Her grey bodyguard is sitting in the station waiting room, reading a magazine. As Aitim passes by on his way to the cells, she glances up momentarily.  

Her face becomes a mask of mild interest: her gaze returns to the magazine.

He keeps walking. 

The unfortunate blue granddaughter is sitting in her cell, looking terminally bored.

"Hello," he says. "All of the costs of your conduct have been successfully shunted off so that other people end up paying them."

"Are you here to lecture me, then? Heard it all before, got the minder, doesn't help." She jerks her head in the direction of the cellblock door, where her grey is waiting for her. "If you have an actually useful suggestion, I'm all ears. If you're just here to repeat the 'how can you be so irresponsible and terrible' lecture or try to send me to some orange, you can safely leave that to my actual family."

"Oh, I'd be delighted if you keep it up - uh, short of getting yourself killed, at which point you cease to be useful leverage. I am quite literally just here to inform you that all of the costs of your conduct will be paid by other people, and I haven't the slightest opinion about whether you should feel sadistic glee or total indifference or vague guilt about that."

"You, uh, might have to get more involved in my life if you'd like to keep your investment, then. I'm kiiiiiiind of notoriously unreliable."

She tilts her head. "Incidentally, have you ever met a red? Turns out they're astonishingly like people."

"I haven't, why would I want to do that? We're going to have to kill a couple of them to cover for you if the witness isn't satisfied with the vague followup she got."

"... I'd love to be all flippant and 'yeah that was worth it', but honestly that makes me feel like crap. Dunno why I'm telling you that, it's not like it's gonna be my responsibility in a, you know, criminal-justice sort of way. I guess I mean try not to kill any reds on my behalf, that'd be dumb. I mean, maybe one would be okay, I'm allowed to pick myself, but..." 

She trails off, shaking her head. 

"What a fucking mess."

"I take it cliff diving and backcountry skiing don't cut it? What about foreign espionage or something?"

"Cliffs and mountains are very far away from anything else interesting, and can you imagine me trying to keep a secret? Yeah, no. I'm a city girl at heart and I've already given my family enough heart attacks from scaling miscellaneous buildings. Why do you ask, are you the kind of person who could get me a foreign intelligence posting?"

"If it'd keep you out of trouble rather than getting you into it, sure."

"I'm really really tempted to say it would keep me out of trouble, but I prooooooobably shouldn't ever be entrusted with anything that could maybe possibly start a war."

"Oh, I wouldn't send you anywhere where even the most outrageous antics could start a war. Get you killed, though, yes, and then your poor grandmother'd be so unhappy and so much harder to angle into things. Are you planning to do this until it gets you killed, or are you hoping you'll stumble on an enticing life path eventually?"

"I'm hoping that eventually I'll figure out either A: how not to be so damn impulsive, or B: some job or whatever with enough ridiculous novelty that it'll keep me from being stupid. So far... Yeah, you can see how that's been going for me. Atha is a nice distraction but even she's not always around."

"And sometimes she's right next to you and you run off anyway. If we revoke your train passes so it takes you longer to get to places where you can do stupid things, will that give you time to notice when you're making stupid decisions or does that not occur to you until several days later?"

"Tried it already. No, it makes me miserable and inspires me to get creative with the contents of my house arrest location. That or I just dodge the security, I'm good at that by now. Part of me would like to bet you about a thousand ni that I could escape from here all on my own if I really wanted to, but the rest of me notes that I haven't tried that plan for very good reasons."

"They'll kill you. I'm not sure how badly you actually want to avoid that but breaking out of prison is one of the things that'll do it. If you like the reds I'd be tempted to suggest you quietly liaison for 'em but that's a job it's actually important not to fuck up."

"Yeah, major containment breach is also one of those things that tends to get you executed. I do in fact care if I die, it's just that I seem to have trouble understanding that the future exists. Fortunately 'the officers in this police station outnumber me ten to one' is something that does actually get through to my hindbrain. The reds seem alright from the eh, three or four hours I spent with them in disguise? I doubt none of them clocked me, I don't know how to talk like one, but they do seem decent. Enough so that being entrusted with them would be, yeah, really stupid."

Jinx pauses, then rubs the bridge of her nose. 

"... You really, really should not have suggested that option to me even in passing."

"Is that so. Because you'll do it, do it badly, and hurt people you actually care about?"

"...Basically yeah. My brain has decided that that sounds like an Interesting Thing that I have a Unique Perspective On and fuck."

She drops her head into her hands.

"I'm going to have to take diplomacy lessons, aren't I."

"I can't say I found them that unbearable."

"Not the lessons that are the problem. The problem is that I'm terminally honest about things I care about and I am really not looking forward to having to deal with that habit. Comes with the impulsivity."

"Maybe they'll appreciate it. Then you just have to report to someone who also appreciates it, much easier than learning how to tell a lie."