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Luckily for Melvin, it so happened that Jordan liked answering questions and explaining what he could. "Research and therapy purposes," he said. He leaned against the consoles, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Missions aren't predictably scheduled, nor can you be sure if you're coming back from any given mission. You're now a hell of a lot tougher and more resilient than any normal human, due to the weapon bond, but every time you go into a combat situation you're still risking your life. With irregular schedules and the uncertainty surrounding missions, it's impractical to keep personal pets. I suspect there's sanitary concerns involved as well. Still, human psychology; there's mental health benefits involved in caring for and playing with animals, and that remains true even if minis are Fear creatures."

He shrugged. "Aside the therapeutic aspect of pet care, it's also a relatively safe way to study Fear. Minis aren't as dangerous or as intelligent as the monsters we fight, nor are they as large. They can be captured, kept, and studied far more easily. It's actually pretty logical if you think about it."

"Magic," he said dryly in response to the question, then more seriously, "I never got an explanation on why or how we ended up as minipets, beyond the simple fact that Allan broke an artifact. It was a pretty disorienting and confusing experience. Unfortunately, me being Sun division means that the techs figure I'm either uninterested or unintelligent, so if I want detailed explanations, I have to make an extra effort on tracking them down. You'll probably have better access to more technical information than I."

Melvin looked like the kind of guy who'd prefer to stay in the lab rather than jumping enthusiastically into missions, and while Jordan knew as well as anyone that appearances didn't always match personalities, the guy's series of questions and responses seemed to confirm that basic assessment. It might be good to have a contact in the labs, Jordan mused. Robert was in Life division, yes, but when it came to technical information the big man wasn't the best person to ask.

"Sun and Moon are combat divisions, specializing in offense and defense respectively," he said. "Moon also does construction and repair much of the time. Other than various duty assignments, Suns are expected to spend a lot of time training and familiarizing ourselves with runic weapons and devices." His eyes sparked briefly with amusement. "Need something destroyed? That's our job. Death division does information, collection and collation, and has a large hand in contacts and business off-island. Life division is research and development, but you already know that. Mist is flexible, expected to have at least basic familiarity with all roles. The division specialization is one of the reasons that you'll see a lot of the larger weapons carried by Sun hunters. Simply put, if you and your weapon are the sort to be effective at smashing things into tiny pieces? Unless you have clear, strong talents that suggest you should be somewhere else, you're going to be Sun."

He shrugged. "Once you've been here a while, you can request to be transferred if you think you're in the wrong section. I considered it, but ultimately decided against it. I've been here - " he blinked, looking surprised as he realized how long it had been, " - nearly a year and a half now." The time had initially seemed painfully slow, the island an alien environment, but it had long since become home.

"No offense taken," Jordan said, and snagged the small trash basket from beside one of the consoles, bringing it over to dispose of the dirty paper towels. "I was considering requesting a transfer to Death division, but there's a certain amount of satisfaction in facing Halloween creatures head-on in combat. There's something to be said for blunt object problem solving when all else fails, and we're pretty good at it."

He chuckled and took a few steps back to the center of the pod. "Ferros's head was a bit bigger than my head when I first bonded with him," he said, and held his hand out to summon. The ring dissolved in a swirl of metallic motes, reforming as the huge hammer; Ferros's haft was now as long as Jordan was tall, and the hammer's head had grown to a good meter long. Jordan rested his palm against the rounded side of Ferros's barrel in an affectionate gesture.

I am magnificent, Ferros said happily.

Yeah, yeah, you know you're awesome. Jordan desummoned Ferros after a few moments. "Anyway," he said, "in Sun division I have a division leader I like and respect. Caelius has made it clear he considers trainees expendable." The careful inflection he gave the word mimicked the Death lead's speech patterns. "I prefer Allan; he cares about his division. And there's a few people who could stand some looking after in Sun. So I stay."

"I guess you'll find out later," Jordan said philosophically. "Ask her what she thinks; she might have a guess as to whether she'll grow."

Ms. Norris - it took Jordan a moment to realize that Melvin was talking about Cass. "Yeah, it's just safer to stay out of Caelius's way whenever possible. If he tells you you're incompetent, don't take it too much to heart, he seems to think he's the only competent person on the island. I don't think I've heard him give a compliment to anyone, come to think of it. The man is skilled and very, very good at what he does, I have to give him that, but he's not easy to work for." He shrugged.

"Dr. H is the Life division head. If he has a name other than H, nobody seems to know it. He's brilliant, but he's also kind of creepy sometimes." There were a lot of individual anecdotes that Jordan could have cited in support of this observation, but he didn't particularly feel like getting into it. "Personal opinion there," he added, deciding not to mention that it seemed to be an opinion shared by more than a few people. Melvin would make his own judgment when he met his division head himself. "I don't like him, but I do respect him."

"Allan - well, Allan is eccentric. Anime fan to an obsessive degree. This sometimes includes cosplay outfits for everyone else and usually includes heartfelt speeches about nakama and kokoro. His weapon's also apparently an obsessive fanboy. But Allan takes a personal interest in the well-being of his division, mental and physical, and even when he's being weird it's obvious that he cares." Jordan grinned. "So far I've escaped the One Piece marathon, but that probably won't be true forever."

Jordan quirked a smile. "That works out, then," he replied. "Would you like a hand with that?" He felt weird not helping; usually, unless he's been tasked specifically with cleanup while down here, he read or played cards when nothing else was happening, which was most of the time. But being idle while someone else worked made him uncomfortable.

"Thanks," he said, laughing a little. "I'm mostly harmless. It makes sense if you think about it, that some hunters are pretty strange. We've spent most of our lives dealing with being told we're crazy, maybe thinking we really are crazy, and trying to deal with that while also dealing with the dangers of the shadows we see. It's not really any kind of surprise that we've got behavioral quirks. Anyone awake and out of a pod - well, they've been deemed more valuable than crazy, for one reason or another. It'd be interesting to see the criteria for the selection process," he mused.

"Good point." Jordan picked up a few paper towels and set about the task of cleaning the monitors. They were probably cleaned more often than the window, but then again, they were also touched a lot more than the window. He wondered if Melvin liked his environment to be clean, or if it was just that the guy didn't like to do nothing.

"I was lucky, sort of," he said. "My brother could see them too, so I knew it wasn't completely in my head." A brief look of melancholy flitted across his face, but he shook it off rapidly. "I was going to college, working towards a degree in psychology with the intention of eventually finding a teaching position," he told Melvin. "What about you, if you don't mind saying?"

"Sounds like an interesting field," Jordan replied. "Research or treatment? Research, I bet," he guessed, sounding genuinely interested. "You might be able to follow that line of inquiry, actually. Maybe with some differences in the equipment used and the scope and type of parasites you're looking at, but hey, no other facility in the world is doing this kind of research. Also, as long as you survive, I'd say you're pretty much guaranteed eventual tenure." He flashed a grin at Melvin.

The smile faded at the question. "Andrew died shortly before I was contacted by Deus Ex," he said. "Otherwise, maybe - " He cut himself off with a sharp headshake. "No use in what-ifs," he sighed.

"You seem to have a decent brain in your head," Jordan chuckled. "I'm sure they'll figure that out sooner or later." He half-shrugged. "You're wearing a trainee coat. That's like walking around with a KICK ME sign pinned to your back. But that's a problem that solves itself with a little time and competence."

He shook his head when Melvin apologized. "I'm the one who brought it up in the first place. Don't worry about it."

He was just as happy for the tactful subject change, though, and picked it up immediately. "I don't think he's ever actually threatened the observation post or the island itself. I seem to recall someone mentioning runic devices around the perimeter, but I'm afraid I don't know what kind. Anything that gets close enough to put the observation post in danger will be in tracking range long before it's in attack range, and if something comes in on an aggressive course we'll have orders in plenty of time. Goes to show how often anything like that happens that I've been here over a year but I still don't have personal experience with protocols for a threat to the sub, I guess."