"I can hope I won't have to, by the time it comes up! But good catch, right now I don't think I could."

"Anyway, that’s a tangent."

"Yeah. So... we were at whether things are nicer enough now than under Asmodeus that you, and most other people, can get out of Hell just with that, and whether there's things that'd help. D'you want to talk about that more, or was there something else from earlier?"

"It’s fucked, right, because a demon could eat me tomorrow and some other guy could live another ten years and he'd get Axis for being luckier, lot of luck in this whole business."

"Yeah. I've been told Pharasma looks at what we meant to do even if we weren't granted the time, but it's hard to rely on that."

"Which is also luck, you have to know what you mean for ten years in advance."

"You could try. But... it's probably about as hard for you as it is for me to figure out what anyone should do in Asmodean Cheliax, isn't it."

"You do not seem amazing at that."

"I'm terrible at that, because it's hard to know what to do when you don't understand how anything works. And I'm not sure anyone knows how anything's going work here in the next ten years, but I figure it's going to get more like the places I'm used to, and less like the ones you are."

"They say we won't even be here in ten. We'll all go home when the demons are thinned out enough."

"I certainly hope so. ...And I hope by that time they've made home a place where it's easier to stay out of Evil."

"I know fuckall about what they're doing back there."

"Me neither. But I can be pretty sure they're at least not making six-year-olds whip each other."

"If they got around to that."

"At some point, I hope. But there have to be so many of these things, and you can't take an entire country apart without some plan for what you're gonna replace it with."

"...As if we don't have enough to worry about over here." Sigh, shrug.

"Yeah. This is eating my spare time for half a week, we're on a full schedule and seven-eighths rations."

"All for one short straw... I'm lucky it was you though, you've got such good questions. I'm not assigned anything yet, d'you have some in-fort shift I could do for you?"

"Are you even trained on parapet watch?"

"No reason for that to be different here than in Mendev, I'd think? Keep a sharp eye out, Detect Evil all the time but only as a first pass to look for hidden demons, shoot anything needs shooting – I'm probably not as good as you are at that, but I can, and the holy bow'll like me if it's going free..."

"There is that. Yeah, you can take my watch if you want it."

"You still gotta tell me after we're done, but deal. Is that gonna do weird things to the gossip?"

"If people think you’ll do it again you’ll get more takers."

"That's good, and I might. What're you gonna say if they ask how you got me to do that?"

"Dunno yet."

"Fair enough. ...Please don't make up something too horribly awkward."