Strange structures rise through the air around Frond, geometric and precise. Lines of light run across the horizon, buzzing with energy. Glowing advertisements surround him, and the clamor of a market hawking high-end prosthetic cyberware is deafening.

Wow, he's not in Kansas Fairyland anymore.

He's gonna settle to the ground, fold up his relatively unassuming pepper-moth wings, and try to navigate on the ground, but as he's four feet tall and has no idea how to move in a crowd like this he will probably soon bump into someone.

Frond is jostled from behind by a behemoth with gray, metallic arms, sending him crashing into a stall selling cognitive enhancements. Processors are thrown everywhere, the vendor is incensed, and behind the stall a girl with a mischievous air about her pockets one of the pieces.

"AUuugh," says Frond. He's more delicate than he looks; wing scales are scrubbed off half his upper right. "You pushed me!"

"And?" rumbles the behemoth, towering over their surroundings. Behind him the vendor squawks, only to find a massive first bristling with artific uncomfortably close to his nose.

To the side, the girl shoves a few more pieces into her pockets and moves to fade into the crowd.

"What is your name, you big jerk?" Frond asks, putting his hands on his hips and glaring at the behemoth.

The behemoth looks down at Frond.

"Name's C4irn. You ain't from around here, are you?"

In the background the vendor is reassembling his shop, and appears to be on the verge of noticing the missing merchandise.

Damn, that's a nickname. Who told the mortals about nicknames? "No, and that's no way to treat a guest in your land!"

C4irn rumbles with laughter. "This ain't no one's land, smalls, but I'd be real curious to know where you got those wingplants from. I ain't never seen work that detailed before."

Behind them, the inventory is finished.

"Thief!" shrieks the vendor, attracting attention from the crowd. A figure in black carapace at the end of the street turns towards the stall.

Is this being shouted at Frond, specifically, or just in general.

"Oh, I'm afraid I couldn't say," he demurs, rustling his wings and wincing at the bare spot.

The vendor's first shout is in general. His gaze, however, falls upon the people in front of him who caused the disruption, namely Frond and C4irn.

At the end of the street, the figure in black carapace begins to move.

"I didn't take anything! If I had wouldn't I have flown away immediately?" says Frond, still going with "indignant" as a posture to conceal "bewildered and overwhelmed".

"Well how the seventh hell d'you explain my missing cogitators?" the vendor demands, and C4irn's hand covers Frond's shoulder.

"Maybe we should get goin'," he says, casting a nervous glance at the figure in black. 

"You're not going anywhere until I got my missing cogis," exclaims the vendor. "Ain't no one steals from Denorius and lives!"

Click! Denorius. Cool. "Stop accusing me of theft! You know perfectly well I didn't take anything, so act like it."

"You didn't take anything," the vendor - Denorius - says, voice strained, optical shutters opening and closing rapidly.

Beside Frond, C4irn's eyes glance between him and the vendor. 

"But your friend here," the vendor starts, as C4irn pulls Frond away from the stall. 

"I didn't steal nothin' either," C4irn hollers back, pulling Frond along with him. 

To Frond, he whispers: "The seventh hell you doin, flashing a cogihack like that?"

"I don't know what you're insinuating but I'll thank you to get your hands off me."

C4irn removed his hand, even as his bulk shuffled them off to the side. 

"That shit you just pull? I know what a cogihack looks like, amigo," he hisses. "That shit'll get you binned for parts like that," he snapped his sausage fingers, "and the rest of us'll get three weeks QT in the isozone."

"It's amazing the extent to which I haven't a clue what you mean. It's like you've never talked to a stranger before."