Orleans with you."

"No!" A woman flung her arms towards Elaine, conjuring a look of bewilderment on her face. "Salga! Salga! Salga!" She physically blocked Elaine from entering the bar with her round body. "Dios me ayuda. Váyasele por favor chica loca de demonio!"

"Chica loca de demonio?" She thought to herself. "Skull, do you speak Spanish? It sounds like she knows something about the events that are going around and wants us to help her."

”You know, Evil Men only become Evil Ghosts when you shoot them.” Frankie muttered wistfully, recalling those days gone by. He was an evil man that had become an evil ghost. As the woman wandered the streets and the lanes in her own memory, Frankie was only concerned with his own history. He was watching the swamp trailing away, the road twisting and turning and guiding him through two ornate iron gates. The road was smooth but gravely to the front door, which was flanked by two men twice the size of Frankie. Maybe that should have been a clue; Why were two guys guarding a door when there was a wall all the way around the damn grounds? But the uplifting feeling of freedom was filling his head with clouds. His feet felt as light as air as he walked over worn wooden floors into a cool room. There were the Capos and the family. Frankie smiled. They did not. When Frankie faltered the two fellas from out front were suddenly on his shoulders and holding his arms. Putting up a fight would have made him a dead man faster.

Maybe he should have put up a fight.

The head of the family got the first cut in, pulling out a switch blade and cutting a curve into his cheek from his mouth. At the sight of blood they swarmed like Piranhas; soon the other side of his mouth was cut. They were calling him liar and pulling out his tongue, which soon became nothing more than a stump. His lips were gone next, then teeth. They used the flat of a heated blade on one eye but left the other just so he could watch his fingers disappear.

They paused when he passed into oblivion and pulled him back from the comfort of the cold dark abyss. In cruel ways. With salt water and alcohol they kept his heart beating as before dragging him down in the basement. They did more there, but it was here that would be his final resting place. The barrel of a revolver hovering over the final eye, still as a pillar to the heavens. Someone said 'Sorry Frankie,' but was shushed with a hiss as the hammer fell down, judging him for a life of misdeeds.

Or, at least, it would have. Seemed there was a hung jury.

Frankie came out of his sudden daydream as he heard someone ask him a question. He was still on the hot streets of Mexico City, Mexico. He was still roped to a breeze block of Crazy disappearing into a deep blue abyss of Screw loose. ”Spanish? No, Princess. I don't know Spanish. I thought you did. Sadly, you seem to be mistaking the woman desperately begging you to go away as someone asking for help. And Skulls ain't meant to talk, so who knows, huh?”

"Well if you don't know Spanish I'll just guess at what she's saying then." She gave it a go. "Entro la paz. Wow, that was easier than I thought." The woman grasped onto the frame of the door and recited the rosary through eyes thick with tears. "Scuse' me." Slender legs carried the girl and her skeletal companion past the woman and into the familiar setting. A few broken tables litter the tourist attraction. Doors knocked off their hinges littered the ground. Any attempt to clean the bar appeared to fail to restore it to any civility to the place.

A quick stroll through the place only showed more and more clues as to what Elaine did the earlier day. "Fonzi, do you know what this place is? I think I've been here, but like you told me this isn't New Orleans, which means if I walked here from Mexico than I couldn't have been here before..." Bullets riddled many of the walls, but a loose floor board seemed like someone pried it up. "...What's that?"

Using her pistol like a crowbar, Elaine pulled the board up. Within the empty crawl space sat a pile of bones. Elaine pondered the existence of such things in a bar, but given the current state of the bar something this macabre did not seem far fetched. Well for Elaine it did. "Are we going to find the Holy Grail? I'm going to be so famous!" Her head drifted off. "And then someone will tell me who I am."

"I'll tell you who you are..." A well dressed man stood behind Elaine. "...You're a serious pain in my ass. Give me the skull, and make sure you put those guns on the ground." Violent death normally followed Elaine, but maybe this time something different would occur. Her pistols slid out of her holster and onto the floor board under the watchful guise of the loaded revolver. Elaine loosened the skull from her belt loop and placed his skull down on the ground in front of her pistols, ever so close to his own remains. "Now get up and turn around. I'd rather not shoot a pretty thing like you while you are staring right at me."

”I think this is a bad idea!” He called out as they walked passed the crying woman. But like usual, the Skull-On-A-Rope was ignored and he got a door frame in his cheekbone for the trouble. It seemed the universe was actively attempting to keep him from achieving any good. He simply gave up, metaphorically laying back and throwing his hands up in distaste at the whole affair. In the physical world, he spun like a Piñata and was treated with roughly the same treatment. ”Hm, seems like someone had a Fiesta.” His eyes went over the bullet holes and the trashed furniture, as something in his head clicked; Wherever this girl went, people were sure to die. This kind of carnage would probably end with someone in serious pain or dead. What is the Princess had been here before? It seemed more likely then not, especially with the sudden and very emotional reaction.

”I think you've probably been here too, Princess. Seems like your Modus Operandi.” The skull watched as she bent down to pry open the boards with her pistol. ”Good god woman, don't you know that weapons should be treated with more-” His scolding cut out as the bones were revealed. His body! He finally found his body! Wait, if this was here, then... ”Princess-” He began softly, keeping his voice low as he heard the gentle creak of a floorboard. He wanted to warn her, but it was too late. Soon he found himself sitting, in front of a pair of pistols, looking up at the big time Cartel brother of a Land Lord he was hunting. Behind him, in the darkness, men began to step out holding weapons of various sizes. Automatic weapons seemed to be the biggest culprits, but there was a fair share of pistols.

As the sleaze bag talked, his weedy looking brother moved behind the bar, his hand resting on a busted up radio. “I don't want Mama hearing this.” He said softly, pressing his finger down. An old song suddenly filled the bar, one from the 80s.


The man holding the gun turned and glared at his brother, speaking rapidly in Spanish. Bones moved his jaw to the right and prepared himself, counting down from three before finally he pushed down with his jaw. The momentum carried him over onto the cap of his skull and he rolled with the force, closing his jaw as he suddenly dropped from floorboard down into the bit. Luckily, some god finally smiled on him, before his jaw hit his chest and his skull rested on a vertebrae. It was as if a switch had been flipped, as his soul suddenly was imposed over the remains.


Fingers twitched and lifted as the Cartel member turned back around, angrily glaring at the Cowgril. Then he looked down and noticed the skull missing.


He moved forward, kicking the guns carelessly to the Cowgirl as he looked down into the now empty hole. The skeleton had seemingly crawled away in the space below the floorboards. He was waving his hands excitedly now when the floor boards in the centre of the room suddenly exploded into a shower of splinters, engulfed in blue flames. Leaping out of the hole, Bones drew his pistol and just floated in the air for a moment, like an Angel of Death.

And then the guns went off.

An ominous void filled behind the man who threw merciless prophecies behind the frivolous veil of chivalry. Within the hallowed halls of this run down drinking hole an underlying evil stirred. And then it burst through the floor boards with all the theatrics one would assume magic could contain. "Aw..." Elaine scratched her head, as a pistol flew towards her. "I want to do that." To re-instill a sense of the danger she faced, a pistol landed squarely in her forehead. Reflexes brought her hands to the triggers of her pistols and the eruption of gunfire turned into a riptide.

Heat rose around Elaine. The kind of heat that let her know she needed to move or die. Two bullets flew by her head, impacting into the collected Tecate posters behind her. Her foot pushed her forward with the firing of a remote detonated round from each gun. She jumped through her ethereal pathway and onto the bar behind the auto-fire. Feral footwork took her from her feet to the side of her hip. Explosive rounds erupted towards the floor boards, as Elaine flew in a spinning movement across the bar.

Her whirlwind brought her to the underside of the well clad man. One final bullet flew forth and impacted into his leg. Blood splattered forth, but no explosion came. Not knowing the pain the action he inflicted on others for year, he dropped his gun and grabbed his leg. Pain dripped from the vulgar strewn squeal he exerted into the room. Elaine flipped the gun to allow her finger to rest solely on the little, red button she so delicately caressed.

"Pfff..." Her lips shot out under against the force of air she blew out of her closed lips, expunging a childish show of dominance against his scarlet stained trousers. "Do you know who I am?"

"Wait. No, please..." Sweaty palms trembled a sign of surrender towards the amnesia patient. "I'll give you anything you want."

"I want to know who I am." She slid back against the course texture of the flimsy wall. "For every minute you don't tell me what I want to know, I blow you up." The handle flipped effortlessly around and rested within the palm; her hand finding its place on the button every time.

“The first thing you do in a fight,” Muttered Mr Ernlaid, as he looked over the broken down backyard of Wilma Brokedell, “Is to go for the biggest meanest guy.” Frank Brokedell, twelve years old and sporting a cut lip and bruised eye like it was going out of fashion, sulked in front of him. “You go for him hard, you don't wait for him to go for you. There's no other rules for this kind of stuff, got it? You just hope you get him so hard that he doesn't even have time to throw a punch back.” The ex-police officer turned Private Eye gazed at the boy, rolling up his sleeves. Frank knew what that meant. He'd seen enough men do it around him and his mother during his life. “But you're no John L. Sullivan. You ain't going to be throwing punches that hard because you're small and light. Don't scowl like that, boy, I'm not bullshitting you like someone else would. When you think a guy is going to come for you, go for him first. Get the weak spots; the balls, the nose, the eyes. Dislocate an arm and he'll probably say sorry. Now, put your arm out, I'll show you how to do it. Than we'll move onto tumbling.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Frankie fell slowly as the guns went off around him. He landed with a slam though, like gravity decided to catch up with him all at once. The splinters flew and were than suddenly being blown away from the hole by a number of bright red, angry flashes of automatic weapons. Bones tumbled to the left, his bones rattling as the gun fire followed him. No table would spare him protection against this onslaught, but he was simply distracting them for Princess to do whatever mayhem he expected out of her; thankfully, she delivered. The debris of the room were added to by more explosions of floorboards that sent men screaming and scattering away from the bar. For the moment, that left Frankie without too much heat on him. In the swirling dust cloud behind the girl, who was apparently trying to negotiate her existential crisis, a brief and violent struggle occurred.

The guys with pistols were put down first. They were furthest from the bar, so Frankie stood and trained his pistol on three of them. Their guns went off first, punching holes in his vintage clothes, but they didn't get a lucky shot (Well, one of them nicked a vertebrae to be fair). He had the luxury of time and a lack of internal or external organs. He shot one in the left leg, which sent him crashing down against one of his friends. The other one was lucky spare the fingers that Frankie shot at; his gun went skittering out of his hand and he went wheeling out of the bar room as if stung by the voice of god. But the gang of goons with Assault rifles seemed to be waking up.

Bones walked over to them as someone cursed in Spanish. One of them was trying to lift the large gun in his hands towards the skeleton, but Bones put his foot on it and aimed the gun right between his eyes. It would have been much more intimidating if the man who had been used as an emergency crutch by his friend clocked him with a pistol on the shoulder blades.

The skeleton was sent stumbling into a table and over it. Whatever advantage he had was lost; oh well. He laid back against the wood as safeties on big guns were slid back. And then he saw it, hidden in the hole within arm reach. It must have been under his body. He reached in and plucked it out as there was a hissed, Spanish argument over what to do. Frankie decided for them.

As he stood, a cigar burned clenched in his teeth. In his hands was his baby, his love, his Thompson. ”Estallido.” He didn't know if he had that word right, but the muzzles flashed and they tried to cut each other down; Bones won.

"I want questions!" Elaine slammed her foot against the man's chest. His head slammed against the bullet ridden planks in the ground.

"Do you mean..." Ruffles of sorrow broke over his voice. "...Answers?"

"No." Silence invaded the noisy room, hushing the bullet ridden onlookers. "I want questions! Ask me where I was born."

A long barrel forced a quick question from him. "Where were you born?" Splinters flew from the explosion point of one of Elaine's bullets.

"You know damn well I don't know that." Heat placated into the mixture of the smells a gun fight brought out. "Ask me how I got here." Mainly fear.

"Should I ask you that, or should I ask you a similar question?" Trembling hands quivered under the stature of the small girl.

"I'm the one asking the questions around here." Elaine barked with the tenacity of a junkyard corgi.

"But you wanted me to..." Elaine turned from the cowering man and flipped her gun. Half way through his sentence Elaine clumsily twirled her pistol and caught her special, little button against her palm.

The bullet exploded, sending Elaine through the wall. Years of neglect left the floor no support to brace he impact of the girl, as she plummeted through the floor boards and into a small crawl space. Her head hit against a small, metal container that joggled her head. Looking around at the mold filled chamber, Elaine rubbed old memories back into her head. "I remember now..." She grabbed the box and pulled herself into the bar. "My name is Ileana. I was brought to Mexico City as an orphan, and raised by a corrupt priest. Now I clean dishes and wait on cartel members. But alas, no more shall I do there work." Twisting time and space itself, Elaine managed to steal the memories and thoughts of an entirely different human. She may not have gotten her memory back, but now at least she could remember something.

The Tommy gun slipped from Bones grasp and hit the floor. Around him, black smoke raised and made the very air shimmer as bullet holes glowed an amber heat before gently smouldering into a coal black. Around the skeleton was a smell of burning hair as numerous bones had been cut with a bullet or two. He was lucky it seemed; most of it happened to the non-essential bone structure, like his pelvis. If he wasn't missing nearly a hundred pounds of muscle, sinew, organs and skin he would have been less happy about the fact that the men chose his crotch and stomach area. But some of them had got lucky shots in. His skull had some pretty new “eye sockets” that the girl could put her fingers in if she so decided. But his arm was hurt the most. He watched as one by one his fingers dropped off and clattered to the floor on his left arm, and then his palm fell apart followed by the left overs of his forearm. Oh well, he could always find a graveyard around Mexico City and steal one of their limbs.

The bar was well and truly trashed now. In his head, Frankie was kind of unwinding, coming back to a world that didn't quite feel real. If he was more focused he would have rushed over to his would be saviour and would have pulled her out of a freshly made grave like she had so graciously down to him. Instead, he very calmly rolled the ruined smoking table out of his way and stepped over the wounded and dying men. They whispered in Spanish but he ignored them as sirens began to wail away in the distance, like cats screaming in the night. Bones paused and looked at the roof for a moment. Then whatever the feeling was, it was gone, and he was sitting at the burning and ruined bar and was pressed his elbows against it, stump of an arm still useful up to the shattered burning bits left by the gun fight.

He heard the girls voice from below, as if she had fallen into some empty space. He didn't much care as he looked down at half of a landlord. His eyes were glassy and empty, the coward behind them disappearing into whatever the hell there was that came after. Bones didn't much care for it, so he looked up at the broken mirror behind the bar and pulled out a case of cigars from his pocket. The one that had been clenched in his jaw had been shot out and it seemed the case itself hadn't been spare, because there was quite a big hole in the metal on one side and many of the fine Cuban's had exploded. ”Aw, damn. I don't even know the Spanish for Cigar. Is it Cigaro? No, it's probably not.” He shook the remains of most it out onto the counter in front of him and finally realised that the girl who had been so kind to him was now talking again. He watched her carefully as she seemed to recall something he thought was hardly true at all.

”You're American.” He said softly, almost wearily. ”I can tell. No one but an American decides to put explosives into a weapon and then carelessly presses the button to make things go boom while pulling off tricks. Who do you think you are, Sammy Davis Jr?” He shook his head and then suddenly lifted a hand and ran it down his face. ”Oh, yeah. Of course, you don't know who you are. Listen, Princess. Some men are going to arrive soon. These men are paid to put people like me and you, Trouble makers, into places filled with people like them.” He jammed his thumb at the human beings littered around like broken toys on a junk heap. ”And, although your first instinct may to be shoot them, we should probably get out of here in a more discreet way.”

Elaine placed the metal box on the ground, while the skeleton continued to talk on and on about something. The lock seemed fairly sturdy, so Elaine kicked it. Her toe jammed under the pressure of going toe first into the box. In her anger Elaine pulled out her gun and fired several shots into the container. To her disbelief the container stayed unscratched, even though the shrapnel sliced a cross hatch along Elaine's forearms.

"I need to get this open, because the fate of the world probably rests on me knowing what is inside of there." She thought of the what a metal box with no ventilation could contain. "Oh no. There could be a cat inside with a tiny radioactive matter so small that within the course of an hour it could decay or not all in the same probability." Elaine rested her heavy head on the table and began to sob. "And you know that if that happens it will cause a hammer to shatter a vial that will release hydrocyanic acid." Her hands rubbed the tears from her eyes as she spat off the reality that did in fact exist. "But..." Her lip quivered as she wiped the tears away. "...I don't like cats. So that means I don't care if the cat is alive or dead."

She regained her composure and thought about the comment about America. It almost sounded like the skeleton did not think Elaine and America were awesome. "I remember a guy who came to Mexico from America. I just remembered I'm American, with no help from you of course, but anyways, he can break this open with magic powers." Remembering the man must mean that he and her had a special connection. "We need to find him. I think I came to Mexico to marry him; he is like the girl who takes off her glasses and realizes she is pretty, and I'm the awesome guy who everyone loves." She peered over to the wobbly bag of bones. "You're the weird kid no one likes and dies of cancer off screen later in his life, but the movie ends after the dance so we never see that part, but I know it happens."

Now that her crisis of faith ended, and her purpose became clear, if it was a strange and ill placed one, she began to walk out into the sunset of Mexico. Splintered boards and broken planks peeled away under the force of Elaine's pistols, as she pried the loose wood away from the beam. Rays of light beamed into the bar. She remembered her name, Ileana, her life, an orphaned girl raised by a priest, and her purpose, to marry Clayton.

Bones watched with critical eyes as the petite girl lugged out a metal box. She was looking intently at it and that probably meant two things; she was about to immediately forget about it or was about to shoot at it. His gut instinct seemed to come away from the bet richer, because out game those multi-tooled wonders that would probably blow up in her hands one of these days. She shot at the little metal casket and ended up with a wound for her efforts as he watched on dully. A man still wallowing slightly in the violence that he had been a part of. But he snapped up, blinking as she said the box must contain something of grave importance to not only her memory but the world itself. He didn't laugh at her, or pity her, he simply reached for a bottle that was left untouched and dragged it in front of him, staring wistfully at it as he imagined how awful tasting the contents would be. How they would sting his tongue and burn his throat and warm his stomach. How after he had finished it and moved onto another there would be a pleasant but firm buzzing behind his eyeballs, which had long since turned to fertilizer.

So lost was he in this little revere he only partially heard her recite an experiment that he knew the name of, and probably existed in the exact middle state. Both dead and alive. ”Quantum Physics means anything can happen at any time for no reason...” He mumbled, before snickering as his jaws clacked together tightly. It stopped abruptly when she sat up and exclaimed to remember some more important things. She had a friend it seemed, wandering around Mexico City probably happy for the ten minute rest. As she denied his involvement with anything what so ever he waved his hand and immediately mumbled, ”Oh, yes, of course.” Nodding along like everything she was saying held even the smallest bit of sense.

He continued to agree with her as she moved on to talk about them being in some trashy, predictable Romance movie and momentarily wondered what kind of person would wish a girl like that on their worse enemy. Then she was wandering out of the bar, leaving a hole in the roof to shine a light into the smoky gloom.

A part of him seriously considered sitting there and ignoring her existence. The cops would show up soon and he was pretty sure he could get off this whole thing if he pulled in a few favours back in America. He couldn't just leave half the landlord there though, not without patting him down and searching for any details on his dirty dealings and accounts. As he stepped on the stool he forgot he was missing a left limb and jerked forward, only saving himself from tumbling face forward by moving his hand. Then he slid down, planting his feet on either side of the still warm corpse before leaning down to pat his jacket pockets. A small black book was his reward, full of tiny Spanish writing that he could easily get translated back in LA. He smiled and pocketed it, standing up and looking around the bar room.

Oh, dammit, he had to go and help her. She was like Aurora, all full of a special brand of energy and naivety that only members of his community could contain. With another leap over the bar, this time without him slipping and landing on his “face” or bony ass, he gave a small shout, ”Princess... Princess?! Wait up. I'll help you with this frog of a prince.”