Minerva didn't understand the words, nor did she quite realize she had cocked back one shaking fist in a highly ungraceful motion, but her Ghost's shout overlapped the stranger's 'please' and what he said she did understand.

"Drop!"

Minerva fell, her stiff arms capable of doing little more than preventing her face from bouncing on the cold concrete floor. In the same breath that she hit the floor, the world seem to explode in roaring gunfire that rang back upon them in echoes just as furiously loud. The noise was like knives stabbing into the sides of her head. Unable to do anything else, Minerva clenched her eyes shut, pressed her hands over her ears, and waited.

A voice, high-pitched and garbling, hiss-growled in anger. There was the faint snap of cloth, then more gunfire that now sounded as if it was coming through a thick blanket. Then even that sound narrowed into a painful high pitched ringing made her ears feel stuffed with cotton and left her effectively deaf.

She couldn't tell when the gunfire or sounds had stopped. As far as she could tell she hadn't been shot, but that didn't mean she wasn't about to be. She was too stiff, cold, and exhausted to do anything but neither could she just lay here like a lump waiting to be killed.

Every motion requiring an almost inhuman effort, she managed to lift her head and look around. Two slumped forms lay on the ground in the thin shaft of light coming through the gap in the gates. She could make out little detail of them other than the shape of their heads was definitely not human.

There was no sign of the hooded figure. Minerva's Ghost was hovering just over her head, almost protectively. She felt a sluggish surge of affection for the little thing.

She heard a distant and muffled humming. An attempt to sit resulted in her barely getting an elbow underneath her and levering herself up. Light passed over her face, and there was a sudden painful pair of pops in her ears. Sound rushed in and she winced back against it.

"Sorry about that. Without ear protection the noise of the weapons damaged your hearing," her Ghost said. It turned toward the gap anxiously. Now that she could hear, a few scattered shots coming from outside it were clear. The Ghost fixing her hearing was welcome but it sapped her of yet more of her feeble energy, and she slumped back down. She didn't even have the strength left to care what happened any more.

She thought she may have fallen asleep. The next thing she was aware of was a hand lightly gripping her arm. It felt hazy, like a dream, and she didn't open her eyes. A voice said something she didn't understand, and she heard her Ghost reply in the same language. Next thing she knew, someone was hauling her up into a sit and her arm was being pulled around a small pair of shoulders.

"C'mon, Sleeping Beauty. Time to wakey wake."

She still didn't understand the words but she managed to get her eyes open this time. The woman in the scarf and hooded cloak was back, hauling her up to her feet. Vaguely, Minerva was aware that a second Ghost, identical to hers, was bobbing around nearby as well.

She wobbled a bit as she got fully to her feet. This time when the woman spoke, so did Minerva's Ghost. He spoke almost simultaneously with her words, but in Russian, and in an imitated female voice that sounded identical to the stranger's.

"Wow, you are a big one! No wonder where they'll stick you. You steady, Asteria?"

She didn't know what that last word meant, and could not think enough to figure it out. "My name is Minerva."

When she said this, the other Ghost suddenly spoke in her voice, but in whatever language it was the stranger spoke. Minerva realized sluggishly the pair of little bots were translating.

"Ehn, Roman, Greek, it's all big columns and togas isn't it?" said the stranger affably. "Are you steady? We've got to move and I can't have you keeling over."

Minerva hadn't felt less steady in her life, not that it had been a very long life. Still, she nodded her head. She wanted nothing more than to lay down and sleep again. The blank mask seemed to regard her warily, then the stranger nodded and carefully took her hands away. When Minerva stayed on her feet, she nodded again. Reaching up she unhooked her cloak, and then slung it around Minerva's shoulders. While the fabric looked thin and all but decorative, it was surprisingly warm. She immediately clutched it about herself, shaking.

"Just don't tell anyone I let a Titan wear my cloak," the stranger said with what sounded like a grin. "Right then. This way."

They worked their way slowly through the tightly packed cars. The stranger seemed to have realized taking Minerva up the moldering stairs or over the wrecks would have been impossible, but she seemed to have an uncanny knack for finding a way through the heaping wrecks where no path seemed to be.

With the inexplicable warmth of the thin cloak, Minerva felt some of the sludge in her mind melt away. Her feet and fingers had started to prickle and ache, and the chill still stung her face, but she was no longer shivering violently.

They were in a massive room the size of a cathedral. Her shuffling old-lady footsteps seemed to echo everywhere and there was no light beyond what the two Ghosts produced. In contrast, the stranger was making no sound at all as she moved. The pistol she'd pulled before was on her hip, and she had what Minerva took to be some kind of long rifle in her hand, but it was like no rifle she'd ever before seen.

How do you know? she thought with a weary amusement, and for a moment tried to chase a memory that just wasn't there.

They had gone what felt like miles before the stranger spoke again, the helmet half turning back toward her. The Ghosts translated as before, mimicking their voices to do so.

"So, you remembered your name? Or did you just pick one you liked?"

"I remembered," Minerva said.

"First and last," her Ghost added almost proudly.

"Nice! I'd say I was wrong, that they'll make you a Warlock, but there's no way that will happen. Not with hands like that."

Minerva looked down at her hands gripping the cloak closed over her chest in confusion. What did she mean? What was wrong with her hands?

"My name's Kalina," the stranger said, and she dropped back to Minerva's side and offered her palm. Min stared at it a moment before something seemed to glimmer. Slowly, she reached out and took the offered hand, shaking it slowly.

The stranger had a good grip, but her hands were small and slim and long-fingered. As Kalina released the handshake, Minerva looked at her own hand again, glancing between the two. Her hand was big, blunt, and solid in comparison.

Maybe that's what she meant?

"What's a…Warlock?" Minerva asked after a moment, gripping the cloak again.

"One of the Classes," Kalina said, and then looked at her Ghost. "Didn't you tell her?"

"I have never been to the Tower," the Ghost said almost sheepishly. "I didn't feel I was the right one to explain it."

Rather than annoyed, Kalina seemed to be delighted with this. "Swift! All right, I'll break it down for you then. We're Guardians- I assume your Ghost explained that much?"

"Yes."

"Right. Well, when a new Guardian is brought back- 'born' as we call it- the Light that reanimates them also pumps up certain talents, in that individual, and gives them a few new ones. Physical, some of them- like denser bones and muscle fibers, or increased nerve transmission to speed up reflexes, that sort of thing. Depending on these enhancements and talents, the Guardian is then adopted into one of the three Classes that best embodies those talents. Warlocks are one of those Classes- they're the brain-gods you know; wicked smart, devoted to study and research. They have an increased number of synapses and a few more weird brain changes that makes them kind of savants. They're a bit weird sometimes, I myself don't understand half of what they say."

Minerva squinted at her, her weariness making her feel stupid. She was confused what that had to do with her remembering both her first and last name, or why her hands would dismiss Kalina from the consideration that she'd be a Warlock.

"Then, there's the Hunters," Kalina said proudly. "That's my Class. Cunning, quiet, fast, a bit dashing and cleverly roguish if I do say so myself. We do things with style."

Kalina did seem to think quite a bit of herself but she said it so happily it was hard to put an impression of haughty egotism on the words.

"Then there's you, Big Girl," Kalina said, giving a faint gesture in her direction. She still sounded as if she were grinning. "You're going to be a Titan."

"Titan?"

"Big and strong, my friend. Big and strong. The Immovable Force. Big fists, big guns, big courage, big everything. Solid enough to get hit by a truck and just shake it off. Think of it this way. Warlocks are bullets, Hunters are knives, and Titans are wrecking balls."

Minerva didn't know if she was 'big' or not. The only comparison she had to go by was Kalina. She was certainly taller than Kalina, and seemed a bit broader, that was true. Her hands were bigger, as she'd noticed. If Kalina were herself average than Minerva would indeed be a small giant. If Kalina was tiny compared to nearly everyone, though, how did Minerva know she was anything other than average?

She didn't. That was the long and short of it. She just didn't, and until they ran into a few more people, she wouldn't. She had no reason to doubt Kalina's word however, nor could she come up with why the Hunter would lie to her. As with everything else thus far, she had little choice but to simply accept it, and little strength left to her to really question it.

"I don't feel much like a wrecking ball," she said. Kalina eyed her. At least, Minerva assumed she had- it was all but impossible to tell behind that face mask.

"Revival does that. First time, everyone's as weak as a newborn, and you had the added bonus of being born in below freezing temperatures without much in the way of clothes."

"I did the best I could with what I had," the Ghost said.

"I'm sure you did, Sparky," Kalina said. "My point is, Mini- we don't come into this world at the top of our game. Birth of any kind is a violent and draining activity. There's a reason the Tower doesn't leave newborns out by themselves if they can help it."

"Were you weak when you were…born?" Min asked.

"Are you kidding me? They had to carry me to the Tower and I slept for two days. The fact you're a newborn that's up, walking, and talking despite being a giant canvas flavored popsicle is another reason I know you're a Titan. They'll keep going even if you shoot a leg off. I know. I've seen it."

She suddenly giggled, the sound echoing and making Min blink in surprise. "…just a flesh wound!" Kalina said, then giggled some more. Whatever the joke was, she didn't explain and Min didn't ask.

They had gone pretty deep into the complex by now, the cathedral like room having been replaced with dark close corridors that reeked of metallic water, rust, and loamy soil. Here, it was almost hot, and Min had stopped gripping the cloak as closely around her. Every inch of her skin seemed to be throbbing or burning at her as her half-frozen flesh began to wake up. She suddenly became very aware of how desperately hungry she was. She felt as if her stomach had been gored.

Before she could ask if Kalina had any food, a blast of fresh and frigid air hit them once again. She had started pushing the cloak away a little; now she snatched it back around herself.

"Here we are!" Kalina said as she stepped through a bent doorway just ahead. It didn't lead outside exactly, but the large room was lacking a ceiling. Bent and twisted scraps along the tops of the walls showed it once had possessed a ceiling, probably back when the cars out there had been running.

Scrub grass and thin, skeletal bushes had grown around the edges and floor of this room, and heaps of rust that could have been anything from equipment banks to conference room tables, formed uneven mounds.

In the center of the room was something that Min's brain helplessly called a 'space fighter' but with no accompanying meaning or context. It was a vehicle of some sort, small and bearing broad patches of metal that didn't quite match. She knew that it could fly, but she couldn't tell how she knew this. She knew those long parts under the squat little wings were weapons, but she didn't know how she knew that either.

As Minerva shuffled into the room after Kalina, the Hunter looked up at her Ghost.

"Binky, can you power us up?"

"I'm on it," her Ghost replied in a lightly feminine voice, before it zipped off to the fighter. As it neared the hull, it seemed to break apart into sparkles of light, and vanish.

"You call your Ghost 'Binky?'" Minerva's Ghost asked dryly.

"Of course I do!" Kalina replied, with the kind of astonished tone that suggested she thought it quite unimaginable she'd call her Ghost anything else.

Min's Ghost turned to her and said softly, "Please don't call me Binky."

Minerva just shook her head. She was still eyeing the fighter.

"This is yours?"

"Yup," Kalina said proudly. "You're lucky. I was already doing patrol in this area when the call came in about a newborn. That's how I got to you so quickly."

Behind her, the fighter suddenly started to make noise- a deep humming throb of engines, a whir of air exhaust, and thin jets of steam escaping from a vent or two.

"It doesn't look big enough for more than one person," Minerva said, looking at the narrow cockpit skeptically."

"It's not. You're going to have to ride digital."

"Digital?"

"The fighter contains a matter transference pad," her Ghost told her, as if determined to be helpful. "It can turn matter into energy and vice versa. Normally a pilot is transformed into energy, the energy is moved into the cockpit, and there reconstituted back into matter. For you and me, we will simply remain as energy- digital information- held in the pad until we get back to the City. There, we can be returned to physical form on the landing gantry."

"The pad can hold up to twenty digital signatures at once," Kalina said proudly. "Let's even small vessels like this carry quite a number of personnel or a large amount of supplies if needed. Don't worry, you won't feel a thing or have any perception of time or what's happening. It'll seem like you just popped from here to the City in a nanosecond."

As she spoke the Hunter reached out and carefully took her cloak back, re-fastening it around her own shoulders. "Won't do to show up at the City with my cloak on a Titan," she said. "Remember, me letting you wear it- that's just between us."

Minerva nodded. She didn't know why it mattered but she still didn't really get any of this so it was as normal as everything else thus far.

She couldn't be sure but it seemed like Kalina winked at her, before she started strolling backward toward the fighter. "All right Binky, bring us aboard. See you in the City, Mini."

A sweep of light consumed her from the feet upward, dissolving her away almost as fast as Minerva could register it was happening. The moment the Hunter vanished, Minerva felt a sudden static tingle along her own skin, a rush of soft vibration. The room around her vanished. For a single beat, less than the blink of an eyelid, everything was a soft pearlescent gray color. Then, the same rush of vibration and she was standing on a narrow metal bridge in the middle of a well-lit hangar. Dozens of people were walking everywhere, equipment and carts were moving this way and that, and she could see another fighter up on some kind of scaffolding. Sparks were flying from it as tiny figures sealed down metal patches similar to those that dotted Kalina's fighter.

Min wobbled a little as she gaped around in disorientation, and she felt her elbow caught.

"Careful there, Mini."

She looked to see Kalina at her side. The Hunter's helmet was off, tucked under her other arm, and for the first time Min saw her face.

She looked almost human, save that her heart-shaped face had a faint dusky blue gray color. Her hair, wild and choppy and asymmetrical, was a dark blue so deep it was almost black, save a single slash of bright purple. Her eyes were blue, the irises actually notably luminescent, as if tiny sapphire lights beamed out of them. Around her temples and the edges of her cheeks, black tattoos formed lines almost as jagged as the edges of her hair. Whether it was make-up or natural tone, her lips were nearly as purple as the streak in her hair.

"Welcome home, Titan," she said, her grin showing astonishingly white teeth. "Welcome to the Tower. What's say we go get a cheeseburger, eh? On me?"