It's early in the morning on Reaping Day, and it's snowing in District 2. Aradia walks down the quiet early-morning street, her pack a comforting weight across her shoulders, a coil of rope bouncing against her leg at every step. The snowflakes hang suspended in the air, illuminated yellow in the light of the old streetlamps. The mountain is up ahead, a dark shape against a darker sky.

In someone's front lawn, there are two earthy disruptions to the freshly fallen snow. A girl leans against a shovel, catching her breath. Aradia pauses just for a second: this is her mistake.

"Move along citizen, I'm investigating," the girl says, as she hoists her shovel to begin digging a third hole. She tosses a shovelful of gravelly dirt over her shoulder theatrically, and it hits the snow in a wide spray. The girl looks suddenly at Aradia and exclaims in a voice that is unnecessarily loud. "Wait just a hot second! You're that ghost chick, right?"

"Hey, Pyrope!" someone shouts from a second-story window. "Go back to bed, you crazy fuck!"

"You're having a weather-based auditory hallucination!" the girl shouts back. "Also, mind your own beeswax!"

"I'm not a ghost," Aradia says softly, and walks away.

She gets to the mountain ten minutes before the start of her shift. The warning bell chimes for the first time just as she enters the locker room. She straps herself quickly into her harness, and dons the mask that kept the stone dust out of her eyes and lungs. Her pick holstered on her left side, she ascends the lift to the fourth level as the warning bell echoes through the mountain a second time.

"You're working deep exploratory again today, kid," the foreman says as Aradia exits the lift.

"Yes, sir," Aradia says.

"Don't worry, you'll be out of here in time to get cleaned up for this afternoon."

"Yes, sir."

The boy in charge of the winch is new at his job, and Aradia's descent down the shaft is jerky and uncomfortable. A ghost would not feel this, Aradia thinks, as the straps of her harness bite into her skin. But as she descends lower, into the deepest depths of the mountain quarry, and the rope that holds her becomes invisible in the growing darkness, for just a second she is floating, insubstantial in a claustrophobic sky. In the faint light of her halogen lamp, the glass of her mask makes her eyes look empty and pale.

Terezi Pyrope is on a mission.

She approaches the foot of the mountain, her breath misting in the cold air. The snow is thinner and wetter now, sleeting down to plaster her hair to her forehead and soak through her insufficient sweater. Terezi Pyrope had a dream last night that she can only just barely remember.

"Cadet Pyrope," says the peacekeeper at the door, and she salutes him with cold hands and a click of her shivering heels.

Inside, the fluorescent lights buzz and flicker. Terezi's locker is at the far end of the cadet's locker room, and she passes several of her tired early-morning peers.

"Think you have enough shit in there?" Petra Sill asks her, laughing, as Terezi opens her locker door and lifts her knee to hold back the contents with a practiced motion.

"Nah," Terezi says with a sharp-toothed grin. A couple pieces of chalk escape and roll listlessly away on the metal floor. Her helmet, in a fit of petulant irony, tips off of the top shelf and bounces painfully off of her head. Petra snorts and pulls her gloves on.

"See you inside, Red 1," she says.

"I have a couple extra dragon pics if you want to emulate my unparalleled sense of interior design!" Terezi shouts after her.

She extricates her training gear and suits up.

It's even colder in the sparring room, but Terezi knows she'll warm up fast enough.

"Cadet Ortega!" she shouts, and across the room a blue-helmeted boy heaves a sigh.

"What's up, Pyrope?" he says.

"Your choice, 3 minutes prep," she replies, and he scowls.

"Fine. Anything but sabers."

"Wuss."

"Hey, give a Blue boy a fighting chance. How about singlestick?"

"Ha! You'll be a black-and-blue boy when we're done!"

They salute and face off on the matt, both in upright guard. Terezi's singlestick, as with the rest of her equipment, is a bright and delicious red.

"So, Ortega," she says, and watches the tense of his shoulders. She knows he isn't used to shit-talking during a match, and she plans to use this to her advantage. "Have you gotten any better at your footwork since last time?"

"Um," he says, and she advances and tries for a hit at his left ribs, and then right ribs, and then right cheek. He blocks each neatly, and always with the forte of his blade. Hmm, she thinks, he has gotten better.

"Nice," she says, and flashes him a dangerous smile. "Keep that up and you'll be Blue 1 in no time."

"I am Blue 1," he says with a furrow of his brow, and advances. He's strong and quick, but bad at maintaining opposition, and she lands a hit on his right ribs. Someone from the other side of the room cheers her on.

"You're kidding!" she says. "Oh, I forgot that Dressler got bumped down because of his foot injury. What a shame, huh?"

Silent, he feints low and then fails to land a hit to her left cheek. Backing up, Terezi switches to a hanging guard. She has not stopped smiling. A few cadets have stopped their training to watch the two of them spar.

"Say, Ortega, do you know how Dressler received that injury? All I've heard is what I'm sure is a spurious rumor."

"I don't know." Keeping his singlestick angled low as well, Ortega positions his right leg slightly out from under the protection of his guard. Terezi's smile grows wider. She loves it when her opponent tries to fool her with such an obvious ruse.

"I heard his harness failed on a quarry shift," she says, and Ortega gives a noncommittal shrug. His right leg creeps further out from under his guard, tempting. "Well," she adds, "I say 'his' harness…" and she trails off. Ortega's eyes dart up to her face.

"What do you mean?" he asks sharply. Terezi shrugs briefly, and then lunges to take his bait. He withdraws his leg immediately as expected, and Terezi moves her singlestick back up to her high hanging guard, where he is surprised to find his cut blocked. His lower half now open, Terezi hits him unwielding on the thigh, and he stumbles, leg buckling.

"I mean," she says, "that the faulty piece-of-shit equipment that sent him to the hospital and dumped him unceremoniously down the ranks of the Blue Team probably wasn't his personal harness, since I found that one when I was doing some casual early-morning excavation in your front yard."

Ortega gapes at her. "Pyrope," he begins, "you piece of shit—"

She opts for a false beat and aims a cut at his hilt. Off guard, her raises his point to block, and she comes in under his guard, smashing a blow in at his ribs perhaps a little harder than necessary. Winded and gasping, he loses hold of his singlestick with only a light tap, and staggers to the side, falling to a knee, palms open and surrendering. Terezi leans over him. All around them, the room has hushed and the cadets are watching curiously. Petra Sill folds her arms across her chest, her lips pursed.

"You will no longer lead Blue Team," Terezi says. "You will not be allowed to train. You will no longer be a cadet. You will never be a peacekeeper." She leans in closer, her hair brushing his cheek and her lips just beside his ear. She is remembering her dream, and not smiling any more. "You will not," she says softly, "volunteer."

She stands straight and walks away, letting her singlestick clatter to the ground.

"Pyrope—" Petra Sill says, a warning. Terezi turns in time to block Ortega's punch, but he has picked up his singlestick again, and in a wild flail it connects with the right side of her face. Her cheek red and smarting, she grabs the shaft of the stick and twists it out of his hand.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" she says, almost casually, and breaks his nose.

When she takes the stage, Terezi is straight-backed and proud, and the bruise on her cheek is starting to purple. She is wearing peacekeeper white— a bitter color, she thinks, but in the wet afternoon light it has a strangely sweet edge. The clothes of Dimitriy Dragov, the District 2 Escort, seem an even darker black beside her.

"Aradia Megido," he says in clipped tones. Terezi looks out over the crowd. Ortega stands off to the side, his shoulders hunched, nose bandaged, and lips and chin still stained pink with the blood. He does not look up. He does not speak or raise his hand.

Aradia climbs up the stairs to the Reaping stage, her feet seeming barely to touch the steps as she rises. She does not look at Terezi, at her white clothes or purple cheek. Her long hair is loose down her back, and she hasn't managed to brush all of the stone dust out of it, and it is beautiful. Terezi grins at her as she passes, a crazy sharp-toothed grin. She is remembering the dream she had the night before. She is smiling the smile of someone greeting an old friend.

"Hey there, ghost girl," she says.