Cullen walked out of the Aurelius tunnel and the home crowd gave him the particular warmth reserved for fighters who had already shown them something worth remembering. The ice-and-nerve fight against Kaizen had done something for his standing with the Aurelius sections—the crowd that had watched him get paralyzed repeatedly and keep coming back each time, that had watched him find the depth the surface couldn't hold and build the freeze the nerve strikes couldn't crack, had developed a specific investment in him that was different from the general home support. It wasn't just that he was theirs. It was that they had been through something with him and the something had been worth being through.
