Whoa. I was totally notexpecting such a fervent reaction from all of you towards that last chapter. You guys rock :) So here is part dos:

-)

I stared down at the paper I'd drawn in disbelief. "Are you shitting me?" I asked no one in particular.

"Why, what did you get?" Vex asked from across the circle.

"First kiss," I answered, and the whole Guild started cracking up. "Who even wrote this?"

Brynjolf shot me a good-natured look over the rim of his tankard. "That's not part of the game, lass."

I sighed, and evaluated the contents of my own tankard. Too much to chug in one go, that was for sure. "Damn," I muttered, then looked up. "I have all these great war stories, and this is what I get?" I let out an overdramatic sigh. "Hell, Nocturnal must hate me. Alright, so a clarification: first kiss, or first kiss that mattered, because for me, they're rather different."

"First one that mattered, duh," Tonilia said instantly from somewhere near Vekel, her face completely deadpan.

I had to laugh at that. "His name's Vilkas," I began, "and he's a Companion in Whiterun."

There was a general chorus of "OH!" throughout my Guildsiblings. "Don't set the bar too high there or anything, do ya Tiberia?" Thrynn joked.

"Not really, Thrynn." My face broke out into a fiendish grin. "See, I'm a Companion, too."

Another chorus of "OH!" though this one was more shocked than the first. "Are you really?" Brynjolf asked, his eyes wide in disbelief.

"Damn straight," I told him, then turned to face the room. "And that goes for all of you!"

Vex was looking at me with entirely new eyes. "No wonder you took care of all those mercenaries at Goldenglow without a problem."

"Aye, I had wondered about that," Mercer said from his vantage point. It was one of the few times he'd spoken up all night. "Thieves don't generally favor all-out brawls. Particularly ones as skinny as Tiberia."

I shrugged and folded my arms across my armor. I've always been rather self-conscious about how small I am; it's just not intimidating when a Dunmer the size of your little sister comes at you with a greatsword. "They say my oldest sister Neva was born with a crown on her head and a bow in her hand, the middle sister Avalon was born with a spatula in one hand and poison in the other, and I was born brandishing a sword and spitting fire," I answered in a way that for me, was quiet.

Even Mercer seemed wary at that announcement. "Remind me never to piss off your family," Vipir said with an eyebrow in his hairline.

"That goes double for me," Niruin added, absentmindedly fingering his pointed ears.

"Anyway," I said, shifting uncomfortably in my seat and trying to get back to the story I was supposed to be telling, "so Vilkas and I had been sent out on a typical quest. Go clear some bandits out of a cave, they're wreaking havoc and the Jarl's pissed." I shrugged. "So we get there, we kill most of the men, no problem. They're wearing studded armor and trying to kill us with iron axes, for the love of the Daedra!" I rolled my eyes.

"Companion fodder, as my clan used to say," Thrynn said with a disbelieving shake of his head.

"Mmm." I nodded to my ex-bandit of a Guildbrother. "But then we get to the end of the caverns, and there are these three enormous guys there with these giant freakin' warhammers! Elven, even, as though to add insult to my injury!" Some laughter at the irony in that, particularly from Niruin. "It took the better part of the afternoon to finally kill all three of them. Now, Vilkas could've taken them out in ten minutes if he'd been alone—the man is the size of a mammoth, I swear—but he had to watch my back, because those three bandits weren't stupid. They realized that a few hits from those nasty hammers they carried, and I'd be as good as done. So…"

"One of them got you, didn't he?" Cynric interrupted.

"Yeah, knocked the wind out of me," I told him. "Sent me flying across the room. Vilkas had my back though; he impaled the guy by way of a steel greatsword two seconds later."

"Now that's a Companion!" Vekel called with a laugh.

"So he comes over, picks me up off the ground, and makes sure I'm still, you know, breathing and whatnot," I continue, "and once that's established, he slapped me and was like, 'Never scare me like that again!'" My impression of Vilkas had taken many drunken bouts in Whiterun to perfect. "And then he kissed me. Scared the shit out of himself when he realized what he just did, though."

More laughter, then Tonilia asked, "So then what did he do?"

"Kiss me again, duh," I replied pseudo-mockingly, and in the same breath turned to Sapphire and added, "Scar or story?"

Sapphire was howling with laughter, so much so that she passed her turn (and since she had only a few sips left in her mug, she was lucky). She turned to Mercer and managed to gasp out, "Scar or story?"

He paused a moment as through deliberating something in his mind, then said, "Scar." He unlatched the leather straps from about his cuirass and pulled the armor over his head, leaving him standing there shirtless. For a man getting on in years, he was rather fit, I couldn't help but note, but that wasn't what my attention was drawn to a moment later.

Mercer turned and gestured to his back, highlighting a jagged scar approximately a few inches higher than his heart. "When I went to Snow Veil Sanctum with Gallus and Karliah, I had no idea what to expect," he said quietly, turning back around to face us. "But it was certainly not the Dunmeri bitch attacking the both of us."

I bristled with indignation for my kinswoman even though I didn't even know her, but Brynjolf had a steadying hand on my arm. "Easy, Tiberia," he murmured, a low warning. "You didn't know that one."

"She got Gallus first," Mercer said, with a vicious bite to his words. "Stabbed him right through the heart with those blasted glass daggers of hers. Fitting, given what they were, no? And you all know Karliah; if she had a weapon, there was poison on it somehow. Gallus died in seconds. And what did she do next? Dump his body in the ruins to sleep with the Draugr!" I could feel the fury and fire coming off the Guildmaster in droves.

"She came after me next, but knew going blade to blade with me was futile. So what did she do? Run away, and shoot arrows at me. Arrows!" Mercer shook his head, disgusted. "And those damn things were poisoned too. I was paralyzed and freezing to death in the snow when by some miracle a mage from the College happened to be stopping by on his way back to said college. He healed me, sent me back to Riften. You all know the rest." He pulled his armor back on over his head, and collapsed back into his chair, exhausted. He muttered, "Scar or story?" in Rune's general direction.

By the time the circle got around to my end again, we were all good and drunk. "Scar," Brynjolf chose this time when asked the ubiquitous question. He unlaced one of his bracers, and rolled up his sleeve to reveal a short white line just above the soft part of his wrist. "This is what happens when you stupidly try to catch a dagger Vex throws at you," he said, and Vex burst out laughing.

"By the Nine, boy!" Vekel exclaimed. "I figured you had more sense than that."

"In my defense," Brynjolf said, holding both arms up in a 'stop' gesture, "I just saw her chuck something at me; I didn't have time to see what it was. Thankfully I missed the catch, or this hand…" He shook the offending appendage attached to the scarred arm. "…would probably be useless."

"And what did we learn that day, Brynjolf?" Vex asked in tone of a condescending governess.

"What did I learn?" Brynjolf exclaimed, sounding personally affronted. "What did you learn, lass?" He shook his head as Vex just laughed.

"You learned not to piss me off," Vex told him through her laughter.

Brynjolf just swore at her, and turned to me. "Scar or story?"

There was no way in Oblivion I was going to stick my hand in the story helmet again, and risk pulling out something worse than I already had. There had been a few cringe worthy stories already, and quite frankly, I didn't want to talk about my past anymore. "Scar," I said, and slid off the barstool as I unlatched the straps around my chest to wriggle out of the cuirass.

The joking wolf whistles and crude comments gave way to shocked gasps and petitions to various deities when the room laid eyes on the scar I was showing off. A large half-moon had been permanently etched into my abdomen, both over my stomach and my back in perfect tandem. It was a series of little puncture holes that had scarred over, leaving white splotches behind. "This, my friends, is what happens when a dragon bites you," I said quietly.

The room was completely silent, but for the steady drip-drip of water leaking from the ceiling. I knew I was drunk right then, because I felt no shame standing in front of the entire Guild in just breeches, boots, and a breastband. (The mortification hit me later, once I was sober.) "How did that not snap you in half?" Sapphire asked, breaking the silence that had settled uneasily over the room.

"As it bit down, I stabbed it in the eye," I answered. "Sword went through its skull, and out the other side."

"Whoa now, elf," Mercer called. "Start from the beginning of that story."

I smiled wanly. "I was on my way from Windhelm to Whiterun, when I ran into this huge, hulking black beast." A lie, I'd met Alduin in Sovngarde. "It shouted down at me, 'Mortal! Taste of my Thu'um and weep!'"

"And you gave it the patented Tiberia 'bitch, please' look, am I right?" Vipir interrupted, shooting the offending look at me as demonstration.

I had to laugh at that. "That is scary accurate, Vipir." My smile dropped as I remembered more of the fight. "And of course I did. And then it attacked, spitting fire and fury. This dragon—I feel like it was a male—circled overhead for a while, and I shot some spells at him, but he landed eventually, and I cut his wings to ribbons fast as I could.

"Now grounded, he had to use his breath, tail, and claws to attack. I avoided them for a while, dancing about like an idiot and slashing at him when I got the chance. But I grew tired, and I couldn't get away from him fast enough. His jaws clamped down on me, and as he began to throw me into the air, I stabbed him through one huge, black eye with my sword, and the force of my attack was so strong it slammed through the dragon's skull and all the way to the other side. It howled with rage and dropped me, and I slammed painfully into the ground when I landed. The beast then died with a great shudder, but it was a good while before I could stand again. When I finally came around, I pulled my sword out of its head, and used its bones to make a rather vengeful set of armor. But that was stolen from me the first time I took it off." I sighed and shrugged. "Such is my life."

"So what is this then, lass?" Brynjolf asked quietly from somewhere behind me. His uninvited fingers traced the four parallel, arrow-straight, diagonal lines—claw marks—across the upper part of my back in between my shoulder blades, trailing fire as they went.

"Not from the dragon," I said, and swiftly ended the conversation there. I wriggled back into my cuirass and buckled the straps back down again. "Scar or story?" I asked Sapphire as I hopped back up onto the barstool.

"Not sure how to follow that up…" she mumbled, and the game continued until the wee hours of the morning.