She smiled, and it transformed her entire face from serious student to the girl who laughed at Jordan's terrible jokes and made sure everyone ate proper meals and somehow made tactical analysis sound like poetry.
"What did you want to be?" I asked. "Before the academy. Before you decided to become a professional monster fighter. What was the plan?"
"Marine biologist," she said without hesitation. "I wanted to study deep-ocean ecosystems. The places where sunlight never reaches and pressure creates environments completely alien to surface life. There are creatures down there that exist in conditions that should be impossible, using energy sources we barely understand."
"That actually sounds a lot like gate exploration."
