"Me too," she pronounces, carefully neatening all of her pages into a tidy stack that she clips together. "Time to return triumphant?"

"There are still several golems to repair but we could go return the samples you collected there, yeah."

"Oh, there's more," she snorts. "Of course, why wouldn't there be, how silly of me to expect it was just one golem. Never mind, the samples will keep, and I don't see why I shouldn't collect more if the destroyers are available. Time to go trek somewhere else and do this all again."

"Now I know how to fix golems!" he says, brightly. "It should not take this long to fix them again."

Onwards to the next cluster of Destroyers visible over there in the distance.

"And I can help without infringing upon your honor! It's not like I have to write a second report."

Onwards!

There are many more Destroyers to kill and equipment to repair. They can easily spend the rest of their morning on this.

Or longer than just the morning. There are a lot of things to fix.

"Want to break for lunch? We could have a picnic, or go back to drop off the samples and I can ask about signet standardization."

"That sounds like a good idea, yes. I don't have preferences between picnic and dropping samples off."

"Hm. Picnic, then dropping off samples and checking in? Because a picnic sounds too adorable not to do. And how many other people can say that they had a picnic on the Fire Islands?"

He laughs. "Not many, I expect! Sounds fine by me. I'll let my minions stand guard if something decides to come attack us."

"Sure! I don't expect we'll get too distracted to defend ourselves from an ambush."

Picnic! They find a suitable location that's easy to defend, out of the way, and not too close to any lava flows. Vetareh has a blanket and food, because why wouldn't she have those things, she has a mesmer bag and had shopping time. The blanket is rolled out, the food is unpacked, and the mesmer daintily sits at a corner and smiles brilliantly at James.

He sits right next to her, also smiling, and leans closer to plant a kiss on her lips.

Aw! She reaches out to caress his cheek, and gently returns the kiss.

"So, do you think this is our first date?"

"Maybe! I suppose yesterday was a bit too action-packed to count."

"We were also a bit less lovey and coupley," she points out, nibbling on a sandwich. "And a bit more surrounded by your close friends. Not that I minded, I liked them all, but this way we can say our first date was on the Fire Islands."

He laughs. "Yeah. I think we'd still have Taimi's company if this place didn't block her communicator."

She snorts. "That'll take some getting used to. I suppose your sparse time off you're rather on call for whatever crisis Tyria happens to have at the time, so it makes sense. Though not, perhaps, always being able to hear your side of the communicator."

"I suppose it would be useful to have a communicator I can shut down."

"Sure. And something you can shut down certain parts of. So you're available if an emergency occurs, but we don't subject a... I recall hearing she was sixteen? To our flirting."

"Yes, I'm sure Taimi has less than zero interest in that, if I frame it that way she'll probably jump on adding that feature in a heartbeat."

"Clever man," she says, fondly.

He beams at her.

And: food!

Food!

"This is nice," she comments. "I mean, the picnic too, but the adventuring. Collecting research samples is fun. Sort of... nostalgic."

"Nostalgic?"

"I was a researcher in Orr. Professionally, I mean. Specializing in studying the interplay of different magic types, with special respect to the subtle changes mesmer magic can have on other branches of magic. Beholden to the crown, with a lab and an office and grants for my research. It was pretty cushy, though it did mean that if the king said jump, I was beholden to jump."