“I don’t like this.” Seth complained stiffly, “At all.  I want that on the record.”


    “It’s noted.” Rylen answered, “Go on.”


    The teen groaned pitifully, and reached to grab the creepy helmet on the table before him.  He held it up in his hands, looking on that faceless face, with those button-like eyes just inside and below where the eyes would really be.  On the black of its base, two silver plates cascaded down from the brow to the cheeks, as if a pair of painted hands had come down from above and behind it, and covered those eyes, leaving the palm-prints behind.  He swallowed a knot in his throat, and turned the whole thing around so he could see inside the opening he’d put his cranium through to wear it.


    “It’s like ripping off a bandage.” The Eidolon commented, “You won’t even know you’re wearing it once it’s on.”


    Seth could feel his heart pounding in his ears, and his hands trembled to pull the mask closer.  At the last, he rejected it, and fumbled at trying to put it back on the table, sending it flying off the back of it instead, “I-I’m sorry…I can’t…”


    Rylen looked on, unimpressed, and crossed his arms, “Why not?”


    The teen could feel the weight of that question, “…S-sir…the Inquisition division…gives me the major creeps.” He explained, just as he’d noted before, “The masks scare me.  They’re…not right.”


    “They’re built to purpose.” The First countered, “They give you access to databases and research systems that no one outside the corps can utilize.  They also anonymize you.  They also give you the option of putting something else over the masks, from your perspective.”


    “…They do…?”


    Rylen deadpanned, “No.  This is a serious division with serious researchers.”


    Seth deflated where he stood, “Permission to leave, sir.”


    “…Dismissed.” He answered with a sigh.  The young blonde bowed his head and turned, all but fleeing the office.  Rylen shook his head, and went to fetch the mask from where it had wound-up behind his desk, “What do I do about this?” He asked aloud to the visage, “The image of the Inquisitors is supposed to inspire unease…but not to the talent I’m trying to recruit.”


    Seth bounced off the door to his brother’s room before he had a chance to tap the panel and request for it to open, and once it did, he rushed inside, smacking his back against the still-closing panel as it shut behind him.  He slid down until he felt the floor under him, and tried to calm his shaking hands, gripping them around his upturned knees.  He practically jumped out of his skin when a call-request lit-up on his glasses, and he grasped one palm to his chest as he realized it was his brother, “F-Furion!  It was awful!”


    “It must’ve been if you ran into my room for cover.  What happened?” The Captain’s voice answered, a tiny image of him displayed on that glass overlay.


    “I just can’t do it with those stupid masks…!” Seth answered, “Why’d he have to make them so freakish!?  What point does it serve!?”


    “Calm down, take a breath.” Furion advised; he stood in the hall just outside the Aegis’ briefing room, “Isn’t Ren up there still?  She didn’t have to come to the mission review.  Maybe you can blow off some of that anxiety with her.”


    Seth lifted his head, but as he looked around, it became painfully clear the room was devoid of life beyond his own, “No, Miss Ren isn’t here…”


    “Well, call her.  I’m stuck here for a while longer.  Half of us are in some kind of trouble over what happened.”


    “…Trouble?  Why trouble?”


    “Because we lost.” He answered, rather matter-of-factly, “Ren single-handedly took down two targets that two-thirds of the team fell against.  We have a lot of things to go over.  …I have to get back in there.  I’ll call you later.”


    “Okay…bye…”


    .


    Ren was two floors down and several compartments away, struggling with a ‘should I’ or ‘shouldn’t I’ conundrum.  A handful of officers went by her, curiously looking at her odd behavior, but then one of them made-up Ren’s mind for her, and waved her hand in front of the door-knocker pad on the frame leading into Gabriel’s room.  The gasp Ren gusped was enough to spook her, and she quickly trotted over to the door before the man inside dismissed it as a ding-dong-ditch prank.  The officer who’d triggered it just laughed and waved ‘you’re welcome.’


    And the door opened…a little bit.


    “Oh!  Hi.  Hey.” Ren stammered, looking at that tired face.


    Gabriel blinked…one eye at a time, “…Hi.”


    Ren deadpanned at him, “You look like butt.”


    “I feel it.”


    “This a bad time?”


    “Probably.”


    “Can I come in anyway?”


    He stared quizzically for a moment, but then pulled away from the sliver of the gap, and let it open the rest of the way, “…Yeah, sure.”


    Blue coat-tails swayed as the reinstated Fafnir stepped through, “I heard you’d been stuck in one of the lower-deck rooms before.” She started, trying to break the ice, “You must be relieved to get out of there.  Going from penthouse to hostel must’ve been a culture-shock.”


    “Rylen has a strange sense of humor.” He explained, the edges of a large quilt-like blanket hanging off of him, “He’s…kind of vindictive, though Xanarken tries to dress it up as being simple pettiness.”Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    “Oh…” She answered, and watched the exhausted mediator shuffle by, one corner of the blanket dragging on the floor behind him.  He went back to the nest he’d made on the corner-couch, and Ren looked around the room, “…How are you holding up, after yesterday?”


    “Trouble sleeping.” He answered, and gracelessly melted back into his spot.  The television was on – and paused – on some show or another, “…Nightmares.”


    “When you dropped, it was like you’d been shot in the head by some sniper.” She said as she came around, “Annashi said your eyes didn’t stop the glowy Limitless thing until roughly the moment the Magi went down.”


    “…Who?”


    “Uh…one of the…other Fafnir.  The one who flew the get-away ship.”


    “Oh.  …Right.”


    An awkward silence filled the room after that.  Ren wasn’t sure how to get to what she’d meant to discuss.  Gabriel looked so tired, he probably wouldn’t remember having that conversation even if she did start it.


    “…I’m sorry I fucked up your show.” He said in spite of her, face buried in his hands, “To be totally honest…I’ve been trying to figure out if there was anything I could’ve done to fix it, but…I just keep coming back to how I just…shouldn’t have been there in the first place.  The whole point of the mission was to either get Aamin out or make sure he didn’t.  I could’ve just asked you to do me a solid and roast the Magistrate extra-crispy…go hog-wild…and hoped the little shit got caught-up in the conflagration.  But…stupid me…  I massively underestimated how strong you were, and thought the better idea was to impose myself, as if I was actually helping keep an eye out for you.”


    “…Gabe…” Ren said quietly.


    “I’ve long-prided myself on being successful because I knew stuff.” He continued, pinching the tips of his thumbs on either side of the curve of his nose, right between his eyes, index fingers pressed to his brow, “But…the Fafnir were always my blind-spot.  I actively avoided knowing anything about them.  I never thought I’d need to know anything, after all.  But that refusal to just…grow up, and get over myself, led to a perfect storm of problems.”


    “…Can I just…stop you there…” She interrupted, and came up behind him, hands on the back of the couch, “I won’t lie to you; these last two weeks, I’ve…had a hard time not blaming you for how that mission turned out.  I took off to clear my head, and when I got back, and saw you outside the briefing room…I suddenly realized how wrong it was to drop the whole thing on you like I had no role to play.  I held back…for a bunch of reasons…most of them selfish.  …And, maybe I didn’t think of it that way in the moment…or for a while after…”


    “…Mhm…”


    “…And I kind of still don’t…”


    He turned to gawp at her over a shoulder, squinted eyes blinking slowly, “…Mhm?”


    “…Yeah, no, it was totally your fault.” She sighed, and crouched down so only her fingers and the top of her head were visible past the couch cushions, “Sorry, Gabe.”


    “…It’s fine.” He turned forward again, and rubbed his face with one palm, trying to wake himself up a bit, “I’ve been nothing but a bump in the road for you this whole time.  There’s no place for a mediator in the Fafnir club.”


    Ren rocked forward and planted her knees at the base of the couch, rising up a little to see over the back of it, “You’ve…unfortunately been thrown head-first into a world that doesn’t value negotiations.” She agreed – or admitted, she wasn’t sure which, “We don’t ask questions around here.  We just…make problems go away with brute force.”


    “…I know.  I’ve…dipped my toes in that method lately myself.”


    Ren’s brows lifted skeptically, “Taking the Prince hostage for a minute with the threat of glowing eyeball-lights isn’t exactly a brute force thing…”


    “I don’t mean him.  I…meant the Captain.”


    “…What.”


    Gabriel slipped his right arm out from under the thin blanket, and flexed his fingers a bit; his knuckles were a subtle brownish color compared to his usual pale affect, “These past two weeks haven’t been my best, and I guess I let it get to my head when I saw the room I’d been assigned.  I…blamed him for it, like he’d done it to me as punishment for the mission failure.”


    With a head-shake, Ren pushed herself up to stand, and heaved herself over the couch to join the man on the cushions.  She slouched back and crossed her arms, “I could’ve told you he’d never do something like that, no matter how upset he was about it.  …You’re the one that put the shiner on his jaw, aren’t you?”


    He huffed a laugh at his own expense, “He barely budged.  I didn’t even realize I’d swung at him till I thought I’d broken my whole hand for it.  I just…stopped thinking.”


    “You threw-hands with the Captain of the Fafnir Knights, and walked away.” She tilted her head towards him, and leaned slightly in his direction, “I don’t know if I should be offended or proud.”


    “Please don’t be proud of that.  It was a really bad moment.” Gabriel shook his head, “What’s worse is that my affliction got away from me in the heat of the moment.”


    That made Ren’s whole demeanor change, “…Your eyes lit-up in the middle of that tussle?”


    “Yeah.”


    “Gabriel Lugios, you are the luckiest man alive.”


    “How do you figure that?  It seems to me like I’m nothing but bad luck.”


    “To any other Fafnir, seeing those eyes in a conflict-situation is a green-light to terminate the opponent.  We’re trained from day one to not mess around with that stuff.  We can never be sure what form that power will take, and we never assume to know the fullest extent of it even if we’ve seen it before.  You’re lucky because you did it in front of Furion.  He’s probably the only one who could’ve ignored the instinct…especially given you were actively trying to fight him at the time.”


    Gabriel wasn’t sure if he was hurt or confused, and he looked at her skeptically, “You’re saying that if it was you, you would’ve put me down?”


    “…Okay, maybe me and Furion.” She amended, “…But I know you; that gives me an unfair advantage.”


    “Do you, though?”


    “Eh?”


    “I’ve kept you at arm’s length this whole time.  Did everything I could to make your experience miserable.  I-“


    Ren held a finger up to her lips, and he went quiet, “…And yet, here I am, trying to reach you.”


    He made a face, “You’re back in your blues and have the home-field advantage.  You’re…like a whole different person from who you came to me as.”


    “That’s not untrue…  I am more comfortable here on the Aegis, especially since clearing the air with Furion…  But I don’t intend to just move on from you because I’m home again.” She explained, and twisted in her seat, resting her right elbow on the top of the nearest cushion, and curled that arm back to press her knuckles to one cheek, “You’re not the same person I met back then, either.  Who would you be if we went our separate ways now?”


    “…I don’t even know anymore.”


    Ren lifted her left arm, carefully extending her hand, and made a slow sweeping gesture over herself; her long blue jacket reforged itself into its shorter red variant, “Once the Aegis gets back to Trazad, we can go back to doing stuff that’s more your speed.  Just two mediators, going around solving problems the nice way.” She laughed quietly, and leaned into her shoulder.


    That look – the casual aloofness of it, the way her hair cascaded over arm and pillow, that relaxed posture – Gabriel felt his heart skip a few beats.  It was a weird feeling, and for a moment, he actually thought he was in pain, and he turned with a hand on his chest, “…Oof…got a palpitation or two there…” He said as he cleared his throat.


    “You’ve worn yourself out so severely, you’ll make yourself sick,” Ren commented, “Why don’t you try to get a few hours in?  I’ll stick around, and keep the nightmares away.”


    “You don’t have to do that...”


    “You know I’m good for it.  Just put your show back on and let your worries go.”


    Those two-colored eyes stared at her – confused, perplexed, baffled – and he tilted his head slightly, “…I…don’t know what to do with this information.”


    She snorted a laugh, “If you don’t lay down and close your eyes willingly, I will sit on you.” She teased, and reached towards the coffee-table with her recovering arm; it didn’t take much to simply tap a limp finger against a touch-screen button.  The volume of the broadcast returned, and Ren flopped back into her spot, “Oh, I know this series.  You’re way behind if this is the furthest you’ve gotten.”


    “…Y-yeah…”