"... And it was only when H.B. put his glasses back on that he realised it was a tree!" finished Irina, before throwing her head back and erupting into raucous laughter. Frye and Yelv joined in. Doug took another swig from his drink and gave his old friend a sceptical look.

"Oh yeah? Come off it, how would you even find out something like that? It'd be a trade secret, and you're an Interceptor."

"Payment for escorting a team of Pathfinders," she said, "It's a long story. They found this rare squirrel, see..."

"Now you're definitely just making things up. Curators would grab the squirrel first!"

"Oh yeah?" she leaned forward precariously on her chair and tried to jab Doug in the chest with a finger, "Well, why don't you tell us a story? I know... tell us why the Harrier logo is a wonky unicorn!"

"There's a perfectly plausible reason!" he said, grabbing another beer, "Way back in the mists of time, when BLADE had only just been formed..."

"Just get to the good bit!" Irina threw a coaster at him.

"Okay, so, Boze was leading this squad of five Harriers in Skells up to Sylvalum. An enormous, and I mean ENORMOUS Progen that could fly and throw lightning bolts from its horn. I think we called it Jeb the Majestic... er... Fantasy? Anyway, this thing had us pinned down, then Boze, he takes a flying leap off a cliff, screams 'KATSUUUU!' and plunges his sword into the creatures' head."

"And he missed and dented its horn instead?"

"To be fair on him, the wind was picking up. Anyway, its horn was broken enough that it couldn't use its weird powers, so it retreated, flew off into one of the big Spheres and was never seen again."

"Bullshit," said Frye, "The Pathfinder's one was more plausible!"

"Okay then, ask me something else about the time period, so I can prove I'm not making this up."

"Why was the old division name Avalanche?"

"Ah, yeah, that..." Doug frowned, "Well, you see, there was this Tyrant. There wasn't really anything else like it, so we don't have a name for its species. But this one was called Avalanche Abaasy..."