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Nadja came up short, nearly bumping against Seth's outflung arm with a quizzically furrowed brow. She'd had a vague idea of where this was heading, but when he skulked along the wall and actually took a toolkit out of his jacket she made a noise of amused, bemused disbelief.

It was hard not to be a little impressed when a man disabled a major security system for you.

But it was an insubstantial thought - the fluttery, impractical sort of thing that would appeal to a sixteen-year-old girl who had never kissed, not a twenty-eight-year-old woman who most certainly had. A host of other concerns loomed large, centered around professional responsibilities and not getting thrown in the brig.

The redhead took on a dryly doubtful expression."..you know, we could just take the elevator again and save a host of trouble," she pointed out, hands in her coat pockets while she watched him fiddle with the fire extinguisher. Did he really want to explain himself if this got noticed?

Nadja's expertise lay firmly in the realm of the living things - machines were an integral part of her daily work, but their workings were often opaque and at right angles to her way of thinking. Seth, on the other hand, spent most of him time with them and certainly knew more about the system, strange as it was. This looked stupidly reckless to her, but he was an intelligent man. (Although stupidly reckless.) So although images of a confrontation with Lucere swam in her mind ("And what exactly were you thinking, Agent, when you willfully compromised security?" "I was thinking I didn't want to be seen going out on a date." "...") the redhead charily conceded, "All right."

She was going to regret this later, surely. But for now, she was off-duty, and it was her birthday, and..

..and she wasn't quite sure why she was doing this, or - more worringly - why she didn't much care.

The tunnel was low-lit, amber sodium lights and the cool, dense walls giving it a feel that was two parts parking garage, one part tomb. Nadja nodded slightly as he explained, drawing revisions to her mental map of the base which would be actively processed later, but mostly she listened to the way the man's voice echoed in the concrete chamber than to the words themse-

There was a sudden tense silence and a sound like an Eevee hitting a brick wall.

At the question, Nadja's stormy expression cleared. Her eyes met his briefly, then shifted to the wall and the fist - hers - slammed forcefully against it. "Oh," she said, as if seeing it for the first time.

Slowly, she relaxed her hand and pulled it away, cradling it as she studied the damage. It had been a direct strike leaving no abrasion, but a sharp ache in her bones made her wonder if she'd thrown them out of joint. She smoothed over the pattern of the concrete's pores on her flesh, the tunnel's gloom obscuring the nuances of her expression.

That was careless.

"It's a small thing," Nadja murmured, and brushed some embedded grit away from skin and sleeve. The redhead turned grey eyes up to Seth and moved to put her hand in her coat again, ready to move on. "It'll pass."

Nadja's eyes narrowed an obstinate fraction. This wan't necessary.

But you picked your battles, and this one wasn't worth it - there was nothing to see. So she sighed, held out her hand to him palm-up with a whisper of coat fabric, and cast an annoyed look at the far end of the tunnel while she flexed her fingers as if to say 'See?' It might have smarted warmly along the edge, but there was none of the sharp, splintering pain that meant something was truly broken.

After a moment she cast a surreptitious glance at what he was doing.

The redhead watched Seth's manual assessment with a faint frown, brushing a loose wisp of hair back in the meantime. Her slim fingers flexed slightly as his hands moved away, then dropped to her side. "I don't plan on it," Nadja murmured, a bit distantly.

Which meant close to nothing. She hadn't planned on it just then either.

"Well." She smirked slightly at her companion, a brow arching. "Shall we move on?"

"Old business," Nadja answered after a brief half-second of consideration. She lifted her chin slightly as she sighted the exit up ahead, illuminated by floodlamps. They gave an amber cast to her pearl drops, which swung as she canted her head to give Seth a similar sideways look and a dry half-smile.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not spoil the mood. At least not today." A valid answer. There were just some things you didn't do on someone's birthday, and 'bring up topics spawning violent reactions' was near the top of the list.

"Thank you," Nadja started to say, but she was distracted from the rest of her thought by the sudden stop. The redhead followed Seth's line of sight with a raised brow, then followed him past the invisible beams. She only had to step over the one; without the heels of her elite uniform, she passed under the other with inches to spare.

He really was too tall.