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Quin thought she was okay. Nothing seemed to be broken, but it was a little hard to catch her breath as she scooted backwards through the growing chaos on the floor of the coffee shop. Her hair was sticking to her face and her hands were slipping on various items that had fallen to the floor. In a word it was chaos and it brought back flashes of strobe lights in a bar, zombie clowns, and a hand fisted in her hair.

Panic was not useful right now though and Quin took a deep breath and tried to pull herself together as the man with the knives made his way towards her, she was going to need to fight. It was just like Lee had said before punching Quin in the face the other day, a real fight didn’t wait for you to be ready and this was as real a fight as Quin had ever been in.

Another coffee mug flew across the room and hit the miscreant and Quin looked up in time to see the same miscreant lunge across the coffee bar at Will. Quin didn’t have time to see what happened next, because the man with the baseball bat was advancing and the rock and hammer guys were preparing for another shot. It looked like almost everyone else had made it out of the shop by now, so there was at least that.

Quin didn’t want to lose her shield, but there wasn’t much for it. Climbing to her feet instead of heading for cover, the redhead concentrated, pulling the scraps and shattered bits of plastic together as best she could. In a manner of seconds she had made a wide flat disk that she sent sailing at the face of the guy with hammers for hands. Quin’s plan was similar to what it had been when she’d found herself in that hellscape of a bar. If she could get the plastic wrapped around hammer man’s face he wouldn’t be able to see to throw rocks at her. He also wouldn’t be able to breathe, but that was something to worry about later.

The guy with the bat had almost reached her by now and Quin got herself in a ready stance. The rock guy was still by the window and Quin didn’t know how well her trick had worked on the guy with hammers for hands, but the man with the bat was the primary concern for the moment.

There wasn’t much space to move in here, but it was going to have to do. The man with the bat rushed forward, welding the implement in an overhead swing that would have hurt terribly if it had connected.

It didn’t connect though, slipping under the man’s arm, the redhead got a grip on the man’s arm and shifted her hips and body so that his own momentum started to carry him downward instead of forward. The bat fell from his hands as he flipped and Quin followed the man to the ground pulling together the last bits of plastic from her shield to try and secure his hands behind his back.

There was more commotion outside, Quin stood again. Her trick with the hammer guy had worked.

”I don’t think we can stay here…” she said, weaving a bit where she stood from the exertion and adrenaline of the last few moments.

Each class had a different name, but they pretty much all played out the exact same way. Look at this aspect of the law. Look at this specific scenario involving that aspect of the law. How is that aspect of the law applied to that scenario? What precedent is there? Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum.

Quin was finally in a rhythm though and as she worked she crossed her leg over her other knee and bounced her foot, humming softly under her breath. Not having a reliable place to get out of the apartment to study had been a much bigger deal to Quin than she’d realized. Suddenly things started to feel just a little better. Maybe she wasn’t in the wrong place after all.

Suddenly it got really quiet. The kind of quiet that made you stop what you were doing and look up and around to make sure you weren’t missing something.

The hairs on the back of Quin’s neck started to rise all of a sudden and she looked up over the top of her laptop just in time to see something large flying at the front window of the coffee shop.

A moment later, glass shattered and the huge form rolled to a stop at the foot of one of the tables. More figures seemed to coalesce on the sidewalk and began to climb through the place where the pane of glass had previously been.

One of them appeared to have hammers in place of their hands, and the muscles to swing them, next to him came a man levitating a rock with him. Quin realized a moment later what wsa going to happen and threw herself under the table just as the rock came sailing at her with the speed of an MLB line drive and smashed to the wall behind her.

The second two appeared to be run of the mill average joes, but one of them had a baseball bat and the other had a wicked looking set of knives. They were the secondary concern right now and Quin climbed out from under the table as the rock guy worked on getting another rock in the air and concentrated on the enormous wall of plastic behind her. It had been humming to her since she’d walked in the door. There were tons of tiny and not so tiny pieces in those boxes and they were light enough that Quin thought she could probably hold it all.

”Sorry Will…” she said softly enough that he probably wouldn’t hear it over the erupting chaos and pulled with her powers.

Boxes flew off the walls as the plastic flew to Quin coalescing into a shield in front of her just in time to catch one of those unassuming throwing knives as it flew across the shop.

These guys definitely meant business and Quin crouched for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts as she started to make her way to that super sturdy looking bar for cover.

Quin knew that a real fight wouldn’t wait for you to be ready. Then again, Quin supposed that Lee’s assumption was her fault and the action had been completely unexpected.

Lee started to circle and Quin tried to keep to the other woman’s weak side, but it was hard to tell what was what with Lee’s lack of stance. This was frustrating but it was also exposing another hole in Quin’s knowledge that needed to be patched.

Not everyone was a trained fighter, not everyone would be in a predictable ready stance tailor made for what Quin knew to do.

Lee lunged to throw a punch and Quin narrowly avoided the fist. Getting leverage on the ground. Quin nodded, trying to keep her focus on the task R hand. Ground work was something Quin knew and was confident about, she just hadn’t expected Lee to be so quick to crawl away. Again, Quin had expected a counter hold or an attempt to do…something other than what had happened.

Lee struck out again and this time Quin moved, intending to to try and get ahold of Lee’s arm as she struck. The punch was a feint though and instead of initiating her own throw Quin walked right into the left cross that Lee threw.

“Shit…” Quin hissed, stumbling backwards. It wasn’t the first time she’d been hit, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Resetting her feet, the redhead waited, blinking and attempting to get reset. No more talking.

Quin tilted her head slightly as Will agreed that the little birdie had been smart to suggest those drinks on a hot summer day but that it was less warm today than when they’d first met. Quin figured that coffee was pretty much coffee and they’d all end up pretty much the same in her estimation which was…fine.

”Well, I’m not picky, so if something better has come along since then, I’m happy to try.” she said with an easy shrug. Will absolutely had more coffee knowledge than she did and Quin was just happy to try something new.

What had brought her to his neck of the woods?

”I’ve been walking around a couple of hours trying to find somewhere to work.” Quin said candidly, ”Everywhere I’ve gone has been packed and the city seems…restless? I was actually just across the street when I texted because I’d tried three of my other usual spots and come up with nothing.”

”I don’t want to impose, but I was here and you had said I should stop by.”

Will had clearly noticed Quin’s backpack and she nodded with a slight cringe, ”Our breaks aren’t really breaks. More like a brief pause or a deep breath before diving right back in.” No rest for the wicked and there were plenty of jokes illustrated how lawyers were just that. It was a lot though and Quin would have killed for a bit more time off.

”But yeah, looks like the right call for today.” she said, glancing around. ”Where’s the best place to sit?” she asked, then narrowed her eyes slightly in thought, ”Didn’t you also mention a cover of some kind?”

It was another one of those days when it seemed like there wasn’t a single remotely quiet place in New York City. It was almost like the city was buzzing. It was the end of a retrograde though and even though it wasn’t supposed to work that way, Quin felt like sometimes things got even crazier before it all finally settled down.

Since she wasn’t getting a whole lot done at the NYU library, or the tea shop, or in Central Park, Quin decided to cash in on a favor she was owed from a chance encounter in the park. Maybe she’d be able to get some work done, maybe she’d just have a nice coffee and discover a new place.

Finding herself near 113th and 114th, Quin pulled out her phone and opened her contacts. “Will Coffee” was right where she had left him that day in the park and the redhead tapped out a quick text.

she typed, studied it for a moment to try and decide if she could be more witty, less witty, if it was awkward or not and finally shrugged and sent it.

While she waited for a response, Quin studied the shop from the outside. It was fairly nondescript overall, but there was a sign declaring it to be “Curse and Congregation”. Remembering that Will had mentioned that the owner was potentially a little witchy, Quin found herself curious what the inside would show. There were some tables outside, but nobody was sitting at them which was definitely a good sign as far as being able to actually think inside was concerned. Some of the heat had broken and if they were packed, surely some of the patrons would have spilled outside.

Shifting her backpack a bit so it stopped digging into her shoulders, Quin waited for a response.

Quin had absolutely been caught off guard by Lee and most people would have ended up flat on their backs from the sweep that had come out of seemingly nowhere. The advantage that Quin had in that particular situation was that aikido specifically focused on that kind of situation and she had acted more out of instinct than anything.

The problem was that once Quin had Lee on the ground, she had absolutely no idea what to do, especially when Lee used her free foot to push off of Quin’s shoulder and scramble backwards. That had definitely ever happened before.

Quin had the advantage on reach, but Lee moved too quickly and before the redhead could gat get ahold of Lee’s legs, or anything for that matter, the older woman was climbing to her feet.

QUin followed suit and stood quickly, ”I guess I should have expected that…” she said, planting her feet and getting into a ready position. That was the other thing about aikido, it was purely defensive. Quin would keep at a safe distance out of reach moving against Lee’s line so the other woman couldn’t reach her until Lee made a move.