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It had been a fair bit of time post Aria's disappearance, though it seemed a little too quick as a certain somebody walked into the shambles of the office. He spent a strange, leisurely amount of time looking around, at the walls, then the desk, then grabbed a chair and sat calmly down as if he owned the desk, and not vice-versa.

"I believe prior to a promotion an assessment is due." The Death lead placed his own folder down, pulling out Lance's archived records. "Your performance this year has been mediocre, though thankfully your former leader didn't quite set high standards." Both of them knew what this was. It was all formalities an assessment but played a greater role. This was a power play, of establishing future ties or severing them entirely. "The Mist Division is on the verge of collapse. In the event there was a conflict of interest, this division was to be disassembled along with any potential.... successors. Your timing is rather unfortunate."

The Death lead leaned over, calmly. There was a look that almost suggested he wished for Lance to fight back. What was another Mist Hunter that defected after all? "Your promotion and the continued existence of the Mist division unfortunately will have to be indefinitely postponed as we investigate Aria's defection. Any information however, you have to expedite this process will also greatly expedite this delay."

"I appreciate the suggestions," he didn't, "but you are not in charge of deciding what is practical. Considering your timing and choice actions prior to Aria's defection, I believe it would be prudent for you to consider what you say carefully." A thinly veiled threat.

"Removing and reshuffling divisions has been a common practice in the past, which unfortunately, you lack all records of experience in handling or exercising. You may think you are playing a favourable game, and perhaps you were as an assistant, but you are the least experienced out of all division leaders, if you even deserve this title. You've built up quite the circle of sympathy with your little handicap guilt trip, but there are those who wouldn't hesitate to use it as a weakness. "

The Death lead opened up a second considerably larger folder. Aria's. "I'm much more interested about your involvement with the defected than your current unimpressive struggles to gain some semblance of leadership in a dying division. Having worked under Aria the longest, did that make her or you the most gullible. It really is easy to forget the internal affairs of such a lackluster division where the results are continuously the byproduct of infighting. I highly recommend if you engage in these little dispatches, you involve Hunters from other divisions as well. It becomes pitifully ironic that this division is called Mist when it is the least diverse. It really would be unwise to make the same mistake your defective predecessor did."

A pause and Caelius closed all the folders. He borrowed Lance's stapler, sealing them both shut. "Lance." A sudden pause. "What do you think constitutes a division leader."

A long pause.

"And yet one of us is not a division leader." He didn't back down, and he didn't have a reason. "You sit here, in this tiny excuse of an office, pushing the same things around, promising the same mediocre things. Promising to help Hunters, to chase them, to preach about something new. Something different, something only you could do. Clearly you were chosen, clearly you are special, clearly you know better."

"Trainees, Hunters, Assistants, all with their material, simple, menial, scheduled goals, and they all forget that they are their own weaknesses. We take Hunters in. We give them purpose, we give them obligation, we make them feel wanted and important, and they in turn show us gratitude by continuously overstepping their boundaries. They learn how to function by distractions from self-cannibalizing. People are not equal by their own choice regardless of intention and teaching, and the imbalance destroys them. I'm sure you did a wonderful job of, as you mentioned, leading by example by chasing your defective former leader away despite all opportunities and attempts to neutralize and capture her, failing to report to any proper personnel until you had ******** everything up, and conveniently lying to cover your own excuses and intentions. You only fooled one person in this room with your your preaches of needing someone with less experience, and I can assure you it was not me."

He stood up, turned around, and then paused. "I asked you what constitutes a division leader. You answered with strength. Allow someone with more experience to answer this question."

He didn't wait. One hand was already at Lance's neck - clang went the wheelchair - and both of them went through the wall, dropping into a portal. They fell, the Death lead relentless, and hit the ground hard, in what felt like snow. In a matter of seconds he had pulled out a gun, firing two shots. They both were deflected by Lance's fear shield.

The surface they were standing on tipped, made purely from snow and ice, and something emerged from the depths below, a large cavernous creature, rows and rows of biolumminescent teeth. Its jaws easily spanned twenty yards opened wide, and closed in on the two of them -

- "The correct answer is survival." The Death lead fired one more shot, this time past Lance. The ice Lance was teetering on cracked, shattered, and the Mist assistant fell into the serrated rows of teeth that closed in and snapped shut in one fell swoop.

It was dark, moist, slick and disgusting. Lance closed his eyes, jaw clenched as he entered the Titan's maw. He could feel the monster's rogue tongue scour his arm as he slid over it. He was warm and wet, unable to tell whether or not it made him bleed.

Did it manage to take a leg off? Lance couldn't tell. The only thing he currently knew aside from his current location was the feeling of being grabbed and pulled forward, head-first into --

Throat. Stomach. Acid. Head first? Blind. No. Lance threw his arms out as the pressure began to build around his body, trying to slow his decent into the beast. The walls were slimy and warm, his fingers sliding down it uselessly as the throat constricted around him yet again. Lance gagged, spitting as fluid he didn't want to think too much about entered his mouth.

He had to move fast. Faster.

Hands moved up and over his head, hands clasped together. Concentrate. Summon!

The air cleared as the fiery lance materialized into existence, burning the Fear it absorbed from the Titan's throat she now pierced. Lance took a lungful of the less foul air before holding his breath again at his weapon's warning. A new kind of warmth crashed into Lance's face, sticking and clinging as the beast's blood seeped into its lungs from the weapon's piercing.

It was getting harder to grasp his weapon, slick as it was with what Lance could only assume was blood. He could feel himself being flung from side to side as the beast began to thrash. Was it choking on its own blood? No; the opening for its lungs had to have been higher up.

s**t. What kind of a monster was this anyway? Lance tried to shift his shoulders to one side, using his weight to try and shift his weapon up. Were they piercing organs and tearing through skin? What of its throat -- could they tear through that? If there's water and they went underwater then --

A sharp sting of annoyance from his weapon brought him back to attention. There wasn't time to think. He had to act, to have his actions speak for him. His lungs were beginning to burn as he concentrated, feeding the Fear Avila was harvesting.

He had to depend on her.

He had to trust her.

He used to hate her, to loathe her for erring on the side of caution.

She had warned him, didn't she?

He could feel her burning hotter as he concentrated, trying to control the amount of Fear she burned. It would be too easy to let her feed until she was full, to burst from the inside of a cooked Titan and ascend. But that would burn her out too quickly, tire her out too fast. There could be more out there.

The hard resistance of bone made him twist, thrusting and trying to jam the lance's tip between the vertebrae. The force at which he was being thrown and thrashed back and forth was increasing.

A thought brushed past him, offered.

He acted.

Lance could feel a different kind of warmth creep up his arms. It was slow and warm that's it increasing in temperature and intensity as he drew it careful carefully further towards himself let it go let it go and up rising out of the vital sludge with muscles that burned.

He sucked in a lung full of air, spitting the tangy Titan fluid out. Lanced moved. His weight shifted back as he held onto the hilt of his weapon, concentrating as the beast's flesh began to sag and melt around his weapon. The beast's thrashing grew wilder, slapping Lance's face against the mushy slick side of its throat. The screams and groans that he had blocked earlier continued to thrum and reverberate against his chest, Fear shield holding as the screams increased in intensity and volume.

Lance was beginning to understand the appeal of a handgun now. Now that his primary concern of not dying had been satisfied to his knowledge, the screams were starting to annoy him. He wondered if the runic handguns came in revolver. It was too bad he didn't have any grenades. He made a mental note to get more and to highly consider keeping them in another place aside from his coat. Where was it, anyway?

Perhaps he might even settle for wearing it properly.

The thrashes were growing weaker.

He was burning with exhilaration as he tucked his shoulders in and slid downward. There was a brief panic; Titans seldom followed logic. What if there was another set of teeth down in the throat? What if he encountered the burn of acid?

Lance threw as much of his weight forward and up as he could, curling around the lance to bypass it. A shudder ran up his spine as he slid down feet first, his hands sliding down the grip of his weapon. They twisted, tightening and jerking the weapon free as he threw his weight back. Muscle, bone, skin, sinew -- to Lance it less heard but more felt like wet paper being torn apart as his weapon blazed with Fear, following his swing.

A roar made by a being he couldn't place shook him before the force of it hit him, causing him to double over as cold overtook him. Lance gasped, eyes open to stinging blackness lit by glowing yellow-red runes. A pair of ragged lines stretching away from him faded away as the cold water sapped the heat away from the Titan he had cleaved in half.

He had cleaved a Titan in half.

No.

They did.

He screamed at himself as he could feel his grip weakening, the chill seeping into his bones. His hands forced themselves around the cooling hilt of his weapon, his eyes closing again as he reached out --