Shadows of the Past

Many thanks to JA/AJ for letting me use AJ the insane HUcast. Herb's mine, as you probably guessed by now, and Shard is ostensibly mine but I think I'm hers. I don't own any of the other characters, Sejanus belongs to Eden and Darrel Whitney and everyone else belongs to Sega. Lucky them.

Chapter Three

I met Shard just outside the teleporter to Ragol. As always she was wearing high heels and a camo uniform in drab olive green, whilst I'd decided to wear my tiger-striped yellow bikini suit. It's really muggy in the Ruins, and I've never dealt well with heat. Besides, I take an evil pleasure in making otherwise intelligent – if burly – Hunters walk into walls. It makes me laugh.

I took one look at the guns Shard was carrying and almost walked away again. She had a pair of handguns called Guld and Milla, only I knew from previous experience that she used them like mechguns and generally managed to destroy entire buildings with them. Don't laugh, I was there the last time.

Hell, she left me feeling somewhat under-equipped. I'd brought a set of Twin Chakrams, a personal favourite, and my pride and joy, a Monkey King Bar. They're really rare, and won't go into the details of what I wound up trading for it. Totally worth it, of course, and let's face it, what's a FOmar going to do with one of these things?

(Shard looked over my shoulder at that point and made an incredibly crude comment. I'll smack her once I stop laughing. Maybe. I certainly am not going to write it down, the unit would melt.)

Oh bollocks, where was I? Oh yeah.

We swapped some mindless pleasantries, referred to a non-existent quest (I was already a little bit paranoid at that point, considering that what we were about to do was just a tiny bit illegal), and teleported to the ruins.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, so I'll mention it now to make my point entirely clear: I. HATE. The Ruins.

Imagine, if you will, a fairly normal set of corridors and rooms on the Pioneer 2. Now turn them the brown of dried blood. Then add strange fleshy protrusions and sections of wall that actually move when you're not looking at them, and a series of mutations that may or may not have once been an intelligent race. Worried yet? Good.

Although I could see the logic of transferring the data here – I mean seriously, how many scientists or computer technicians come here? – I still wished he'd thought of somewhere else. Then again, who knows what goes on in Mome's head some days? I sure as hell don't, and I used to date the man.

Another thing about the Ruins. Always take someone who knows Resta with you, especially if you're a Hunter Hunter, because I can promise you right now, you're going to get the tar beaten out of you. The first few rooms were okay – Claws are dead-set easy to beat – but then we encountered the bane of my existence. Delsabers.

Assuming you aren't too freaked out by that lovely little image of the Ruins I had you conjure up earlier, here's another little exercise for your imagination. Take your average saber wielding HUmar. Strip him down to a skeleton, but keep his weapon and shield. Warp the bones a bit, fuse the saber and shield to his wrists and hands, and add a thin layer of purplish-black flesh that shimmers in a really worrying way. Yeah, that's a Delsaber. Enough to put you off the job for life, some days.

And, as I discovered very quickly, if you're even remotely distracted they like to toy with you. Shard was busy handling one of those centaur things, and I was crowing after smacking two of the Delsabers with one swing of the MKB. And then the third one shoved its blade through my shoulder into the wall, pinning me there.

Needless to say, I swore. A lot. I used every filthy word I could come up with, then moved on to a few of the dirtier sayings I'd picked up from hanging around Hunters in bars. Then, running low, I started on ancient Palmanian curses. I was pissed. I was also stuck.

I was about ready to admit that I was going to die there when I heard this inarticulate yell and the pressure pushing me to the wall broke off, leaving me to fall to the floor, blade still in my shoulder. A heeled boot pushed into my back and the blade was yanked free. I fell backwards and stared up at Shard for a while, mouthing obsceneties.

Finally I managed "What took you so long?" Hey, I was in shock and running out of blood. You try being witty and original in my place. Ha, told you so.

"Hey, I could have reloaded properly and not risked blowing the gun up in my face." I didn't really have a retort for that, so I let her cast Resta and stood up. Somehow I'd had the MKB in my hand the whole time and not tried anything. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

"That was pretty impressive, though. You didn't even repeat yourself! Where'd you learn that one about Great Lutz and Flaeli?" She was grinning from ear to ear. I just blushed. A lot. I'd picked that one up from a genuine Esper, although I'd sworn blind not to tell anyone his secret. I didn't either. To this day I'm one of the rare few who knows that there really are Espers on the ship.

Whoops. I'll have to erase that last bit some time. Or not. Half the ship is fairly certain that most of the Forces are Espers anyway, so who'd really worry about it? Alright, I might get a Flaeli or two up the ass for it, but if they sent you-don't-know-who I'd probably be too busy trying to stare at his ass to care. So I'm a bit shallow. Never underestimate the power of a nice ass.

(Shard's making obscene comments again. I have got to start paying more attention to my surroundings, or anybody could be reading these. Yikes, bad thought.)

Speaking of nice asses (That's it, I'm throwing her out!), not long after the Delsaber incident we met another Hunter. Well, met probably isn't the best word.

I think the phrase I'm looking for is 'saved from certain death'.