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 Four

You know how sometimes you see something and you instantly know what's going to happen, even though logically you shouldn't?

I got that big time. We walked into another room, and I knew we were getting close to the terminal, seeing as I'm kinda sorta almost nearly the reason that it's disconnected from the network most of the time. Hey, it was doing weird things to the Ruins! The place is crazy enough on it's own, thanks!

Anyway. I absorbed the situation in about 1/1000th of a second flat. Dark Belra. Two Delsabers. A whole pack of those Dimenian things, I'd say about nine now that I really think about it. And somewhere in the middle of all that, occasionally yelling a very familiar battle cry, the flash of orange armour that can only belong to a HUmar.

I have to admit, for the briefest of brief moments, I thought Noel had come back as a man. Then I was wading in, Twin Chakrams in hand and bloodlust in my eyes. I think – I know – I was still pissed about the Delsaber-Wall thing, and I was trying my very best to get to the two fuckers and kill them.

Didn't quite work that way. Even accounting for my slightly sloppy technique at the time, due to anger and all that crap, Shard's guns weren't doing anywhere near enough damage. Normally those things can punch a hole through foot-thick titanium alloy, but she was barely even chipping the armour on these things. I was having slightly more luck, seeing as how my weapons were specifically designed for slicing through stuff like that, but still…

I found myself back to back with the HUmar. I didn't see much, little more than a flash of tired blue eyes and a mop of brown hair really. But trust me, we were pressed back to back for a while there, and all I'm saying on the subject is that I like HUmars for a reason. They make me feel all fuzzy and sexy.

Oh, shut up. Trust me, in the heat of battle all kinds of odd things spring to mind. And for some reason one of the ones that comes up most often – for me anyway – is men. I can't help it, alright?

(I've just been 'reassured' by Shard that I'm not the only one, but I'm not so sure that her word is the best benchmark for something like this.)

We won through eventually. We'd been at it so long I felt like my arms were going to drop off, though. And of course, being the front-liners, the HUmar and myself were dripping with all kinds of yucky stuff, bleeding from lots of wounds, and generally battered in the way that most Rangers and Forces will never, ever experience. I stabbed the Belra a few times to make sure it was dead, then sat on it. Yeah, that's how wiped I was. Flinging a couple of Foie blasts during the fight hadn't helped one bit. I pulled a Trimate and Trifluid from my inventory and chugged them both in one massive gulp.

Ahhh, the blessed pain of healing.

The HUmar did the same thing, and Shard quite literally smacked me upside the head. I was reliably informed later that my eyes crossed for a second.

"What the hell did you think you were doing? We have a policy, remember? DON'T CHARGE INTO BATTLE WITHOUT WARNING ME, GOD-FUCKING-DAMMIT!"

I just stared. Shard gets angry a lot, but she almost never swears like that. Normally she takes something normal and makes it sound dirty. Like 'Mother of Little Pigs'. She sure confused Principal Tyrell with that one. That was before we gave up working for the Council, of course.

The HUmar just stared at Shard. I don't blame him, she's damned scary when she's pissed off. Of course, he never did understand that Shard only gets really angry when she's worried. I eventually stemmed the tide by making a silly face and making with the tickles. It took a while for me to eventually get my breath back, but it did calm Shard down enough that she wouldn't try to hurt the new guy.

Speaking of whom, the poor guy was looking at us like we were crazy. We'd just gone from combat to abusive shouting to tickle fight, so yeah, he was bit thrown off. He's gotten used to it since.

"Uh. I. Um. Thanks." He was just a little bit lost for words. Who can blame him?

"No problem," I said, wriggling out from under Shard and shaking his hand. "Name's Herb, by the way. That's Shard, try not to piss her off. She bites." Shard make shark-teeth chomping. It's something we do to a lot of people we meet. To this day I think he's scared of being bitten by Shark-Shard.

"I'm Ash," he replied, and something inside my head just clicked. You know what I mean, like one of those magnetic puzzles most of us had as kids. Ka-klick! Like that.

"Holy shit! You're one of, you knew, I mean you, AGH!" I'll admit it. My brain kind of shut down around about that point. Thing is, I already knew this guy, at least by proxy. The Black Hound incident was what prompted Noel to take on an apprentice, namely me, because she almost let someone die, namely Ash. So yeah, I had a major shutdown of all systems.

Shard had also been pretty close to Noel, probably knew her better than me, so she knew what I was trying to say. Which is just as well, because I was about to have a fit of some kind.

"Dammit Ash! Where the hell have you been?" she demanded, launching herself at him and unleashing the Noogie of Doom. Obviously he'd been subject to it before, judging by his reaction, but still. I pity anyone on the receiving end of that thing. It's both painful and undignified.

He eventually squirmed free. I couldn't help myself – I snickered. His hair looked like he'd been ambushed by a tornado. And of course, as soon as I snickered, Shard giggled, I laughed, she laughed, he laughed, and the entire situation degenerated from there.

Eventually we calmed down – sort of – and we got around to asking Ash what he was doing down there. Training, he said. Training! Noel was right, he is a twit.

"You're a loony!" I declared dramatically. I pointed back at the Belra to illustrate my point. "If we hadn't turned up, you'd have been turned into a big smear on the floor!"

Not that there aren't plenty of smears on the floor in the Ruins anyway, but that's something for another time.

"Excuse us a second," Shard said, grabbing my arm and hauling me back into the corridor. "Hey, I had an idea. Let's get him to team up with us. You won't need to pay him because he was down here without a quest, and I know you think he's cute."

I glanced back at the bemused Hunter. She was right of course, both about the payment and my attitude. She really pisses me off some days. She's definitely gotten worse since Doctor Montague went to ground, though. She'd almost talked Elenor into letting her scan her systems, which is Shard-speak for 'copy the design to make an android'. Shard's always wanted an android servant, but she can't get permission because she's a Hunter.

Damn, I'm a fool. I can't believe I listened to her.