"Okay. Seriously, Hilde, we have to talk about this," Taba said as the door closed behind them.
"What? What's the matter, we got back," Hilde said while avoiding eye contact.
"Don't you even try to lie to me," Taba snapped, black eyes glittering. "You almost died."
"The gorilla wasn't the problem," Taba said. "Well, it was, but not the real one. It was the idiot thing with the grenade. I mean you basically just froze there and stared at it until it blew up in your face."
"Okay, I don't really have an answer to that," Hilde admitted. "I may have been a bit surprised at finding it."
"That's not the only thing," Taba said. "The only thing keeping you from rushing off into the whole mess ahead of everybody when that girder went tumbling was Mike."
Taba sighed and shook his head, sitting down on one of the seats.
"What do you want me to do, not be excited for this opportunity?" Hilde asked before turning around and punching into the wall.
"No, no, of course not." Taba said. "What I want is for you not to waste it, or worse, kill yourself before you can get anything done. Think a little bit before you do stuff, maybe."
"Come on, what's the worse that could've happened?" Hilde asked.
"You could have fought Shi," the djinn noted. Hilde froze, her mouth closing as a pondering look crossed her face. "And who would of won out of that?"
"Ah, fuck," Hilde said.
"Yeah, maybe think a little bit before we move to applying axe to face," the djinn noted. "That said, I really thought it was going to lead to that and we'd get pasted."
Hilde thought back to watching as the robotic woman teleported into view and scattered the clockwork robots that they had had so much trouble with before. All with that sort of floating robot tentacle ball keeping them organized. The sheer physical damage that the angel was capable of was somewhat humbling.
"It would have been a hell of a fight though," Hilde said with a sigh.
"And probably we'd be a footnote in the tale of her legend," Taba noted. "You might get to Valhalla, but you wouldn't die an Aesir."
"Right, and who knows where Shi would go if we won," Hilde asked, brought back down to earth a bit.
"You don't know what your fate is yet, Hilde," Taba reminded her. "There's no reason to go looking for it."
"Now we have to deal with this 'Father' person...thing," the blonde stunt woman said. "This is so much more than dealing with a jerk competitor on camera. But at least we got the other team back so that woman won't think we're just throw-aways right now."
"Well that goes without saying," Taba said. "You just keep being physical and I'll be your mouth. As usual." The djinn gave her a thumbs up and winked.
Hilde nodded with a sigh and leaned against the wall for a few seconds before a twinkling came to her eyes and she turned to look at Taba. "Speaking of getting physical...how's your mouth working Hayden so far."
"He seems delightfully off-balance so far," the djinn noted with a considering smile. "We'll see where that goes. By the way, with him on the team, I seem a bit superfluous."
"Yeah, but not to me," Hilde said. "May your negotiations be wildly successful."
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