The crowd was roaring but it had faded to a mute hum in Isolde's ears. She avoided the jab at her throat with a little difficulty; there was blood pouring down into her left eye from a decent cut above it and it made it difficult to see. Her opponent, a wily older Gear, was using this to his best advantage as he jabbed, punched and kicked at the blind side of her body.

Isolde defended against each of his attacks, waiting for the feint and then the lunge that inevitably came. She grabbed her opponent's wrist as it sailed past her, and threw him into the wall. He went down for a moment but struggled back to his feet, shaking his head to clear it.

Isolde took the moment of slight reprieve to glance at the manager; he raised his eyebrows at her and tapped his wrist to mime 'time'. She scowled at him and went down under a sudden spear tackle, but she rolled under the older, slower Gear and came up.

His move having backfired, her opponent lumbered to his feet only to be sucker-punched with a king-hit. Isolde shook her hand out; it felt like it was on fire. Suddenly she became aware that the crowd was roaring again, and went over to check the other Gear. He was unconscious but not too badly hurt, so Isolde signalled for the medics and left the ring.

The manager pulled her aside, silently handing her a folded piece of paper and an envelope.

"This came while you were fighting. Good show…"

He disappeared as Isolde looked quickly around before unfolding the piece of paper and drawing up a chair. It was a letter from Harmony, and it read

"Isolde: we're having a top-secret briefing this evening, as early as everyone can get to command. I'm sure the Chairman won't want to waste the opportunity to verbally abuse us and then send us to die, so it's sure to be an immediate deployment into some god-forsaken red hot zone. Should be fun! Don't be late. Love Harmony."

Isolde screwed up the letter and threw it into one of the fires burning near the fighting ring. She picked up her military jacket and pulled it on, clamping the envelope in her mouth until she was well outside in the freezing cold air before tucking it inside her coat.

Her cat sleepily poked her head out of a specially-altered inner pocket where she'd been sleeping; the tiny muddy kitten that Isolde had randomly picked up had survived several incursions and was now a lean fighting machine that hated Locust as much as her mistress. The adorable adolescent cat also gave Isolde something to love, and she was noticing a definite improvement in her general anger at the world.

She wandered towards command, taking her time, knowing it would piss the higher-ups off. Just because there'd been an improvement in her temperament, thanks to the cat purring comfortably in her pocket, didn't mean she couldn't still be snotty about being called into command late on her day off.

Thinking about it, she knew that at least Claire would be drunk by the time they had to report and smiled as she considered the Chairman's reaction to a drunken female Gear. She strolled casually up the stairs and into the building, past several other male officers gathered in a group. One turned and looked her over, apparently oblivious to the colour of her hair.

"Hey pretty lady; I think you're going the wrong way… my place is down the street."

He grinned at his wiser compatriots, who avoided his gaze and shuffled away from him to give Isolde room. She turned on him and smiled

"So you think I'm in the wrong place?"

He grinned and nodded, apparently not noticing his friends trying to give him the signal to shut up. The sergeant barely seemed to move, but suddenly the other officer was pinned to the wall by her forearm. Her cat scrambled out of her pocket and perched on her shoulder, hissing at the man as Isolde stared at him, her expression deadly.

"I'm thinking that I'm going to have to teach you some respect for us female Gears. As you can see, I've already been out teaching other Gears to respect us."

The man started shaking as she leaned closer, eyes intense.

"Next time you think you might like to hit on a girl, just remember that she's a person too. As much as the Chairman says she's not."

She shoved the man one last time and walked off, fuming, leaving him to fall to the ground in a daze.

She didn't pause but simply barrelled her way through the building, her cat perched on her shoulder. Harmony was waiting outside a room at the end of a long corridor, and Isolde moved more quickly towards her.

"Sergeant…"

Harmony looked her over, her face creasing into a worried frown as she took in the blood. Isolde ignored her worried look and asked

"Are the others here yet?"

Harmony nodded.

"You're the last to arrive. I managed to get to Claire before she got too drunk, but we'll have to watch her during the briefing to stop her saying or doing anything stupid."

Isolde nodded and stepped through the doorway, eyes quickly flicking around to take in the surroundings.

It was a very plain office but a lot bigger than the offices of the other members of the general staff. The Chairman sat behind his desk, his hands folded in front of him as the other girls stood silently, waiting. Adam was leaning against the wall near the door, and he nodded to Isolde when she glanced at him. Her scrutiny of the office was interrupted by the Chairman's voice.

"It's so good of you to finally join us, Sergeant. Are you alright? You seem to be bleeding."

Isolde wiped quickly at the cut above her eye and shrugged.

"I'm fine, sir, but thank you for your concern."

The man nodded and picked up a sheet of paper that had been sitting in front of him.

"Earlier this evening, I received this report. It concerns Beta-five squad, a less-than-exemplary squad who'd been given the task to investigate some strange noises outside the North perimeter… long story short, only one of them survived."

The Chairman looked at Harmony.

"A certain Private Gareth Johnson…"

Isolde saw Harmony's eyes widen, and the older woman asked

"Is he…?"

The Chairman shrugged.

"The medical officers can't find anything wrong with him, except for mental trauma. But the point is his squad found a highly suspicious building. We need Alpha-F to investigate further with your…"

He coughed delicately

"…'unique' way of doing things."

Isolde stared at the floor, feeling her face settle into a scowl.

"So you want us to investigate something that's already been investigated."

The Chairman nodded

"Essentially, yes. But it's more the space underneath the suspicious building that we need you to take a look at. According to Private Johnson… there's something down there."

He cast his eyes over the squad of women (and his son) again, focusing mostly on Claire weaving slightly on her feet and on Isolde's various cuts and bruises.

"I'm giving you a few days to get yourselves together. Dismissed."

The squad started to move off, but another thought seemed to occur to the Chairman.

"Oh and Sergeant O'Connor… young Private Johnson will be going with you in the place of Adam. You understand why."

Isolde bit back the acidic retort that sprang to mind about wanting to protect his precious DNA and sending a mentally-unstable Private back to the place where recent trauma occurred to do so and saluted, leaving and shutting the door behind her.

The other girls were already halfway down the hall; Claire, Megan and Alice to go and finish their drinking and Harmony hurrying to go and check on her youngest son. Isolde scratched her cat and wiped at the sluggishly bleeding cut, freezing as she heard Adam say loudly

"I can't believe you're not letting me go out again!"

Curious, she pressed her ear against the door and managed to catch the Chairman say quietly

"I don't want to risk you on a suicide mission."

Adam made a noise of derision and snapped

"The Sergeant looked out for me last time when I was nearly blown up by a grenade. Do you think she'd let me die in some underground hole?"

The Chairman's tone was even as he stated calmly

"This mission is much more dangerous, and quite frankly they're a lot more disposable than you. O'Connor's a good sergeant, one of the best. But the fact is that, when it comes down to it, she'll look out for number one and expect you to carry your own weight."

Adam was silent, and then the Chairman added

"You're just not ready. I'll send you out on a few more recons and rescues first, and then we can discuss a suicidal mission. Dismissed."

Isolde just managed to scramble away from the door and out of the way as Adam barrelled out of his fathers' office, slamming the door behind him. He breathed hard for a couple of seconds, and then seemed to realise that he wasn't alone. Isolde just stared at him, and he smoothed back his hair before nodding to her.

"Sergeant…"

The boy started to walk off, but Isolde grabbed his arm.

"Come on, you. Let's go drinking."

She started dragging, and he stuttered "w-wait!"

They both stopped and stared at each other, and he managed to scrape together

"Don't you want to go out with the other girls? Or at least Harmony?"

Isolde shrugged, nearly dislodging her cat (and earning a few scratches).

"The other girls have already downed rounds so they'd win a 'drink to insensibility' contest, and Harmony's taking her care of her dipshit son."

She smiled a little at him.

"Come on. I won't bite… unless you want me to."

He raised an eyebrow but followed her down the corridor, his fight with his father already almost forgotten.

Instead of going to any of the watering holes where off-duty Gears usually hung out, Adam received the dubious honour of being invited to Isolde's place.

"I brew my own. It's better than any of that practically negative-proof shit you'd get anywhere else. It's nothing like Harmony's friends' moonshine, but it gets you nicely toasted pretty quickly."

She opened the front door, and Adam took a moment to examine the house; it was a town-house, snuggled up between two others in a moderately-untouched part of the city. It seemed too big for just one person, and when he walked in from the spacious hallway to the even more spacious living room he noticed a lot of dust.

"I don't really use this room. I don't use a lot of rooms, to be honest. Usually, when I'm here, just the basement, bathroom, kitchen and study get used."

She opened a door off the hallway and disappeared for a few moments while Adam examined the dusty pictures on the mantelpiece.

They depicted various stages of the sergeant's life: from an adorable red-haired baby to a serious-faced little girl under a long wave of fiery hair in the arms of a tough-looking, grinning Gear with the same hair, to a professional shot of her in her uniform staring into the distance, to a casual sepia shot taken of her and several other Gears grinning and posing with their Lancers. Adam recognised her and Harmony but no-one else in the group picture, and spent the most time studying that.

"Here we are…"

Isolde chose that moment to come back like an author's plot device and handed him a bottle of clear liquid.

"Get that down you, and don't tell your daddy. I can get court-martialled for this."

She opened her own bottle and swigged as he gave her a disbelieving look.

"Court-martialled, for making moonshine in your basement?"

Isolde shrugged

"That and giving it to the Chairman's son…"

She grinned cheekily and threw herself down on the couch, raising a puff of dust that made them both cough. He sat a little more gingerly next to her, and petted the kitten that slipped out of her coat to curl up between them and lick her pretty paws clean.

The silence suddenly stretched awkwardly between them, and to cover his sudden embarrassment Adam took a sip of the moonshine. He swallowed convulsively and coughed, his throat on fire, and Isolde pounded him on the back.

"You'll be right, boyo."

After a while he managed to get himself under control, and tried to breathe evenly without setting off his coughing again.

"That's… very strong."

He managed to gasp out, and Isolde laughed. She took another long draught and nodded.

"It's no fun if it's piss-weak. If it was just 100% sugar… how is that fun for anyone?"

Adam had no idea what she was talking about, and cast his eyes over the pictures again.

The old picture of the serious little girl in the arms of a burly, grinning Gear caught his eye again; from the edges, this photo had obviously been well-loved. He felt Isolde's eyes on him and he turned to meet her eyes; they were questioning, but not scary, as though curious about what he thought. She looked away, at the pictures on the mantle, and her mouth twitched into a lopsided grin.

"If you're wondering about that big, tough-looking Gear… that was my dad."

She turned the bottle over in her hands and took another drink, remaining silent and passing up what was obviously a fantastic opportunity to explain more about her somewhat mysterious past.

Adam also remained silent, braving another sip of the moonshine; he managed to keep this one down with only a few coughs.

"Good man."

He smiled under her praise, and had another bigger sip that was definitely more of a gulp. She held out her bottle to his and they toasted each other jokingly, beginning a long night of hard drinking and increasingly stupid competitions.