On Any Other Day

[earthborn]

Who| Shepard And Her Adoring Fans
What| The Customer Complaints Desk Is [OPEN]
Where| A lovely little park outside a lovely little café on a quiet day when the sun is shining, just after a certain network post
When| The morning after Shepard's Exposé goes live.
Warnings/Notes| Talk of murder, genocide, cussing, and political discourse. God help us all.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, she's got a rail-thin barrista with a shock of violet-pink hair, and he keeps bringing her coffee from all the way across the street. On any other day, she'd call it perfect— he keeps sarcastically saluting her and she keeps sarcastically thanking him as 'private', and the coffee is damn good in addition to cheap and hand-delivered. On any other day.

But despite the shining weather and the convenient caffeine-drip, she's not set up here with the empty chair beside her own for the sake of simple joys.

Come at me, bro.

Comments

[earthborn]

"Just Shepard is fine. Commander, if you wanna impress me," And then, after a moment's thought, "Captain Murderfleet is only if you want me to sell you back to your own fleet for a profit."

This calls for a toast— a silent one, because anything she could say would only be giving Terezi more ammunition.

"Well, I don't know how things work where you're from, but on my ship we tend to do the joining first, and the suicide missions slightly later. So don't get too excited."

[pythianjudgment]

"Oooh, Commander." There was virtually no way that Terezi wasn't going to tease Shepard about her title, but at least she keeps it light and brief. There's more important conversation to be had.

"Oh, I wasn't even talking about suicide missions yet. Back home, the Fleet is mandatory. Trolls have to join when they come of age. If they're not suitable, they're killed. Our enlistment policies are incredibly motivating."

[earthborn]

Terezi's mockery is more bemusing than offensive. It is her rank, after all. What a weird child.

"Define suitable," Shepard couldn't help but ask. God help her, she loved storytime, "Doesn't make any sense to me."

[pythianjudgment]

"Suitable. Not defective. Mentally and physically fit. No obvious disabilities." Terezi shrugs her shoulders a little. "I don't know exactly what they would be looking for, but something along those lines."

[earthborn]

"Wait, so they don't...test for competency, regardless or..."

That gave her pause. She tried to imagine a working navy like the one Terezi was implying. She tried to imagine the sheer inefficiency of such a setup, where a brilliant mind might be discarded for the sake of a twisted leg, or a badly healed femur break might be considered fatal.

It was more than just barbaric, it was...

"That sounds kind of ludicrous," and then she remembered, "And being blind, nothing else about what you can do would matter."

[pythianjudgment]

Terezi was kinda hoping that Shepard wouldn't link those two things together, but... obviously she's not going to pass up the opportunity to point that out.

She shrugs again, this time a little more self-consciously. "If they found out I was blind? No, probably not. Though I was hoping that I could keep it quiet long enough to prove that I didn't need my eyes. That, my lusus, my ancestry, my caste... I was hoping one of those things would grant me an exception."

[earthborn]

"See, with me, hiding that kind of crap would be grounds for expulsion, not revealing it," She's not going to let it go. A more sensitive soul might have let the matter drop, an awkward stone in both of their bellies, but Shepard was not known for her diplomatic delicacy.

No, she was known for that other thing, "Terezi, you navigate well enough that someone could be forgiven for forgetting that you're blind. Regardless of how you do that, you don't need light to perceive. That alone would be deadly if you develop it as a combat skill. If it could be taught to others, you'd be invaluable to any military."

[pythianjudgment]

It takes a lot of willpower for Terezi not to put her hands over her ears at all of this. Not because she doesn't want to hear it, but because she doesn't want Shepard to see the tips of her ears flushing teal. Invaluable to any military. Those are words that would make any decent troll blush.

"I don't know if it's teachable. I only learned it out of necessity--psychically, from my lusus." She's not even sure if non-teals could learn something like this... Let alone humans or other species. But that other stuff... She's not sure what to say about it. Her initial instinct is to counter the praise with something more realistic. She opens her mouth to do so, but hesitates. Meulin had already scolded her enough on that.

But that doesn't mean she has any better of an idea of what she should say. So instead, she deflects to a different comment. "Does all this mean I have to provide you with a laundry list of abilities?"

[earthborn]

"You're damn right," and that's very nearly a scolding, "I can't use you properly if I don't know what you can do."

[pythianjudgment]

"Laundry lists are not on my laundry list of things I'm good at." The complaint is mild and half-joking, and Terezi is already thinking about what to place on this list.

"You know about the blindness--I don't know how much you've picked up on how it works. I fight close range. Canes, staves, and swords--but most trolls can also tear someone's throat out unarmed if the need arises. I am a excellent artist, as seen by my resume. And sometimes I enjoy long walks on the beach. And by beach, I mean the complicated pathways of temporal space."

[earthborn]

"On second thought, I'll just wait and ask for a practical demonstration," Temporal what? Pathways of what? Chrissakes, Terezi, you're a madwoman, "How would you rate your ability to cope with... Stress."

The 'unholy abominations cobbled together from your dead friends and various spare parts?' talk seemed like something more to work up to, really.

[pythianjudgment]

"Was that too many words for you? Should I use less syllables?" It's a good thing that they have already established a certain level of teasing between them, otherwise Terezi might be a little worried about Shepard taking her jabs the wrong way. As it stands, she leans back in the chair a little, amusing herself by tipping it back on the back two legs.

"Define stress. Are we talking 'Oh no, I stayed up all night FLARPing and I have a culling exam in the morning'... Or is it more like 'Oh no, our species as we know it is almost extinct and the universe imploded'. These are very important levels of stress to differentiate between."

[earthborn]

"Mostly that second one," Shepard replied drily, only narrowly avoiding the conversational pitfall trap laid in the word 'FLARP'. If she were so easy to rile as that, Joker would have put her off years ago. Terezi's sarcasm was nothing.

[pythianjudgment]

"Then, yes. I have excessive experience in that level of stress. Ten outta ten. My ability to cope is through the roof." Actually, to be honest... She hasn't coped with it all that well. But she did at first, and that's what counts, right? That's what she would be asking about, in the heat of the moment. Not in the months afterwards with nothing to do except reflect on how fucking screwed you are.

"Does this happen you you regularly? This is a question I probably should have asked before making all of those super cool pictures of you, among other things."

[earthborn]

"It's more common than you'd think. But yeah, the stakes are kinda...high, right now."

It's a sad day when even Shepard looks a little uncomfortable about that fact, really.

[pythianjudgment]

"Hmm." Terezi sets her chair carefully back down on all four legs, mulling that over with a bit of seriousness that she hasn't shown much since plopping her butt into that chair.

"How high?" she asks, after a bit of silence. "I probably should have asked that from the start! And, you know. How much of the propaganda video was true. But I was having too much fun making fun of it."