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After years of being without Gehenna, Vanessa had not really been able to contain her excitement, when Kam suggested that she put on her senshi suit and join him for an evening of patrolling. They were trying to be friends. She was still... sort of with Blake. They weren't going on a date, but the Senshi of Volcanoes prepared for the night with Kam's declaration of love still ringing in her ears. She'd tidied her curls in front of the mirror in her bedroom and then mussed them up again, so that they were properly improper. Wild without looking unkempt, they complimented the playful fire that twinkled in Vulcan's bright eyes as she made her way through Destiny City at Gehenna's side.

A part of Vanessa struggled to believe it. That he loved her. From the start, Kam had been very upfront about what he hadn't wanted from her. He'd slept with so many other women. For a little while, he had even ignored her text messages, and resisted the efforts she'd made to spend time with him. While that particular blip in their not-really-a-relationship had been brief, Vanessa was a little bit haunted by the memory of what it had felt like. Not even she, with all of her optimistic naiveté, could pretend that Kam wasn't trying to shut her out.

Vulcan glanced at Gehenna out of the corner of her eye. It was dusk. The sight of him, so large and so powerful, with the light of the dying sun glistening off his armour brought a soft smile to her lips.

He loved her.

"I forgot how good you look like that," she said, accidentally flirtatious, radiating with the confidence of both a woman and a warrior.

A car alarm started up somewhere nearby. The horn blared. Vulcan turned her head in the direction of the noise, staring down a street where a man was scrambling out of a house to show his son how to shut the stupid thing up. He spotted Gehenna and Vulcan and pursed his lips, but did not say a word.

Vulcan laughed and waved at him. She was tired of hiding.

"I bet I kill more youma than you do tonight."

"You don't need to do me any favours," Vulcan scoffed, twinkling at Gehenna over her shoulder with her big bright eyes. His ego was just like she remembered it. Strange, that he could be so much the same after so many years doing god knows what somewhere else.

Vulcan knew that she was different. As a girl, she had been full of questions, enamoured by Kam's lifestyle as much as she was the way that he looked. With all of those muscles and tattoos and the hair, he was every father's worst nightmare. And he'd been her every dream, before she'd understood exactly how you went about getting into someone's pants.

Not that she'd ever really figured that out.

The war had taken none of Vulcan's fire, but it had changed her. As a woman, she was brave and bold and strong. But the fantasy had gone out of her fight. In Kam's absence, Super Van had wilted into little more than a memory. Vulcan stood proud and fierce in her place.

"Come," she said, reaching for Gehenna's arm with two hands. Smiling, Vulcan gave his bicep a playful squeeze and then started pulling him, gently, down a back alley. Excitment was clear as day on her pretty face. "I want to show you something."

Vulcan stopped short above a curiously large manhole cover. This part of Destiny City was older than the rest. Some sections of the streets were still made out of cobblestones.

"I followed a youma down here one day," she explained, bending to heave the cover out of place, revealing a hole big enough for Gehenna to fall through if he wasn't careful. Metal rungs of an old ladder were visible in the sunlight, before disappearing, leading the way into darkness. "You won't believe what I found."

The other night in the park, when Kam told Vanessa that he'd wanted her to be with someone who would take care of her, she'd decided to be charmed instead of insulted. It was sweet and good of him to want to protect her, and she slept easier at night knowing that he was close by again. When he'd left, all those years ago, Kam had stressed the dangerousness of his mission. He'd stayed firm in his conviction, refusing to let her come along-- and Vanessa had opened every letter, after that, with a lump in her throat, knowing that it might be his last. Knowing that he might never hold her or kiss her or pull her hair again.

He could have died out there. Alkaid had almost killed him.

"Yes," Vulcan smiled at Gehenna's narrowed eyes, lips quirking at the corners, expression as cheeky as her booty shorts. "I did."

It took more than darkness and youma to make the senshi of Volcanoes tremble. Not that Gehenna hadn't found other ways, once upon a time. Determined to at least try and be a good girlfriend, Vulcan reminded herself to focus on the task at hand. She summoned her cell phone out of the subspace, opened up the flashlight app, and aimed the beam of light into the dark at Gehenna's feet, revealing more of the ladder.

"Come see," she said, brushing past Kam to start climbing down. Her feet and hands were confident on the metal, cellphone clutched awkwardly between her fingers. "I actually went in another way the first time, but there was a cave in. I didn't find this until after."

A whole day and a half later. She'd gotten another strike against her record at work for that, and an earful from her father.

"I think it'd make a good place to hang out or something, after some pest control. And dusting."

"That's because it is!" Vulcan said, obliging Kam by stepping forward, aiming the light of her cell phone ahead of them. A glance at the screen told her there was 65% battery life remaining.

Hopefully that was plenty.

"I did the research," she continued, and there was no mistaking the pride in her voice. As a student Vanessa had been much better at turning essays into paper aeroplanes than writing bibliographies. It was a big deal, that she'd taken the time to sit down in a public library and ask the google oracle about the 'awesome youma tunnels underneath Destiny City.' Pending a couple of typos and word choices, her search had proved fruitful.

"They started building it forever ago, but stopped when Destiny City quit growing. They didn't think enough people would use it. I felt a little like Indiana Jones last time I was down here."

And then, aware of the dark energy that was fading ahead of them, Vulcan flashed a grin at Gehenna over her shoulder, heart rate quickening with the anticipation of a fight. It had been a long time since they'd done anything like this together.

Their first battle had ended in a public washroom. Vulcan remembered with a degree of colour in her cheeks the way he'd lifted her on to the counter, tended to her wounds, made her kick a dent in the nearby stall...

... but that was before.

Vulcan swallowed, and then turned off the light, holding up a hand to stop Gehenna. She pressed her fingertips to his chest gently, and did not let them wander.

"There's something up there," she said, voice low, "if we let our eyes adjust, we might be able to get close before it attacks us first."

Otherwise her flashlight was as good to them as a red target sign.