Night Patrol

[rekindledtitan]

It’s always hard to tell where Nexus time will fall relative to her own world, and it gets even more complicated with the planet-hopping nature of a Guardian’s job. This time it’s the small hours of the morning back home, but Blaze finds they’ve popped out in the early evening, Nexus-time. ‘They’ being just herself and her Ghost, one six-foot-plus robot soldier in plate armor and her palm-sized companion, his shell an array of silver points that flex and spin as he floats alongside her.

 

Ghost is projecting a map of the central Nexus in front of him as they walk. If one watches closely, the little boundaries and markers shift slightly, every so often. They have a lot of errands duties to get through, so it’s possible to run into them almost anywhere. Hunting for parts in an all-night tech market, or collecting a takeout order from one of the many places serving ‘Nexus fusion’ dishes. Sorting supplies around a park bench in the moonlight, or heading into the woods along one of the less popular walking trails.

 

They talk to each other now and then, one loud and one barely a murmur; it’s mostly about the work, but now and then it slips into more serious discussion. Eventually, Blaze exhales a simulated sigh of frustration and asks, perhaps rhetorically, perhaps directed at the nearest innocent bystander:

 

“How would you help someone figure out how to be their own person?”