Lyra slammed her fist into the tree, glaring at it with an anger she could usually keep hidden. "Fucking bullshit, that was such fucking bullshit. What, death sentence for crashing an airship? What kind of crap was that? Why the hell should I bother helping Xylphatia, if thats how they react to us." Marcus watched from his own perch, leaning against the tree, skin peeled off his hands as he sharpened one of his smartdisc blades against his metal arms. "What, you think she didn't do anything else we missed? Grow the hell up Lyra. We've worked with them before, and they've been the better of two bad options." Lyra turned and snarled out "oh really? you think if you walk into Xylphatia like you normally look, without the skin, they'll just let you in? They won't judge you because you're metal?"
"Oh yeah, they'd judge the shit out of me, but that's not the real point here. The real point is, you identified with Tao, right?" "That's not the point, the point is she died for no real reason."
"So? Lots of people die for no real reason. Both your parents. Long Fang. Millions of people in my world got nuked because they were flesh bags. Xyleena's brood died for no understandable reason, since we never saw what killed them. I'm sure everyone knows someone who died for no real reason. Hell, your boyfriend died because he was trying to sell out some of our ship locations to the fangs, and you did the killing yourself. Considering the fangs had a single ship left, even if it is a massive bugger of a ship, you didn't have to kill him." Marcus pulled back on his skin and stood up. "Now, you gonna sulk all day, or we going to get some jobs done? Because, no matter how much more complicated this new great hunt is, we need to get on with it. Long Fang would have wanted it that way."
And then Marcus was hit by a smartdisc from the stalking predator in the trees, causing him to fall forward and start cursing as the disc buzzed in his back, attempting to cut his spinal column.