Pixie Grinder's Compound

Boada moves away to keep herself between Yuvan and the sugar when he tries to take it, stopping eating only briefly. "You don't need this, I need this. You have no idea how much energy it takes to shrink and grow so much." Also she's generally got a fast metabolism and gets hungry quickly. She's eaten most of it, anyway.

From the spice rack, Yuvan has cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, a very small jar of saffron, ambergris, a bottle of vanilla extract, a pot of moonsugar, some dried hallucinogenic mushrooms, curry powder, turmeric, salt, black pepper, cloves, jalapeno chilis, fennel, mustard, grated horseradish root, ghost pepper oil, vinegar, allspice, mace, spikenard, galangal, ginger, sunflower oil, and poppy seeds. There's no pixies or enemies in the cupboards, but one drawer is filled with silver cutlery, one cupboard is filled with a variety of wines and spirits- brandy, rum, whiskey, amber wine, huangju, mead, and so on. There's also a cupboard filled with crockery, and in one of the bowls is a small plastic bag filled with a fine shimmering glittery dust.

Abandoned Battlefield

Nobody is outside the tank; they know it's safer inside than out. At least, theoretically. In sensha-do, sometimes somebody peeking out of the tank or riding outside gets hit by a shell, and whilst they use reactive armour to prevent the shells from penetrating, they are still pretty real shells.

The beam misses, though blisters the paintwork; if they'd not just had a swim, the canvas for the Valentine's Duplex Drive would probably have ignited, instead of merely getting a steam-dry. The missiles are a bit more surprising, though fortunately aren't aimed and so mostly miss- except for the shrapnel and rubble pinging across the tank's hull. "AH! Are you sure we can't surrender?"
"He said they were pirates. They won't care about surrender. Just keep dodging and stick to cover. Wait, there. That intersection, stop there and swing the barrel round." The tank skews to a halt where the Commander orders, the turret rotating. They don't stay long; just long enough to fire another anti-tank shell at the Panther, though without the advantage of having taken time to aim first. The mech's a big target, but it probably won't hit anywhere effective. The Valentine quickly reverses back the way it came, spinning and racing back as the cannon is reloaded.

Ruined Motorway

There's three lanes of traffic in each direction, split by a low concrete dividing wall. Occasionally, a long-abandoned car wreck sits on the cracked and crumbling tarmac, whilst old road signs, faded to illegibility, point towards communities that no long exist. The quiet is disrupted by the roar of engines and staccato bursts of gunfire, as a convoy of vehicles race along.

In the lead is a light tank, shunting wrecks and rubble out of the way easily. It's got eight wheels in total, a two-pounder cannon mounted in its turret, and it's being pursued. Following behind the Tetrarch are three technical fighting vehicles and a faded yellow schoolbus. The technicals are pickup-trucks, crudely armoured with metal plates and with machine-guns bolted to the cab roof, operated by people standing in the flatbed. The schoolbus has also been crudely armoured, most of the windows covered by metal plates with only a thin slit left to provide light. All four of the raider vehicles have bones hanging from their sides and bouncing on the road behind.

The Tetrarch's khaki paint has been chipped by the machine-gun fire, and its turret is rotating back. It fires, a shell flying through the air. The shell hits the schoolbus, smashing through the laminated glass of the windscreen, carrying on through the body of the vehicle, and hitting the window in the bus' back door, knocking the armour plating off and continuing quite a distance before the two-pound shell hits the concrete divider and explodes, showering gravel across the unmaintained road and wrecked vehicles.