Chapter Three: Perilous Times and Perilous Men

Night had fallen and the vanguard offices were emptying for the evening. Normally the vanguard would disperse, lock the doors, and leave the hardworking frame units at their station until sunrise.

Tonight, however, Ikora gave the order to completely empty the office and shut down surveillance systems. The frames agreed readily and in monotonous, harmonious consent: "Understood."

Ikora Rey and Commander Zavala watched the frames, thin robots used for labor and drudgery, march out of the room single file. They shared a nervous look, and Ikora leaned against the edge of the war table in the center of the office, watching down the now empty hallway for their third, and last, member to join them.

"He said he'd be here." She clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth in aggravation.

Zavala nodded and stood tall next to her, his eyes dancing across the room. It was the only sign of his anxiety. "He has his business to attend to, just as we do." He huffed out a breath of air through his nose and looked up to the ceiling. "Full blackout." He commanded. "Nothing in, nothing out. One hour." The monitoring systems of the office, hidden expertly from view, whirred in assent and powered down. It never hurt to be careful.

At last they saw Cayde-6, hunter vanguard and Speaker of the Traveler, descending down the stairs into the hallway that led to the vanguard office. His head was cocked to one side slightly and he appeared to be talking to someone, with one hand up where his ear should be.

"Uh huh." He nodded and continued forward at his meandering pace, giving a wave to the other two vanguards as he approached. "Uh huh. And the money is in my account?" He paused and stopped at the other side of the doorway into the office, looking down the handful of stairs to his comrades even as he continued his conversation. "Okay, perfect. It was good doing business with you." He clicked the call off and stood up straighter to address them, "All right, let's get this started. Zavala, get the door, please." He pressed his palms together and gave the order with a smile-or as close as his robotic features would get to one.

"You're closer to it." Ikora responded, crossing her arms and smirking.

Cayde rolled his bright cyan optics. "Ikora, do we have to do this every time? Should we put it to a vote? Who's in favor of Zavala closing the door?" He raised his own hand up. "And who's in favor of me doing it?" He lowered his hand but the other two vanguard raised theirs. "Ah, okay. So since I have two votes, being a vanguard and the Speaker, this is a tie. Hmm, and Ikora, remind me who has the tiebreaking vote in these matters?" He paused only long enough for her to start talking before he cut her off again. "That's right, the Speaker! So, Zavala. Close the door." He cocked his thumb behind him toward the open barn doors of the office as he made his way down the stairs.

Ikora furrowed her brow. "The Third Council Amendment states very clearly that the Speaker only has a tiebreaking vote if he has not yet cast one. By no means is a member of the council meant to have two votes." She scowled at him and threw an arm out to stop Zavala from complying with the order. "Paragraph seven, subsection two. In fact, given that clause, I'm not certain you should even be allowed to hold two offices. You would know that if you did your homework."

Cayde stopped halfway down the stairs and visibly deflated at her retort. "Fine, I'll close the damn door." He climbed the stairs backwards and turned around at the top, setting about his task. He called back over his shoulder as he did, "So what's our status, team?"

Zavala gave Ikora an appreciative nod as he started, his voice deep and commanding. "I have foundries under guard and working around the clock to produce weapons. It is slow, however, because they can barely keep up with Tower demands under normal circumstances. Guardians are notorious for their disregard for less than optimal weaponry, and any recycling efforts have been met with general disdain. They would rather harvest high-quality weaponry for parts than give them to a citizen." He shook his head slightly. "That being said, we have seen a two per cent increase in firearm ownership and I have it on good authority that the local militias are seeing more recruits. The problem is, they don't know why because we won't-"

"Can't." Ikora corrected him.

"-tell them." The titan vanguard finished.

"Hmm." Cayde locked the door and turned around again, descending the stairs once more with his impressive ego restored already. "Only two per cent?"

Ikora added, "With a population as large as the City's, it comes out to an impressive number."

"And how about that wall?" Cayde walked past them and gazed out the huge back window of the office. Here they towered above the City as the last bastion of defense against the darkness. Out there the mountains rolled on, unimpeded by the affairs of humans, aliens, or gods. It was a misty night below the dark clouds. Shadows bathed the rocky landscape out past the wall they were so precariously betting everything on.

"The walls are being fortified against attack as best they can." Zavala admitted.

"Doesn't exactly inspire confidence." Cayde replied.

"Cayde," Zavala approached and stood next to the hunter vanguard, looking out at the mountainscape, "Between the constant rounds on the walls, the tireless scouring of the steppes, and the constant strong-arming of weapons and armor manufacturers, I can't also put my Engineer Corps on backbreaking labor duty. My titans are stretched thin enough as it is, and with their orders and the rumors from the City…" He trailed off.

"You said it yourself, Zavala. Judas is a threat to the City and we need to do everything we can to stop him. So that's what you're doing, isn't it?" Cayde grimaced and ran his metallic fingertips over the charred mask of the previous Speaker that hung on his belt.

"But you said that it needed to be kept a secret. We can't raise a panic. No one can know." Zavala clenched his hands into fists. "It's on your orders we're running ourselves ragged, and because of it we won't be able to keep this a secret for very long."

Ikora joined them on the other side of Cayde. "My warlocks are putting in sleepless nights in the library and with the Engineer Corps to develop more advanced defense systems. But they're still people, Cayde. They need to sleep, to eat. To live."

"I know that." Cayde relented softly, staring down through the glass floor to the ground below. The faint edges of the massive wall could be seen. "I sent recon teams to swim through the drainage and sewer systems all over Old Russia. Nothing. We all have agents running around looking for anything weird. But we also have to let a lot of them live, go about their normal lives. If we use everyone, we'd accomplish even less. Trust me, Ikora. I get it." He took a step forward and placed his hand on the cold glass, looking out past his own reflection to the world beyond. "Judas is out there somewhere. He's building an army and we don't even know where. It's only been a few weeks, but he's had so much longer to plan this."

Ikora reached out and placed a reassuring and firm hand on the exo man's shoulder. "I know. How are your preparations going?"

Cayde's mood shifted quickly, but he held a hint of sadness and frustration in his words still. "Pretty great, all things considered. Phoenix and his boys really ran the gamut in the Trials." He turned to face his comrades and again slipped between them to return to the war table. "We definitely won on that one. I think they're ready."

"Ready?" Ikora asked incredulously.

"Ready." Cayde agreed. "Of course, it was a team effort."

Zavala veritably stomped down the stairs. "What did you do?"

"Me? Not a thing. Well, a few things. I may have pulled a few strings and cashed in a few favors." Cayde responded. "But you gotta believe me, they're good. See, I needed them to fight other guardians because, well, you know, Judas is a guardian, so I made sure they could pull the trigger."

"What are these strings and favors, Cayde?" Ikora's eyes narrowed and she stared him down with brewing storms behind her words.

"Just got them a few freebie wins, nothing an experienced Trials-goer couldn't do."

"And?"

"And got Arcite to rework the bracket. Wanted to see how they'd do if they were…" He searched for the right words, "Emotionally invested as well as physically challenged."

"And?" Ikora asked again, clearly not enthused. She watched as Zavala came around to Cayde's other side, blocking an easy exit.

Cayde shrugged. "I got Shaxx to look the other way for a while. And when he couldn't do that anymore, you know, to protect his precious 'femme fatale protegés', it still worked out."

"I can't believe this." Zavala nearly roared. "You rigged the Trials of Osiris!"

"Rigged is such a strong word." Cayde stepped aside and away from the titan, and sauntered over to the stairs to take a seat. "Look, those kids are special, both in a 'Mommy loves you' way and a… a 'touched in the head by God' way, all right? I made sure they had good match-ups, but it was never anything they could walk all over, outrageous light levels or not. And," He chuckled and shook his head as he looked down to the ground. "Phoenix pulling the plug on the other team, I never saw that one coming."

"Why did you do it?" Ikora asked calmly. "Do you realize the embarrassment you've caused the other contestants?"

Cayde looked her square in the eye. "The same reasons I do everything I do, Ikora. I wanted to boost their confidence. Now they have shiny new toys and they think they can take on the Darkness all on their own. That Koru kid might have a rough night after that final round, but come on, guys. They just won the toughest challenge known to guardians and let me tell you, confidence is half the battle. If they have to go up against Judas, they'll have the juice to do it." He ended his reasoning solemnly.

Zavala sighed and held his face in his hands. "Lord Shaxx will-"

"Lord Shaxx can't touch us." Cayde explained. "Let's just say I recently returned some compromising evidence to him that gave me a pass. Just this once, but it was worth it."

"What's the other half of the battle to you, then?" Ikora inquired further.

"Hmm?" Cayde leaned back. "The other half is making lots and lots of money." His metallic features could not contort into a smile, but his cockiness and the evident pleasure in his voice told the other two vanguard that if he could manage a grin, it would a shit-eating one. At his allies' appalled stares, he only shrugged. "Hey, what can I say, I'm a bettin' man. After my stint in this stuffy office is over, I'm thinking of retiring. I hear Brazil is nice."

"You're insufferable." Ikora admonished. She turned and looked over the war map, currently displaying the north Asian steppes of Old Russia and Old Mongolia.

"You just don't know how to snatch a good opportunity." Cayde gave a flippant wave of his hand. "Anyway, how's your other project coming? Any progress?"

She nodded and did not look over to him. Through a seething breath, she spoke. "Yes. The Hive language is guttural and almost completely alien to us, and nothing on our research into them suggests they even have a verbal language. However-"

Ikora was cut off by a sudden clatter from the far side of the room. All three vanguards looked over in sudden surprise as the locked barn doors shook and were then wrenched open and shoved apart by a lone figure. It looked to be a warlock in dingy brown and black robes, female, with three glowing green eyes like a Hive acolyte's covered by a thin veneer of cloth. Her voice boomed, dreadful and grave.

"Did she really just break our door?" Cayde asked rhetorically.

She chuckled, a horrifically macabre sound from low in her throat. "I have crawled through the underbelly of the Hellmouth searching for escape. The Hives' magical locks became an everyday obstacle. A simple human device is nothing to me."

Zavala stood tall and addressed the new woman. "Eris, have you had any luck figuring out what Judas said?"

Eris Morn strode forward, keeping her shoulders forward and her hands cradling a bright, almost sickly, green glowing orb close to her chest. She stopped at the far end of the war table, on the opposite side of Cayde, who had quickly risen to his feet and whose hand hovered over the pistol at his hip out of instinct.

" Yes. The Hive have a language, but it is one of terrible and inhuman sounds! And at Ikora's request I have translated this... " She paused, her lower lip quivering. She raised her head up slightly and gasped nearly inaudibly. Her eyes never closed or even blinked, and from her eye sockets streamed black tears that fell in a never-ending river down her pallid, pale, sickly green skin. "...Judas. I have translated Judas's speech to his horrid legion!" She settled back into her normal posture and tone, still as constrained as ever.

Cayde gave Ikora a disdainful look. "Uhh, really? Her? She's the best you could do?"

Ikora shrugged. "She was the only expert we had."

"Couldn't get someone a little more sane?" Cayde continued.

Eris Morn looked over to Cayde and slid past Ikora like a viper through the underbrush. Her long fingers reached out to him and gripped him on the sides of the head and she pulled his face in close to hers, staring into his optics with her replacement eyes and speaking in a tone just above a whisper. "I am more sane now than I was before I made that descent. I can see so much more clearly."

Cayde took a seething breath and grabbed Eris by the wrists, violently wrenching her away from his face and nearly shoving her back. "Ah, ah, no touchy." He took a step back and wiped his hands on his cloak absently as she recoiled, staring him down like a wounded animal. He continued, "Just tell us what he said, and then leave. And go far away from me."

Eris let out another low laugh. "Of course… Judas, a warlock, like you." She turned to Ikora. "He was your student, correct?"

"My star pupil." Ikora agreed with a bittersweet tone.

"Then this," Eris paced about the room, "Will be hard to hear. Judas… He wants to destroy you."

"Well that was obvious." Cayde rolled his optics. "Ikora, can your 'specialist' tell us something we don't know?"

"Not kill!" Eris hissed. "Destroy. It means something different for the Hive. So many things do. He wishes to rend you molecule by molecule. Swallowed by the Darkness. Never to rise again, as the guardians are so wont to do. His orders to them were nothing more than a warning and a promise. A warning of your power… but a promise of his. They challenged him to a duel to prove his claim, and he won. But he is not strong enough yet. Not to command a true army. Only a splinter in the chitin."

Cayde looked down to his wrist as if checking the time. "Can we wrap this up soon, please?"

Eris continued, pretending not to have heard him. "He promised to gather all the splinters. All the chipped chitin, and from it craft a new blade. A sword he would use to cleave… you. He said the guardian kings, but he meant the vanguard. I could hear the pain in his voice. The Hive have no concept of vanguard. They know of kings, but not of vanguards."

Ikora nodded. "And did he say anything about his next move?"

"Only that he would seek power with the Vex." Eris gave the message ominously. "The Vex in their stronghold. The source-a source-of their power."

The vanguard each shared a worried look at that revelation.

"That could be anywhere." Zavala frowned. "The Nexus Mind. The Black Garden." His bright blue eyes widened and his jaw went slack as if he had found a deep secret of the universe in an obvious location. "The Vault of Glass." He whispered softly, almost to himself.

Eris only shook her head. "Your young warlocks were spotted before he could tell them where they were to go. And none of the legion live to interrogate for information, either, thanks to the guardians and the Eliksni."

Cayde gave the warlock and titan vanguard a moment to stew on this information. After a moment of tense silence he walked across the room and up the stairs near the entrance, his footfalls soft and measured.

"Cayde? Where are you going?" Zavala called out to him.

"I need some air." Cayde responded simply, and without a further word he rushed up the stairs, leaving the three others behind him in the office to plan, to talk, to figure things out. That was never his style. While they pontificated and worked out their problems, he would go to work. He would act. It was all he was cut out for.

He emerged out into the cold night of the Tower's empty plaza. Shops were closed up. Wind howled all around and whistled through the eaves of the building's wings. Out below them the majestic Last City lived on, pulsing and moving with life and light even as the sun set. Hovering above it the cracked and broken Traveler waited in cold silence. He scoffed. It had never spoken, he knew.

He paused to look out over the city. Gathering his resolve, he pulled up the tattered brown hood of his cloak a little further, lamenting that his protruding horn stopped it from covering more of his cobalt metal face. With a nod he turned and made his way to the elevators. He would go down to the City and seek the answers he needed.

II

"Idiot." Koru stated blandly, rocking back on his feet and taking a seething breath, his eyes locked in place ahead at the wall. A dull thud sounded through the bar as his forehead made contact with it again.

"Hey Koru-" Phoenix called out to him.

"Stupid." Thud.

"Koru?" Phoenix fully turned in his stool to watch the warlock's rhythmic head-smacking against the wall. He took a sip of his beer.

"Dumbass." Thud.

"Hey," Phoenix calmly slid off his barstool and approached Koru slowly, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him away from the wall before he could hit it with his face again. The hunter turned the warlock around and steadied him with a hand on each shoulder-he still held his beer in his right hand, however. "Whoa, whoa, are you daft? It was kinda funny for the first five minutes," He looked about their usual bar under the hangar with his bright green eyes, spying a few other patrons entering from the corner of his gaze. "But now it's sad and people are starting to stare. Pull yourself together, man!"

Koru looked to Phoenix with a dry, apathetic gaze. His mouth hung open slightly in a frown, his hair was unkempt and a bruise spread across his forehead, swelling rapidly. "What's the point?" He asked groggily. "I ruined it with Eve. How could I be so stupid?"

Phoenix rolled his eyes and shook Koru hard by the shoulders. "Come on, man. So what? It shouldn't be that bad. Besides, you'll find someone new if it is. Someone better."

The warlock frowned. "There's no one better than Eve."

"I don't know, man. She's a bit of a weirdo." Phoenix shrugged. "But then again, so are you, it should be fine." He tried to smile and pat Koru on the shoulder.

Commander Roy emerged from the bathroom and confidently strode over to the wall Koru was slumped against. He smiled and eased himself uncomfortably close to his teammates, looking down at them. "Hey, what's up?"

Phoenix gestured to Koru with frustration. "He's just sitting here beating himself up about the Eve thing."

Roy tilted his head. "Why? I was the one who killed her."

Koru sighed. He looked up to Roy with fire behind his dry eyes. "That is precisely the point. You," He jabbed Roy in the chest with an accusatory finger. "You interrupted us! I was making a breakthrough."

Roy raised an eyebrow and brushed Koru's finger away gently. "Brah you were making a mistake. It's okay though, I think you'll be fine."

"Why is that?" The warlock asked indignantly.

"Well," Roy patted Koru on the head, tousling his hair slightly, "Girls like it when you show dominance. Gets 'em real weak for ya."

Phoenix chimed in, "But weren't you the one who shoved your fist in her throat?"

The titan laughed. "Ha! Yeah, that's true. But it's fine. Not the biggest thing she's had down there." He gave a wink and a nudge, which the hunter, thankfully, did not return.

"You are not helping." Koru lowered his head and held his face in his hands. The fighting was over. He wanted to scream. He wanted to fight more. It was easier.

Phoenix was about to retort when a sudden frustrated whisper from the hallway caught his ear.

"Son of a… why? Why is this a thing?" The voice was familiar.

Phoenix grabbed Koru by the shoulder and dragged him along across the bar's length and out toward the door that led to the steel and concrete hallway at the bottom of the stairs. Commander Roy followed after grabbing a drink from the bar.

Fireteam Pluto emerged into the hallway only to see Cayde-6 wedged between several huge steel crates marked with the Dead Orbit sigil stacked haphazardly in the back nook of the hallway. Like a deer frozen in the headlights he stopped his squirming and stared at them for a moment of awkward silence. After a breath he resumed his vain attempt to snake his way behind the boxes. He let out a sigh of resignation. "Well, damn. How are you kids doing tonight?"

Phoenix and Koru watched Cayde with dumbfounded stares while Roy took a mighty swig of beer from his pint glass. It was the titan who responded. "Celebrating. You should join us! You gotta tell us a story."

"Yeah!" Phoenix added, "You always tell the best stories, Cayde. Got any about love and romance or whatever? It's for Koru."

Cayde's optics shifted from Phoenix over to Koru. He made a tsk-tsk noise under his breath and his gaze softened. "Wow kid, you don't look so good. Hey, look at this way, you're guaranteed to find someone better than her after this. You guys are like celebrities!"

"There's no one better…" Koru repeated.

"Celebrities?" Phoenix asked. "Uhh, no one knows who we are here. I mean, they kinda do at this bar because we go here all the time, but like, not as celebrities."

"You guys hang around the wrong crowd, that's all." Cayde shimmied his way deeper into the crevice between crates, his hand blindly reaching to feel, banging against the other boxes deeper in the nook. "In the crucible scene you guys are on fire. Now…" He paused for a second and at last stopped his awkward shuffling into the corner. "Hey, warlock guy, Koru. You'll either work it out or find someone new. Trust me. Someone better." He lowered his head and spoke directly at the warlock, "Someone who, you know, eats meat and actually drinks beer. Someone fun."

Koru scowled. "She is fun, she just-"

He was cut off by Cayde. "Hey, mind giving me a hand? I need to get out of these boxes, it's not working out. Can you boys be lambs and help papa Cayde through?"

Roy looked over to Phoenix. "I don't think Zavala would want me to take this mission."

Phoenix looked to the titan with a frown. "But it's Cayde, he's the hunter vanguard. He's giving us a mission."

"Yes," Cayde agreed, still stuck between the boxes. "A very important mission."

Koru added, not without palpable cynicism, "Aren't you the same rank as Zavala, anyway?"

Roy crossed his arms and sipped his beer as if in thought. "Hmm."

"Phoenix, a hand?" Cayde whispered, looking down to his hip suggestively.

"Uhh…" Phoenix responded with confusion.

"The mask, man." Cayde rolled his optics and turned his head a little farther, looking out directly over his right shoulder now.

"Oh, right!" Phoenix perked up and grabbed the old Speaker's mask from Cayde's belt, holding it up against the exo man's face. It was an ill fit and it bumped up against his protruding horn, but Cayde worked with it.

His voice muffled behind the mask, he cleared his throat and affected a more jovial tone. "Commander Roy, my boy!"

Roy perked up and immediately stood at attention. "Yes sir, Mr. Speaker sir!"

Cayde continued, "I need you to move these boxes out of the way. That's an official mission!"

"I got it, sir!" Roy nodded and shoved his pint glass into Koru's hand. "Hold my beer." With that he almost ran forward to attend his new task. Crates and boxes were shoved aside and Cayde, still with the Speaker's white mask pressed against his face, was freed within a few moments.

Cayde snatched the mask from Phoenix's grasp but still held it against his face. "Very good, Roy. You always were one of my favorite titans."

Roy beamed with pride. "What else do you need, Mr. Speaker? How long were you stuck there, are you thirsty? Do you need a drink?" He produced a flask from seemingly nowhere. "I think this one is whiskey." He held it out to Cayde, who simply shook his head.

"Uh, no thank you. But if you could be a lamb and ah, move those boxes aside. There is something at the back of the hall I need. Right down the middle there." He pointed to the center of the back wall and then down to the area that was covered by the many, many crates of Dead Orbit.

Roy nodded. Just as he was about to withdraw the flask, Koru reached out and snatched it, unscrewing the lid and taking an impressive gulp of the fiery alcohol.

The titan set about to his task while Cayde, Phoenix, and Koru continued to talk. Cayde walked over and grabbed Koru by the shoulder, pulling him in close. "Kid, don't worry about it. If it works out, awesome! No relationship is perfect. You're gonna fight. Not get along. Hell, you may even kill each other a few times. But," He tapped Koru's chest with his finger. "It's all about how you feel here at the end of the day. Not," He trailed the finger up to tap the warlock on the temple, "Not how you feel up here. So let me ask you, my boy, do you love her?"

Koru took a moment to respond. He took a deep breath and considered the advice Cayde had just given him. His mind was racing a thousand and a half times again with thoughts of doubts and fears. If, however, he let himself breathe and let go of those thoughts for even a moment, his heart spoke. It was faint, suppressed, but inconceivably true in its feeling even if it could not be articulated into comprehensive language. At long last he responded. "Yes."

"Great!" Cayde patted Koru's shoulder reassuringly. "Show her. Love is a weird, squishy thing. It just needs some attention to get a little less gross." He laughed then, a warm and happy sound. "You got this, kid."

"Done!" Roy called out happily. The three other guardians looked to see the scattered and haphazard crates were now neatly stacked in two columns pushed against either wall, leaving a perfectly straight alley between them through the center of the hall, leading to a small black square just barely big enough to let a person stand inside it on the ground.

"Very good Roy!" Cayde congratulated the titan with his fake Speaker voice. "I'll put in a good word to Zavala on your behalf!"

"Thank you sir!" Roy smiled and grabbed the beer from Koru's hand. He took a gulp and burped loudly.

Cayde strode forward and crouched down in front of the square, grabbing something on it and pulling up hard, revealing it to be a trapdoor. It squealed and whined on old hinges but it eventually gave way and swung fully open. He looked up to Fireteam Pluto.

"Cayde, what is that?" Phoenix asked.

"Oh, just a little nook I use to get down to the City. The elevators are a little too heavily guarded to just waltz on out as a vanguard, or God forbid, the Speaker. The guards would demand I have an armed escort or some other nonsense. I swear, they increase security detail every year." He muttered and cocked his head slightly to the side. "Oh, and when I close this thing, can you guys, uh, you know, cover it back up again?" He gestured to the neatly stacked boxes. "You ever play Jenga?"

"Jeng-what?" Roy asked. He looked to Koru for help, but the warlock only shrugged.

Phoenix nodded. "Got it." He gave Cayde a thumbs-up and then made his fingers into fake guns to fire at him.

The vanguard returned the gesture and dropped down into the blackness of the underbelly of the Tower's hangar. After a second he reached up and closed the trapdoor behind him.

A moment passed. Phoenix turned to Roy, "Hey Roy, I think the Darkness is trying to use these boxes to hold itself up."

Koru opened his mouth to protest. "But he just-" Phoenix kicked him in the shin to shut him up. The warlock relented, shrugged, and took another deep drink from Roy's whiskey flask.

"Oh no! Don't worry!" Roy rushed forward and shoved the stacks of crates down onto the ground, once more in a scattered pile. A few broke, spilling more styrofoam packing peanuts than actual goods onto the ground. "There. I saved us."

Koru sighed. "I am surrounded by idiots."

"Hey, you guys breaking shit again?" Came a familiar, and not wholly welcome, voice from the stairs. Lilei Nizo almost laughed but managed to stop herself.

Fireteam Hades descended the steel stairway in a line, with Lilei leading the group, Eve just behind, and Ozara bringing up the rear. None of them looked particularly excited to see the men of Pluto loitering in the hallway to the hangar bar.

"No, it was a mission." Roy announced.

"Very important." Phoenix agreed amicably.

"Utterly critical." Koru added with a cynical eye roll.

"Right." Lilei frowned and looked to Phoenix. "It wasn't part of the deal, but I think you idiots owe us a drink for what you did today."

"What did we do?" Phoenix asked with genuine concern as he imagined their already impressive bar tab racking up more debt.

The huntress sighed and walked into the bar, dragging Phoenix by the arm beside her. Roy and Ozara followed in due absent-mindedness and due diligence respectively. Koru and Eve were left in the hall alone.

"So," Koru started. He stood up a little straighter and looked her in the eye, though she seemed unable to return the gesture for more than a few seconds at a time.

"Yeah?" Eve responded with an unusual softness in her voice. She visibly shook, just once, a single spasm from the crown of her head to her knees, as she clasped her hands in front of her.

"Don't you think we should talk?" He asked.

The rhythmic, droning beat of the bar's club music nearly made the floor outside bounce with hypnotic reverberations. He took a step closer, then another. Soon he was face to face with her, pressing his sore and swollen forehead to her own unmarked one. His golden eyes gazed deep into her emeralds. He took in her slender, curved nose, her full pink lips, her sunkissed tan skin. By the Traveler, he thought, there was no way he could stay mad at her.

"Well? Shouldn't we-" He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with a kiss before he could finish. He pulled back slightly and gave her a quizzical look, one eyebrow raised. "Uh, what?"

She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him in again, pulling him close and pressing her back against the wall. This time she buried her face in the crook of his neck to kiss and bite softly. She whispered, "Later. I promise. But right now I need you." She pulled away to look to him again, gently brushing a strand of his raven-black hair from his brow. "My place?"

He nodded, holding back a gasp and shutting his mouth, which had been agape in surprise since her affectionate attack began. "Yes." He said simply. "Let's go."

Eve nearly leapt out from underneath him and grabbed his hand, veritably dragging him up the stairs on the way to the elevators.