"I never had enough money to eat here." Maverick said

She and Ramirez sat together under the dimly glowing neon. Music echoed up from one of the nearby clubs, and voices advanced up the street in a rolling echo as the night life pulled itself into full swing. The table at which they sat wasn't much more than a slab of plywood on top of a barrel.

Ramirez prodded at his plate, "I think that might have been a blessing in disguise.

Maverick grinned at him from the half-darkness, "Stop being so picky."

He lifted his chin in defiance, "In my defense, I am used to a higher standard of cuisine."

"My apologies the food wasn't plated by angels my dear prince."

The beam of a rolling blacklight passed over them from the front entrance of one of the clubs highlighting the, usually invisible, tattoos on maverick's face. From what he had seen of it, the tattoo depicted the branches of a tree which crawled up the side of her neck and around behind her ear onto the side of her head to vanish beneath her hairline. One of the branches but down onto her cheek and forked into two prongs that framed one eye.

She must have noticed his staring because she raised an eyebrow.

"Not that I blame you for staring. I am sexy as hell, but you want to tell me why?"

Ramirez shrugged, "I don't know. I just.... well I just realized that I don't know as much about you as I thought I did, and I'm not sure how I feel about that."

Maverick shrugged, "Honestly all of this stuff.... Its not all that interesting."

Ramirez looked around, tilting his head back so he could see the distant ceiling high above covered in pipes and great slabs of metal lit only by the light of glowing neon and fires. From here, he could see catwalks spanning the walls, and cutting across the ceiling like the tangled canopy of forest trees. Not to his surprise, he swore he could see people moving up there.

"I literally grew up on Cedar Street and started figure skating when I was four at the local rec-center. MY town was pretty boring." He motioned around, "All this.... Well, its almost as alien to me as Arcadia."

She gave a small smile, "You're just as alien to this place as it is to you. You stick out like a sore \thumb."

Ramirez ran a hand through his hair, "When you're this sexy it's hard not to stand out."

"I mean you're well fed, and your facial hair is intentional. believe you me if I wasn't here, you would be in serious trouble."

And as if to emphasize her point, just then a group of rather rough and tough young men walked past sizing Ramirez up with critical expressions. Digital blacklight tattoos rolled across their skin in geometric patterns. It was hard to see their eyes, but Ramirez thought he saw them looking him over. They only stopped when Maverick shifted in her seat and they caught sight of her.

It was clear, he may have been an outsider, but she sure wasn't.

The men walked off.

"To be fair this isn't exactly a great part of town. This is what equates to the red light district, which is sort of meaningless here since the primary source of income in second city is prostitution,"

That was an understatement.

Ramirez could have guessed that fun fact about second city's economy from a mile off.

Voices rose up from another group of passing strangers, clearly directed at him. Promising a good time. Short curvy women and tall lean men.

Ramirez didn't bother to more than glance at them.

He wasn't that kind of guy.

Sure he got around back in his day, but Ramirez had never paid for fun. He prided himself on his ability as a pickup artist, and not in a creepy kind of way. Why pay cash for something charm could buy, and plus none of those people were half as interesting as the women in front of him, and that thought had stayed mostly the same for over the past two years.

Two years in which he had been as chaste as aw holy mountain monk, which, sadly put his pickup skills to waste.

The past few months he had simply contented himself in wingmaning for Emperor Celex who, as it turns out, had a surprising amount of game all on his own. He didn't know what it was about the rainbow haired war criminal that women liked so much, but they certainly did.

Some women just liked their men a little dangerous.

Maverick turned her head towards the street, light glittering over her tattoos again, "Come on its still early and we have a ways to go ."

He gladly left the majority of his inferior food unfinished and followed her out into the street, blending in with the crowd to some degree as they made their way deeper into the darkness. They left the red light district some distance down, and ended up passing into the street s of a large shanty town. The people here were a little more put together than they had been at the homeless encampment. From looking at them, the people here seemed to be the ones who probably worked at the nearby bars and clubs.

At least they had rooves over their heads, though, ramirez looked up towards the cavern ceiling, not like they would need it.

Halfway through the city, they passed over a rather murky and sluggish looking canal. In the half dark, the water below him looked almost black, and Ramirez didn't even want to think about what might be lurking under the surface. Ripples disturbed the water's surface, and Ramirez paused to look down the length of the canal eyes widening in surprise when he saw a series of small narrow boats being paddled up the length of the canal. Each boat was made so that the front end curved upwards out of the water to end in a long point upon which was suspended some manner of lantern. The lanterns tended to come in eerie shades of green or yellow, the same colors he might expect of the ferryman who guided souls across the river Styx.

The walls of the small canal were lined in an almost continual strip of graffiti layered one over top of another. Ramriez imagined that whoever had done them had had to do them while standing on one of those rickety boats.

He felt Maverick as she stepped up beside him.

"That's the Churn, it's the central canal that leads out of lake Luctus."

"You guys have a lake down here."

She gave him a grim smile, "Yeah sure, burst pipes, poor water management, and underground runoff all sort of bring water here. I wouldn't drink it though. One of the highest death rates in second city has to do with waterborne illness."

"We talking like Cholera.'

She grinned in the half dark, "that's exactly what I mean."

Ramirez backed slowly away from the canal holding his hands up as if they were contaminated. Maverick laughed and grabbed him by the back of the shirt, "come on, its just this way." They turned left at the end of the bridge and followed the line of the canal heading further into the city. The streets were alive with bodies. Men and women sat on the edge of the canal, their feet dangling up over the water as they sat.

The further they went in the more boats Ramirez could see. Rickety little loading docks protruded into the canal every few hundred yards, and boats practically swamped the canal like lily pads in a swamp to the point where Ramirez could not longer see the water.

The buzzing of voices rose up as they made their way down one of these stairways.

Ramirez did his best to hold his footing as he was jostled left to right, and was sure that if he had bothered to bring his wallet it would be more than gone.

Maverick stopped at the base of the dock where a few open boats were waiting for passengers.

They approached the man at the front of the cue, tall and dark, wearing a long black cloak that hid his face in shadows. As he stood he leaned against his long staring pole, which disappeared into the black water beneath him, "Credits." He demanded , "And don't say you don't got no credits, I can see you're well fed enough to have them."

Maverick didn't argue. She probably could have, but he wasn't asking for much.

There was a pause as the man looked her over.

"Hold on..... Maverick, is that you."

Maverick paused and leaned closer, "Mind telling me who YOU are."

After a moment the man pulled back his hood, and Ramirez stepped back a bit in unintentional shock. The man standing before them was rather.... Well a good portion of his face had been taking up by some sort of growth which obscured one eye and ran down onto the side of his cheek.

"Ill be damned, "She muttered, "Toad, is that you."

Toad, Ramirez mouthed behind her making a rather odd face.

"LONG time no see." Toad said leaning even more heavily against his pole, "And here after all these years the boys and I thought we were going to find your bones moldering in a dusty alley somewhere. One day you was there and the next day you was gone no word, and no postcard." He looked her over with his one visible eye and grinned a blackened, toothless grin, "So where you been all these years, you look good, less than starving. You get yourself picked up by one of those flesh traders." He glanced over her shoulder at Ramirez, "Whose this, a john or your pimp?"

"The pimp in question was the UNSC." Maverick said voice filled with mild amusement.

The man's one eye widened a bit, "No shit. You went up and sold yourself to the government. Can't say I blame you. Was the food at least good."

"I thought it was worth it. At least got me off of having to live on the same planet as you."

The man barked a laugh, and then turned his eyes on Ramirez, "Now who is this. Not one of ours, he's to pretty." He cackled, "boy looks like he hasn't slept hard a day in his life."

"Toad, this is Ramirez. We work together."

Toad cackled again, "Relegated to the coworker zone I see." Ramriez felt his face flush a bit red in the half dark. Toad waved a finger at him, "You don't want Maverick boy, she may look normal now, but she's dirty cave dwelling scum just like the rest of us."

"I'll keep that under advisement." Ramirez said, taking a step into the boat to sit next to maverick." Toad pulled his hood back up over his head before turning to navigate them through the crowded canal bumping into other boats quite frequently as they navigated their way inward.

Maverick turned to Ramirez, "Canal porter is the easiest way to get around down here, and probably the safest."

Toad cackled, "yeah, we got the porter's guild. Pays pretty good for lowly wretches like us, and we get docked pay if we tip you into the river so homicide by my kind is relatively low." He winked at them, or at least Ramirez thought he winked.

What was with people with only one ye and winking, Adam had the exact same problem, and they didn't seem to understand it was no better than blinking in most cases.

They continued down the length of the canal through slow traffic for a time before things began to pick up, and Suddenly Ramirez was sitting at the front of the boat his mouth open in awe as their small ship cruised outward, and onto the surface of a massive black, underground lake.

Thousands of orange lanterns peppered the darkness around him from boats and arrays along the bank of the river.

The space was so large that the distant other side of the lake was hazy with atmosphere.

The water below him was as black as marble, reflecting rippling light from a hundred boats that cruised in slow patters across the lake surface. The high ceiling was almost lost within the blackness overhead. The lake shores were clustered with shanty towns and docks. Smoke rose into the air from what Ramirez could only have assumed was some sort of outdoor market.

As they rowed past, a long, thin boat with a roof, sitting low in the water, caused by on their right light by several lanterns along either of its sides.

It was as if he had entered and entirely new world.

One that he was woefully unprepared to handle