Liya stared down at the newspaper; the room suddenly seemed darker and colder around her. Just behind the black smudge of the boxy truck, she could make out two figures--one, with a light colored shirt but now head or arms she could make out--and the other, a blurry point of white and grey. There seemed to be too much grey, spread out behind the figure--

Like wings.

"Yoshi?" she said out loud, and snatched the paper up, eyes darting from the� photo to the Aetherian script around it. Yoshi, Vlad, and Shinobu went quiet; Shinobu looked irritated at being interrupted. "This is a newspaper, right? What does it say?"

Yoshi seemed relieved to step away from Shinobu (who rolled her eyes) and Vlad, and came to stand beside Liya. "Um, let me see."

Liya let him take one side of the paper, still staring at it as though it would suddenly make sense if she looked hard enough. Yoshi merely gazed at the headline for a moment, frowning.

"Mm...'Government Slavers,'" he read. "'Riots erupt in Symphony Archipelago over the discovery that government entities are selling dissidents into trafficking rings...' '82 die, including two Order soldiers,'" and then, adding, "Wow..."

"You haven't heard?" Vlad said with some surprise, as Shinobu put her whole snout in her cup of tea. "Everyone's afraid Cynn Numair is going to take us to war over it. Actual war, not--"

"Ahem," Shinobu huffed, surfacing from her tea, "Liya is from the Symphony Archipelago."