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Description

Commission for theentirebeemoviescript and EarthWolder (with a story by them)

The fancy restaurant that 03 had reserved was crowded at this time of the evening, when the sunshine glinted throughout the city, bouncing from window to window, building to building, reflecting off of the great obelisks of the city. People thronged the ground and upper floors, quietly talking with one another. Their clothing reflected the general atmosphere of the place: refined, lively, elegant. She had to do some research beforehand, look the place up, download a small slideshow regarding table manners off of the internet...

She sat, sorting through additional bureaucratic work, files, reports, while she waited, attempting to be efficient and divert her processing power to somewhere productive instead of prowling the possibilities for the nine hundredth time. Hopefully her outfit was suitable for this place. Formalities beyond company protocol were unfamiliar to her, and, truthfully, she had pulled this out of "her" old closet.

The dress did not belong to this iteration of her, and, despite the slight aesthetic changes between chassis, it still fit her. Her facial recognition scanners had detected familiarity and animosity within the employee at the door, but he had held his tongue for whatever reason. Perhaps politeness.

She checked her internal clock again - 18:29. They were scheduled for 18:30. Hopefully her appointment would show up on time. From what she had heard, 03 was very busy, busier than she was, ever since Project Golem had been initiated. Perhaps something had came up. Saving the world was a very important job.

She stared at the burning candelabra that sat in the middle of the table set for two, watching the flame burn down. The waiter, an older trans-human hare, came around and placed a menu in front of her, smiling warmly. She stared flatly at it for a moment, realizing that she needed to order something - that was what you did at restaurants.

"Ma'am? What can I get you to drink?"
"Well... I, er, I would like to have-"
"It wouldn't happen to be ginger ale, would it?"
"...Yes, ginger ale, please."
"Very well. You remind me of someone I used to know," he said, nodding as he jotted the item down and walked off. She did not know what ginger ale was, but that was secondary. How many people had she known before?! It was getting difficult to keep track...

"Are you going to order me something as well?" A deep, calm voice asked from the other side of the table. Paige instantly shot upright as she heard it, her combat module coming online for a brief moment, before she saw who it was. She let out a soft sigh.

"Ah, 03, I apologize, I did not detect you there... forgive me." She said meekly, lowering her head.

The dragon, clad in scales of onyx, was already in her seat, with no indication or trace of how she got there, legs crossed politely as she opened up the menu and began purveying it. "There is nothing to apologize for," she responded, curtly, flipping a page in her menu, "Your hostile engagement protocol wouldn't help you, either. They designed it off of data they collected from me."

"O-oh, I was not aware of that... I'm not aware of a lot of things, actually," She admitted, casting her gaze off to the side. 03 had come in modest clothing - brand-new dress pants, flats, and a rather nice sweater, even though it was a warm night.

"I know."

"..."

"That's why we're here, isn't it?"

"Well, yes."

"Good, you remember that. So there's no anterograde memory loss so far."

She felt almost insulted. She was naive, yes, but that just seemed outright stupid to consider. "I've been online for a couple of months now, I think that if there was any signs of memory issues, they would have detected it."

"Are you sure? The last time you were having issues, we didn't know until it was too late."

"What are you talking about?" The robot retorted, her expression dampening. "Are you talking about Mk. 1?"

"Keep it down. Don't go talking about classified terms like that. You have a library of sensitive keywords regarding company information, don't you?"

"I do, but I thought that because it was you-"

The stoic woman suddenly cut her off with the same tone of voice that she had been speaking with the entire time. "This is a public place. It does not matter who I am. There are ears everywhere, and some may belong to our enemies. It is important that we follow privacy policy to a tee." Her facial recognition scanners revealed nothing, as her face barely moved beyond what was necessary to speak and breathe. She could barely even tell when her eyes would move - they would looking in one direction, and then suddenly be turned on her.

"...You are correct," she admitted, balked. She opened her beak, but her words ceased like sand through glass. What was the point of their meeting here if they could not speak about what had happened? What use was the past if it could not shine light on the present?

The waiter came back after a notable silence, setting her drink down. The glass fizzed as he pulled out a notepad. "So what will it be for you ladies?"

Her host spoke up. "Ribeye. Rare, please. I would also like to order the bottle of wine."

Paige's internal dialogue gave way to minor panic, as she realized that she had neglected to find anything to order. Her eyes darted from the words on the menu, some in Italian, food that she was quickly searching for on the internet, to the person across the table, to up at the waiter. "Uh, I will, er, I want to order the... uh..."

"Oh, wait, let me guess again," the waiter jumped in, his face growing mirthful at the challenge, "you want the-"

"-squid ink spaghetti." 03 finished, not looking up from the menu.

"Hey, how'd you guess, heh heh?" He turned to face the bird. "Is that it?"

She nodded. "Yes, that sounds good," she agreed, folding her menu and handing it to the waiter. 03 did the same.

"I'll let the chefs know, and I'll get you your drink." he said, and left them to their own selves once again.

The musicians began to play from downstairs, directly below the balcony that they were sitting on. Violins, drawing their bows, the soft notes of a piano, the gentle howling of a saxophone... a soft breeze blew over the outdoor seating, the flames of the candles flickering and dancing under its strain. The tune was faintly familiar, but again, what wasn't? Soon enough, she began to attempt piecing the melody together, without looking it up. "...among the stars... dun dun... in other words..."

"Your favorite song," she told her. "I thought you would appreciate it. I had it organized in advance."

"I can recall something similar to it on the edges of my hard drives. How did you know? And about the food, too?"

"I bet a lot of things feel that way, don't they? We tried to salvage you. You should have seen the state that you were in."

Her heart began to drop, just as her hopes began to rise. Was this how Clawed Hand members spoke to each other? A looming sense of dread lingered, but she kept listening attentively. "They do."

"Your processors were almost entirely melted. But before that, most of the data had been heavily and irreversibly corrupted. I can't tell you how much of 'you' was left, but I doubt it was much. Maybe a few core memories, basic information, a variety of scraps about your life. No one can really say now, though, and it's not like the specifics matter anymore. But we wound up having to leave your body behind. I don't know where it is."

"My data was corrupted? But they told me that I was equipped with the best redundancies and fail-safes they have."

"You do, and you did back then, too. The problem was that you have something very, very important inside of you. I'm sure you know what it is - your soul, but something else also. You had been tampered with in such a way that gave your system access to very, very dangerous data. Information potent enough that it would destroy you, which it did."

Listening to the dragon speak was like reading a history textbook about her own life. Only a computer, and not the kind she was, could present information like this in such a flat and steady manner.

"The person that tampered with you was someone very close to you," she continued, nodding to the server as he placed a bottle of wine in front of her. She poured herself a glass of the thick, dark red liquid, peering into it. "I won't go into detail about them, or why they did it. But they worked for us. They actually helped bring our mutual friend into existence. That was around the time they tampered with you, I believe. Are you going to take a drink from your cup before it gets cold?"

Paige realized she had been staring wide-eyed at 03 for the past 10 minutes or so, and moved to tilt the soda back into her mouth. As the taste hit her tongue, and her sensory processors got to work, her expression brightened, and she flinched a little bit. It was really good, if a little sour when cold. "Okay, please, proceed."

"When you started to show problems, they took you and ran off with you. When we tracked you down, you were borderline non-functional. They still fought us anyways. They were strong, too. They still are, if not more so. We almost died. You actually died. We had to leave your corpse and take out that very special thing."

"I... see," she said, checking her task manager - sure enough, the program Oracle had sent her was running. She let out a small sigh. This was a lot, but she could handle it. "...are they still... looking for me? Actively pursuing me?"

"Maybe. We have an issue with our recon, well, two of them, really. Namely, the first is that they are proficient in the invisible arts, so they have ways around our information-gathering alternatives. Secondly, they always seem to have more intel than we do, so, even by the time we figure something out about them, chances are they're already several steps ahead. It's to such a degree that it renders most of what we do have useless."

"So there is a chance that they could still be?"

03 nodded, but hesitated for a moment afterwards. "...affirmative. We feel that, if they were, though, they would have acted already. For the moment, they seem to be content to remain in the shadows and linger. However... we have reason to believe that they are associated with the megafauna incidents in one way or another."

There was an awkward silence as the waiter brought them back their food, wishing them a nice meal. The blackened noodles sat in front of her. Should she even bother? A deep pit had opened up at the bottom of her chassis. Eating this would barely even nourish her. What was the point? She'd be better off hiding in a bunker somewhere, remaining plugged into a charging cable, and doing her paperwork digitally.

Looking up, 03 was meticulously cutting her steak into geometric cubes, working through and dividing the entire thing apart before even beginning to eat. And, despite all of the things she had said, the bad news she'd dropped, and everything else she'd seen... she ate, anyways. Paige knew how 03 operated. She had seen the Soulstorm. It was only once, but... she had seen it. There was as much a purpose to her steak as there was her own spaghetti.

And yet, she ate. Paige tightened her grip on the fork, and stuck it into the wiggly mass, twisting it decisively a few times. Pulling the food into her mouth, she clamped her beak around it. It was a new flavour, unfamiliar and odd-tasting, and bitterer than she'd hoped, but it was unique, all on it's own. More than that, it surprised her; it was interesting - she found herself taking another bite for its own sake.

If 03 could eat, then, she could too, and if she could eat, then she could do other things... she had only been around for such a little while. Hell, she had been around for much longer, two whole lifetimes, at least. Her memory was the issue - she had only seen a small snippet. If she could survive and fill her home with all those little touches, and hell, make it into a home, then... she could do it again.

She took another bite, and then another, making sure to taste the food, every last bit, and swallow it down. It was surprisingly visceral, cathartic, in a sense. The energy stored in the chemical bonds as not necessary for her to live. But it felt nice to partake in the tradition of survival, as old as life itself.

"Paige."

She suddenly stopped, looking up at Reaver. A light flush covered her facial display as she realized she had been horking down her food with little to no care for her manners, in this upper-class place. "You... you have not addressed me by code-name before."

"It's not a code name. That's your name - Paige. It seems terse to refer to you as 01. I was expecting you to correct me at one point or another."

"Why would I do that? You are the superior ranked officer."

"We aren't on duty right now. And you insisted that I call you by your name before."

"Am I supposed to now?"

"No, not unless you would like to." Reaver paused for a moment, opening her mouth for a moment, then closing it, then waiting some more. Her eyes were fixed on the vase of flowers. "But I would like to get to know you better. We both know you are not the same as you were before. That cannot change. But we may enter into a first name basis, may we not?"

Paige's flush deepened a couple of hex codes - another new emotion. "Well, I would like that, yes... it was very nice of you to take me here, and agree to help me... it would be the least I can do, Reaver." For the first time that night, she found herself smiling, even if it was meek and sheepish.

"Good." the dragoness responded, finishing off her meal. "It's good to see you again. I've been busy lately, and... there aren't many people to talk to. At least, there aren't many people that I can talk to. It may have been self-serving, but I think it was always a mutually beneficial arrangement that we had."

"You mean being friends?"

"If that's what you want to call it."

"That's what they told me we were."

"They know nothing of us."

Her mouth curled upwards some more, and she put her hand up in front of her beak to try and hide it. "If you say so."

"How childish of you."

"I have only been alive for a few months now, Reaver. You must forgive me if I have not learned exactly how to act yet."

Her companion just shot her a shimmering emerald glare, her tail tapping once against the wooden floor below.

...until she let out a small burp, stifled through her clenched jaw. When Paige began giggling, she just looked to the side, those bejewled eyes locking onto the waiter as he walked past, nearly freezing him in his tracks. "Give me the check. Now."

"Is something wrong, Reaver? Did you meat your food too fast or something?" Paige added, nearly on the verge of cracking up.

"You obviously need more time to refine your sense of humor, if you think that is even remotely funny."

The bird looked up at the waiter as he set the small leather booklet down in front of Reaver's imposing figure and disapproving glare. His head was turned away from her, presumably so she wouldn't catch him biting his lip at her reaction to the pun. She flicked it open, sliding her credits chip into the book and scribbling a signature so hard it had to have bled through the paper.

"I think my sense of humor is fine just where it is, Reaver. Yours is the one that seems like it could use an update to be more inclusive."

"You think you can talk to me that way?"

"You are the one who wanted me to be on a first name basis with you. Is this not what you had in mind?"

The dragon furrowed her eyes, closing them for a moment and taking a deep breath. "Perhaps I was romanticizing things. You could be worse than 05 sometimes. I remember that now."

"Does that mean that I have not changed much?"

"It does mean that... for better or for worse," she admitted, nearly snatching the card back from the waiter and tucking it away in some hidden tactical pocket or other. She stood up, pushing her chair back in, and looked down at Paige. Her cold glare had softened some, as well as her sour look. "You're still you, even after everything, it seems - that's quite the achievement. Perhaps you'll outlive us all. Make sure you do your job until then, though. I will be in touch if the time is right for us to speak again. And... don't go looking into this person any more. The situation is not ideal, but I promise you, we will protect you. Those are my orders, and the orders of our co-workers as well."

Paige nodded, leaning back in her seat and gently folding her hands on her lap. "I will not. I trust that you have it all under control."
She took a step back, and then another, placing a hand upon the railing. "Farewell, then."

"Good bye, Reaver."

And, in the blink of an eye, she was gone, and Paige was alone again. Although... perhaps alone was not the right word, for better or for worse. For now, though, she tapped on the table, quietly singing along with the music. She had the social graces of a brick, but... Reaver wasn't that bad, after all.

Description

Commission for theentirebeemoviescript and EarthWolder (with a story by them)

The fancy restaurant that 03 had reserved was crowded at this time of the evening, when the sunshine glinted throughout the city, bouncing from window to window, building to building, reflecting off of the great obelisks of the city. People thronged the ground and upper floors, quietly talking with one another. Their clothing reflected the general atmosphere of the place: refined, lively, elegant. She had to do some research beforehand, look the place up, download a small slideshow regarding table manners off of the internet...

She sat, sorting through additional bureaucratic work, files, reports, while she waited, attempting to be efficient and divert her processing power to somewhere productive instead of prowling the possibilities for the nine hundredth time. Hopefully her outfit was suitable for this place. Formalities beyond company protocol were unfamiliar to her, and, truthfully, she had pulled this out of "her" old closet.

The dress did not belong to this iteration of her, and, despite the slight aesthetic changes between chassis, it still fit her. Her facial recognition scanners had detected familiarity and animosity within the employee at the door, but he had held his tongue for whatever reason. Perhaps politeness.

She checked her internal clock again - 18:29. They were scheduled for 18:30. Hopefully her appointment would show up on time. From what she had heard, 03 was very busy, busier than she was, ever since Project Golem had been initiated. Perhaps something had came up. Saving the world was a very important job.

She stared at the burning candelabra that sat in the middle of the table set for two, watching the flame burn down. The waiter, an older trans-human hare, came around and placed a menu in front of her, smiling warmly. She stared flatly at it for a moment, realizing that she needed to order something - that was what you did at restaurants.

"Ma'am? What can I get you to drink?"
"Well... I, er, I would like to have-"
"It wouldn't happen to be ginger ale, would it?"
"...Yes, ginger ale, please."
"Very well. You remind me of someone I used to know," he said, nodding as he jotted the item down and walked off. She did not know what ginger ale was, but that was secondary. How many people had she known before?! It was getting difficult to keep track...

"Are you going to order me something as well?" A deep, calm voice asked from the other side of the table. Paige instantly shot upright as she heard it, her combat module coming online for a brief moment, before she saw who it was. She let out a soft sigh.

"Ah, 03, I apologize, I did not detect you there... forgive me." She said meekly, lowering her head.

The dragon, clad in scales of onyx, was already in her seat, with no indication or trace of how she got there, legs crossed politely as she opened up the menu and began purveying it. "There is nothing to apologize for," she responded, curtly, flipping a page in her menu, "Your hostile engagement protocol wouldn't help you, either. They designed it off of data they collected from me."

"O-oh, I was not aware of that... I'm not aware of a lot of things, actually," She admitted, casting her gaze off to the side. 03 had come in modest clothing - brand-new dress pants, flats, and a rather nice sweater, even though it was a warm night.

"I know."

"..."

"That's why we're here, isn't it?"

"Well, yes."

"Good, you remember that. So there's no anterograde memory loss so far."

She felt almost insulted. She was naive, yes, but that just seemed outright stupid to consider. "I've been online for a couple of months now, I think that if there was any signs of memory issues, they would have detected it."

"Are you sure? The last time you were having issues, we didn't know until it was too late."

"What are you talking about?" The robot retorted, her expression dampening. "Are you talking about Mk. 1?"

"Keep it down. Don't go talking about classified terms like that. You have a library of sensitive keywords regarding company information, don't you?"

"I do, but I thought that because it was you-"

The stoic woman suddenly cut her off with the same tone of voice that she had been speaking with the entire time. "This is a public place. It does not matter who I am. There are ears everywhere, and some may belong to our enemies. It is important that we follow privacy policy to a tee." Her facial recognition scanners revealed nothing, as her face barely moved beyond what was necessary to speak and breathe. She could barely even tell when her eyes would move - they would looking in one direction, and then suddenly be turned on her.

"...You are correct," she admitted, balked. She opened her beak, but her words ceased like sand through glass. What was the point of their meeting here if they could not speak about what had happened? What use was the past if it could not shine light on the present?

The waiter came back after a notable silence, setting her drink down. The glass fizzed as he pulled out a notepad. "So what will it be for you ladies?"

Her host spoke up. "Ribeye. Rare, please. I would also like to order the bottle of wine."

Paige's internal dialogue gave way to minor panic, as she realized that she had neglected to find anything to order. Her eyes darted from the words on the menu, some in Italian, food that she was quickly searching for on the internet, to the person across the table, to up at the waiter. "Uh, I will, er, I want to order the... uh..."

"Oh, wait, let me guess again," the waiter jumped in, his face growing mirthful at the challenge, "you want the-"

"-squid ink spaghetti." 03 finished, not looking up from the menu.

"Hey, how'd you guess, heh heh?" He turned to face the bird. "Is that it?"

She nodded. "Yes, that sounds good," she agreed, folding her menu and handing it to the waiter. 03 did the same.

"I'll let the chefs know, and I'll get you your drink." he said, and left them to their own selves once again.

The musicians began to play from downstairs, directly below the balcony that they were sitting on. Violins, drawing their bows, the soft notes of a piano, the gentle howling of a saxophone... a soft breeze blew over the outdoor seating, the flames of the candles flickering and dancing under its strain. The tune was faintly familiar, but again, what wasn't? Soon enough, she began to attempt piecing the melody together, without looking it up. "...among the stars... dun dun... in other words..."

"Your favorite song," she told her. "I thought you would appreciate it. I had it organized in advance."

"I can recall something similar to it on the edges of my hard drives. How did you know? And about the food, too?"

"I bet a lot of things feel that way, don't they? We tried to salvage you. You should have seen the state that you were in."

Her heart began to drop, just as her hopes began to rise. Was this how Clawed Hand members spoke to each other? A looming sense of dread lingered, but she kept listening attentively. "They do."

"Your processors were almost entirely melted. But before that, most of the data had been heavily and irreversibly corrupted. I can't tell you how much of 'you' was left, but I doubt it was much. Maybe a few core memories, basic information, a variety of scraps about your life. No one can really say now, though, and it's not like the specifics matter anymore. But we wound up having to leave your body behind. I don't know where it is."

"My data was corrupted? But they told me that I was equipped with the best redundancies and fail-safes they have."

"You do, and you did back then, too. The problem was that you have something very, very important inside of you. I'm sure you know what it is - your soul, but something else also. You had been tampered with in such a way that gave your system access to very, very dangerous data. Information potent enough that it would destroy you, which it did."

Listening to the dragon speak was like reading a history textbook about her own life. Only a computer, and not the kind she was, could present information like this in such a flat and steady manner.

"The person that tampered with you was someone very close to you," she continued, nodding to the server as he placed a bottle of wine in front of her. She poured herself a glass of the thick, dark red liquid, peering into it. "I won't go into detail about them, or why they did it. But they worked for us. They actually helped bring our mutual friend into existence. That was around the time they tampered with you, I believe. Are you going to take a drink from your cup before it gets cold?"

Paige realized she had been staring wide-eyed at 03 for the past 10 minutes or so, and moved to tilt the soda back into her mouth. As the taste hit her tongue, and her sensory processors got to work, her expression brightened, and she flinched a little bit. It was really good, if a little sour when cold. "Okay, please, proceed."

"When you started to show problems, they took you and ran off with you. When we tracked you down, you were borderline non-functional. They still fought us anyways. They were strong, too. They still are, if not more so. We almost died. You actually died. We had to leave your corpse and take out that very special thing."

"I... see," she said, checking her task manager - sure enough, the program Oracle had sent her was running. She let out a small sigh. This was a lot, but she could handle it. "...are they still... looking for me? Actively pursuing me?"

"Maybe. We have an issue with our recon, well, two of them, really. Namely, the first is that they are proficient in the invisible arts, so they have ways around our information-gathering alternatives. Secondly, they always seem to have more intel than we do, so, even by the time we figure something out about them, chances are they're already several steps ahead. It's to such a degree that it renders most of what we do have useless."

"So there is a chance that they could still be?"

03 nodded, but hesitated for a moment afterwards. "...affirmative. We feel that, if they were, though, they would have acted already. For the moment, they seem to be content to remain in the shadows and linger. However... we have reason to believe that they are associated with the megafauna incidents in one way or another."

There was an awkward silence as the waiter brought them back their food, wishing them a nice meal. The blackened noodles sat in front of her. Should she even bother? A deep pit had opened up at the bottom of her chassis. Eating this would barely even nourish her. What was the point? She'd be better off hiding in a bunker somewhere, remaining plugged into a charging cable, and doing her paperwork digitally.

Looking up, 03 was meticulously cutting her steak into geometric cubes, working through and dividing the entire thing apart before even beginning to eat. And, despite all of the things she had said, the bad news she'd dropped, and everything else she'd seen... she ate, anyways. Paige knew how 03 operated. She had seen the Soulstorm. It was only once, but... she had seen it. There was as much a purpose to her steak as there was her own spaghetti.

And yet, she ate. Paige tightened her grip on the fork, and stuck it into the wiggly mass, twisting it decisively a few times. Pulling the food into her mouth, she clamped her beak around it. It was a new flavour, unfamiliar and odd-tasting, and bitterer than she'd hoped, but it was unique, all on it's own. More than that, it surprised her; it was interesting - she found herself taking another bite for its own sake.

If 03 could eat, then, she could too, and if she could eat, then she could do other things... she had only been around for such a little while. Hell, she had been around for much longer, two whole lifetimes, at least. Her memory was the issue - she had only seen a small snippet. If she could survive and fill her home with all those little touches, and hell, make it into a home, then... she could do it again.

She took another bite, and then another, making sure to taste the food, every last bit, and swallow it down. It was surprisingly visceral, cathartic, in a sense. The energy stored in the chemical bonds as not necessary for her to live. But it felt nice to partake in the tradition of survival, as old as life itself.

"Paige."

She suddenly stopped, looking up at Reaver. A light flush covered her facial display as she realized she had been horking down her food with little to no care for her manners, in this upper-class place. "You... you have not addressed me by code-name before."

"It's not a code name. That's your name - Paige. It seems terse to refer to you as 01. I was expecting you to correct me at one point or another."

"Why would I do that? You are the superior ranked officer."

"We aren't on duty right now. And you insisted that I call you by your name before."

"Am I supposed to now?"

"No, not unless you would like to." Reaver paused for a moment, opening her mouth for a moment, then closing it, then waiting some more. Her eyes were fixed on the vase of flowers. "But I would like to get to know you better. We both know you are not the same as you were before. That cannot change. But we may enter into a first name basis, may we not?"

Paige's flush deepened a couple of hex codes - another new emotion. "Well, I would like that, yes... it was very nice of you to take me here, and agree to help me... it would be the least I can do, Reaver." For the first time that night, she found herself smiling, even if it was meek and sheepish.

"Good." the dragoness responded, finishing off her meal. "It's good to see you again. I've been busy lately, and... there aren't many people to talk to. At least, there aren't many people that I can talk to. It may have been self-serving, but I think it was always a mutually beneficial arrangement that we had."

"You mean being friends?"

"If that's what you want to call it."

"That's what they told me we were."

"They know nothing of us."

Her mouth curled upwards some more, and she put her hand up in front of her beak to try and hide it. "If you say so."

"How childish of you."

"I have only been alive for a few months now, Reaver. You must forgive me if I have not learned exactly how to act yet."

Her companion just shot her a shimmering emerald glare, her tail tapping once against the wooden floor below.

...until she let out a small burp, stifled through her clenched jaw. When Paige began giggling, she just looked to the side, those bejewled eyes locking onto the waiter as he walked past, nearly freezing him in his tracks. "Give me the check. Now."

"Is something wrong, Reaver? Did you meat your food too fast or something?" Paige added, nearly on the verge of cracking up.

"You obviously need more time to refine your sense of humor, if you think that is even remotely funny."

The bird looked up at the waiter as he set the small leather booklet down in front of Reaver's imposing figure and disapproving glare. His head was turned away from her, presumably so she wouldn't catch him biting his lip at her reaction to the pun. She flicked it open, sliding her credits chip into the book and scribbling a signature so hard it had to have bled through the paper.

"I think my sense of humor is fine just where it is, Reaver. Yours is the one that seems like it could use an update to be more inclusive."

"You think you can talk to me that way?"

"You are the one who wanted me to be on a first name basis with you. Is this not what you had in mind?"

The dragon furrowed her eyes, closing them for a moment and taking a deep breath. "Perhaps I was romanticizing things. You could be worse than 05 sometimes. I remember that now."

"Does that mean that I have not changed much?"

"It does mean that... for better or for worse," she admitted, nearly snatching the card back from the waiter and tucking it away in some hidden tactical pocket or other. She stood up, pushing her chair back in, and looked down at Paige. Her cold glare had softened some, as well as her sour look. "You're still you, even after everything, it seems - that's quite the achievement. Perhaps you'll outlive us all. Make sure you do your job until then, though. I will be in touch if the time is right for us to speak again. And... don't go looking into this person any more. The situation is not ideal, but I promise you, we will protect you. Those are my orders, and the orders of our co-workers as well."

Paige nodded, leaning back in her seat and gently folding her hands on her lap. "I will not. I trust that you have it all under control."
She took a step back, and then another, placing a hand upon the railing. "Farewell, then."

"Good bye, Reaver."

And, in the blink of an eye, she was gone, and Paige was alone again. Although... perhaps alone was not the right word, for better or for worse. For now, though, she tapped on the table, quietly singing along with the music. She had the social graces of a brick, but... Reaver wasn't that bad, after all.