The woman said there was no such thing as too much chocolate but when Panu ate chocolate, there was a point where it stopped tasting good and started tasting like punishment but he kept eating anyway and he was never sure why, except that it was chocolate.

Just looking at her ice cream made him feel that way. He had ordered a pink thing with little chocolate truffles, modest and discretely folded in, like blushing women. Hers was like a black hole of cocoa that had attracted a glob of whip cream and nuts by sheer gravitational force. He leaned across the table to see it better, his camera dangling forward on its string.

This is when the woman robbed him. He felt the fingers on his neck, warm fingers that he had not seen coming because ice cream shops did not need heavy surveillance systems. He cringed reflexively at the touch, his shoulders tightening, and then went very still so that maybe he would not throw up. His vision was spinning and whirling and badly-auto-focusing because she was still holding it by the string and it was his only current AV input and this horrible disorientation was exactly the feeling of too-much-chocolate but in his head instead of in his stomach.

He took in a shaky little breath as she finally finally sat down and stopped moving his eye everywhere. He lowered himself carefully into his seat and adjusted his headphones and shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket where they wrapped comfortingly around his phone. He did not take it out because maybe she was grabby about all the things, and he did not want to lose it. But it was there if he needed it.

He did not touch his ice cream. He could see it, and himself, through the camera in her hands. He did not currently have any eyes on her, he flipped through nearby input sources but no one was pointed in their direction, mostly he saw a lot of dark inside-of-pockets and brown texting-above-the-wood-tables.

"Antakaa että takaisin." His voice was soft and like a bird's song when it had fallen from the nest. Also it was not in English. He tried again. "Please give it back. Or is it normal that you rob people you are protecting?"

The camera she had stolen was turned on. This was the only special thing about it. Its battery was half dead, and its memory clear of any trace of pictures.

From her fumbling, she couldn't tell anything weird about the camera other than the fact that it seemed to be connected to some wifi. No pictures. She'd even opened up the battery, unplugged and re-plugged the little wires and checked for obvious funny business. Honestly, if the camera hadn't housed a battery it probably wouldn't have been on in the first place.

The kid kinda froze. Brain freeze? But she glanced at his gelato and he hadn't touched it a bit.

"What's wrong?" Best guess? He looked cold. It was a little chilly in here. "We can move to the patio." Noel motioned with the camera to indicate which patio she meant. You know. That one over there.

>"Please give it back. Or is it normal that you rob people you are protecting?"

Oh.

Noel looked at the digital camera. She gave the kid a long hard look.

It was suspiciously not suspicious. Who carried around an empty camera? Who didn't have a guardian worried about them wandering alone? That wasn't even discounting the fact that the kid was now sitting in a gelato shop with a woman carrying concealed weapons who had a mystery texter giving her minute-by-minute updated directions.

Noel passed the camera back to the child and watched him carefully before she licked her thumb. She'd handled the object enough for some transfer to occur. Hazel eyes glazed a bit as she made the connection and Noel started to navigate what memory might be housed on the camera. Bomb? Secret message in the interior?

The horrible woman just kept poking and button pushing and taking out the battery. His vision flicked to black. There were other eyes in the area, but still none on them, so the area he was sitting in was a big void of nothing and he could not tell if something horrible was about to happen he could not even eat his ice cream why was she doing this--

She clicked the battery back in, and the little camera fired up again. Panu saw himself through its lens, looking very pale and a little shaky.

When she hurled his vision towards the patio, he was not sure if it was only the camera listing to the side or if he also saw himself listing. Probably it was both, a little.

He did not see her hard look. He only heard her not saying anything and there was a long stretch of silence and maybe this had all been a terrible idea. Or maybe her 'employer' should text her, tell her to give his phone back--

Finally she returned it. He saw himself growing bigger in its image, and stretched a hand out to meet it, his fingers growing large and distorted and dark until finally he was looking only at the fleshy pink light showing through his palm. He hurriedly fumbled the cord back over his neck, and righted the image.

She was licking her fingers. Probably she was actually a psychotic serial killer who liked to toy with young boys. This was his new theory and he was too sick to eat his ice cream (probably also this was motion sickness, a little. Either way it was her fault.)

Her thumb would taste like flying his dogs in Central Park, as he sat on a bench behind the growing crowd, anonymous. Also it would taste like stepping over the third stair at night when he went to the kitchen for snacks, because he did not want to wake his new father, adults hated to be woken by noisy children. And just a little, it would taste like finding dragon prints on a wood floor, stamped there in drying blood, and going to get a roll of paper towels to clean them up.

He had not replied to her comment about the patio. He was afraid to open his mouth or to move very much. But he could do this.

Your services are no longer required, her phone said. Leave the package where it is, someone else will pick it up.

That was unexpected. Also unexpected was the text buzzing on her phone. Noel had resolved to figure this thing out before she took any more mystery directions so, despite the fact that it could be a calendar reminder, Noel ignored it.

She was still flicking through memories when she came across something interesting. Not that seeing this little Panu child cleaning up bloody footprints was not interesting. It was. But even more interesting was how his brain worked in the first place and how, this morning, something had sent a message straight to his brain to say hello.

Noel's eyes snapped to focus on the kid, on the camera, and a quick sweep of the area. Then, she did something she never thought she would do. The memorymancer pushed her gelato to the side and leaned both elbows onto the table.

"I thought the camera might be the package. I thought, heck, it might even be a bomb and that someone was using you and putting you in danger." Those were, by her account, fair assumptions based on the information she'd had before. Now? She knew better.

"I apologize for taking your eye, Jousten." She had a pretty good pronunciation of the word now that she'd heard it from his head.

Panu was not very good at reading faces. Faces were always relatively far away, and the details hard to make out. Eyes are the window to the soul was a stupid line when eyes were just small pixels on the screen and just as soulless as everything else.

But elbows on table, and gelato pushed aside, those where things he could understand. The boy tucked his shoulders as the woman leaned towards him. He did not cringe away because cringing was weak, but he maybe tried to look as small as he could. A little.

"I accept your apology," the Fin said softly. "I am not angry anymore. Probably I have too much fun at your expense." This was very very true, in the same way that her gelato was very very chocolate.

"Employment is maybe not fake." It was fake up until this moment, but now he felt bad. He felt even worse because she was the first one to pronounce joutsen correctly since he came to this hot humid big crowded country. That made her at least part Finnish, in an honorary capacity. "You do this often? Are freelance?"

She pressed her lips together and tried to look into the lens of the camera. She couldn't use her memory erasure power through it, as far as she remembered. It was just a matter of being polite and looking into someone's eye(s) when you spoke to them, no matter how odd it felt when that eye turned out to be a camera.

"Freelancing is all I do." She let that sink in for a bit. It meant she relied on her reputation and that she had enough of a reputation at this point to perpetually have work. At least, that was the theory, anyway.

"I still intend to get you home to your... dragon." Father had not been the right word and she hadn't been listening carefully enough to catch a proper name. Also, someone should probably give the mutant a talking to about blood and children and how this child even seemed to work, which was to say, Noel owed that Dragon a punch in the maw. "Even if that was just your way of poking fun, I wouldn't feel right leaving you alone."

The blonde boy tried to look suitably impressed that she was a full-time freelancer. But it was a little hard when she was staring right at him. Right at his camera, any way. He knew that people with organic eyes liked to make eye contact, and like to make it a big deal that they were making eye contact. But most people did not with Panu. Either they did not know he was blind, or they forgot what that meant, or they felt strange looking into a camera instead of at his face. He was not used to feeling like someone was seeing him. It was very uncomfortable, and he squirmed a little in his seat.

"Thank you," he said. "But probably it is okay if you do not take me home. He is... maybe a grumpy dragon." Also if Jaager knew that she knew he was a dragon, then he might want to kill her. It was supposed to be a secret.

Wait. How did she know? About 'his dragon'?

Panu stiffened in his seat. "Are you mind reader? Is very dangerous power."

Dangerous, because she should not say things like dragon when she should not know about dragons at all. After a moment more of thought, his eyebrows creased into a deep furrow.

"Maybe is rude question. But... why are you so easy to trick? I tell your phone to go places and you go to them. It is very dangerous."

Or maybe she had just been playing along. Maybe she was so very good at her power and her job that she was not worried about danger. There were mutants like that.

If she had been playing along, though, she had been playing very well. He could have sworn she had not realized anything, up until a moment ago.

Grumpy dragon, schmumpy dragon. Noel had fought non-humanoid creatures in the past and she would probably fight non-humanoids again. Though, she wasn't about to start fantasizing about being Noel the Dragon Slayer. She knew her limitations and she should maybe draw the line at dragon. Maybe.

"I would at least like to drop you off at the gate. He won't mind at least that, will he?"

> "Are you mind reader? Is very dangerous power."

"It is a very dangerous power." She conceded the point with a frown. Noel wasn't about to tell the guy she was the cruddiest psychic in town. Let him wonder. That wasn't what she'd been hired for in the first place.

> "Maybe is rude question. But... why are you so easy to trick? I tell your phone to go places and you go to them. It is very dangerous."

In some instances, she'd found, that saying less was somehow more. Noel often had a hard time curbing herself. She wanted the whole truth out there to avoid any potential half truths or other such nastiness.

"I rely on my phone for work." And life and everything in between now that she was thinking about it. "This is supposed to be a very secure model, but that kind of thing doesn't matter to you, does it? That was a good trick. I didn't figure it out until we got here." She knew that her blind faith in the phone was a weak point. She'd been hoping that this super spy unlock only for her was the real deal, but alas. Even Hades' tech was no match for an 8 year old with a computer for a brain.

"You'd better eat your pink truffle before it turns to soup." She glanced over Panu's shoulder casually to note who had just walked in and then peeked at his gelato. At least she hadn't paid for it.

Panu considered very hard. It was still broad daylight, so probably there were neighbors out, so probably Jaager would not do any murdering on the lawn. He had not done any murdering on the lawn even at night, as far as Panu could tell, but when it was someone's life at risk it was best to be careful. The brunette woman with the many earrings and princess hair and competent freelancing and naive phone usage seemed nice enough, now that they were eating gelato. He would prefer if she was not brutally murdered for maybe knowing who Jaager really was.

Easiest way to stop brutal murder would be to recruit her.

The blond boy nodded, with conviction. "Gate is okay. Maybe even you can come inside a little. Meet my adult."

Jaager had promised to adopt him after Finland. Until then he was not father, he was only adult Panu lived with.

Psychics were useful, and dangerous when in other people's hands, so probably Jaager would see the benefits of paying her to not work for others.

That fixed the problem of her maybe-murder for maybe knowing too much. Her tech security would be much harder.

"You cannot just do all things your phone says to do," the eight year old lectured. "Especially crazy mission from number you do not know that you do not even remember taking." Really. She admitted she had been tricked, which meant she had not just been playing along, which meant she had been following directions from someone she'd never ever heard from before. Who does that?

"Is it that you have anonymous employers often? Then you need to work out code or something so you know they are employer and not eight year old."

This was a very stern lecture, and he punctuated it by spooning a mouthful of pink truffle gelato soup into his mouth. Tech security was no joke, kids.

Hmm. Did she want to meet Panu's adult? Maybe to tell him that his child was cleaning up after him. Though the more she scrubbed through memories, the more she was getting the idea that had been Panu's initiative, not some weird Cinderella story.

"You were technically the one to hire me so I'll leave it to your discretion. I'll meet your adult if you think it's wise and if that's what you want." She was having mixed feelings on the matter now. She'd been full of self-righteous glory earlier, ready to wallop a Dragon. Now she was figuring out that the child really needed no protection. Not in the way she'd been imagining. "I see that you can take care of yourself in most ways, but it still bothers me that you were alone. Having an adult is one thing, having a parent is quite another. Uhm." She flipped through memories like flash cards because she realized that what she'd said was pedantic. "Perhe. Family?" His mind was very organized. It made for easy browsing.

>"You cannot just do all things your phone says to do. Especially crazy mission from number you do not know that you do not even remember taking."

She pressed her lips together in displeasure. "It hasn't been an issue before today. You've seen my phone." Heck. He had a copy of everything in his head. For security, she should probably delete that... she was having a hard time caring at the moment, however. "When I take in memories sometimes things overwrite. I have to be meticulous. If there's something I can do better teach me. I'm more than willing to learn how to keep my backup system private." 8 year old or not, he was definitely the expert here.

The boy sat up so straight that maybe for a moment his rear was not even touching the seat. "Puhut suomea?" You speak Finnish?

There was a delighted smile on his face that transcended mere gelato. Perhe. Family. She understood, and more than just Finnish. But of course she did--she was wonderful beautiful psychic who was already in his head, so if she had not been scared off already, then she did not mind the things she saw.

"<Family, yes! I'm trying to build a family here, but it's hard. First people need to know that I'm useful before they'll want me. Jaager--he's my dragon--he said he'll adopt me, but he hasn't yet, and I don't know exactly when he will and I'm so nervous. He keeps saying 'After Finland, after Finland,' but I don't know why we need to wait, and sometimes when adults wait it's because they don't actually want... to... do... purple apples and green hippos and stripped giraffes? You don't speak Finnish, do you.>"

Of course she didn't. This country was horrible, and nothing here could possibly be so nice. Even through his camera, even with how bad he was at reading faces, it was clear to see that she did not understand. Maybe a word or two, but not all.

She was psychic, and she was understanding things only through his thoughts. She was cheating at Finnish.

The blond boy settled his headphones more comfortably, and focused back on eating his truffle soup. It had been stupid to be saying all that, anyway. No one cared, so it was just as well she did not understand.

"Yes, you will meet adult." He said softly. "Is wise."

She knew about the dragon, like she knew what perhe meant. But maybe she did not know about Ragnarok, like she did not know Finnish. Maybe she was not a very good psychic at all, only bluffing. In any case, she knew enough that he had to take her to Jaager, so the man could decide what was to be done with her.

"First phone security," he said, "is do not connect to networks you do not know."

What kind of psychic overwrote their own memories, anyway? That was just stupid. Maybe less stupid than overwriting your own sight.

The boy set down his spoon. "Have you found way to un-overwrite?"

There was one very important thing his brain was missing, compared to a real computer. Panu had no undo.

He was so excited that Noel was suddenly very motivated to learn Finnish. That was Finnish, right? She caught a word here and there. Definitely the word family was in there, but when Noel went looking for someone Panu considered family, she only found a pack of lies. His new adult. Some other adults who had been his adults and now were quite horribly dead.

This was a very special kid, indeed.

When he noticed that she'd zoned out, he was crestfallen. Noel had never quite felt maternal about anything. She didn't know what to do to... fix... whatever Panu was going through. She vowed then and there to learn Finnish, at least conversationally. So she dipped into some language formative memories looking for specific terms to cobble something together.

"<You will needs teach me family about. Apology Finnish is cheat. I to do learn.>" Noel face palmed before Panu ever had a chance. Eugh. That was painful. She needed time and practice to make anything better, though.

Don't connect to strange networks. Okay. Noel made a note on her phone.

> "Have you found way to un-overwrite?"

"Yes and no." She glanced up from her screen, again noting who was coming and going and to check on Panu's expression. This seemed like something important to him. Ah. The "eye" thing. She put her phone down. "My ability kind of makes up for anything I overwrite. When I lose something, it's because I've also gained something. Usually it balances out." She shrugged and checked her gelato cup. She had scarfed most of it and then forgotten about the rest. What was left was not appetizing. Oh well.

"Finished?" What was in his cup didn't look all that appetizing either.

She said more Finnish, and he tried to look encouraging while she talked, but he was not sure what an encouraging face was supposed to look like. Especially not when listening to her was like listening to a cat that was screaming along with a Mozart recording.

"It is good effort," Panu said. He made sure to say it almost before she was even done speaking, so that it would not show any hesitation at all. He did not say this in Finnish, for the obvious reasons. If she had been closer maybe he would reach across the table and pat pat her shoulder, but she was not, so he watched her face palm from a distance. "Everyone needs start somewhere. Maybe I teach--"

The Fin suddenly went very very very still. He was no good with facial expressions, but horror was very easy to do.

"This is what I sound like to you. In English. I am sounding like idiot talking under water in fish tank and too stupid to know I am drowning."

This was maybe what he really thought of her 'good effort.'

The eight year old slumped face-first onto the table. Words where no longer adequate for expressing his shame.

"Maybe we help each other?" His voice was muffled, because table. "I am cheating at English. Am not really hearing or speaking, am repeating from Google translate. Maybe we are practice together? I should maybe learn real English." Maybe. He really didn't want to, it was so ugly on his tongue. "And you can learn Finnish. Is beautiful language, you will see."

He kept talking. And talking. But all he could really hear himself saying was blub blub blub. Why had no one told him he sounded so bad? Were all adults so cruel, did they just listen to him speak and go into other rooms and double over laughing? At least Noel was nice. He would never ever insult her Finnish again, because at least she was trying.

Slowly, with more willpower than he knew he possessed, the Fin peeled himself off the table and sat up straight again. On his shoulders hung the heavy weight of eternal humiliation, but it was a burden he must learn to carry. Maybe he really should stop cheating at English.

But it was just so easy to. Really learning things was hard.

"Can you choose where you are overwriting?" The boy asked, trying not to wince at the words coming out of his mouth, now that he knew they were like glass shards in her ears. "My power got much easier to work with, when I learn to use files."

He did not need to look down at his own cup. He had already picked out all of the truffles. There was only pink left, and it was not as delicious as it had looked when it was solid.

"Very finished." He agreed.

They were off to see a dragon, then.

His efforts to placate her only earned a humiliated groan. She was only trying because this kid's brain was the closest to understanding her struggle. But maybe she should forget to be socially embarrassed.

His stillness alerted her to danger before she spotted any. Noel was in her feet looking for the threat before Panu had a chance to explain that the danger was only social.

Good thing too. She kept forgetting she didn't keep weapons on her person when she ran.

> “Maybe we help each other?”

She had no other use for Finnish that Noel knew of, so that was a give in. ”If you can be patient with my underwater gurgling, I can return the favor.”

Ah. Panu was really too clever for his own good. ”You’re never going to learn if you have a crutch like Google Translate. If you want to really learn, you’ll have to shut that away. No cheating.” And if she wanted to learn… well, she would need to remind herself why, probably.

First thing was first, Noel made sure she was no longer sending pushes to Jousten. Then she made a note about the look on Panu’s face when he figured out that she’d only been cheating at Finnish and also that he had no parents. Only adults. She would have to look into that.

"At least you know about measuring your words for your audience. I've seen you do it to your adult." Well, she was already up. Noel collected her trash and indicated that Panu should be responsible for himself.

They were already walking by the time Noel had figured out what to say about how she chose what memories to overwrite.

”If I am careful and prepare, I don’t lose anything, really. It’s when I weaponize memory loss that the real damage is done. Then I lose memory in equal amounts.” It was fascinating to talk with someone who actually knew what they were talking about.

She was a very good body guard. She tried to protect him very diligently, even from social terrors. It was very much too bad that no one could save him from bad accents.

Together they cleaned up their table. Panu did not need to be told to clean his own place, the only reason he had not picked up his bowl was because he was pushing in his chair.

There was a little desperate edge to the boy's voice as he followed her to the trash can. "If I turn it off, then no one understands me. You speak more Finnish than anyone I have met here and you know how much Finnish you speak. I know Swedish too, but that is even less useful. I am in county for," he stopped to check his calendar, "for one week. Cheating is only way for me to live here."

She couldn't ask him to learn for real. She couldn't. Jaager was the adult he talked with most, and Jaager would loathe it if Panu's English got worse. He did not really understand what measuring his words meant, but if it was what he did with Jaager, then already she knew that he couldn't afford to lose that. But she was right, he would never get better if he did not learn for real.

(Unless Google translate got better. Which is was doing everyday. So maybe if he was just patient--)

Before he could lose his nerve, he made the appointment. Finnish/English Practice with Panu, at gelato shop. Reoccurs: weekly. Until: no end date.

There. If she did not want to help him for real, she could delete it. But now it was on her calendar. He copied it to his, too, only changing the name from Panu to Noel.

"Can you cheat more?" The boy asked as they left the shop. "Learn all of Finnish?"

He tried not to sound too hopeful. But it would be very, very nice to talk in a civilized language again, with an intelligent friend. ...Probably friend was too strong a word. Language acquaintance with similar brain?

"Losing memories is very good power," the Fin said approvingly. "It is useful, forgetting for real, not just the try-to-forget that normal people do. Can you back up memories so you do not lose if one copy is made deleted? This is what I do. I make mistake when I am young, so now always I back up."

It had been a very big mistake. She was psychic, so probably already she knew how he had lost his eyesight.