Kaiden and Nyx came down eventually.
The gravel took them back somewhere in the middle of all that noise, and she did not let go of him for the walk out of the crater, one arm hooked through his and her face turned pointedly away from four hundred people who had just watched every second of it.
"You’re a hopeless clip farmer," she said into his sleeve.
"It’s not my fault you were recording."
"...Ha-ha." Nyx’s narrow eyes suggested she wasn’t amused by his comeback.
"Hey, at least we’re sharing the spotlight."
"We are not sharing anything, Kaiden Grey." She pinched his skin hard as evidence of her disapproval. "You’re going to be the guy who kissed his lover in the clip, but I’m going to be the woman who got hopelessly kissed until she melted and her powers literally lifted her and her assailant into the skies..." Her grip tightened. "There’s a major difference, and I’m going to be explaining it to you for the next couple days. Minimum."
"I’m all ears for my beloved space babe’s wondrous voice."
"I’m not being taken seriously one bit, am I?" Nyx scoffed, but she could only hold it for a single second before her whole face gave out and went bright.
Keeping the act of being an innocent maiden could only interest the pink-haired beauty so long. She could spend her time better, such as leaning her head onto her lover’s shoulder while humming a happy tune under her breath.
...
The day did what days do when nothing is on fire. Kaiden signed things, walked the lot twice, settled two arguments about squad rotations, and spent most of the afternoon pretending he could not hear four hundred people replaying nine seconds of footage on their handhelds.
By evening the lot had gone dark and the command tent was the brightest thing on the compound again, but for the first time in three days nobody in it was investigating anything.
Ms. Rook laid the last signature page in front of Scarlet at twenty past seven.
Scarlet signed it with the pen held like a knife.
[Eclipse - Guild Roster]
[Registered Personnel: 476 → 477]
[Z: 7. SSS: 1 → 2. S: 3. A: 26. B: 74. C: 131. D and below: 89]
"Eclipse has two SSS-tiers," Doug said, to the roster, to himself, to every guild filing he had ever touched in a career that had not prepared him for the sentence. He took his glasses off and put them back on. "There is no other guild on this continent with two."
Kaiden pulled a folding chair around backwards and sat on it with his arms over the back, close enough to the map table to be in the conversation and far enough from Doug to be out of the paperwork.
"You may all thank me at your leisure," Nyx announced from the map table.
"Fatty’s been working you since the Claimant?" Luna’s head came off the cot.
"Sixty-two messages," Scarlet said, kicking her boots up on Doug’s table until Doug moved them off it. "A day."
"Fine. Fatty, I’ll give you this much, you’re the perfect bait." Luna pointed at Nyx with her whole hand. "I don’t know if it was the strategy or the enormous milk jugs, but something in that pitch worked on a woman who’s told entire governments to eat shit, so-"
"Are you insinuating that I’m a lesbian?" Scarlet interjected with a flat face.
"You’ve never once been photographed with a man and basically every rich and/or powerful prick on the continent wants to court you." Deterrence had never worked on Luna and it did not start working now. "So either your standards are insane or-"
"In case you haven’t figured it out yet, pipsqueak, I’m a hopeless addict."
"Pipsqueak?"
Scarlet ignored the question entirely, which Luna fully intended to revisit.
"I don’t know about you guys, but when I level up..." She had her elbows on Doug’s table now, talking at nobody in particular. "Something goes off in my chest. Every single time. First one, hundredth one, doesn’t matter."
"...Okay, yeah," Luna admitted, betrayed by her own body.
Every single awakened combatant knew the joys of progressing one’s stats. It was a truly liberating feeling, as if one was shedding their mortal coil and ascending to a higher state of being.



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