She was human. She was ashamed to admit this at times, as strange that seemed, and perhaps the gravity of the situation was finally beginning to weigh down on her form. Maybe she was getting weaker and weaker with each passing day and she only had herself to blame, but she found feel herself beginning to crack. With each sunrise and sunset, Nyasa Freeman could feel that the changes that had begun throughout the world around her beginning to seep into her. The mask that she once prided herself in was beginning to fade completely, and it would not be long before it threatened to consume her.

But she tried. With every twist and turn of the toymaker’s orb that she found herself in, she pushed against its tilting and resisted with all her might. She once believed that she could withstand anything, could find a way to adapt to every situation she found herself in. But in the end, she was only really fooling herself, and she could no longer deny it. Times had changed, and now, so would she.

Things had been getting a little crazy, and Nyasa Freeman felt that it was time to pack what meager belongings she had left, and just go. And it wasn’t necessarily due to any irrational hatred or disgust with her roommate, a man she once considered killing in his sleep when he had simply pushed her buttons too hard.

No, he had changed, though she wasn’t certain if it was for better or for worse. As far as a Negaverse agent, Captain Buddingtonite was truly coming into his own, and had she not been a cold and callous ice queen, she would have been very proud of him, maybe even willing to admit it. He kept a tight schedule and he was willing to put in the hours needed to show his dedication, gathering ample enough energy and starseeds on his own. And he was even preparing himself for future recruiting ‘seminars’, so in a sense of Buddingtonite, she could not want anymore out of him.

But Richard Moreau… was starting to scare her. He had changed, and it was that change that made her consider Ilmenite’s offer once more. Not simply the ‘get along with your fellow officers’ part, but the part he mentioned about the apartments, and she had spent most of the day punching away numbers and shifting through one job application after the other, preparing herself for the possibility that she’d finally be able to regain her much desired independence once more. Even if it was nothing more than a bedroom with a pathetic excuse for a kitchen and a half bathroom, it was something. It wouldn’t have been the first time she bathed in a sink.

And by the end of the day, just moments before her roommate came slinking into the apartment with a half-hearted ‘home’, she found her ticket. She had more than enough to last a few months until she found a job.

“Thank you,” she said, cupping her hands together and praying as though she were addressing her lord and savior himself. “Thank you, Ilmenite…”

((Word Count: 524))