Bonjour, new chapter.

Sorry to keep you waiting. For this one, I highly recommend using rainymood in the backround as well as an ambient song of your choice. Read it slowly and it may turn out very well. Things advance in this chapter, so there's that. I also have a love of rain, which serves as an inspiration for this chapter. Read on and review, would you kindly? It really does wonders for me, letting me know what I'm doing right and what you enjoyed. -Breezewhiskers.

The night was day to both of them. Their working hours were during the night, their leisure hours were during the night and their lives were during the night, potentially their death as well. Malik found that it didn't matter that much. Sure, they found themselves on the receiving end of gunfire multiple times a week, but Jensen's savviness had gotten them out of a staggering amount of near-death occurrences, frankly, their apparent immortality was making her cocksure. Might as well be a little overconfident rather than be scared of going outside she reasoned. After all, she got some kick-ass benefits. Amazing pay, an international workspace, the best insurance money can buy, the best view this side of the planet, flying, flying and more flying. She got paid to do what she loved doing the most, how many people can say that? As a kid, she had grown up on comics, mostly Marvel, and she had always taken Stan Lee's advice and followed his example by doing something that she believed in and what she thought was important.

Importance. Before landing a job at Sarif, that had been the most important thing in her life, getting a job in piloting. Nowadays when life was less complicated but a whole lot more dangerous. Importance though, there was a concept that she hadn't thought about in a while.

Sitting atop a rooftop in her bird, she swung her legs back and forth from her elevated position in the VTOL, savouring the night air. It was electric, invigorating, almost drinkable, the electrically charged velvet nebula that swirled around the sky like a panther in the tense timespan in which she was awaiting the rain. Up here, nothing was in front of her. Just an endless expanse of nothing, limitless potential. The empty space seemed to foretell an ominous, yet beautiful future. The puffy, lukewarm winds that rose to meet her atop the high-rise building were acknowledging her improbable existence, adding to the intoxicating combination of deadly heights and blackened ice that was contained in the air. The fog was dimming the soft golden glow of the city beneath her, like it was all one singular LED light. The light pollution still outlined the chaotic plumes of clouds above her. Several flags on the roof grooved violently, but in a dignified way, Malik was at the seat of power, a conduit between man's dizzying technological achievements and nature's immortal and terrifying power. She had unconsciously moved out of her safe haven and placed herself near the edge. No matter how high the skies took her bird, seeing it in person was a near-unbeatable experience. The golden-orange glow beneath her seemed to intensify beneath the grey shroud, gathering its strength for an onslaught of fluid. Her flightsuit seemed to emit a vague aura of similar light, its reflective capabilities kicking in, almost mystically. The glass surface of her building became hard light, with ghosts of man's world galloping across in dreamy, melting abstract reflections. Faridah closed her eyes, inhaled through her mouth, letting the liquid crystal flow right into her, like ice-cold soda on the warmest day in July, with all the mystical ingredients of nature's strange imagination. Products brought on by

Thunder.

A door slammed open in the empty room of the sky, its echo sending shockwaves searing through the air like supersonic ethereal snakes. It caused her a brief moment of surprise. The air grew heavier, the altitude finally catching up. The thunder had her spellbound, her muscles aching in the waiting tension. Was it here? Was it just the ice in the wind she was feeling? She let her eyelids glide aside, the moisture in the air was dimming the lights more and more, like she was looking out of a windshield without a wiper. The shadows crept in, only the lowest lights banding together, and the tallest skyscrapers lifting themselves a few inches higher, the drops taking small pieces out of the normally symmetrical lines, blurring and mixing technology and nature.

There. There it was. A slight dab of paint upon her cheek, another upon her brow. The water grazed her lips, her covered arms, bouncing faintly on the metal hull of her bird, mixing with the industrial gravel underneath her boots, melting the galloping dreams across the wall of hard light she stood above, her hair became heavier, traces of rainwater sliding into her mouth, forming streams around her pores. The flow became even, unrelenting, to some it would be disquieting, even frightening.

Lightning.

For that brief moment she could see everything, and the world was gold and black no more. White shapes cut out of a black canvas, like her very sense of colour was erased, had never existed.

"Eager on catching a cold?"

His voice, closer than the thunder, louder than the rain spoke over her shoulder.

She smiled into the rivulets of her face, breaking the even flow down her features.

"Can't rain all the time. So I savour it while I can."

His coat rode the currents of air, drawing him into the darkness of the sky as he savoured it too, she thought at least.

"As.. nice as it is… I prefer my pilot to be nausea and cold-free." He extended his hand toward her.

Standing rooted for a few final seconds, she inhaled that final trace of night air that was evaporating in the dark. She slowly took his hand and he led her back to the safety of man's technology through nature's storms of vapor.

Inside, Malik switched her flightsuit for some more casual clothes and joined Jensen in the passenger compartment, sitting and enjoying the oldest sound and lightshow on earth. She flopped down next to him and shared an amicable silence. Eventually she shuddered and huddled closer to him. Shrugging off his coat, Adam draped it around the petite form of Faridah. Giving him a look of concern, he replied with a small smile. Knowing that everything was right in the world for the remainder of their night, she wrapped herself tighter into the confines of his coat, the one she had bought as a replacement for his old one all those months ago. Her hand sneaked out and grabbed his augmented digits before he could withdraw, to her pleasant surprise, he didn't make much of an effort to escape. She looked up to see his reaction, he stared off into the night looking content. A look she hadn't seen on his face for a long, long time. Her head lowered itself onto his hard shoulder, her body settling into the grooves of metal and carbon like it was cotton.

"Keep this up Spy-Boy and I'll be forced to take you to a fancy restaurant." She quietly murmured into his frame, staring out into the dark, their daylight.

"Anytime Fly-Girl." He leaned into her a little more.

"Anytime."

Importance. Something she hadn't thought about in a long time. She knew what was important to her now though. A certain tall, dark and handsome security chief with a killer goatee and a love for cereal.

They enjoyed their night until dawn set on their day.