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 Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 9:51 pm
Natron didn't want to acknowledge it - there was, admittedly, a whole lot he was Not Acknowledging - but Des's words had sat heavy in his chest since he spoke them. That he was different, changed since the time he came out of the Rift.
There was, he supposed, an opinion he could seek, and also someone he had been intending to speak to anyway. It would be good to see Zircon again; to check on how she had been doing in the years he had been gone.
(Years. Sometimes that weighed on him like a ton of lead. Lost years.)
He found the office designated hers, knocked, and waited. If she was there, he would speak to her immediately; if not, he had all the time in the world to wait.
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Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2017 10:45 am
Zircon did not often entertain social calls in her office. It was her private workspace, and barely enough room for her desk, chair, and a small bookshelf full of reference materials and case files. She rarely worked on large-scale operations and her research was still largely not discussed with the movers and shakers of the Negaverse, so she rarely prepared for company, certainly not today, with papers spread across the entirety of her work desk, series of phrases highlighted and circled in purple ink. She felt the aura of a general go by and thought nothing of it, because generals came and went and it was none of her business where they tread.
But this one lingered in her hallway and knocked on her door, which suddenly made it her business. Zircon winced.
Were it an agent of equal or lower rank, she would have just invited them in and spared herself the effort of stopping in the middle of her work to stand, but a general was not to be ignored or ordered about. Closing the folder at her desk, she brought herself to her feet with little effort, adjusting the lapels of her jacket, making sure her hair was in place. Who among the generals would have even bothered to knock? Not Labyrinthite or Schörl, or any of the generals she regularly reported to, who would have just known they had permission to enter. Maybe someone from the European Division?
She opened her door and her mind went blank, staring at a ghost made flesh. "General Natron," she said, and in a blink her eyes flickered over his form to find the falsehood, the zipper on the back of the costume, the hidden camera. But the image held, and in the absence of any glaring facsimiles she had to consider that perhaps the man standing before her was real. It wasn't outside the realm of possibiliy that he'd survived, after everything had happened in the Rift, but it had always seemed highly unlikely. Labyrinthite had made it for the sheer conviction of his character, and even then he had not returned entirely the same. Natron was of a softer constitution, too kind to his subordinates for their own good.
"What can I do for you today?" Zircon asked politely, in place of the more pressing question of 'How are you alive?' Even still, she kept her hands on the door frame, occasionally glancing down to make sure there wasn't some kind of crystal projector at his feet.
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Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2017 12:30 pm
Natron met Zircon with a polite, almost cold smile. Once upon a time, before he was crystallized, he would have been idly slouching as he waited, and he would have met her with a reasonably friendly greeting - but the Natron that had come out of crystal was not the Natron that went in. He noted the way her eyes flicked over him, the way they repeatedly went to his feet, and he let himself have a moment fo light entertainment, because of course she was surprised to see him.
"Afternoon, Captain," he said, and his tone was coolly professional. "It's good to see nothing terrible happened to you in my...very long absence." Something approaching actual amusement did tug at the corners of his mouth then, a crack in the professional facade.
"As I'm sure you're aware, I've been...indisposed for a very significant period." To say the least. "You'll forgive me for not calling ahead, apparently two years in crystal have done terrible things for my manners. But I wanted to speak to you - I've always found you a competent officer, and I hoped you might help me reorient myself. Rather a lot has changed on me, while I was gone." In the Negaverse, and out. He thought, for a moment, of Fangite, and of his strange reaction - and of his apparent wavering loyalties.
No competent officer spoke of regretting a corruption, surely. But that would be another thing to address.
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Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 10:36 pm
Zircon was speechless. She couldn't find words for this ghost or his demeanor, and so she didn't speak, wary of the cold notes to his voice, the decorum in his words. Was this a test? A prank? Her own expression blanched when he mentioned nothing terrible happening to her, but she said nothing of it--the last thing she was going to do was make mention of her injury, or anything that would make her less of an asset to the Negaverse, even in the presence of someone who had been so accepting in the faults of others. He was still a General, and he certainly wasn't playing the part she remembered now.
"...I can see that," Zircon finally answered, motioning for him to come inside with a stiff wave of her fingers. There wasn't much space in the Captain's office, but she compensated for it by being organized and minimalist, with next to nothing in the way of decor. She scooped up the papers at her desk and neatly slid them into a single file before tucking it away, then offered her chair if the general would have it, turning to her bookshelf to sort her research back into its appropriate place.
"If it's been a whole two years, then you really have some catching up to do," Zircon began, her mouth set in a thin line while she thought back. "The important things to know are that senshi made it into Negaspace somehow and now Apatite is dead, Laurelite has been crowned Queen by Metallia, and we have three new General-Kings filling in for our expanded ranks." She had more pressing questions on her tongue, like 'how did you get out?' and 'what did it feel like to be trapped for so long?' but she resisted the urge to speak out.
"The rest is minutiae, but there are always more objectives and initiatives in progress, if that's what you meant," she continued, crossing her arms while she looked him down and up one more time, just in case. "What is it you want to know?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:36 am
Natron avoided the chair, for the moment; he intended to have this conversation as face to face as possible, given the difference in their heights.
He nodded along with her quick summary, and frowned deeply. A Senshi invasion, a dead General-Queen; none of that was ideal, to say the least. And familiarizing himself with new leadership was going to be unpleasant. At least, as far as he could tell, he didn't still look like some stupid child. Perhaps that would help them take him seriously.
"Give me your impressions on the new General-Sovereigns. And hold nothing back, please; you have an eye for assessing people, and I want to hear your actual assessments, not the sanitized ones you're giving me because you don't want to offend a superior officer. I promise, I won't tattle if you say something rude." He quirked his eyebrows, a little playfully; shades of the person he used to be, for a moment.
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