A/N:

For those of you who read this but not necessarily my other stories, a quick head's up. For the next several weeks, until about mid-December, my posting is going to be even slower and more sporadic than usual. A trip out of the country and little things like 'getting married' are going to be happening so I apologize in advance. Things shouldn't stop altogether but just wanted to make you aware. Sadly, this chapter is a skosh bit short but hopefully good for all that. Thank you!


When Minerva sat down with her tray, the food on it didn't seem to have changed much from previously. There were the same slabs of grainy bread slathered in that green paste; the same fried nuggets heaped to the side; the same mug of golden, frothy drink. The only thing that had really changed was the casserole. Instead of noodles, dingy gravy, and hunks of unidentifiable meat, it consisted of potatoes, dingy gravy, and hunks of yellow that she suspected were eggs.

Incredibly hungry though not starving as last time, she ate with far more decorum, curiosity prodding her to ask Kalina about her meal.

"What's this?" she said, lifting one of the bits of bread and indicating the paste on it.

"Winter food," Kalina told her, then explained. "The City grows what vegetables we can but greenhouses for growing over winter are limited and we have the entire City to feed. Doesn't get too terribly cold here but cold enough we can't grow a lot of the summer food. Whatever vegetables are left from summer and fall get boiled, ground down, and mixed with salt and yeast into that spread. Lots of newborns don't like it at first but some think it's good."

Min didn't mind it. She supposed hunger was a spice that would turn almost any food delicious. She shifted her fork, pointing to the main dish.

"And this is…eggs?"

"Eggs, reconstituted potatoes, nothing shocking. Though I suppose that gravy is a bit of a shocking color, isn't it?" She smiled.

"And these bits? I think I like these the most," Min said, picking up a small handful of the nuggets.

"Oh, those are crickets," Kalina said. Min paused and looked at her, nuggets halfway to her mouth.

"Crickets?"

"Yes," Kalina said, smiling. "Easy to raise on nutrient extracts, wonderful source of protein. As you can imagine, large scale ranching and raising of livestock is impossible in the City. There is some livestock- a few cows, goats, pigs and such- mostly chickens- still domesticated and in town. Beyond the wall there's a lot that's long gone feral and wild again and we do kill them and bring them in for meat when we get the chance, but it's too dangerous to do on any large scale. So, red meat is rare. Fish is almost nonexistent. Chicken is more plentiful. Insects, however, are abundant and take far less room and resources to raise large scale."

Minerva looked back at the nuggets in her hand a moment, then mentally shrugged and popped them in her mouth. They were tasty. Who cared if they were crickets?

Clearing her mouth with a swig from her mug, Minerva then pointed at Kalina's food. As before, she was eating only a small bowl of some kind of gelatinous squares, covered what looked like cream. The sole difference Min could see was that these ones were a bright emerald green, and the first lot had been blue.

"And what are you eating?"

"Oh!" Kalina looked down at her bowl as if noticing it for the first time. "This is called styur. Nutrient cubes. You wouldn't like it."

"How do you know?" Min asked. Kalina laughed.

"You're human, silly. You taste things differently. To me, your food would taste like old sweat socks. I know, I've tried it. I can eat it if I desperately need to but I would not enjoy the experience. To you- I've heard styur tastes to humans like spilling a little bit of gasoline on the tread of an old automobile tire and licking it off again. Oh, and this-" she indicated the white cream "-is apparently remarkably similar in taste to wood glue."

Min grimaced and recoiled a little, and Kalina laughed again, then offered a spoonful. "Want to try it?"

"No, thank you," Minerva replied, prompting more giggles. After they'd gone back to eating for a moment, Minerva asked the next question in her head. "So…you're not human? I mean, I had already kind of figured…"

Kalina looked at her and smiled. "It is a bit obvious isn't it? I'm Awoken. We're not human…not anymore."

Min blinked. "Any more?"

Kalina nodded. "No one really knows why. During the Collapse several ships managed to flee Earth…and then something happened to them. Even our most educated don't know what it was. Whatever happened changed the survivors into…well, Awoken."

"What could do something like that?" Min asked. The skin and hair color was one thing, but what could turn normal human eyes bioluminescent like that?

"Your guess is as good as mine," Kalina said, but Min only half heard her. She was wondering suddenly how she knew what 'bioluminescence' was.

For the briefest moment she felt on the verge of a memory- but if it was there, it sank back into the abyss of black without surfacing enough to get a clear look at it. She was tempted to chase it, but she had no doubt it would ultimately be futile. So, instead, she looked up from her plate toward the synthetic serving the food.

"There are robots too," she said, as if Kalina had never noticed this fact. "I saw some outside my room that were very sophisticated."

"Those 'sophisticated' ones would be a bit upset if you called them robots," she said. "The ones doing menial tasks, like the server- they're AI but they are robots. The other ones, those 'sophisticated' ones you saw…those are Exo. Obviously they're synthetic AIs and were built at some time during the Golden Age but- they're so far advanced even the Ghosts don't understand their internal workings. They're as sentient as you or me. They are also revived as Guardians by the Ghosts and you'd be hard pressed to find any difference between them and a human being save in appearance."

Minerva picked at the last dregs of the breakfast casserole she had left, but before she could ask another question, one of the Exos they'd just been discussing strode into the room and right toward them. He- judging by the proportions Min at least assumed he was male- was wearing a hooded cloak much like Kalina.

"Good morning ladies," he said cheerfully. His voice sounded like any human's, but with a faintly tinny edge, and whenever he spoke yellow lights flashed in his mouth. Whatever language it was he was speaking, it was different than Kalina's, but Minerva's Ghost translated it into Russian with as much finesse as it had hers. "So this is our newborn?"

"This is Minerva," Kalina said, beaming a bit as if she'd given birth to Minerva herself. "Mini, this is Cayde-6. He's the Hunter Vanguard."

"Vanguard?" Min asked.

"That's what they call you when they imprison you in this tower and never let you see the sky again," Cayde said, then let out a laugh at the expression that must have crossed Min's face. "I'm kidding. Sort of."

"The Vanguard head and mentor each Class," Kalina said, as Min wondered if all Hunters were…goofy. "They're the best and most highly skilled members of their faction."

"And so naturally they keep us here and out of the field where our skills would actually be useful," Cayde said cheerfully.

"You're useful, Cayde," Kalina said. "Planning missions, conglomerating intel, overseeing training-"

"Annoying the other Vanguard?"

"That too."

"Have I ever told you that you're my favorite Kalina?" Cayde asked.

"Course I am," Kalina said, as if there was no room for the slightest doubt, then looked at Minerva. "Thank goodness you're not going to have to put up with him as your Mentor. Every time a Hunter leaves the Tower he practically latches on to their ankle and begs them to take him along."

"Just the ones that have nice legs," Cayde said. "But what makes you think our new friend here won't have me as a Mentor?"

"Oh c'mon, Cayde, look at her. She's a Titan if I ever did see one."

"Now now, didn't your mother teach you not to judge by appearances?"

"Possibly but as I can't remember the slightest thing about her-"

Minerva observed this back and forth with a kind of bemused bafflement. Both of them spoke so quickly, ribbing each other with a swift ease that seemed only possible with rehearsal. As she doubted the Hunters went around rehearsing conversations and comebacks just to impress newborns, it had to be natural.

"Think of Oscar," Cayde said. He now seemed to be appraising Min again.

"Oscar's an aberration," Kalina said. "Nine times out of ten you can tell just by looking what Class a newborn-"

"But that always leaves the tenth," Cayde said, then grudgingly added. "I agree though. She does smell all sorts of Titan-ish, doesn't she? Well, we'll find out soon enough. Get her down to get tagged and then to Lord Shaxx."

"Who's Lord Shaxx?" Minerva asked.

"He's the one that will be determining your Class," Cayde said, "through a little thing we like to call the Crucible. Don't worry, it's easy enough. About the third time you get your head blown off you get used to it."

Min stared at him, unsure if she'd heard this correctly, and then unsure if he'd been serious. Before she could speak though he clapped a companionable hand on her shoulder and gave her a cheerful, "Good luck! Kalina, leaving her with you for now. I think I heard Zavala talking about the Twins in the Crucible today too so should be a bunch of giggles."

"Oh, no," Kalina said with a weary sigh. Cayde clapped her shoulder too then headed off again, whistling.

"Was he serious?" Min asked, looking at Kalina who now had her face in her hands. She looked up between her fingers with a faint groan.

"What about?"

"About getting my head blown off?"

"Yeah."

Minerva stared, and Kalina sat back and looked at her. "The Crucible is a controlled combat arena," she said. "Lord Shaxx puts newborns in there to see how they handle it- what their fighting style is like, their tactics, and their gifts. That's how he determines who belongs in which class. Veterans fight in there too, to test out new weapons or just to improve their skills or to have fun."

She leaned forward and looked at Min intently. "Understand this now," she said in a low but kind voice, all joviality now gone. "You will get shot. You will get killed. Likely more than just once. It's an observed and controlled environment. Your Ghost will be with you and in no danger at any point. You'll be revived again if you die or are hurt, just like he revived you out in the field the first time. The Crucible isn't just to determine Class or to keep skills honed, Mini. It's also because you need to know what it feels like to be shot, to be dying, to die. The survival instinct is still very strong in Guardians and it doesn't get overridden easily in most. When you're out in the field, fighting a real enemy- if you have a moment of panic when you're badly injured, or if you flinch because you're afraid of the pain of getting shot or killed, or you give up because you feel that sensation of death creeping into your bones- that could mean the real deaths of not only you and your Ghost, but everyone in the City and everyone that serves the Light. You can't hesitate when you're facing a dozen Fallen to guard some nomads…Ghosts won't bring them back if you're knocked out and the Fallen kill them before you're revived. You've got to conquer fear, pain, and death in combat- and the only way to do that is to fear, hurt, and die in combat. Over, and over and over. Does that make sense?"

Minerva nodded slowly, but the clench of nerves in her gut and throat threatened to bring her food up again.

Kalina looked at her gently. "You look green," she said softly. "That's ok. What you're feeling right now is ok, Mini. It's normal. As I said, the survival instinct is incredibly strong. You'll master it. And they'll make sure you've mastered it before they just toss you into the field."

"What about exhaustion?" Minerva asked, and hated how small her voice sounded.

"You mean, what you felt before, when your Ghost revived you?" Kalina asked, then nodded. "What you felt when you first woke up- it's never that bad again. That came from your entire body being rebuilt from just a strand of DNA, and in your case, then nearly freezing solid on top of it. Healing like that is a one-time deal. Getting mended from wounds, even horribly fatal ones, will still make you tired- the worse the wound the more tired- but nothing like that again. Repeated rehealings will eventually exhaust you and I'm not going to lie- your first few days here after the Crucible you're going to sleep like the dead. But it won't be like it was before. In the field if you're getting healed and revived as often as you would in the Crucible you're doing something wrong and you shouldn't be out there. And if there's nothing left of you but a strand of DNA again it won't matter anyway, because even a Ghost can't revive you from that a second time- they don't have enough Light left for that. I know I'm probably not making you feel any better…sorry."

Min sat back in her chair and shook her head. "You're all right," she said. "It just-…"

"Millions of years of human evolution and the drive to live is hard to overcome," Kalina agreed. "But you're a Guardian. And you'll kick its ass."

She suddenly gave a bright and cheerful grin, and Min couldn't help but chuckle weakly at it. The Awoken patted her hands firmly on the table and got to her feet. "So, we might as well get it over with," she said. "Unless you want more food?"

Minerva was quite sure her stomach wouldn't allow her to eat another bite without refunding all she'd already eaten, so she shook her head and got to her feet as well. They dumped their trays and headed out of the mismatched little café and back into the corridors of the Tower. They were heading down a stairwell when Minerva remembered something Cayde had said, and Kalina's reaction to it.

"Who are the Twins?" she asked. Kalina gave a little groan again, seemed to contemplate a moment, then let out a resigned sigh.

"A pair of Titans," she said. "Good. Deadly good. Couple of the best actually. Old veterans."

"And they're actually twins?"

"Seem to be," Kalina said. "Funny story that. Both born within a week of each other- Nara was found by her Ghost on Earth like you were, in what used to be Spain I think; Blayd on Venus in the ruins of one of the old cities there. Spitting image of each other, at least in looks. They don't remember their lives before their Ghosts found them of course but they took to each other immediately. Act like siblings. You half expect them to finish each other's sentences but thank God they don't- that would really be creepy."

"And you don't like them?"

Kalina gave Min a sideways look and an uncomfortable shrug. "It's not that I don't like them," she said slowly.

"One of them then?"

"I like Blayd all right," Kalina said with that resigned sound again. "Nara scares the styur out of me."

"Oh?"

"She's just…never mind. I don't like speaking ill of another Guardian. You might get on aces with her, who knows? That's for you to judge on your own fairly. Don't need my opinions of other people coloring up yours before you even get a chance to form them. I will say this though. With those two in the Crucible today- you will get your head blown off. Better start telling it goodbye now."