Fenix remained silently confused; she wanted to be hugged? He wasn't sure why, or how he was supposed to know, or why she would want him to hug her as she seemed to tolerate his existence at best, and before he could make a decision on whether he was supposed to do that now she stepped forward.

It wasn't until she was halfway through the first word that he realized what she was entering. "That's..." He trailed off--impossible was what he was going to say, but then the she hit the button to confirm the password.

The wall turned green, and slowly faded away, along with the identity of Subject V:

R E M I N G T O N V A E R B O N D

And now it all made sense. What kind of power could topple a nation of mages? The power to completely nullify magic simply by being near it. Along with being a top class fighter, that ability ensured there was probably no one in that entire country who posed a serious threat to him.

"I hate mages." He recalled the words; the question why had remained, forgotten in the chaos that followed that day.

"Emma..." Clearly she hadn't known how her brother had gotten his powers. He took a few steps forward. It was awkward, as he was quite a bit taller than her and had to lean down, but he wrapped his arms around her as she'd suggested.

"I'm . . ." she trailed off.

Not just a moment later, Fenix took the steps necessary to wrap his arms around her. She felt her breath catch and a momentary skip of her heartbeat followed soon after. She lowered her head. She . . . she wasn't exactly serious when she'd said that, well--maybe she kind of was.

Was that why she didn't feel so bad?

Emma lifted her hands, touched Fenix's arms, and leaned back against him. She squeezed his forearms and didn't let go. For a long time, she just breathed.

". . . I'm glad," she stated indignantly, "That they got what's coming. They fucking deserved it. They fucking deserved it all."

While on one hand, she wanted to just storm off, go after the box over in the distance, take what she could find, and leave in a huff, but . . . at the same time, she couldn't. She couldn't do it at all. Fenix was still holding her, and she still had her hands over his arms, and she was feeling a little better when she had someone holding her when in a really bad state like this, which Fenix would probably be able to tell, if only because how tightly she was holding onto his arms.

"That they did." His agreement was genuine, not just an attempt to placate her, though it might've been hard to tell. In addition to whatever they did to Remmy, they had sacrificed someone in order to create whatever was in the case ahead.

Which they probably should grab, but Emma was holding onto him tightly, so he figured it was best to stay put. That she found comfort even in someone like him spoke for how upset she must have been. If it weren't for the fact that she'd probably faint the moment she saw a skeleton, Fenix would've wished Mayako were here. She was much better at comforting people.

He wasn't sure what else to say, so he said nothing. Being silent was always a good option to default to.

For a long time, Emma said nothing. She just breathed, kept clinging to Fenix, and refrained from letting her emotions get the better of her. It took a long while, nearly a whole minute of just standing there, time she inevitably spent resting her head against Fenix's chest and feeling his heart beat against her skull. That was oddly soothing, reminding her of times that she'd laid her head upon Mayako's chest and stayed in the comfortable warmth of the girl's arms.

"Okay, I--" she paused and took a deep breath, "I'm-- I'm okay. Um."

Emma broke away from Fenix gently, turned slightly, and looked up at him. She smiled slightly. It was very obviously forced, but . . . she was trying, at least. No matter how broken she must have looked, hair all out of her face, scars lining the right side of her face, those tallies on the right side and the deep cuts and bruises all around her sunken eye; there were tears in her eyes and a weak smile across her lips. It . . .

"Um, yeah," she bit her lip, "Thanks, um-- yeah, let's just get this and get some sleep, okay?"

She was on the verge of stuttering with that one, but she was sucking it up and getting better. With that, she turned and marched down the room, to that lone box resting at the far end . . .

"Sure." Of course, they still needed to find a way out, too. He hoped it was the remaining path from the main room that led to to the exit and not the collapsed hallway where they fell in or getting out was going to be rather difficult.

It was actually a case; a wooden bottom and a glass top, with some cloth in the bottom. Resting on top of the cloth, carved out of what appeared to be bronze, was a medallion.

Fenix did not bother asking Emma to be careful; it was impossible for any magical traps to be functioning on the box, assuming it worked as advertised.

Without even a second thought, Emma rummaged around through the box. There didn't seem to be too much. No depth to it at all. It didn't take her too long to haphazardly find the object for which she'd searched for this whole adventure of theirs.

". . . what?" she asked aloud.

Emma plucked the medallion from the box and held it up before her face, taking a short moment to examine it. Before long, though, she whipped around and held it out for Fenix to see.

"What the hell is this?"

Fenix frowned; he'd gotten the impression that Emma knew much more about Remmy than Mayako did, but apparently even she didn't know about her brother's power, or she wouldn't have needed to ask.

"It's a medallion," Fenix answered, which would probably irritate her with the obviousness of it, but then he held out his free hand, and a dark ball of flame appeared in it at the same time as his wings reemerged. "And it does this."

He had the good sense not to scare her by throwing it at her, fortunately. Instead he simply walked forward while holding it--once he got within a few feet of her again, the flame wobbled before breaking apart into small particles of energy, which shortly thereafter disappeared. Another step forward and the same thing happened to his wings.

At first, she was shaken. She didn't expect Fenix to bring out his wings. It was going to take her awhile to get used to that. The problem here? He was walking right towards her. He also had a ball of fire, too. Emma recoiled visibly. It was subtle, but it was noticeable . . .

And she didn't exactly show signs of fighting back, either.

But then it happened. Emma quirked a brow at first. After another second, as the flames began to die out, Emma realized what was happening.

"W-- wait-- they were--"

She felt her knees shake. It was another reminder. Another Goddamn reminder.

"They were seriously--"

Emma brought the medallion down to her side, wrinkled her brow, and began to walk. She said nothing further. Fenix could have interpreted this any way he liked, it didn't matter to her. She knew how she felt. It was bittersweet. This was a glorious magical artifact, yes. It was most definitely that. And she had every intention of keeping it forever. Yet at the same time, she knew what they were trying to recreate, and she didn't even remotely approve.

It would probably go unnoticed by Emma, but Fenix bit his lip slightly when she flinched back away from him. Not that he wasn't expecting her to, but there was no better way to show her, and explaining would've taken more time than he would have liked, especially as she didn't know even the fundamentals of magic.

Funny, how mages thought sometimes. They understood magic so well they could make it so someone could almost completely nullify it--but they could not understand people, and that had cost them their success.

He did not say this to Emma, but he could sympathize. Now with what they did, but simply how they were--he felt like he wasn't too different. He was a quick learner, a good reasoner, but due to his upbringing he simply did not understand people. Not very well, in any case.

As much as he just wanted to follow Emma silently, there was a question that needed to be asked. "What do you want to tell Mayako?" Emma had forbid him from bringing up the night in Galaens to her, as she apparently didn't remember it--a condition he agreed was probably for the best. While this wasn't directly related, as far as he knew Mayako did not know Remmy had any kind of special power.

Emma stopped walking at Fenix's question. She said nothing for awhile, just mulled it over in her head until she came to a simple, logical conclusion.

"We went on an adventure," she replied (without turning around, that is) and held up the medallion, "And I found an awesome magical item. That's all we gotta say."

And neither of them were technically lying, either. They were going to be leaving out some details-- everything dealing with Remmy --but the base idea behind their adventure was the same. Mayako was going to ask questions, sure, and they'd be able to answer them all under that logic alone.

With that, though, she started walking again.

"As you wish," Fenix intoned. He would just leave the story to Emma; it wasn't like Mayako was going to to question him not having much to say about it. Besides, while he usually had no problem with lying, lying to Mayako came with more guilt than he generally liked to feel. He wasn't yet sure why.

He followed Emma through the lab and back to the main room; he now had to say a few feet back from her, as getting too close would put out their light.

There was only one more direction to go, which was the way directly across from where they'd fallen in. It was a long hallway; much longer than any of the others, and it had several doors that were probably once locked and possibly magically protected, but were now simply laying on the ground, either time or the intruders that killed the mages having taken them off their frames.

It ended in what would seem like a dead-end...however, as Emma reached it at the edge of the light, the wall blocking their progression would dissolve into the same kind of energy particles as earlier, revealing a stone staircase leading back up to the surface.

Emma briefly wondered why Fenix was walking so slow. There was no reason he couldn't walk beside her or anything. At this point, she wouldn't have minded it. Honestly, it might have been a little comforting. After a second of wondering if she smelled bad or something, though, she realized that his torch ran on mana--they'd just lose their ability to see if Fenix got closer.

She frowned a little at that.

Down the final hallway, she paid little attention to the details of their surroundings. There were a number of doors all ripped from their hinges, but they weren't going in there. There might have been more magical artifacts to find here, but Emma wasn't interested anymore. She kept pushing forward, until at long last they reached the end of the hall--the end and the wall that quickly dissolved before their eyes.

"Well . . ." she paused. "That's convenient."

"An illusion to hide the entrance. Guess it won't be so secret anymore." Not that there was much for anyone else to find, unless they were willing to dig through the collapsed hallway. Even if there was, they'd made off with the prime loot of the place.

"We better find our way back; Mayako's probably pretty worried by now." Assuming she hadn't fallen asleep or something. He hadn't exactly asked what the situation back at the camp had been.

With moonlight being adequate to guide them, Fenix stuffed the manalight in his pocket along with the others he'd pilfered and walked up beside Emma. He looked at her a few moments searchingly before asking, "Are you going to be okay?"

It was a fair question, and one he had to ask before they reunited with Mayako.

Outside of the facility, Emma had to agree with Fenix. It was no longer a secret at all. It didn't matter anymore, though. Those people were dead and the world was better off for it. They had nothing left to hide. Emma's mood was steadily dropping by the time they got up the stairs and into the starlight. She barely had a facade left to wear. She just wanted to go to bed, but she knew it wasn't an option. Sleeping probably wasn't an option, even. She was feeling the pains of sadness in her chest and she knew how that could last all night.

". . . yeah," she sighed.

It was hellish for her, thinking about her brother. Emma folded her arms over her diaphragm. She could feel the thoughts weighing on her again . . .

"I just . . . I miss him." Emma sulked her head and shoulders, "I think about him . . . every day, honestly. And just-- I know that it's supposed to go away, but-- you know how when someone . . . dies? And you go to sleep and the next morning you think they'll still be here? It's supposed to go away! But I still think that all the time. That I can just go home and he'll be there and he'll just say 'Mornin', Em! I'm makin' pancakes; you want some?' with his goofy lookin' face, like nothin' ever happened."

With Fenix standing next to her and her mood steadily dropping again, she was once more tempted to just lean into him. She was starting to feel self conscious about that, though. That maybe she was being too clingy or something, or that she was giving him the wrong idea or something (though she didn't even know what the "wrong idea" would even be at this point), so she didn't. Not at this distance, at least. If he were closer, maybe. He was comforting when he wanted to be, after all.

"And then, just-- everything down there, everything those fucking mages did," Emma huffed, "It just makes everything feel so much worse . . ."

He recalled him, the man who was willing to take on an army to rescue those in his care--two of which were his sisters. However foolish the assault might have been, Fenix had found himself drawn into the plan, assaulting Theleaus himself to try and buy Remmy some time to reach his friends and family.

"Don't think of him like that," Fenix instructed, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I didn't know him for long, but even I could see that you all were the most important things to him. I think the best you can do is to remember him fondly as your brother."

To let what the mages did tarnish his memory would be too much a disservice--and to give them more credit than they rightly deserved.