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Life was starting to look up since that Masque. She had been able to spend plenty of time with Wolfram, had some fun at work with the embossing machine, Parker was back, Dani was alive, things were just going so well. And you know, she usually tried not to be too excited about her life. Things almost always turned bad after a while, and who knew what would get ******** up next? But it was starting to seem okay, to hope. To dream, maybe, that things could stay just this good forever.

She'd stayed overlong at work that night, doing an extra run of posters for some big-deal band concert. Fun, easy, and she got to work on the Vanderbilt, which was not nearly so fiddly as the platten presses. Working in "real media" really was as fulfilling as working on the computer, even if it was altogether more difficult--at least, coming to printing. It was dark, clouds covering the moon, and chilly--for that reason, she was keeping her head down, ears pricked for noises.

Just because things had been going so well didn't mean that she was necessarily immune to a random monster's attack, or that a stranger couldn't attack her for whatever it was in her chest that people in Wolfram's organization wanted.

She was a little more than halfway home when she heard the footsteps behind her. They were trying to be light, and that was what drew her attention; she turned, and then immediately blanched.

"You can't touch me," she said to Zinkenite, "You promised."

It was true he hadn't touched her, and a bit of color returned to her narrow face. She clenched her hands in her pockets, took a few steps back; if she ran, though, he could catch her. But he would only pursue if he did want to hurt her, so... either way, she practically had to trust him. So she took a deep breath and said, "You tried to kill me," in as accusing a tone as she could muster. That was definitely pretty physically violent, she thought. Almost certainly.

She scowled, too. "I'm hardly going to fall on the sidewalk," scornfully, but then the doubtful expression faded. She did have to trust this man with her life. She owed him at least a little respect for it. So the brunette took a deep breath. Steeled herself--the shoulders went back, chin up, producing a more visibly confident Tatiana Konstantin. "I guess."

Deep breaths. She was taking them as he caught up to her, suiting her longer strides to his; she yanked her hood off her head, tucked the cardigan she'd been wearing into her bag because it was suddenly too damn hot. "S-so I never got your name," she said through clenched teeth, trying not to betray her anxiety.

She sighed, scuffing her shoes on the ground. God, he really was short. Tate almost was annoyed at herself for being scared of someone who was only just barely more than half her Amazonian height, but she remembered that blinding, shrieking pain in her chest and--jesus, he was probably so used to doing it it was no wonder. "Are you all named after minerals or something," she asked. When he stopped walking, so did she; her hands in her pockets tightened a bit, and she wondered if keys were as good a defense against people like Wolfram as they were against civilians.

"Um, if you can't talk about it, that's okay," she edited suddenly, hands out of her pockets in a warding gesture. "Or if you don't want to. Um. Yeah."

"Are they? Huh." Parker would probably get suspicious if she invested in wasp spray, though. Their apartment did not exactly have a wasp problem, and probably never would; nowhere for the wasps to collect. Actually, too, she really rarely had any problems. Except for the millipede and for her encounter with... Zinkenite.

She didn't like the silence as they walked; it let her mind wonder too much to what could possibly go wrong. "So... your organization is against the senshi, but... you're powered by... whatever it was you were trying to get from me?" The blanket just-making-conversation stayed in place, and she was nervously quiet as she walked. It was hard to try being unaware of the fact that she could die at any moment.

She shook her head. "Why would it be? I just..." Tate shrugged, a little confused and worried. "No, he didn't tell me. He just seems to really hate senshi. Which isn't bad--they're the ones ******** everything up, as far as I've ever noticed." Except for the one who had saved her from Zinkenite, but she didn't mention that; she didn't particularly want to mention it, either. Just thinking about that night gave her the shakes.

"I am careful," she said, careful to keep her tone level though she couldn't quite mute the spike of irritation. "I usually leave while it's still light out. Tonight we just had a lot of extra work to do." Defensive, defensive; she shivered, stuffed her hands back in her pockets. She was just curious, she wanted to say. She didn't know any senshi, just... whatever Zinkenite and Wolfram were. How could she give information to the other side?

At the mention of a masochistic streak she looked a great deal uncomfortable; she flexed her hands in her pockets, more unnerved by the lack of information right then than at the thought of what the person next to her could do to her. Studying her. He hadn't studied her... which was an unnerving thought, because it implied that he studied other people. "I don't actually know him all that well," she lied.

They had meant to meet up together at the Ball--which meant they certainly did know each other well enough to trust each other. But Wolframite had said to pretend they didn't know each other, so... she would. "I just see him every so often, you know?..."

"First time I saw him was when he popped up with you," she said, a definite note of accusation in the alto voice. The implication, of course, was that if she hadn't ever met Zinkenite she wouldn't have seen the silent Negaverse protector; of course, that wasn't true. Tate pursed her lips, looked up at the sky. They were close to home, close enough that she thought perhaps she shouldn't go any further with the Negaverse officer at her side.

She stopped on a street corner. Turn left there, a right two intersections down and she was home. She considered this for a minute, and then looked down to Zink. "Are you going to walk me all the way home, or should I try to save at least a little mystery for next time I run into you."