When Xandra returned to the hidden laboratory beneath the keep, Rikbore Warstone was not even remotely surprised to see she was in a bit of a snit. It had been suggested she was not in the mood for the conversation she had been summoned to Rata Sum to engage in, and that the conversation in question was as much part of a conspiracy as anything else. Knowing the diminutive Asuran engineer as he did, that sort of thing was precisely the way to anger her. She galumphed down the stairs in a distinctly crabby fashion, then pinned him with large red eyes.

"Had I not instructed you when first I revealed this location that you were not to interact with anything that you might find with you?" she growled.

Rikbore had to stifle an urge to chuckle. Asurans could be quite fierce, and packed rather a surprising amount of danger in their little bodies. But growling was not something they could manage to do without sounding more like an overeager chihuahua than something to be threatened by. He carefully pushed the mirth away. "Your clothes were dirty, and unlikely to be either a hazard or a delicate experiment. So I put them in the hamper."

"That's not what I mean." Xandra moved one of the hands she'd perched on her hips so that she could point at a golem arm resting on a dusty table. "The prototype XR-14 manipulative armature has been moved."

"That wasn't me," Rikbore rumbled. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back in the chair he'd moved down from the barracks above. "After you left, Sara paid this place a little visit."

"Sara." Xandra's eyes narrowed suspiciously, though they were no longer aimed at Rikbore's black and orange face. Instead, they were now glaring up the stairs she had just come down. "The human."

"Or I'm not a charr."

"With the milk chocolate tone derma?"

"If by that you mean the skin she shows so much of, yes."

"Skin that is displayed excessively by the open fronted Orchid hued vest and cut up the hip layered pencil skirt?"

"I never realized you knew so much about fashion," Rikbore chuckled.

"The blind Whisper's mesmer."

"Yes, the Whisper's…" Rikbore sat up. "Did you say 'blind'?"

Xandra, looking no less cross than she had started out being, waggled a finger at Rikbore. "Yes. Her ocular orbs are completely impaired, leaving her sightless. That is why she so often covers them up with those peculiar bandages of hers."

Rikbore gaped at Xandra. "I had no idea. She doesn't act blind."

"She can extend her body control to multiple doubles of herself," Xandra explained. "Her ability to extend that control also covers her ability to sense her environment. She can not only hear everything around her, she can use psychokinetic extensions to feel out the lay of what is about her."

"She uses mental braille to read the world." Rikbore shook his head. "You learn something new every day."

Xandra finally crooked one of the cute little grins that managed to make her look cute even without proper fur and tail. "I shall make a proper asuran scholar out of you yet, bookah."

"I'm Iron Legion," Rikbore rumbled. "We're required to have some degree of intelligence."

"I suppose I can grant you that," Xandra agreed. But then she scowled again. "What did she want?"

Rikbore settled back again. "Well, she wanted to tell me a bit about the meeting you just went to."

Xandra muttered something under her breath. The only thing Rikbore could be certain of was that it involved entirely too many syllables. "That meeting was…" She trailed off.

"That meeting wasn't just your parents, was it? Zojja was involved as well."

"She told you that?"

"She conjectured. But given the storm you brought in with you, it seemed reasonable to assume she was correct." Furred fingers propped up Rikbore's chin as he contemplated Xandra. "Your parents most certainly had called for you to come back and have cubs. What's more, they had convinced Zojja to offer a rather nice position on her krewe again. In fact," he leaned forward, "they even introduced the very smart, large eared and very male lab partner that would be working with you."

"And all I would have to do is ship all of my work from here to Zojja's labs," Xandra barked.

"Xandra…"

"Of course, that completely ignores the fact that my research is completely locked into the unique and peculiar energies of this particular plain of existence."

"Xandra."

"Uprooting all of my work and bringing it back to the Tarnished Coast will remove any possibility of continuing to engage in practical research owing to the utter absence of the very power that I am researching!"

"Xaaaaandra…"

"I'd be stuck with nothing but the extension of theory which has yet to be established to a sufficient degree to support a purely theoretical approach! It might leave me time for progeny, but only because I'd be accomplishing absolutely

"XANDRA!"

The diminutive (even for an asuran) woman blinked and turned to stare at Rikbore. "Yes?"

"Stop pacing and sit down. You're giving me a headache."

Xandra blinked twice, then turned and pulled a block that was casually defying gravity over. She plopped down onto it.

"She told you all of that?"

"She didn't mention the lab position, but as a tactician it seemed to be a logical extension of their plan of attack."

"Once a charr, always a charr," Xandra snorted. "You're acting like they're waging a war over me."

"They are. Your womb being the first battlefield they are looking to conquer."

Xandra gave Rikbore a dark look. "I would take it very kindly if you didn't refer to my uterus as some sort of territory to be made a conquest of."

"Even if it's true?"

"Listen, you hirsute, overgrown, alley dwelling mouse hunter…"

"No, you listen." Rikbore's tone was 100% legion at this point, his voice pitched to rattle his orders through the bones of warriors trapped in battle lust. The effect, apparently, worked on arrogant scientists just as effectively, as Xandra stopped and simply stared at him.

He coughed softly, and eased his voice to something more conversational. "Zojja, as I understand it, wants nothing less than your total devotion to the cause of ridding Kryta of dragons, right?"

"Well, this is true, but

"No buts. Your parents want you to produce cubs for them to gloat over."

"Yes, but how does that

"I'm not finished," Rikbore held up an admonishing finger. "In order for each of them to get what they want, they need to apply enough concerted pressure on you for you to capitulate. So, Zojja promises your parents that you will be given the perfect setting to have those cubs with a hand picked sperm donor, in exchange for them adding their voice to hers in getting you back in her krewe. Zojja then promises you that any cubs to result will end up in the sort of crèche that only someone with her kind of power, connections, and reputation can provide. That means your biological clock is now adding pressure from inside."

"I suppose your argument does make sense." Zandra nodded thoughtfully. "But it still is insufficient for the task of convincing me to abandon my life's work."

"Which is why a mesmer from the Order of Whispers, who also just happen to want the dragons exterminated, tried to get me in on the act as well."

"WHAT?" Xandra shot off the floating cube, her body held as stiff and tall as her miniature form would permit.

Rikbore shrugged. "She pulled the 'as a loyal soldier of the Legions, you would want to see the Black Citadel protected from the dragon threat' act on me." Rikbore chuckled. "She even thought you'd be willing to let me tag along. Like I would listen to a nobody human."

"She's not a nobody," Xandra muttered.

"What?"

"She was one of Trahearne's commanders when they took down Zhaitan. In fact, she was his second in command. Even Efut followed her orders."

Rikbore shifted awkwardly in his seat. Warmaster Efut may have been an asura rather than a charr, but even the Black Citadel respected her prowess as both a warrior and as a leader in battle. "So that means it's not just a faction of the Whispers that are interested in you, even the Pact has taken sides."

"And that is a lot of pressure," Xandra acknowledged. "If she's trying to suborn you, she's doing so with the backing of the Master of Whispers, whoever he is, and Trahearne as well."

"So what happens if you capitulate?"

"I get a very prestigious position high in the hierarchy of Zojja's labs, as well as practically my choice of breeding stock amongst some of the best asuran males around. I will be permitted time to produce progeny for the next generation before I get pushed into hunting dragons, and said progeny will become some of the best educated and well placed asurans of their generation. My genetic stock will be assured for so long as there is an asuran race."

"And that's how they would get you fighting the dragons. Once cubs were no longer merely a mental exercise they would have the ultimate incentive to get you to exterminate dragons. The protection of your own descendent line."

"Yes," Xandra murmured. "And it would work, too."

"Is that why you've never taken the time to have cubs?"

"And why I dedicated my life work to projects that kept me isolated in the Mists."

Rikbore snorted. "I thought you were here because you and she had a disagreement when you were younger."

"We did. I helped Professor Gorr prove his theory that dragons were consuming the magic of Kryta. She decided that this meant I had to fight the dragons by joining the Priory."

"And you?"

"I never wanted to be a hero, Rikbore. I just wanted to be the best golemancer of all time."

Rikbore looked around the lab Xandra had hidden beneath a non-descript keep in a little known part of a forgotten war on an alien plain of existence. "Picked a funny place for it."

Xandra shrugged. "There are no dragons here. No Orders. No pressures to push fledgling intellectuals out of my birth canal. No calls for heroism. Just my golems. And people to test my golems on."

"So what will you do?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I just… don't know."

Rikbore grunted, and rose from his chair. He stepped over to Xandra and scooped her up in his powerful arms and held her to his chest. She always seemed so fragile to him, even when driving off enemy raids with explosives no self-preserving charr would touch. Now he knew why. He cradled her to himself, saying nothing as she wrapped her tiny arms around his neck.

After a moment, though, she stiffened. "Rikbore, what is that bottle over on that desk?"

"A little something Sara left behind for both of us."

"For both…"

"For a blind woman she sees entirely too much for my sense of comfort."

"But enough for mine, I take it?"

Rikbore chuckled. "There's only one way to find out."

There was a moment of silence, and then…

"Grab the bottle."