"Acknowledged, Kyaris. The cart is on its way, ETA 1.3 minutes," the dispatcher responds.

"It's good you found him," she tells Mike. "Lets get him sitting down against the building so that he doesn't risk another fall before the medical people get here, alright?"

She slowly approaches Timmy, her hands spread where he can see them, and where she'll be able to grab him if he starts falling.

"Purple pants!" he declares, and goes for his holster, only to find it empty.

"Yes, that's right. She's ..." Mike pauses. "Emergency services. She's here to help, alright? You took a pretty nasty hit to the head."

Kyaris helps him lower Timmy to the ground, and then sits crosslegged beside him. "Where did you find him?" she asks Mike.

Mike squirms internally, but he can't just abandon the plan now, ill-formed though it may be.

"In this alley here. I was just trying to get him out on the green where someone could help. I don't have my phone on me," he tells her.

She nods, and starts to ask another question, before turning and looking down the street.

"Oh, and here come the medical people. Once they've got him secured for transport, I'd like to ask you some more questions."

"I'm not sure," he begins, but he doesn't know how to finish the sentence.

The medics get Timmy carefully loaded onto the cart with his head and neck braced. He clings to Mike's arm, so Mike just stays with him, because that was the plan, anyway.

Kyaris hops onto the side of the cart, standing on a step and hanging onto a handle bar as it starts back toward the train station.

"Here, you can stow your bag just under there," she tells him, gesturing at an empty space below Timmy's bed.

"Oh, I can just hang onto it?" Mike says, a bit awkwardly. "I'm sure it's not very far."

If Kyaris finds anything particularly odd about this, she doesn't let it show.

"So where should I have his insurance send the payment?" she asks instead, pulling her phone off her vest with her free hand. "It probably won't be too much, because one of us would have found him pretty soon, but it's something."

"The ... payment?" he asks. "What is there, like, already a bounty out for them?"

Sometimes people get pretty rattled in emergencies, so she's used to explaining things that might have slipped people's minds.

"Central River City is a required-insurance jurisdiction. Everybody's required to have a minimum amount of medical insurance," she tells him. "Since health outcomes are better when people with injuries get treated more promptly, his insurance will pay you for getting him care faster than he otherwise would have, because you're saving them money."

Mike is silent. Maybe "Central River City" is just what they call Rochester? Like how New York is the Big Apple.

"What if he ... doesn't have insurance like that?" he asks instead. "His clothes look pretty foreign."

"If he doesn't have medical or travel insurance, the city will charge his care to the diplomatic fund for his home jurisdiction," she reassures him. "It will all get sorted out, and you'll get a payment regardless. Nobody would want people to stop and check whether they were insured before helping; that's why the city has an insurance requirement."

Mike licks his lips. "I, uh, I don't need a payment like that. It's fine, I'm just happy to help," he says.

He has the growing feeling that this is a bad plan.

They get to the train station and load Timmy into a waiting emergency train. The platform has been cleared for them, with all the passengers congregating on the opposite platform.

Kyaris ensures that Mike gets bundled along as well, although that's not difficult when Timmy is still visibly attached to him.

"It's not often you meet someone who would give up the reward like that," she comments, once the train is on its way to the hospital. 'Because why would you do that' she doesn't say. Stress makes people act in funny ways sometimes.

"What's your name?" she asks.

"Oh! I'm Daniel Fitzgerald," he tells her, holding out a hand to shake.

She looks at his hand and then mimics his gesture, holding her hand near his.

"That doesn't sound like a local name," she remarks. "Are you from Smaller Continent?"

"No, you, uh, you take the other person's hand and shake it," he finds himself saying. He gently takes her hand, shakes it up and down, and then lets go and goes to stick his hand in his pocket. Except he's wearing robes, so he just sort of tucks his hand into his lap.

"I'm from America," he adds, in the vague hope that this will make anything make more sense.

She leans forward in her seat. "I've never heard of it," she tells him. "What's it like?"

"It's the best country in the world," he tells her. "But things still suck. I don't know — I think it was better when I was a kid. But is that really the kind of question you want to be asking me?"

"Oh! Right."

She straightens up and checks her phone screen, although just for the look of the thing. It's usually easier to get people to answer questions when you take an interest in them.

"So where did you find him, Daniel Fitzgerald?" she asks. "Actually, that name is a little long. Can I call you Gerald?"