Rest was a necessity of life, but it was also a novelty which a soldier could not afford. The only way to ensure efficient rest was to take shifts. Some people preferred to have only one person stay on guard while everyone else slept, but that was completely inefficient. Nobody was able to keep the guard in check. As a result, it had been the Asteroid tactic to only have one person take their rest at a time while the others remained alert.

This particular rotation had led to Psyche and her Mauvian partner, Thetis, to be asleep.

This left Iris and Eunomia to keep an eye upon their current outpost. The assignment had been simple. Eradicate any Negaverse officers that arrived at the outpost. It had been quiet, but the Intel had suggested a small group of new recruits would be here for training exercises. It was an excellent place for such activities, since it was a desolate hill with prickly brush serving as the only decoration.

Iris and Eunomia weren't known for conversation. The war had a tendency to do that to people. Eventually, the blonde senshi cracked out in a dry voice "...you hungry?"

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Since rejoining the Asteroids, Eunomia seemed drained of all of the traits that had defined their dynamic previously. Once one of their more obstinate members, her return saw a different Eunomia that deferred to Iris without question, and seemed stiff and inactive without guidance or assurance.

And even though she took her current role as guard of their little outpost in earnest, now seemed to be one of those stiff, silent times until Iris broke through her thoughts, getting the eternal senshi's shoulders to jump a bit before she looked up to face her.

Her brow knitted in confusion for a brief second, until her brain finally registered what had been said. Then everything about her shifted posture with new movement as if she was just coming out of a trance. "Oh..I-- yes..."

She cleared her throat and crossed her arms, glancing back to Psyche sleeping with more than a tinge of jealousy making its way to her features. She couldn't tell if Psyche was actually peacefully sleeping or if she was projecting something false onto her sleeping features, but it was something she envied all the same.

"Do you think the intel was good?"


The blonde's features seemed almost as if they had been chiseled of stone with how little they seemed to shift from the one expression. However, there was still life inside of her.

Just an utterly vile excuse for existence, but it was still a life.

The yellow suited senshi pulled a satchel closer to the pair of them and pulled out the Iridian staple, Sand Root. It was disgusting and tasted like eating dirt, but even a small amount of the dry plant was a sufficient way to ease the hunger. Holding it out in her hand towards her blue-suited teammate, Iris made her stance on the situation clear.

"Either it was good intel and we get the jump on the f*ckers, or it was bad intel and we end up attracting Negaverse officers because of our auras. We are still doing our job either way."

The less officers that could survive meant less Chaos polluting the Earth.

It might have seemed like a stray thought, but as Iris' eyes scanned the gray sky, she couldn't help but ask "...didn't the sky used to be blue?"

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Eunomia seemed to hesitate, but she took the sandroot all the same. Every so often the college aged twenty-something who somehow managed to eat artery clogging, salty, terrible foods available on a vegetarian diet cried out in anguish that she never over indulged anymore.

But that voice had been nearly kicked to death by all the other voices. The voices that cried out in a chorus of blame and guilt. That reminded her dad was dead and Columba was a chittering Negaverse drone and Eunomia, who let that happen, didn't deserve to want things anymore. Someone like her had no room to complain, or crave something better than the circumstances they were in.

So she placidly ground sandroot between her molars and tolerated the stuff without complaint or expression, while nodding at Iris' assessment of the situation. She had no questions or challenges; Iris' line of thinking was probably more reliable than her own.

A bitter, wry chuckle seemed to choke its way up at Iris' question, though. "The world used to be a lot of things."


Iris wished she could remember what the sky used to look like. It had only been five years, but it felt like lifetimes ago. Even longer than the Silver Millennium had been.

Reaching into the satchel again, the yellow suited senshi began to work on her own bit of Sand Root. She had once lived on the odd plant, and it was almost tragic that she had been reduced to such a survival tactic again. Once upon a time, she might have chuckled at the thought.

No longer could she afford to make such sounds of amusement. There was nothing amusing about the status that humankind had been reduced to. Grinding the root between her teeth almost like someone chewing on tobacco, she allow her hand to drift to the Ewer still hanging from her hip. Her gloved fingers smoothed over the edges before she tilted it to take a look at the contents.

"We'll need to find water again soon..." Her own rations seemed to be low.

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"It's been a while, HQ will probably get a new shipment of provisions soon," Eunomia said passively. It was a way of cowardly wanting to eschew other methods of finding water. Natural sources that hadn't been tapped were a ways away and going into the city was difficult.

Even more difficult because Eunomia hated infiltrating the city, constantly operating in the far she would run into Columba and have no recourse.

She had stopped being so naive and gentle about killing enemies that needed to be eliminated. She would do it if she had to, if she was ordered to, and just try not to think about it. But Columba would still be hard, seeing that hollow, stupid smile on a face that used to belong to her sister.

"There enough to at least last this stakeout?"

Maybe it would be okay if there wasn't. Time going by with no action made her uneasy. Quiet was unsettling instead of comforting these days.


"I don't trust HQ."

It was a blunt statement, but Iris had never been considered the tactful sort before. Making any sort of permanent settlement was asking for trouble in these trying times. Certainly, the Mauvians, like *********, were there to attempt hiding the various auras, but the Mauvians could only handle so much. Even in shifts, there were blips that could easily get by, endangering everyone who relied on the settlement. The captain kept her visits to HQ as brief as possible.

Tapping the edge of her Ewer, she muttered "...after this stakeout... we'll get some..." She'd rather risk going to natural sources out of the way than go to the city. A senshi without a civilian identity couldn't really slip into that city unnoticed.

Having finished what would be considered her breakfast, she put away the Sand Root and instead pulled out a serrated knife with a blade as long as her hand. Though her tone was flat, her concern was as evident as it was going to get these days as she asked "...do you think you will be able to get some rest after we wake up Psyche?"

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"Right..." Eunomia half whispered. It would be so much easier if she did trust HQ honestly. Sometimes it was hard to cope with, knowing that oasis was there and available with open arms for them if they so chose.

She also knew that her longing for something easy did not mitigate any of the issues Iris had with it, and those issues became hers by default.

After a quiet moment, she nodded her head in acceptance of the course of action ahead of them and looked back to Psyche.

Instead she just broke off more sandroot to grind in her teeth. "I can if I need to. Is my shift coming up already?" She was more inclined to let the silver haired senshi have the leeway when it was doable without being terribly inconvenient. Psyche can have a little more sleep, Psyche can have some of her rations, etc. She was loyal to Iris to a fault and the Asteroids as a group but there was still a pattern of clear bias for the senshi of breath she didn't like to admit to.


"Yes... I want you both rested."

The blonde used the knife to carve into the dry dirt a couple lines. "Depending on the results of this stakeout... I may need rest after."

It went unmentioned that such rest would require her teammates to share the responsibility of carting her on their back for a bit. After the several years of using a crystal, she had managed to perfect the art. The amount of rest after using the crystal varied upon the specific use of the crystal, but rest wasn't had so easily in the Mainstay. Typically Iris could function after 3 hours of solid unconsciousness. It wasn't ideal, but she could function.

Crossing out her lines with a third line in the dirt, she glanced up to Eunomia again.

"That means you will be in charge or replenishing the water rations after, if I require rest."

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Eunomia shifted the way she was sitting, but she didn't argue, she only nodded her head with her mouth pressed in a thin, straight line.

"Understood."