// Ravelin, Bastion...
// 0752 local time...
Recovery suited her about as well as anything did, the mirialan restless and inexplicably just as tired in equal tandem which had seen her pace by the window of her hospital room on an endless loop. It was as listless as the new hum in her chest, the replacement for the heart she had lost in the ditches of Nirauan, when it could endure punishment no further. She had been driven to madness by it all, so she had thought, the steady tink of her newly fixed fingertips against one another, and the mechanized hum beneath her ribs where before lay a steady cadence.
‘It will all take some moderate… adjustment.’ The heavily augmented doctor had told her over and over, perplexed by her human inability to adapt immediately to the changes. Insistence had been his game, and persuasion even more so, yet her stubbornness had been her salvation; her saving throw.
Half an arm and an eye less, at last, she had been cleared to return to duty once again, and not a moment too soon. An eye and half an arm were of little consequence in the grand scheme of things, she still had brothers to avenge. And had it not been for
his somewhat frequent assurances and half-lipped smiles, she would have been fixated solely on the rage she felt about the ordeal. She would shake it off and get back up, like she did everything else, even when it felt like the loss was too much to bear, for she had come to understand some time ago, she never endured it alone.
Checking out of the Cybernetics Division and walking up the block to Fortress Imperator was a slog, it was an anxiety-riddled trek that filled her guts with nothing short of slithering dread, the sort that coiled around the ribs and cinched into a noose of stuttering confusion. And it feasted solely by Kolson’s rather sudden disappearance, those days past when he had frequented her recovery but did no longer. She had prayed to whatever gods were left that listened to the likes of her that he hadn’t deployed again, not so soon, but she knew him well enough to grasp the purposelessness of such vague actions. He had gone back out into the field, no doubt about it, and he had rallied new members for their squad around him, leading them headlong into the collision of Order and Chaos in such a way that suggested he was everything but just one simple man.
These were the thoughts she sought comfort in, especially now as she stood before the leading stairs guiding the path upward into the fortress. A moment of respite, just one, time stolen to spar a cigarette between her lips. A passing glance of her fingertips against the scars carved from beneath the patch secured over her left eye. One last rip before the vice was forsaken and cast to the duracrete beneath and crushed underfoot, and upward she climbed, duffle bag lazily hung over a shoulder.
She could’ve wished all she wanted that he wouldn’t go back, but ultimately, she should’ve known better. That was the oath they took, to serve their Empire in the Special Forces. To never surrender even if they were the last and to hope to spit in the eyes of their enemy. Kolson lived it to a fault. Even when he was quite literally the last of his unit, he’d take these freshly trained and selected operators into the fires again. That was what was expected, just as he was once a wide-eyed neophyte of the Imperial Army, he’d become the mentor, the leader to those who’d stand and fight.
Much in line with the Mirial in pursuit of him, he’d just snuffed a cigarette into a nearby ashtray as he looked over the intelligence laid before him in the form of datapad reports, holomap projections, and probe droid scans of the area they were soon to assail. In the black-trimmed field gray service uniform of the Imperial Army Special Forces, he continued his evaluations in silent toil until the door slid open with its quiet metallic hiss, to reveal
her. In contrast to what he’d seen in New Carannia, she looked a world better but all the same, he looked worse for wear even if no wound could muster the same intensity of what she’d faced in those fires.
He went back, without her or her say in the matter. To him, it didn’t matter, he had a duty, an obligation. Scores of men and women in worse shape than him went back for vengeance and he was the example to be led by, he had to go back all the same. It was hardly a choice, even if one was laid out to him, it was an obligation to maintain the standards he upheld. He looked to her in conscious eyes for the first time in...he didn’t dare guess how long.
He
thought about speaking, but he ultimately couldn’t command the words to come out and just stood still, looking in silent placidity to the woman before him, waiting for the berating or the line of concern that he expected to emerge from her.
She stood in the doorway, lingering there unsure of what to say initially. Tension coalesced in her jaw, manifesting resistance to rush and punch him in the jaw for his stupidity, that instinctive urge nearly driving her stride to see her anger claim its prize. But, she was above it, she understood it. Rather than act brashly, she glanced around with a turn of her head and dared forward, dropping the kit bag to the floor by her boots with a heavy thud.
“Kolson.” she stated, biting back the tremble spurred in her voice by the near overwhelming relief that he was standing there,
“You stupid, stupid, man.” Though she understood his purpose, understood his drive, it would not stop all of her thoughts from being vocalized.
One swift stride saw the mirialan rather abruptly throw her arms around him, and she drew him into a tight embrace, grasping at his back with mismatched fingers.
“Next time you do something like that, you’d better take me with you.” she muttered quietly,
“Or I swear I’ll punch you.” She let the threat hang in the air, and finally, relieved herself of the breath she’d sucked in when she saw him standing there. A moment passed, and another, before she relinquished the grasp she’d taken, and pivoted to turn her attention on the displays projected before them both.
“I know you’re too stubborn to take your leave, but I was just starting to get used to having dinner with someone who actually at least pity chuckles at my jokes. The doctors? Not so much.” Sephi snorted, folding her arms,
“How did it go, then? How are you?”
He wrapped his arms around her in return as she moved to embrace him, if paralyzed for a moment as his body rung with the pain of still recovering wounds from the physical contact, something he was more than willing to endure as he reared his head back to press a kiss to her emerald lips for the briefest of moments before eventually, his blue eyes shifted back to hers, baring that ever frigid gaze.
“You should know better by now than to be surprised, I’m fine, everything went fine but...Vandal’s been in a better spot, that’s for sure.” Given the uniforms, the mission before them, it was time for business...
again.
“I’m still...registering everything that happened that day...but shit, I’m just glad you’re in one piece. But they should’ve known what it takes to take you down...never enough.” He said, reluctantly relinquishing that embrace as he glanced over the strewn apart war plans.
“So then...I can assume you’re good to go then, yeah?” He asked, arching a thick brow to her as he propped his hands unto the holotable, offering a cursory glance to its details.
“Yeah,” she nodded, flexing out her new hand to curl digits into her palm,
“mostly one piece, to be fair,” she quipped back,
“but I didn’t lose anything too important, at least. Didn’t die, can still fight, really that’s what matters.” Her eye was situated on him, both hands coming to rest against her hips.
“Whatever awaits us at this hellhole? We’ll take it on together, second verse, same as the first. And then we’ll end up back in that dingy bar, stuck to the seats by gods know what, sipping some of the worst liquor I’ve ever tasted. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
NEW IMPERIAL ORDER
TASK FORCE TRACHTA
IMPERIAL ARMY SPECIAL FORCES
1st GROUP | 'VANDAL SQUAD'
\\
Kolson Vrask
//
IMMORTAL
Another day, another mission; it was always the same routine. As ever, she was thankful for the return to it. Listless waiting and preparing had always done nothing but agitate her nerves. Talk, talk, talk, there was so much chatter in the air before their quiet file into the cargo hold that she barely had the patience left for by that point. Yet, as the door sealed and each member of the squad, all of them new to her besides Grunge himself, had settled into their calm. Some dozed off, others idly flipped through pages in books, others entertained themselves with systematically breaking down and rebuilding their kits over and over, something to keep fingers that didn't idle well from itching too badly. She would have been among them not so long ago, fidgeting with the anxiety of the ride, waiting with bated breath for the final review of their mission and the command to drop.
Now, however, she was a stone, calm and steady, but not without her own prebattle ritual. Headphones rode comfortably in her ears, pumping the sounds of whatever latest schlock she had the time to download before being shipped off into her headspace. She didn't care for most of it, though, admittedly, there were some golden tracks in the muck and filth. It was these that drove her metal digits to tap against an armored thigh, drumming along to the rhythm only she was privy to, remembering the strength she had found on Niruan amidst all the devastation and loss.
The Mongrel
had all but killed her, but she had come back stronger for it. It wasn't enough to make her cocky, to bolster her ego and drive her to arrogance, rather, it served the opposite. She remembered, more now, than ever before, why it was she fought so hard. She remembered what it was that made her special, what set her apart from their enemies. She was nothing more than a grunt, a pack mule, with maybe more than a couple of screws loose, but it was the conviction in her oath to fight for her brothers in arms that kept her alive. Sephi found herself wondering briefly if The Mongrel had made it out alive too, or if she truly had laid him to his lowest and sent him to the grave.
If he was anything like her, the dance with death would have only solidified his resolve, making him even more dangerous. And
that thought drove her to frown into the darkness of the cargo hold, briefly curling her gloved fingers against the outside of her chestguard, feeling after the steady hum in her chest- the one that had
replaced the natural rhythm of a pulse. A low hum resonated in her throat, her hand falling away to rest on her lap soon after, and she turned her head about to fix her exposed eye on a familiar silhouette in the dark.
"We're almost there, yeah?" she asked of Grunge, tilting her head back to knock against the rounded wall behind her gently,
"Jungle warfare, how exciting." Her sarcasm wasn't particularly masked,
"And the Crusaders to boot."
This wasn't the first time she'd deployed alongside them and the memory of that made the scar on her side burn.
Tren Chaar
TWO - Olly Piblarian SEVEN -
Leon Gallo
Isla Draellix-Kobitana
Jon Kovacs Delilah Jones 
Tu'teggacha
