The Green Pier was as busy as always. Laku’s city in general was always brimming with people and products from all over the universe, and the locals had developed or adopted all sorts of habits due to the interaction with them. Finding a specific foreigner would be difficult in that chaos of varied people and their intertwined styles.
Fransic wished he had a little more information about the suspicious person he was looking for. The old lady had tried to be specific, but her description wasn’t really helpful.

A sturdy brown dress? Most of the traveling merchants and half of the sailors wore something along those lines.

A mischievous look? Well, that was everyone or none of them, depending on the circumstances, right? Besides, many foreigners would look mischievous or smug, thinking that they had just swindled the sellers because they had been given products in exchange for nothing. They didn’t understand Ogha’s market.

Empty hands? It wasn’t as suspicious as the concerned lady thought. Maybe the stranger was about to buy some of the sea products the green pier had to offer. It didn’t help much to identify her either; most people were carrying something, sure, but not all of them. There were plenty of sailors having breakfast or playing games with empty hands right now, and even some people who had already sold all their merchandise.

Sandy blonde hair in a tight ponytail? That was a trend like any other, but nobody around seemed to have it at the moment.

Maybe the person was gone or looked different by now. Laku’s only constant was change, after all.

Maybe he should have been looking for a sailor with new-looking empty bags, a tired look and her blond hair down. Or a traveling merchant with an improvised bun, pushing a new wheelbarrow full of white lettuce towards the spaceship's port, all the while laughing at the naivety of the local merchants that gave their products for free if you told them a sad story in a convincing tone.

He didn’t think that that expression was what the old lady had seen, because everyone in Laku’s city was used to that behavior. Given her age, the concerned citizen wouldn’t be worried about a regular trickster either, they just accepted that foreigners had strange customs. There must have been something different in this foreigner's demeanor, but the old lady hadn’t been able to explain what it was. Hopefully he’d be able to notice it too, but first he needed to see the person.

While he walked around the pier looking for a suspicious woman that could be gone already, he interceded in several transactions where it wasn’t clear if the client really needed the product, and even in one case of two people who needed a unique item—that was a challenge sometimes. Before he knew it, he was having an ordinary day of work, with only a few thoughts about the kind of mischievousness of this or that foreigner.

It didn’t mean he wasn’t paying attention, and he visited different establishments hoping to meet the suspicious woman.

He was in the biggest fruit store of the Green Pier—and in Ogha, most likely— when he understood what the old lady had meant. There was a woman sitting in the Rest Corner, with a plate of whispers and floating apples in her left hand and a slide of the map of the universe in the other. She was muttering something to herself, a grin showing her sharp canines and the traces of the blood red juice of the apples, which made her disheveled sandy hair seem like a sign of ferocity instead of the popular all-work-no-play hairstyle. But none of that mattered, because even her violent and threatening appearance seemed innocent compared with the way she looked at the map. Like a Sleepy White Dog would look at a crocodile while it contemplated the idea of chasing and killing it.

The moment he saw that woman’s attitude, his instinct screamed “danger”, and his percipient sense revealed that she was a Conqueror from the Eight World.

Why would a Conqueror come to Ogha? People from that culture craved the fight against worthy opponents, not pacifists without possessions. Even for the odd Conqueror who would be content with stealing resources, it was absurd. Ogha had little resources, and nothing that couldn’t be extracted somewhere else with less effort.
Why, then?

To this question, his percipient sense provided no answer. So he would have to deal with the fact without knowing the reasons.

According to the manual, he was supposed to start a conversation with the Conqueror, gather information about her and her purpose, help her to achieve it as fast as possible and immediately invite her to leave the city, and Ogha, to never come back.

He had never expected to find himself in the awkward position of applying that rule that was not only rude but a little… What was that word? His percipient sense—always whimsical—didn’t provide the right term and neither did his memory. It didn’t matter what it was called, he knew that it was the kind of unfairness that had almost destroyed their world in the distant past and he had always thought that it was a mean law. Now that he was in the situation, he didn’t think it was enough. Even if not all Conquerors were as unreasonable as rumors said, this one was. He knew it by instinct and because the universe had whispered it to him through his percipient sense.

Trying to tell a Conqueror what to do would be futile. They communicated through battle, in terms of victory and defeat.

 Who had even come up with that rule to deal with Eight World’s Conquerors? Not that anyone could blame them for not knowing how to deal with them. Nobody understood what was on their minds, after all; not even the other kinds of conquerors and warriors, or the competitive people from power driven cultures. How would an Oghense know how to discourage them from invading them?

A Conqueror wasn’t going to buy some algae, thank them and obey at the first warning of a pacifist.

Warnings would only tell this woman that she had been detected. Or worse, the words could feel confrontational enough to be interpreted as an invitation to try her best to destroy the whole world, because that was the language of the world she had grown up in.
To defeat others was the Eight World’s Conquerors core, just like taking care of each other was the core of the Oghenses.

Nevertheless, ages ago, someone had said that the best thing they could do with this kind of people was to send them away, because Ogha wasn’t able to give them what they thought they needed. And everyone had thought that was fair. Because it was!
But Fransic didn’t think that this Conqueror would understand.
What to do, then?

He turned around and left the establishment, because there was only one possible answer for that: it was better to warn Laemsi and explain what was wrong with the manual’s logic. Maybe even convince her to talk with other law enforcing regional leaders. Or with the Community!

By the time he reached the main door, he was scuttling. He was unable to stop or correct the course in time to avoid the collision with someone on his way out. He almost fell by the impact. He wouldn’t have noticed who the person was if he hadn’t talked immediately:
“Oh. Hi Fransic. I guess you already dealt with the issue, then.”
It was Zovjo.

He must have been warned about the invader too. Not that people would imagine it was this bad. Fransic wouldn’t have imagined it if he hadn’t known exactly what she was. It took a percipient to know that there was a Conqueror in Ogha, because it wouldn’t cross anyone’s mind.

“Do you know where Laemsi is?” he asked.

Listening to the urgency in his voice, Zovjo tensed, and his tone was full of worry when he explained where he had seen their leader, right before coming here.

“You may still find her there. What’s…”

Fransic was already running towards the fishing pier, leaving a confused Zovjo to finish a question that he wouldn’t answer or ever listen to.