I'd sprung into action because action had been thrust right in front of me. With Dragon out of the picture and the soldier-caste operating out of their own minds instead of Oasis', I was possibly the strongest fighter in the city, I was the best chance the place had of surviving this onslaught I'd dumped on their heads.

But with every exosuit I cut down, gargling and gasping as my swords materialized inside them, every rocket I jumped into so that the arc would chase down the contrails and the VTOL at the end of it, with every drop of blood and life cut short, there was just a second's pause, the momentary reprieve bought with death.

And in those seconds, I found myself wondering why.

Why was I still here? Why was I still fighting? Why was I under any obligation to keep Oasis from burning?

There was nothing here worth saving. Most of these people didn't even exist. As far as I knew, the sum of intelligent life here was Rio, Dragon, and some long-ago-dead Sino who still haunted his tree. And given how fucked up the tree and Dragon's relationship was, I wasn't even sure you could count either of them.

So all for Rio then? That seemed impossible. It wasn't exactly a closely-guarded secret that I'd been berating her, tearing down her entire lifestyle, and threatening her with death all day. We weren't exactly chummy, and given that it was frequently looking like I had to choose between her stupid gun-ambitions and Moon's well-being, I knew who I'd throw away in a heartbeat.

I squinted my eyes against the flash as I tore into another exosuit and it sparked with kindling flames from within. People kept dying, and I felt like I had no reason to kill them at all.

There was a boom that shifted the ground under me as the gate exploded, and my exoframe overcompensated and sent me tumbling half off the wall. I barely held myself up, and saw too late another exosuit bearing down, butt-end of his mammoth gun bearing down on me.

He froze where he stood, weapon raised, as though running into an invisible force. For a moment, I thought my shield had somehow caught him, impossible though that was, when, suddenly, in a panic, I realized my shield wasn't there at all. My swords had gone out. I couldn't feel anything with my powers.

"Watch yourself, Ashton," Karu said with a chuckle as she drifted past, tapping the gun in her arms lovingly.

"Karu?" I shouted, trying not to freak out about suddenly being de-powered mid fight. But she'd already jetted off, and I stumbled on too-heavy legs that wouldn't get under me.

It was incredible that the guy hadn't killed me yet, until I looked up and noticed...nothing. No signs of motion, no hissing of pneumatics or adjustments of the suit's external cams, nothing.

And then, as though I had just been lagging, my swords popped out right where I'd intended for them to be and cut him in half inside. My ears or...something in my head, rang, as my senses suddenly flooded, and I felt my shield around me, as latent and charged as static.

I muttered to myself, bewildered and confused as anything, lashing out and killing another exosuit by reflex almost, as though nothing were wrong at all. Except something was, something had definitely happened. And my exoframe proved it, still being as heavy and uncooperative as a pair of metal pants ought to be.

I knelt as much as I could and cracked open the service panel, using my powers to saturate everything around me with a static film so I could an eye on all of it in my mind, in case any others decided to show up and gun-butt me. Systems looked fine, nothing shorted. Fluid pressure looked good. And charge--

Empty? That was almost impossible. There were delith cells in there which were slow-feeding a battery almost twice as fast as my usage rate. If I were really pushing it, it'd dip some but...empty?

Fortunately that wasn't much of a problem for me. I could just wave my hands and knew the system so well I could flood it with the right voltages across the system, booting it back up instantly. But what the hell?

I sprang to my feet and then jumped back to a crouch again as something purple and nasty, like spinning saw blades erupted from a nearby gun and peppered the wall around me. Using only my sense to aim, I chucked a handful of bulbs back in his direction until I heard it connect and the shooting stopped.

When I got up again, I saw a very different scene than I remembered. Maybe a quarter of the enemies had already been...defeated wasn't the right word. Petrified, maybe. Tanks locked up in a poor bearing, doing nothing as our handful of Exhumans battered them down. VTOLs simply given up on flight and crashed into the ground. Exosuits, utterly still, mid-attack or maneuver. One unlucky bastard was jumping a short wall and just landed on his face on the ground. Many of them were cracked open, the emergency hatches popped, and the soldiers within emerging to flee in their undergarments.

Suddenly the gun in Karu's hands and her little chuckle had made sense. I'd thought that was a little too much levity for her in the midst of a serious fight, and now I knew why. She'd gotten her hands on some exotic tech which stopped these bastards cold.

I looked around and found her, just a streak of blue in the air, still impossible for my eyes to keep up with even after all this time. She flew circles around a VTOL which was strafing down the top of the wall, and the longer she clung to it, the slower it moved, until, as though falling asleep, it dipped and then careened downwards, crashing with a much gentler crunching noise than I'd have expected.

And then I lost her again, but not before another column of exosuits froze in their tracks. To add to the scene, Tem had apparently arrived, properly infuriated, based on the size of her blasts. Poor fuckers didn't stand a chance.

I sighed. Fine by me. I didn't want this fight anyway. Karu and Tem could have their fun. I kicked off in my newly-charged exo-legs and jumped backwards away from the battle.

It felt like a slog, going back uphill towards the temple. The whole time in Oasis had been a slog. I was tired and defeated, beset by too much indecision and too many mind games. All I'd wanted was an enemy I could defeat and then go to Moon's aid.

Instead I had Rio. Who'd just popped up on me with death written across her pale face.

"Why are you coming back?" she asked, speaking too quickly. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. Karu's got the fight in hand."

"Why aren't you with her? We need everyone. You issued orders, you...you were in charge of our defenses. I did everything you asked."

"Yeah. And it worked. The fight's over, now it's time for the rout. If you want to kidnap people to mindfuck 'em or whatever, go have fun."

I sat down heavily, feeling like I kicked up a plume of exhaustion instead of dust. Rio furrowed her brow as she looked me over.

"You don't look so good," she said.

"Yeah, no shit."

"What's wrong?"

I glared at her. And it took a lot of willpower to not just say 'you.'

But I knew that wouldn't do any good. She wasn't an evil or awful or even bad person. Sure, as much as I could blame her for much of the shitty state of the world, the simple fact is, when I'd called her on her bullshit, she'd actually listened to me. She didn't want to listen, that's for damn sure. And she was responsible for a huge amount of corruption and death with her stupid, naive outlook and her obsession with her 'art'.

But then again, so was I. I'd killed hundreds, maybe even thousands by now. I had my own things I just wouldn't let go, and clinging to them had made all kinds of trouble, this current fight included. I might oppose her, she might be incompatible with my beliefs, but who the fuck was I to say my beliefs were any more right than hers?

I mean, they were. And if push came to shove, I'd kill for my beliefs, or die for them. But that didn't make them right, that just made them worth killing or dying over, and that tiny grain of distinction is what pissed me off so much about Rio.

I sighed. "Oasis is frustrating," I told her. "I wish you guys were as shitty as I say you are."

"Um. Why?"

"Because then I wouldn't feel bad about just burning the whole place down. Instead it's like...this weird...messed-up weapons factory, with its heart in the right place entirely out of naivety. And then Dragon. Actually that does sound pretty shitty."

She seemed to almost-turn on the spot and then come back. "Um, my city's being attacked. But you also seem...affected. And you're just kind of crapping on it, which is typical but...I wouldn't want to leave if…" she sighed. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Damn her being a decent person. Why couldn't she be an unrepentant baby-eating drug-lord?

"I'm fine, and your city's fine," I assured her. "I promise. Whatever gun Karu's got, it's shutting down everything they have."

"Oooh, which one?" she asked, instantly pert. "Sternwerver? Espina? The Elucidator?"

"You name your guns?" I asked, hoping to not find another reason to like her.

"I do," she said, crushing that hope. I'd never told her, but I found it adorable that Whitney did the same. Whitney's family wasn't sent across the globe to murder people, though.

"Something that drained electricity. Turned off my powers and drained the charge right out of my exoframe's batteries." I extended my legs a few times just for the swish-swish sound of the pneumatics. "Nasty thing."

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"Ohh, Ennervator. I love that one. Karu's got excellent taste." She frowned at me for a second and then offered me her hand. "You're sure the battle's won?" she asked, as though she was checking I was single before picking me up.

"Yep. Good ol' Ennervator."

I took her hand and she pulled me to my feet. "There's something I've really wanted to do with you. I normally save it only for the Oasians and...well you are...but I also think you aren't...it's complicated, and maybe that's what makes it so exciting. But from the moment I've laid eyes on you--"

"Uh, I kinda really don't have room in my life for another girl. Like, two girls ago."

She blinked at me. "Huh? Come on, it'll be fun."

And then, veritably dragging me along, she ran into the temple with me stumbling in her excited wake.

I wasn't gonna do anything. I mean, I technically could have, since I was, at the moment, unattached from all the girls in a sort of...danger-parallelogram sorta way. Each of them seemed content for the moment just to shamelessly flirt and bust my balls without anyone getting too involved, and as long as they were all on the same level, none seemed to take it too personally that nobody was getting anywhere.

Maybe some kind of game theory was in play. Maybe each took solace in the fact that, sure, she wasn't getting any, but by maintaining that altitude, she was stopping at least two others from doing the same, which was a net win mathematically. I didn't know, it was girl logic stuff.

So of course, I wasn't about to light Rio's fuse and throw her into that bomb-heap. Even if she was enthusiastic as she threw me down on a bench in the middle of her arsenal and told me to relax.

And then brought out several devices which looked like they were made for probing. Possibly both of us at once.

"Um, hey, maybe uh, ask me out first?" I said, backing away as much as the bench allowed.

"You're leaving tomorrow, right? You've got...got the thing with Saga and our god sorted. You've got me and my weapons sorted. You've got Dragon and his crusade sorted. You're...out of reasons to stay. So...if we're gonna do this--"

"Which we're not," I clarified. She stopped and cocked her head.

"Why not?"

"Uh, why so? You're like, twenty years older than me--"

"Why would that matter?"

"--and you're uh, kind of an adversary through all this--"

"Water under the bridge. I understood."

"--and, um, what about your art?"

She blinked at me. "This is for my art."

"Your art is guns." She nodded. I felt my eyes bugging out a little more at the devices in her hands.

"Oh these? These aren't guns. These are tools. I'm gonna make a gun, from you. Well, not from you just...using you."

"Like...by melting me down?" I was now very much trying to get my butt off the bench and away from her.

"No! I just want to borrow you. It's not going to use you up or anything. You'll have a lot more!"

[Okay, what the fuck.]

"Saga! It's not me! She's trying to use me!"

[At least warn me before you do the dirty so I can make pop corn. Fuck. So inconsiderate.]

"Saga, wait, help!"

I felt a belt cinch. Something clamped onto me. I held my pants and closed my eyes and waited to see if I'd have to kick her in the head a little bit.

Instead, nothing.

"Um, relax, please," she said. I cracked one eye open and saw her reading my pulse and blood pressure through the arm-cuff and finger-clip thingy she'd put on me. "It works better when you're calm. Also, please take them out."

"Take...them out," I echoed.

"Your powers."

"Okay, sister, just what the hell are you planning to do to me?"

She straightened up, looking at me with utter confusion. "Um. We just discussed this. Weapons, right?"

"Sure? What about them?"

"I...I make them?" she asked more than stated. "And...you were going to help. Since you're leaving."

I thought about everything that had gone down in the last two minutes and realized I did not miss Saga chuckling in the back of my head, as she relived just how awkward Rio was and what a dingus I could be.

"You want to use my powers to make a gun. A lighting exotic."

"Yes," she smiled. "Sorry. That."

"Jesus, why can't you just say what you want?" I sighed, slumping back on the bench. I conjured up a few blades in the air above me for her to study or whatever.

"That's it?" she asked. "That's...no good for a gun. Maybe I could...hmm, some kind of close-range grenade. Or a trip mine, unleash a torrent of them in a localized area perhaps. But...that's no better than a standard incendiary."

"How 'bout this?" I asked, flinging some bulbs across the room, so they'd sparkle on the floor.

"Ooh! Most excellent. Again!"

She made me do it again and again, and then a few hundred times after that, touching and holding me, resting her head on my shoulder so she could see it from my perspective, overall a whole lot more intimate than the sex I kinda imagined she'd been implying. But the whole time she worked on me, bobbing in and out of my sight and assembling an ever-growing pile of materials on the bench with me, she never showed anything other than utter delight and complete professionalism.

In fact, once she was mostly done with me and got working on the gun itself, I was the one who started pestering her, asking her to narrate everything she was doing and what each piece did. She had answers for it all, and not just glib ones either -- detailed answers, talking about alignments and material quality, anticlockwise spirals' dampening effect on the gun's intended focusing of an electromagnetic sheath. Shit that I knew, shit that I knew I didn't know, and shit that was so far beyond me, I wasn't sure that even if Whitney and AEGIS had a recording and a dozen years, they'd piece it out.

For the first, and only time, I understood suddenly what she meant when she talked about a calling. It wasn't like myself and figuring out my major, it wasn't even like me and football. It was a study she'd completely given herself to, immersed herself in, until she knew everything there was to know about everything in it. She could (and did) prattle on about the differences in the tiny washers which were electroplated, versus hot-dipped, versus sputtered, and the different kinds of wear and effect you could expect from each...all of the top of her head, as though it was as native to her as English.

Even Whitney, even AEGIS, whose memory was, as far as I could tell, basically eidetic with her ability to review past events faster than human recall, I'd known both of them to have to look things up or make corrections. But there was none of that here, and it wowed me.

Like, honest to God, I found myself saying wow. Saga did too, so...yeah.

And at the end of less than an hour, she let me hold it and shoot it.

Felt weird. Felt just like using my own powers, but obviously not. The gun rattled in my grip, a bulb of pure energy growing at the tip of the barrel, only to shoot off and crackle explosively when I let go of the trigger.

"Well, no wonder you have so many guns. If you can pop them out in forty minutes."

"I could do the next one faster," she shrugged. "Now that I know how."

"And...that's it? You don't need me anymore? You'll just...have my powers now?" I asked, alarmed, and frankly again wishing she'd have cued me into this stuff beforehand.

She laughed. "No, I meant next time with you. Um, if there is one. I can't just...make one without you, not with your powers. Not...yet anyway. Don't worry. That's why I wanted to do it when we had the chance."

She batted her eyes at me lovingly and I jumped to my feet. "It is sexual for you! I knew it!"

"No it's not! It's just...intimate! This is a unique piece of both of us."

"Oh God, I had an accident and made a gun baby," I said, holding my head. "A beautiful, deadly gun baby."

"Oh shush and name him. It."

I stared long and hard at the gun in my hands. Not much jumped to mind, except for how much it looked like me. Not in any...real physical sense, it was a gun after all, and I was just a dude. But in style, somehow she'd captured the coolest, possible thing I could imagine and just made it real. I wondered, if she could reach into me and borrow my powers to make it, had she also touched on my sense of awesome? Were all the guns here products of their creators sensibilities made manifest?

Most of them looked pretty samey. Just guns. Mine had glowing streaks and a super-lightweight folding stock, angled front grip and a barrel shroud that crackled when it was charging. Just the coolest fucking thing.

And then I realized...the other guns...they probably did reflect their makers. They were probably the product of Rio and some poor Exhuman stuck here forever. That was the material she had to work with.

"Hard to come up with a name?" she asked. "I don't blame you. Harder than making 'em, usually."

"Oh. Yeah. Uh…" I looked around. Pulled the trigger a few more times, tried to find any part of it that seemed to carry a name. I couldn't just give it a human name, that was stupid. And I didn't want anything too significant, though a few of those jumped to mind.

I almost sighed as I decided on something stupid.

"How about...erm...Pistil?"

"It's a rifle. Pistols are shorter and--"

"Not pistol, pistil. It's the part of a flower that makes the seeds."

She looked at me sideways.

"Seeds uh...become bulbs. Like tulips."

"Two...lips?"

"Tulips? The flowers? Damn it, I should have gone with 'Glassblower'."

"Because...glassblowers...have two lips?"

I was hanging my head at six o'clock shame by this point. "Because...glassblowers make...light bulbs."

"Light bulbs?"

"It's like...a thing...from before lightbars. Okay never mind. It's name is Pistil."

"It's a great name," she said beaming as though we hadn't just had this conversation. "I might use more flower parts in my naming. I suppose you already heard me say Espina. Plenty more where that came from," she sighed.

We lapsed into a long silence. And then, as though only remembering, I handed the gun over to her.

"Oh no, keep it," she said. "I hope you...remember us."

"Like I could forget," I scoffed.

"In a...bad way?" She frowned. "I guess...of course. You were miserable the whole time, weren't you."

"Weren't you?" I asked. "I crapped on your ideologies. Got your city attacked. Threatened your way of life. Challenged your beliefs. Called you stupid more times than I can count. Got in a duel with your co-jerk. My sister bashed you in the face. And I held you hostage and then threatened to kill you."

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "But you didn't. And you tried to help. And you talked to me, argued with me, when it would have been easier for you to just leave, or ignore me, or kill me. You're one of the nicest guys I've met."

"Dude, that is so sad," I said, clapping her on the shoulder. "Trust me when I say I'm not really very nice at all."

"There's more to being nice than being nice," she replied. "Like you said yourself, sometimes you have to do something wrong to do what's right. I hope the world treats you better, Athan. You really deserve it."

And that, more than anything, caught me off-guard about this awkward, intensely and unintentionally scandalous, intimate goodbye between two adversaries. I was still thinking about those words as we scoured the battlefield for supplies and transport, as I got one of the APCs juiced up and ready to run, as we said our final goodbyes to Oasis and packed ourselves in with what provisions they could spare.

Even Dragon had come to see us off, but I suspected it was more out of relief and absolutely wanting us gone than any sentimentality. And I wasn't sad to see him disappearing in the rear-view mirror, nor the city behind him.

But I was sad. And I wasn't quite sure why.