Johan and Frost began down one of the first-floor corridors, keeping a careful eye on every shop entrance and side-hallway they passed. There were thick streamers of some kind of veiny, pulsing goo stretched across the old cross-braces of the mall. Passing a Trixie’s Fine Candies store (featuring a grinning blue unicorn) they paused for a sec.

“Shit. I think that’s the electronics place ahead.” Johan looked left and right, then nodded before he continued, “I come down here every now and then looking for components for some of my stuff. I, ah, mess with some electrical work in my free time.”

“Oh? I never knew you were a mechanic Johan. What else don’t I know about you?”

He shrugged. “Electrician, actually. I work with wires, and power crystals, and... well yeah, you’re probably not interested. Uhm, I collect those Fighter Dude figurines?”

“Care to be a little more specific?” Frost said with a forced expression. “Fighter Dude figurines doesn't really narrow it down.”

“Ah, I’ve got Black Knight, Thunder Mace, and I even got the limited edition gold version of Fighter Dude himself! Well, provided my apartment hasn’t been ransacked or something.” Johan shuffled on his feet, obviously unsure of what the reception to his liking of small children’s toys would be. He also completely missed Victoria’s expression through the combined filtering of two faceplates.

“Wait, they’re actually called ‘Fighter Dudes?’ I thought you were just calling them that because you couldn’t remember their original name.”

Johan turned to her in disbelief. “Frosty! I’m surprised you haven’t heard of ‘em. They’re really popular these days. They’ve got a game series, a tv show, and tons of toys! They’re collectible. The characters are funny, and the game’s pretty cool, too. Hey, when we’re done with all this craziness, I can show you the card game, Fighter Duel! It’s really strategy intensive, but I think you’ll do fine with it.” He sounded so... well, he sounded childlike, with an air of innocence and wonder in his every word.

Frost couldn’t help but just stare at Johan, picturing him as a child playing with these toys. She let out a slight huff and began to laugh, shaking her head.

“What? I’m being serious here! They’re really cool!”

“Whatever you say, Johan. Whatever you say.” She continued forward, keeping her eyes peeled.

“Fighter Dudes? Really?” she said suddenly. “They couldn’t come up with something a little more, I dont know, less stupid?”

Johan made a sign of devil-warding with his hands, speaking with a shocked tone. “Hey! It’s not stupid, it just started as a tv show for kids, alright? And when it got popular for the good gameplay and storyline, they couldn’t just change the name.” He sighed, and looked down a bit. “But, they could’ve chosen a better name, yeah. Hey, I know, if we see a toy store or something, I’ll ‘loot’ you a Pyria figure. She’s always reminded me of you.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Well, she’s got the highest accuracy rating in the game, has access to the ‘Fire’ magic domain, and specializes in hitting dangerous opponents from a distance with high-damage attacks. Oh, and she has some really nice ti-” he stopped mid-sentence to re-evaluate his response, replying instead, “uh, a really nice figure.”

“Nice save, smooth operator. If you finished that sentence I might have had to hold my gun to your pecker again.”

“I’m not used to talking about this type of thing with girls, this is pretty much for my small group of friends who also collect the stuff.” He gulped a bit, and was really glad she couldn’t see him sweating through the helmet.

“Friends? I figured you spent all your free time hitting on girls at the bars and getting some- umm... Ass.”

“The term is flank these days. I would’ve thought you, of all people, might keep up with today’s slang...”

“I’m not much of the social type, remember? All my spare time was spent helping...”

“Sorry.”

“Just forget it.” Her voice went cold and flat.

The two resumed walking, stepping past the candy store and into the electronics zone of the mall.

“I kinda forgot how big this place was... shit, we could get lost in here. Stick close, Frosty, I don’t want you getting lost, I know I have in here...”

True to Johan’s words, the massive sprawl of gaming stores, electronics stops, RIG kiosks, and so much more would up through and internalized section of the mall, embedded in a rise in the chunk of rock it tunneled through. As such, it was normally lit by hundreds, if not thousands of lamps, lights, signs, and advertisements. As it was, there wasn’t much more than a flicker of light here and there.

“M- maybe we shouldn’t head down there, Frosty, if I remember correctly that’s a three-story area over there, and one of the oldest on the Station.”

“Why not? You scared?” Frost taunted, trying to hide her own fear.

“You want the truth? Then, yeah, I’m a little scared of that place. I’ve never liked the dark, to be honest. Always make out with the lights on, or I can’t finish.”

“Wait- what?” Frost stopped. “Rewind please?”

“Ah... when I was little, I got locked into a closet. You know, one of the air-tight ones for storing expensive clothes? I almost suffocated before my mom found me. I’d stopped crying about an hour before that. Being in the dark just makes me wanna... shut down.”

“I’m sorry.” Frost bit her lip. “If it makes you feel better, I try to avoid that dark as well, cause, you know...”

“Yeah... Looks like neither of us are really up for this... but I don’t think we want to go back, with those things at the tram station.” Johan took a hesitant step forward, just another foot towards the darkened reaches of the unlit mall.

“Maybe we should just camp out somewhere, for now anyways, maybe we can find a flashlight or something in the stores.”

“Well, we do have our suit lights... but I think anything we’d need to see would see us first..”

“Touche.”

“What does that word even mean?”

“It’s means ‘good point.’ It’s French, an extinct Earth language.” Frost cleared her throat slightly. “When I wasn’t with Dad I would look up history... I find it interesting.”

“Huh. Weird, but I guess that makes sense. I just keep hearing folks say it for just about anything these days, like calling someone a ‘shizno’... But at least that has roots in that one movie series that died off a century ago. Something like Orange versus Purple or something like that...”

“Red Vs Blue.” She corrected.

“Same difference. Oh, yeah, I’m color-blind.”

“Well, that explains why your driving record is so atrocious.”

“Hey, I can do just fine! As long as you don’t have me compare yellow and red, or orange and green. That’s all. Ah, you are a redhead, right?”

Frost almost hit him for the remark, until she realized he was joking.

“Well, at least I know you won’t make the ‘fire crotch’ joke.”

He chuckled. “Well, I think I know this one place we can buy some some hair dye in bright red...”

Frost glared at the male, pointing her gun at his groin.

“Gah! It was a joke! A joke I swear!” His hands had dropped from his pulse rifle to his groin, and he had turned slightly, all on instinct.

Frost only gave a triumphant huff, paired with a smile. Johan picked up his rifle again, and shuffled forward, obviously not relishing the journey ahead.

Sighing, he swallowed his fear. “Alright, let’s stop procrastinating... and let’s go in.” Frost, understanding his trepidation, didn’t make the obvious remark and simply nodded her head.

Taking in a deep breath she followed after him, keeping her steps light and almost exact to Johan’s.

“I don’t hear anything,” Frost said, her heart beating in her ears it seemed. The darkness definitely wasn't somewhere she wanted to be with all the monsters running around.

“I- I’m turning on my headlight a- and the light o- on my rifle.” Johan’s breath was coming out in short, ragged bursts, fast and light as panic began setting in.

“Johan wait,” Frost said quickly. “Maybe we should go back and try to find some sort of night vision goggles or something. We don’t want-”

“N-none of these places sell any. And we wouldn’t be able to wear them with our helmets on. A-and we need them on, i-in case those monsters are here. Alright? A- and it’s light inside the helmets, so it’s alright. It’s- it’s alright...” It sounded more like Johan was speaking to himself, and he already sounded desperate, in spite of not even being in the darkness yet.

Victoria put a hand on Johan’s shoulder, giving it an affirming squeeze. Johan turned to her, and she could practically feel the intensity of his fear, projected by the two eyes she could barely see. After a moment, he turned back to the darkness ahead, and stood a little straighter.

“I- I’m good. I can do this.”

The words were barely a whisper, and the next were even quieter, to the point that Frost didn’t catch them.

She stared at him, then gave him a reassuring nod. “I’m right behind you, okay?” Johan nodded at her words, still staring resolutely ahead. Together, the duo of security personnel stepped into the long, deep shadows of the electronics zone of the mall, headlamps and gunlights on maximum.

Stepping past the first couple of quiet stores without incident, the two humans only grew more nervous, something about the situation setting their teeth on edge and their stomachs to churning. Johan looking forward and Frost watching the rear meant that very little could sneak up on them.

And yet...

And yet the security officers felt like they were being hunted, the sensation of watching eyes ever present. Unfortunately, this led to Johan blasting a bottle of cleaning solution on a twitch reflex. After laughing that one off, they continued on, forgetting to wonder what might’ve caused it to fall in the first place.

As they stepped further into the eight-kilometer-long section of the mall, the winding passages only able to be mapped by computers and the doggedly determined, they wondered where everything was. They had seen neither hide nor hair of anything, beyond a few splatters of blood, too small to be lethal, and some occasional smashed windows.

In just about any emergency situation, looters showed up. Kind of like cockroaches, they were ubiquitous. But none had appeared. Heavy boots crunching on shards of glass, Johan swept the entrance to a store he recognized. Not a big-sponsor shop, the Gynoid’s Basement was a well-kept gaming store. He’d stopped by on many occasions to play Fighter Duel, and he knew that the figurine he’d promised Frost was somewhere in there.

Frost saw Johan’s sudden change in direction. Keeping an eye out from the entrance to the store, she called back to him in a harsh whisper. “What’s wrong?”

Johan continued rummaging through the packages of toys. “Nothing. Just gimme a sec, I need to get something from here. Promises, you know?”

“In a toyshop!?” Frost was somewhat irritated. Johan corrected her with “Game shop!” and began rummaging again. “would you just hurry up! This place is giving me the creeps!”

A few seconds of looking later, he realized that all the boxes must’ve been sold already, as they were Rares with some of the best stats available for a starter character. A harsh growl emanated from the back of the shop. As Johan whirled, he caught a glimpse of the box he’d been looking for: a Fire Starter box! Unfortunately, it was right next to a bloated, staggering form, once a pony and now something... else.

Frost had also turned, and upon seeing the creature she pointed her gun and pulled the trigger without hesitation, only for the clip not to fire, instead a dull ‘thunk’ answered her, the sound of a jam that could take seconds or as much as half a minute to fix.

“Aw shit.” Frost muttered venomously.

Johan, standing in front of the creature, barren of much of its fur and wobbling unsteadily on fused legs supplemented by a new ‘leg’ made from a spill of guts, made his decision. Staring at the thing he’d promised to grab, he dived forward and tucked into a roll. With a gurgle, the thing suddenly heaved forward, thick, yellowish fluid sprayed forth, pouring across the floor of the shop with an evil hiss.

As he shot towards the orange package, Johan rolled athletically, the movement too fast for the lumbering monstrosity. Taking it up in one hand, he threw it to the door, just as the creature finished its turn in his direction.

The monster proceeded to wrap across Johan’s shoulder with a long, tendril-like set of fingers, the others hand set with claws that tried to pull Johan’s head from his shoulders. Punching viciously at the thing holding on to him, Johan was rewarded with a caustic flow of bile and fluids, the liquid burning and scorching across the metal and enamel of his armored suit, and liquifying the outer layer of the fabric-like material that made up most of the suit.

The kevlar-like material was fairly resistant, however, giving Johan enough time to push the thing off of him, punching it across the face with his rifle hard enough to knock the thing’s head off with in a spray of burning fluid. Pointing his rifle to the monster’s chest, he pulled the trigger, a spray of bullets tearing into it until there simply wasn’t enough of it to left to stay animate.

Standing in the puddles of gore and spent acid, Johan panted from the exertion of what he’d just done. Turning to Frost, he casually shrugged, and stepped back towards the stunned markswoman.

“I hate these things. I got jumped by two of the fuckers trying to find you the last time. Anyhow... Ah, here it is!” Johan bent down and picked up the orange box from the ground, and presented it to Frost.

The woman just stared at him, mouth gaping in disbelief before letting out a sigh and putting her fingers to the temples of her helmet. “You almost got yourself killed for a toy?”

“No, for a collectible figurine. I said I’d get you a Pyria figure, and I just did. Here, take her.” Johan held the box out. through the cellophane front of the box, a three-inch figure, wreathed in battery-operated holographic flames, stood proudly, covered in heavy plate armor and wielding a sword as big as she was. In fact, the only obvious way to tell it was a she was the face and the flame-like hair. The burst of flame acting as a standing point may have made her a little taller, but not by too much.

Turning the box around to get a better look at it, Johan gasped as he saw it. “Wait a minute, this is the Knight of Sunset limited edition version!”

Frost cocked a brow unamused and held up her Divet at Johan’s chest. He backed up a bit, but kept holding the box out for the angered woman to take.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you.”

“I just risked life and limb to fulfill a promise, no matter the seriousness of it? And I’m cute?” He sounded a tad unsure of the veracity of the last claim, but was willing to try it anyways.

Frost pulled the trigger, unamused. Johan flinched, only relaxing when the thunk of the jammed gun told him he wasn’t in any immediate danger.

“Not funny, Frosty. I’ve got enough issues today, such as being in a dark mall, with limited ammunition, and monsters everywhere.

Frost opened her mouth to retaliate only to be interrupted by a faint roar in the distance, coming from the direction they began in. She let out a heavy breath after a moment of silence and took the figure, giving it a quick glance. “C’mon, lets get out of here.”

Johan nodded at last, and hefted his pulse rifle. He and Frost started onwards again, slowly falling back into their paranoid state as the feeling of being watched weighed on their minds. Victoria, having pulled out her seeker rifle, Jackie, was watching the upper balconies they passed under, constantly catching a glimpse of something moving up there.

Johan was practically having to drag his feet forward, the acidic etchings on his armor still smoking slightly after all that. Every few steps, he’d had to yank a foot forward, feeling a paralyzing fear trying to overwhelm his mind.

The both of them were practically crazed with fear, and if nothing happened to relieve that, and soon, they were going to snap.

Fifteen minutes later, they did snap, but from something dropping down between them. Both of the humans pulled away and spun to face the thing that had fell towards them, revealing a snapping, distorted pegasus, still in an EVA suit, a long set of bladed shapes pouring from the thing’s back, the twisted remnants of the creature’s wings. The ex-pegasus’ rib cage had been burst outward before being re-fused with another layer of bone or chitin, the ribs themselves forming a next of spikes.

The twisted thing stood on its back legs, the remains of its green coat patchy and sparse, one of the legs split roughly in half to form a tripod. Its huge, dead eyes stared at Frost with violence seething in them, and she found she couldn’t move. The twin orbs of necrotic red-and-black bore into her soul, and held her limbs in place as she sat, sprawled on the floor.

She barely noticed as another couple of creatures advanced on Johan, the man firing into them as she sat there. The monster in front of her advanced, strangely fluid in its movements, and a little voice in her head was screaming. Suddenly, a painful weight on the front of Frost’s mind, accompanied by a familiar, comforting voice, snapped her out of her trance in time to lift Jackie and fire, blowing the thing’s head off. It had been her father, yelling at her to hit it dead in the eye, and she had.

For a moment, she forgot where she was, simply trying to listen for her father’s voice, but the sound had already faded. Shaking as she aimed, she targeted and fired mechanically, hitting the monsters in the centers of mass and blowing chests apart. With nothing left to bind the limbs together, the creatures went down for good. Johan’s own staccato fire tore up the beast’s bodies and limbs, and the two humans were quickly the only things left moving.

In mental anguish once more, Frost chose, in that moment, not to tell Johan what she’d heard.

“Hey, Frosty- you alright? You’re not injured, are you?” Johan’s own voice was slightly pained, and his RIG slowly blinked a sedate yellow-green.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine.” She said quickly, giving Jackie a quick click, reloading the barrel. She always checked her gun whenever she was scared, a quirk that not even her father knew about.

“Ah- alright. Jeeze... what the hell was up that one thing, though? All it did was stare at you.”

“I- I don’t know...” She clicked her gun again. “It just- I don’t know.”

“Well, as long as you’re alright, then we can get moving. Unless you need a breather?” Johan ducked under a thrown piece of goop at his last statement, and held his hands up defensively. “Alright, alright. I was just- just worried, alright? Wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“No...” Victoria leaned against a broken wall. “I need to sit down, for a second.”

As she slumped against the chunk of meteoric rock that formed many of the basic walls in the habitat, Johan came over and tentatively sat next to her. When she raised no complaint, he settled a little closer.

His voice cracking slightly as he spoke, Johan asked his friend, “So... hey Frosty? Wha- what’re we going to do when we get out of this? We going to get together or are you just going to shoot me? I like you alot, Victoria, and I respect you greatly.” Johan’s helmet peeled back to show his face, now sporting an angry red chemical burn near his throat. “But... I just don’t know if, well... if I’m safe. I know you always seem to gravitate towards the authoritarian in-charge types, but I’m not afraid to admit that you scare me sometimes, alright?” His eyes, normally so bright now looked so... haunted in the wan, pale light of the suit he wore, and he looked older. So much older.

“You’re such a sap,” she said with a heavy breath, her helmet rolling back to reveal her face, her hair sticking to her forehead with sweat, her eyes closed. Johan just stared for a moment, before looking down at the pulse rifle in his hands. His shoulders sagged far more than normal, now that he knew Frost’s attention wasn’t on him.

She let out a deep breath before opening her eyes. “Dad always liked you; said that your macho-man attitude was just an act because you were insecure about yourself.”

“What? No way, he was always glaring at me every time I showed up. I kept feeling like he was going to somehow beat me to death with his stare alone.”

“He did that because he wanted to see if you had the balls to stand up to him and actually ask me out properly. He and your old man actually had a bet going on how long it would take you to make a move.”

“Whoo... man did I blow that chance.” Johan sighed deeply, the bags under his eyes hidden by the shadows of the suit’s projector. “Fuck, and my old man kicked the bucket two months ago.”

“Hm, guess now I know why Dad didn’t let me visit him for that one week.”

Johan shrugged. “Wasn’t sure how to tell everyone. He went in his sleep, thankfully. All that Burger Barn lunches finally caught up with him. Had a dual aneurysm and heart attack, never stood a chance. Doctors are still marvelling at how such a thing could happen without someone seeing signs.” Johan looked to the gun he held once more, contemplating it in a way that made Frost mildly uneasy. She’d seen the look before, just before a kidnapper shot the hostages and then himself. It was rare... but it stuck with you.

“Your old man bet against you, ya know?” she said, keeping her voice level, hiding her feelings.

“Figures, he always did back the winning pony. Too bad he hated gambling anything more than a credit or two.”

“Not this time, bet a full 500 creds.” She cleared her throat. “The bet was that you would make a move by the year’s end, despite my father’s disapproval. And do it respectfully.”

“Well, looks like he lost either way. You made the move, after all, and none too respectfully, if my balls have anything to say in the matter.”

Frost let out a huff, paired with a slight grin. “I got impatient. And if I was gonna do anything it might as well be now, you know, the end of the world and all. Besides, Dad said he wanted grandkids before he kicked the bucket, little late now but still gotta make him happy somehow.”

“Heh... Hey, uh, Frosty? I think I can get us to another tram station, but it’s one of the fixed ones. Depending on which tram is operable, we’d end up at a specific location. Wanna give it a try? We’d have a few minutes to ourselves, guaranteed.” Johan looked hopefully at Frosty, the first honestly nice face she’d seen on him since the conversation started. She just hoped he wouldn’t be plucking gray hairs by the end of this.

“Sounds good to me, I was never a fan of the dark anyways,” she responded getting to her feet, stretching slightly. Her joints cracked loudly, indicating their objections to all the stress.

Johan, also getting to his feet and stretching, was mildly amazed that nothing had attacked them in the time they spent talking. Maybe these things only hunted in packs.

Leading on, Johan threaded his way through empty streets, occasionally chatting back with Frost, making sure she was still there. Finally, they came across a dead end, the wall scrawled over with graffiti and posters..

“The trams are just on the other side, there. We need to climb up. Should you boost me, or I, you?” Johan asked the question while inspecting the broken section of walkway, the whole thing sagging enough under its own weight in the artificial gravity to be only a bit too high for either of the humans to get to on their own.

“I’m lighter, and if anything comes up I can cover you.”

“So, ladies first, then?”

“What a gentleman,” she said, stepping into Johan’s cupped hands, the augmented muscles of the human straining to lift the heavily armored woman. Finally, it buildt up enough inertial force to overcome the gravity and launch her up to the lip of the walkway. Simply stepping forward with her magnetic boots, she landed perfectly on the walkway with barely a sound, beyond the dull clang of the connection.

“I’m up. Give me your hand,” she said, peeking down and holding out her arm to the guy. Catching her arm, he hefted himself up with her help, and stood at the top. Looking over the wall of the dead end, though...

“Well, shit. That’s a lotta dead guys.”

Johan’s ammo counter clicked to empty again. And once more, he gave thanks to whatever gods helped poor little security boys like himself, as the pulse rifle he held used its automatic ammo feed and sweep to drag in nearby pulse rounds and reload for him. And his suit had so many storage pockets.

If he hadn’t requested the extra add-ons, he’d be dead a couple of times over now. And if he hadn’t had Frost covering him from the balcony, he’d be dead so many times over he didn’t want to count them. He’d taken to blasting groups of the monsters with the pulse grenade function of his gun, just because it was more efficient than the individual rounds.

The automated function, a piece of arcanotech that used a short-distance teleportation matrix combined with a mechanical ammunition feed, was remarkably efficient in this combat-riddled scenario.

Shaking off yet another of the big, black-skinned slasher-things that had grappled him, Johan shot it in the chest with a dozen or so rounds.

Smashing the creature with the butt of the gun yielded a satisfying thunk, and knocked it over into another one, some sort of creature made from a pegasus, using massive sword-like wing-talons to slash and stab at Johan. He’d been hit more than once, and he’d even been struck by that disgusting acidic bile that those pukers shot at him.

A loud crack of a shot breaking the sound barrier, followed by a wet thump behind him, told him Victoria had saved his ass once again.

All in all the gory slaughterfest had been tense to begin with, but was rapidly dulling to a hack’n’slash, just blasting away at monsters and smacking them around with his rifle butt.

At last, he stood in the midst of a pile of corpses, torn apart and savaged by gunfire and so many bullets he was surprised they had held enough to restock him twice over. Waving a sluggish, tired arm to Frost, he made the gesture indicating for her to sweep the area in case of sneaky ones.

She gave the same tired wave, taking the cue. Nothing stood out, and nothing moved. The one remaining possibly operable tram was sitting in the dock, the powder-blue paint splattered with so much decayed blood and gore it was nearly black. The doors lay open, and the tram was lit, the corpse of a single black-skinned slasher laying sprawled across the floor.

Her trigger finger hurt, her shoulder hurt from the recoil, and her eye hurt from squinting all the damn time. Sliding exhaustedly to the ground below, she and Johan began walking to the tram. the only worrying thing at this point was Johan’s bright red, flashing RIG status lights. There was only two bars left, and he kept limping on his right leg, and he’d started shooting with his left arm.

“Almost there...” Frost groaned, dragging her feet. Approaching the tram, Johan stumbled on the arm of one of the slashers, allowing Frost to step in first. Turning back to him to jokingly berated him for clumsiness, as a sharp pain speared her shoulder. Coincidentally, right where a long, black talon had spear her shoulder, as well.

Her exhaustion-addled mind took a moment to put the two together, Johan already raising the pulse rifle in his hands as the talon withdrew from her shoulder. As she fell, oddly limp, she vaguely heard the roar of pulse rifle fire and some sort of liquid splattering across her back.

A while later, she woke to find herself on the tram still, still in the carnage-wreathed tram station. Looking up, she found that Johan was holding himself protectively above her, pulse rifle still out as he sat. He seemed to have a good eye for theatrics, as this was almost exactly where he’d been sitting when she’d gone to raid the Manehattan. This time, though, she appeared to have been rolled under his knees.

His helmet was off, and he looked worn ragged. His eyes had a hundred-yard stare that only slipped away when he looked about, his gaze colder than a basilisk’s. As she moaned from the severe headache that now accompanied her other injuries, his face snapped to look at her, and she got an even better glimpse of his haggard appearance. The chemical burn at his throat had gotten bigger, and some of it had appeared near one eye, evidence of where a puker had almost gotten its sludge to burn through an eye-slot.

Upon seeing she was awake, he slid off of her and dragged her into a close embrace, holding her so tight, that if she was more frail she might’ve broken.

“Johan?” she muttered. “What happened?”

His voice cracked, sounding strained and forced, as he spoke, still holding her close. “I- I almost lost you. I al-almost lost you...”

She realized with a start that he was crying. Johan never cried, he laughed. Even at his mother’s funeral, he’d preferred to tell a joke she’d taught him, and say she’d rather if he always smiled, than cry. Frost’s father, then still walking on his own, had commended him for it after his speech. He’d been so young, then, but he’d held that his whole life.

And he was crying. For her. It almost broke her right there.

“H-hey,” she croaked, embracing him in a slight hug. “I don’t want to see any tears soldier.” He could only chuckle weakly as he nearly sobbed into her hair.

“I’m alive, so there’s no need to cry.” Johan nodded into her hair at her remark, slowly drawing back. He looked awful.

Looking at him made Frost cringe, his once untouched and perfect face was now, in a matter of hours, stricken with age and stress, greys seeming to grow like weeds in the bad lighting of the tram and his suit.

“Johan...” she swallowed the knot in her throat, cupping his cheek with her hand. He looked back at her, the faintest of twinkles in his eye returning.

A stain of blood on his forehead caught her eye and Victoria gave a small smile, licking her finger and wiping the blood away. A small laugh escaped her, echoed by Johan.

“So are you gonna let your dad win the bet?”

“Well, I can’t exactly ask your dad, so I’ll have to make do with what I have.”

Swinging her back into an overly-dramatic pose, he presented a clip of seeker rifle ammo, offering it as a gift. “Victoria Frost, will be my super-special somebody? Because I think I know where this tram is going, and I’d rather not die a virgin.”

She looked up from the reclined pose and stared him in the eye. “You’re a virgin? What about all those girls you keep wooing?”

Johan still had it in him to blush, his pale face going scarlet. “Yeah, uhm... most of those were actually just friends from high-school. We faked flirting a lot, but most of them already had boyfriends. Or coltfriends, some.” He gently lowered her aching body to the plastic-covered bench of the tram, marginally more comfortable than the floor, and only because there wasn’t as much blood on it.

“If they were your friends then, why the act?”

“Well, since we all knew each other for a while, it wasn’t an act so much as our ‘thing’ amongst friends, I actually helped set them up with most of the boy- and girl-friends in my group.”

“Looks like I’ve been wrong about you for all these years, Johan. And here I thought you were just another wannabe bigshot”

“Yeah, sorry to get your hopes up, the closest I ever got to that was the two years I spent working as a masseuse in my free time.” He shrugged and wiggled his fingers. “Volunteering, mind you, and most of that was store maintenance. I did get pretty good though, when I did have to fill in. Ah, I think we have enough medi-gell to fix your shoulder and stuff, and I could give you a shoulder massage?” He suddenly realized what his offer might be taken as, and backed up a bit. “Ah, if you’re up for it, that is.”

“What about you? You’re in the red,” Victoria said, rolling her shoulder, realizing how in need of a massage or something she was.

“Ah, I’ll be fine. The suit’s keeping me together, for now. and if I’m right, there should be a field dispersal medigel in the emergency kit on this tram, so I could just fix up your shoulder for you, if you’d prefer. You’re still in the green, surprisingly. That thing must’ve had a pretty sharp blade not to cause much collateral damage.”

Johan looked up at the main entrance to the tram station, thinking for a moment. turning back to Frost he elaborated on his thoughts. “My security clearance should be enough to halt the tram in the middle of the tracks. There’s plenty of air in here, for the two of us, even if we wanted to nap for an hour or two.”

“Thank God!” The officer exclaimed, letting out a huge sigh of relief. “I could definitely use one.”

“Alright, so you’re good for that suggestion.” He looked to the console and pressed a holographic button, causing the doors to close. “You might want to put your helmet back on, I’m going to use the cleaning ventral system to clear out this blood and such, and there won’t be air for a minute.”

After a quick cleansing of the tram, most of the blood was out, and they were on their way.

“Alright, so this is where we’re going...”

Author's Notes:

Here we have Chapter 8. Yeay, character development! Also, there will be
'Stuff' between them. When it is written up, there will be a link here. Massages are hawt, just remember that.

Also, please vote on the following, to decide where they go:
Military District - Vice-Admiral Sarnow might be willing to help them. He's been a nice guy in the past, and he knew Frost's dad and Johan's mom. However, he's military to the core, and if there's any doubt about them or their motive, it might end in tragedy, but they could easily get better armor or weapons from here in any case, or at least access to some upgrades for their current ones.
Shipping Quarter - They can probably spoof the clearance required, and get to the docks, and try to find a ship out of here. It's a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless. Along the way, they might be able to collect up more supplies than might be found anywhere else, including that most vital of supplies, medigel.
Civilian Habitat PV-07 - Back where they came from, maybe the massacre was spared of the peaceful little space-village. at the least, they may find some survivors, and in numbers there is safety.

Thanks to the following for contributing to the story so far:
Itsmyfuneral, starring as Sketch
Hunterz263, starring as Broker Wordsmith
Rosethorn, starring as Victoria Frost
SomeGuy, co-starring as Johan Allegro
The Pieman, as Copy.Data