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 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2019 4:23 pm
Location: Crimson Hotel
It was normal to feel fatigue after a long flight, to take a few days to adjust to a new time zone. The human body ran on circadian rhythms and particular cycles that did not like to be jostled, and even caffeine could only stave off the inevitable fatigue of travel.
That should have faded weeks ago--what Suri felt could no longer safely qualify as jet lag. Her body dragged with the weight of a dead ache, her mind fogged, with little want to think about anything but events out of her control. She ran over them like touching new scars, reviewing the details--had Maverick been sluggish, in the days before he'd opened his mouth and spoke? Had he always been that way, or had something happened? She didn't grieve the captain--but perhaps she should have. It was a heavy thing to lose an entire branch, even if she'd seen countless recruits cut down in her time. How did the senshi get so organized as to topple an entire outpost? This haunted her more than the missing captain, but less than the specter wandering the hotel halls. Perhaps she did not know the man in lavender, but some part of her did, something she couldn't cut out like the rest. Her mind still felt so jumbled from the circus nonsense, so tired, but she dared not tell Chase. He made promises, yes, but there were only so many concessions he as a general could allow before his hand would be forced. She would not be responsible for putting him in that difficult position, to decide if she was still fit for duty or if it was time to put her out to pasture. She did not want to face that fight.
But tired or otherwise, the mission stopped for no one, least of all her, not when there were reports to file and correspondence to send to the appropriate channels. It wasn't the thrill of field work, but Suri was fairly certain she didn't qualify for much of that anymore. Instead, she holed up at a table alone in one of the hotel eateries, dark bags under her eyes while she shuffled through reports, on her fourth cup of coffee and not showing any signs of benefit from it. She wore black compression clothes under a loose frock, intending to hit the pool afterwards, even if she felt tired enough to sleep in this booth. Suri had no choice but to keep moving, keep pushing her limits. If she did not train her body, it would decay from the nerve damage. If she did not complete these reports, she would be a disappointment in the mission, failing the only role she was suitable for. If she did not maintain her composure, she would be setting a bad example to her lieutenant and as a representative of the Pack.
The fact that others managed what she could not was clearly some obvious defect of her character, one that she was unwilling to share. She could hold out for longer, keep it hidden. She could just...drink more coffee. Yes. That would work. It would have to work.
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2019 11:39 pm
What hadn't faded for Suri had faded for Damien almost immediately. The human circadian rhythm did not enjoy being jostled, but then, Damien had already chosen to travel often in his time becoming a general of the Negaverse. He had learned ways to counteract the tendency to fall into jet lag. For one, days before he left, he had already begun shifting his schedule to most suit the times of Witzend, England. He actually had found Witzend's time more convenient than other places he had traveled to. The one time he had found himself traveling to Australia-- Well, that was not a venture he particularly cared to repeat. As a consequence, it was not terribly surprising to find that Damien was fairly bright-eyed and alert, for a relative definition of bright-eyed. For one, he wasn't exactly, well, smiling. Nor did he look particularly chipper. If anything, his expression was best described as pensive, perhaps even dismissive, as he scanned over everything in the particular eatery he found himself in. He was partially taking note of the other agents who had found themselves in there, trying to figure out what might have been driving them or if they had any other information. Perhaps together they could figure out more about these damn White Moon-- His eyes fell upon someone who seemed to be drinking far too much coffee. Damien's brows lifted. Curious. He was fairly sure she could not possibly still be jetlagged. Casually, he strolled over to her, asking without announcing himself, "Do you need that much caffeine to get a buzz?"
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 3:25 pm
Suri's lip twitched and the grip on her pen tightened, but she did well enough to catch herself before she winced. Her kneejerk reaction to strange male voices at her periphery was typically violence, and that was only enhanced by the jittery feeling in her chest. Instead, she funneled all of her initial startled energy into an unimpressed look, which she cast up at Damien instead.
He wore a face she'd seen at the meeting, but she couldn't place a uniform to it. Suri scowled instead. "The buzz is actually the part I'd prefer to avoid," she muttered, examining the dregs of the remaining coffee in her cup. In retrospect, she could have simply ordered black tea, since they were in England and all. Perhaps then it wouldn't have tasted so burnt, or oddly tinny. Ah, well. Hindsight was 20/20.
Still, she had to be professional, so she motioned vaguely at the chair opposite her before she put her nose back in the paperwork, making a face at someone's creative spelling of the word 'petals'. "Can I help you?" Suri asked, no love in her voice for the man or his chipper demeanor. It was offensive, that people could just stroll into the lobby that awake and alert. If he wasn't an officer of some caliber, she'd have half a mind to drain him, so that he'd know what she felt like.
Consequences aside, it was still a tempting thought.
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Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 9:30 pm
Damien returned the unimpressed look with a smile that could have been interpreted as either smarmy or smug depending on how one looked at him. Either way, he seemed obviously confident. "Hm. Perhaps you should have tried tea," teased Damien, as he went ahead and took the seat she gestured to. As he settled himself into it, pushing his frame into the back of the chair, he remarked, "We are in England, after all. They're a bit obsessed with their flavored leaf water here." That wasn't to say he didn't like it... He took a moment with that all-too-smug smile to look her over. He definitely recognized her from the initial meeting they had with Chase. In fact, if he recalled correctly from taking a look over the roster, she was one of the more powerful people with them. Curious. He supposed it made sense she was pouring over paperwork. The higher they got, the more nonsense they had to deal with. "See you got a lot of paper in front of you. You come across anything interesting while in that caffeine haze?" It was snarky, but from the way he set his notebook down, it seemed he legitimately was curious.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 7:37 am
"I wanted something a little more American," Suri grumbled, her fingers curled around the base of the cup. What she'd thought she wanted was something more bitter, something so sharp that it would bring back her senses, but she found that all coffee was good for was being tired at faster speeds.
It gave her just enough energy to shoot him a dirty look after he made some comment about her caffeine haze. "It's still too soon to know," she said under her glower, focusing down to turn a page. "But we're starting to build a map of sightings in the area, and there have been a few leads worth investigation."
Fighting senshi in Witzend was a different game in Destiny City--back home, you could pick a block on any street corner in the urban core and simply stand powered up to flush out an encounter with a White Moon soldier spouting about morals and 'justice'. Here they were more elusive, organized, more difficult to root out. She needed to rise to the challenge if she was going to recoup any clout she was losing by not being at her research day and night, but so far she was coming up on empty, distracted by too many variables. It had been infuriating at first, but now...she was struggling to feel anything that wasn't tired.
Rubbing her face, she slid her current open file across the table, letting the man have a look. Maybe a fresh set of eyes would pull something out of the map, the random circles and x's drawn in crisp blue ink. "They don't seem to have a pattern--do you see anything?" Normally, it was Suri's MO to keep her data close and secretive, against the spirit of sharing her reward when she found it out, but she didn't have the luxury on this mission to keep to herself. The sooner they finished here, the sooner they could go home, and maybe the sooner she could get some sleep.
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 11:55 am
A little more American? Damien's brows lifted in amusement, though as much as he was tempted to push his luck, he dropped the temptation to comment about how considering they were in Rome, she should consider doing as the Romans do. Not everyone thought blending in was the best means for gathering information, and that was fine. It seemed that she had some information of her own, anyway. "A map?" The teasing expression on his face fully melted away when she pushed something in his direction, and he scooted in a bit closer, bending down to take a closer look at the details. She was right, they didn't particularly seem to have a concrete pattern, which was not a particularly good sign when it came to being able to corner them off. It was likely they had gotten used to having run of this particular city and had become efficient at it, something which was not particularly promising for the group of Negaverse agents who had been brought in to deal with the problem. He took out his pen from his notebook, flipped it so the stylus-side was pointing down at the map, and traced out a few things, attempting to triangulate some sort of center for their operations. "It appears they are more than likely quite familiar with the city. I am certain we could locate a base or bases, but it seems like more data might be best to figure out solutions. I think there are hints, though," he murmured, as he boxed in an area vaguely with his stylus. "We can also corroborate this with some of the information we have gathered. For example, Emilia, while on a mission with me in the in construction high-rise over here--," Damien circled this point with his stylus while flipping open his notebook to a certain page, again making sure to not actually mark the paper, "spotted a guardian cat. A sure sign they are at least present in this sector, which may explain these seeings." He tilted his head. "These senshi seem far more adept at guerilla warfare than most of those back in Destiny City do."
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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