Wardroom
(JP Feat Ametheliana)
As Thao observed their new boss down the drink with confidence, they simply rested their elbows on the counter, projecting a small, distant smile of their own. Doing so disturbed the beads of their white-metal necklace, which seemed to just orbit through the air at a lazy pace, without actually touching neither skin nor each other. The woman was basically a living cubist sculpture.
"A general appeal, huh?... If I had known serving in the Vangaurd was so gentile, perhaps I would have considered a different carrier." Eyes got narrower, and the smile just a little more heartfelt. "Officially I'm just here for testing and repairs, but... Hey, these are strange times we are living in. You never know what special, off-model missions your dolls might be called to partake in... One needs only say the word, if you wish for my involvement to increase, Lanranr Behea."
"We'll start you off working in a more simple capacity and work from there," Naak said. "Now that we've got that out of the way, let's stop talking about what we are
going to do and delve further into what we are doing. Having a few drinks amongst friends is what I'm doing. Please, join me." Naak patted the chair next to her that was free and looked expectedly to Thao with her shimmering green and blue eyes.
"That is fair." Thao responded simply, pacefully rolling the words, then briskly making herself a copy of the same offbeat cocktail.
When it came time to move around the table and join the more toned woman, though, they seemed to take a minute to absorb those tall, busty features.
"You're Maekardanii, dare I ask?..." The question was placed simply, as they sauntered onto the free seat. The fact that they were both tall and pale was what prompted the question, but they were also genuinely interested to learn what kind of person would be giving them orders from now on... "Your hair... It reminds me of one of my sisters."
"I am, indeed, from Maekerdan. I learned a lot from the Eyr Ranr and feel closely tied to the culture of sailing the skies and becoming one with the stars we find ourselves surrounded by. There is nothing I would rather be doing, though, than commanding this wing. Since its birth I have felt a deep longing to see its success. I am happy we have someone aboard that will help in a new and interesting way, now that you're with us."
Naak paused, then said, "And my hair... Thank you." The Iromakuanhe woman put a hand underneath her silvery black hair and brought it upwards, making the two-toned locks spill out and gently touch the arm of Thao.
"I'm not privy to your organisation's official combat reports, but the news certainly seems to believe you are succeeding..." It was a diplomatic answer. Thao could judge for herself what kind of situation the frames had been in, but wasn't so sure how the command staff would react to them prying just yet. "Yes, the press seemed to like pictures of your blonde haired lass... What's her name?... Miss Bousaid?"
A short swig of her drink. Great, now she sounded like a gossip. Or an old ninny that only believes the spin.
"Y-you mean Altair?" Naak asked in between giggles. "He was on the news recently, is that who you mean?!"
"Erm, they aren't the same person?" The woman's eyes narrowed even more, making a bit of an unladylike grimace. Looking behind them, they found that Altair was in fact in attendance, thought they seemed to look different in reality. More compact. Was somebody in the press manipulating images of him to make him more spritely?... "My apologies. Of course not."
"I can feel the courageousness in the very organoid cells of your frames." Half a swerve out of that subject's territory, and half an acknowledgement that they at least had some idea what the team was like in reality. "So it is quite apparent to me that your unit is no joke."
"Would you perhaps like a stronger drink? A toast to your victory?"
"I am happy to hear you say that," Naak replied, referring to Thao's complimenting her wing's courageous emanating from their VANDR. "
We are happy to hear that. I will, of course toast to our future victories. That would be more in order," Naak told Thao.
The engineer paused for a pace, and then a renewed the grin with a small laugh. The snowy leader was a lot less frigid that they seemed in the corporate profile.
"Mazrit Brandy?" Not so much a lucky guess as an educated one, as Thao could see the last empty glass.
"I wouldn't mind another. Two more of the last drink for the both of us," Naak asked the bartender. He procured the drink after several steps of slicing and squeezing Porun, slapping Rysari and shaking it all with some ice in a lidded metal can before pouring out just the liquid into two glasses. Naak placed one in front of Thao and raised the other.
"To future victories and present indulgences!" Naak said with her raised glass tilting a little. Some of the liquid slipped out and splashed onto her pants. The corners of her mouth raised as she let loose a laugh and then rubbed the spillage on her pants with a finger before bringing it to her mouth and sucking on it. She then raised her glass higher and spoke again.
"To enjoying oneself!" Naak said with a gleeful smile while her green and blue eyes looked upwards, then at Thao.
Raising a hand a little as the bartender replicated the concoction, the engineer seemed almost emotionally involved with the process. She didn't care much for the flair, though, it was all about getting the mixture exactly right... Well, her version of exactly right.
It wasn't an aloof expression, simply a feeling of wrongness that sat in her gut. Something ethereal that made her itch...
Standing up on the rungs of the stool and leaning forward, one of the arms on her back snapped open, moving around and under the counter. What they procured was a small bottle of essence of ash garlic, generally the kind of thing you put on meat...
Exactly four drips. Thao was adamant about lightly grasping the bottom of Naak's glass mid-accent, and giving her drink the same treatment, too...The drink was somehow fuller now. It felt more weighty on the tongue, with a longer, more rounded burn...
Another sudden freeze, with another sudden look of self awareness.
"Perfection, my Lanranr." A clink, making a point of completing the toast with this added input, though the tone was more of a confident, reserved whisper. The spice made their softly featured face a little redder, but they liked that part too. "Perfection, in all it's forms..."
The Lanranr in question took a nice gulp of the concoction and smiled wistfully after she had taken the drink. "That hits the spot..." She plopped her chin on her knuckles of her right hand and asked, "Where did you grow up? Maekardan seems to interest you about myself. I'm going to go out on a ledge and say that is the planet you call home."
"Where did I grow up? Port Aersin... Where do I call home?... OGNEIR dot net, in all honesty." A frank smile, brushing a hand across the back of her neck. Thao didn't know what it was, but there was definitely something about Behea's charismatic personality that just made her want to open up. "A computer is honest. It will insult you to your face when you do something wrong... Yes, my family had a bit of a penchant for trying to buy me friends, you understand. But I believe in self-determinism."
Too heavy? Too deep all of a sudden? Thao just rotated her glass, staring at the faint reddish fluid as it sloshed about.
"Thinking about it, I had my fair share of pod sickness as a youth. I definitely got more than a little invested in my OGNEIR friends than some of my real life ones, but that seemed to be just fine for me. We both turned out just fine," Naak said before another deep gulp of her exotic drink.
Naak liked talking to Thao and wanted to know more about the orb-surrounded white-haired technician. And, so, she asked, "What else do you believe in? I'm sorry if that's too vague of a question, my apologies."
"That anything is possible as long as you have the will, I suppose. Is that a cliché?" She took a similar gulp, embracing the familiar, warm feeling as it descended her throat. "That, and I guess that a machine has just as much spirit as it's pilot. Manufacturing processes always have some defects, no matter how minor... To me, those quirks are what gives a frame personality."
"What were families like, with the Eyr Ranr?" Another oddly paced question, but Thao at least turned to face the woman's two-toned eyes this time. "Were they close by necessity?"
"Close by necessity?" Naak asked. "Not so much in my family. Everyone, it seemed, were in the Astral Vanguard and, so, a lot of them were gone at some point. There was a lot of..." she looked for the word she wanted and settled by saying, "tag-teaming. One would leave just as another got back from a deployment. They scheduled things to take care of me as best they could. They being my two dads and mom."
"So they still remained personally involved even despite that situation?... That sounds nice." Perhaps they were over romantizing it. But Thao kind of couldn't help but imagine Naak in a blimp with some kids of her own. Maybe it was the drink talking. "Two dads... For the military life, I guess I could see the use of that, too..."
Naak nodded, thinking a bit of her childhood and what she felt what went well and what could have been improved. "There had never really been a push for me to find my own way. Perhaps in another family I would have been a Solan Starworks technician instead of a wing commander. Perhaps I would be a bartender," Naak said with a nod to the man that had his back to them. "But I never questioned my goals in life and I don't know if I ever will. Hasn't happened yet so I don't know why it would." Realizing she was growing introspective, she coughed and looked away from the bartender's back to Thao. "I can't say I think about it too much. There's something about you..." she trailed off, not knowing if she should continue. Then, finally, she spoke. "I like you."
"Do you, now?..." Thao smile grew a couple of levels stronger, but her eyes hid back into the confines of her drink, which she was still constantly rotating upon it's axis. Kind of hard to tell if she was blushing, considering her face was already flared from the fiery substance in their hands, but a slight arcing of her head, bringing their horns very near to clinking together, spoke of another depth.
"So... You were born knowing what you had to do, by the sounds of it. That's very interesting..." Another small swig. The red, sharp eyes might have been a little forelorn. "Tell me, leader... What do these built-in sensibilities cause you to believe in?..."
"I believe we don't always know what's right, but we can do what our dreams tell us are as close to right as we can get. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we work through intuition. I believe in listening to what makes sense but, more than that, what the heart says is of importance," Naak told Thao. She finished off the glass and pushed it towards the inside of the bar. "That seems like the best course of action to me. It's what I 'believe' in."
"So, simply... to do good? To do what comes naturally from the inside?" Thao paraphrased, raised her glass, but found herself not finishing it off, resting her mouth on those long blue nails... She didn't know if she agreed that dreams were always so pure, but found it very endearing that Naak had chosen to gift her with that kind of information. "You sound like your muse must be very strong..."
The hand twisted, holding her palm out now, wondering if the career soldier would be willing to share that internal sensation.
Naak tilted her head and again her hair splayed out on her thigh as she looked at Thao, this time while trying to hide the great deal of glee she felt at the extended hand. She placed her own pinkish hand on Thao's own pale white one. She opened up her empathic link and allowed Thao to feel all that she had to offer, doing nothing to hide the small but still present fears and inhibitions. Thao would be able to feel quite strongly that charisma and drive she had felt while they spoke, as well. It was the most defining feature of the Iromakuanhe woman. What brought her the greatest joys in life were apparent to Thao, such as fulfilling her goals and being in the cramped space of a VANDR, as well as climbing the ranks and commanding.
"You're... You're strong..." Thao remarked simply, eyes next to closed as she felt the more densely built hand of the soldier grasp her own. It always felt a like putting your head underwater, but this experience was more akin to a hot spring. It felt warm. "You feel like this all the time?..."
The return signal wasn't quite the same. The mechanic was like a causeway of little felt hexagons, all gently flowing and swaying to a subtle music, but never breaking from one another. Everything had it's place, its own function. Small little worlds of bristling soft colour, but almost like a white noise of emotion when taken in all at once. It was a kind of electric fortress, alive but endlessly guarded.
"Do you like what you feel, my leader?..." A soft voice, the dark ivory of their horn now making a more deliberate, weirdly intimate, clunking contact. Naak could feel that this woman thought highly of her, but it was a marching band of emotion that never quite stayed in one place.
Eyes closed on Naak's face as a softer, more calm smile spread on her lips. She nodded when asked if she liked what she felt and didn't break away from the empathic link, instead letting loose her own feelings about Thao. The technician would be able to tell Naak had a curiosity about her that she didn't want extinguished. Instead, she seemed to want the flame fanned by none other than Thao herself.
Opening her eyes, Naak asked, "And you? Do you enjoy what you feel half as much as I do?"
"The minute I feel anything, it's in the past." Was what the lips of the woman spoke, but the emotional response was different. It was like Thao wanted the freedom to think nothing, but couldn't. There was a daydream in there somewhere, like hanging off Naak's strong shoulders like a ghostly cape. Just invisible. Just comfortable observing that glow, floating along weightlessly.
Having almost been searching for that sort of daydream, Naak was pleasantly surprised when she learned it was one that gave off the feeling that perhaps she was involved in some way, too. It was impossible to tell, but she got the distinct feeling from Thao that there were similar feelings between the two of them. Naak moved her hand so that it softly held Thao's and brought the back of it up to her lips and gently kissed the other woman's pale white skin, watching her closely with her blue green eyes.
Instability. Just a glimpse, like sparks or smoke, rippling underneath those tiles like a silent surge. Thao's dark, gloomy eyes arced sideways just a hit with surprise, and then retreated back downwards again...
Stability. Control. The warm instigated something, but the pale woman was back at the reigns now. The schematic was drawn, and Naak could see it before Thao did it; A small lean sideways, bringing their shoulders into contact, and a deliberately softly angle on her head, so that their hair was brushing lightly together.
"...Did you want to sit somewhere more comfortable?.." A guarded tone. The pearls orbiting her neck had ceased their rotation, simply hanging in space.
It felt like being a match head, and Naak was the match paper.
"I think my cabin would work out just fine," Naak said to Thao evenly, though inside she was a tumult of feelings and excitement. She wanted so deeply to enjoy the company of this newcomer, civilian, technician, and above all else, cause of Naak's wonderment. "If that suits you?" she said, a lilting tone to her voice denoting it as a question.
A morose sigh, following into a twist of the stool, as Thao quietly peeled away her exposer and broke physical contact, and then downed the rest of their drink promptly.
It looked like they were going to simply walk off, but the motion halted directly behind the light rose skinned woman instead. Delicately, they draped their forearms around Naak's neck, submerging her breath into the right side of the woman's mane of greyish hair. It was the daydream again. A flood of neurosis kept at bay, Thao softly smiled once more, consciously directing those pearls to form a wide ring around the both of them.
"Is that appropriate, my Lanranr?" A careful voice, guarding a now rippling sea of hexagons... The odd, distant channel could perhaps be explained as a feeling of disconnection. A person that was afraid of corrupting what they touched in such a way.
But the muse
was nice... And she
did get to enact her dream...
Naak's lips moved one on top of the other as she tried to suppress a smile once more. It must be something about Thao that forced her to want to both burst out smiling and, at the same time, to lean heavily on Thao's own feelings instead of her own. She could feel the sensation of Thao withholding something and so, Naak tried to do the same. She could not for very long and soon enough, a whisper of what she wanted passed from her tongue to Thao's horns.
"If I will have my way, we'll soon be finding out how very
inappropriate we can be," Naak said in her low voice.
The solemn grin was audible, warm breath flowing from tightly controlled lungs. Thao's hands broke away from the hug and held themselves directly forwards instead now, palms-up in Naak's field of vision...
"What would you do if you had these hands, leader?" An odd flavour, as if considering all of the weapons that the woman had constructed in her lifetime, all at once. "If I had yours, well... I'm not sure I could have stayed so tightly on course."
"No. I play the music, but I'm not the music myself." A kiss to the side of the face, before the Thao's blushing visage had retreated completely, and the woman broke away. "Keep that warm muse alive for me, leader... I feel I shall need it on occasion."
Naak bit her lip as Thao broke away and closed her eyes, consumed by the afterimages of her encounter with the Maekardanii.
"I will," Naak said almost too quietly to hear. "For you, I most certainly will."
Naak turned away, looking to the bartender as she raised a finger and shook her head after, casting her eyes downwards after she had gotten the straight Mazerit brandy and began to nurse it.
Thao's heels clattered away, methodically, mechanically. The disconnection hurt. But that's why it couldn't be allowed to progress further.
