Welcome to Gaia! ::

The Negaverse castle definitely had an aesthetic. It was big. It was bold. It was dark and elegant, with the crystals and everything, and with all of the spires and spikes on top, it was kind of intimidating, too. Sylvite liked it, overall. It was pretty, and it had a distinct look that was exactly what the castle of a magical army was supposed to look like.

The thing was, it didn't match Sylvite's personal style at all.

When she'd been given her tiny captain's office back when she'd first been promoted, it'd had the same dark crystal walls and simple furniture as all the others. She'd had to use just about every Pinterest trick in the book to make it cute.

There were fairy lights behind gossamer. There was a gallery wall that was all just wrapping paper in cheap frames. There were polaroids of Alexa and her friends on a string, and there was of course several years worth of a cute stationary collection on the desk. There were even a few little plushies. The most recent addition to the room had been a little bit more expensive, but it was also the best one. Sylvite had found out that stick on wallpaper worked with the crystals, so now her office was a much more satisfying shade of palest pink.

There was still a lot of paperwork to do, following the ambush. Sylvite wanted to make sure everybody who had been their got credit for what they had done, so she was putting the time in to make sure she was writing as good of reports for everyone as she could, and also keeping up with Cybele's progress.

The door to her office was open, and Sylvite was scribbling away inside.

The sound of footsteps in the hall and someone calling her name was more than enough to get Sylvite to turn towards the door. She waved when she saw who it was, already smiling a little bit. “Van!”

Something was different, though. Sylvite’s mouth pressed to one side as she looked him up and down, and she squinted so hard that her nose wrinkled. Was it his outfit? Yeah. She was pretty sure that was a new sash, and there was something about his aura, too. She lit up all at once when she figured it out, her eyes going wide and her hands pressing together at her chest. “I mean, Captain Rakovanite! Woah. Look at you!”

He must have found some of that motivation after all, and Sylvite couldn’t have been prouder. She realized that was a little weird, since she was pretty sure he was older than her, but still.

“I guess I can’t tell you what to do anymore, huh?” she asked, not seeming upset about it at all. She didn’t think she could have made him do anything before, anyway.

She glanced back down at the papers she’d been scribbling away at, then shoved them off to the corner of the desk, all in a heap. Her fancy Japanese highlighter got a little bit more care. She was at least pretty gentle when she put the cap back on that one, but it got put away too. “Yeah, I was doing some reports, but I’m never too busy to say hi,” she said, looking back up with a grin. “What’s up?”

Sylvite did a little wiggle in her chair when she heard the nickname, her mouth somehow opening even farther.

He'd remembered.

She had lots of friends in the Negaverse, and the ones she was close enough to like, go out for frozen yogurt with, she almost always called by nicknames. It was Still and Chrys, not Stillwaterite or Chrysocolla. Nobody had ever bothered to call her anything cute back, not until now.

Maybe there was more to Mister Stoic Soldier Boy after all.

Although, he was a pretty good soldier. "Yeah," said Sylvite with a bouncy little nod. "I'm not super surprised. You totally deserve it. I mentioned you in reports a couple times. I said you were smart and, uh," she grabbed a pink folder from the other side of her desk and flipped thorough it for a second before squinting at one of the papers inside. "Level headed." She snapped the folder closed and flicked it back across the table to where it had been, any lip-twitching or stares from Rakovanite going completely undetected, "But it's kinda up to the sovereigns what they wanna do with that information. I'm glad it all worked out."

Some of the initial excitement seemed to have worked its way out of her system. Sylvite glanced back over to the first stack of papers, and her voice was almost even when she said, "Cybele's okay. The recruitment went through and everything. It worked pretty much the same as ours." She put a hand in front of her own chest and wiggled her fingers to demonstrate. "I've been trying to help her settle in. I can introduce you guys if you want! I bet you'd get along."

They both liked staring at things and had that super serious vibe. Together they could probably intimidate even the most stubborn of Order's forces.

Sylvite leaned forward, steepling her fingers. "But you can't just tell me there's a new senshi and nothing else!" She tilted her head. "Who? What? Where? Are they nice?"

"I mean, she's still a person," said Sylvite with a bouncy little shrug. "You don't have to say anything weird. 'Hi' is always a good place to start."

She thought back to the way Cybele acted whenever she came to the office to go over notes or information. She had a tendency to hang out in the doorway, or just inside of it, the way Rakovanite was doing now. Now that she was thinking about it, they both kinda looked at her the same way, too, like they were watching her carefully, even if they were just hanging out.

"She's all serious, like you. Really into work. You guys could always talk about that. She's been bringing in tons of energy ever since she started going out on her own."

Yeah, she was sure of it. They had so much in common that they could be great friends and an even better team.

She snapped the folder shut and started pawing through her other papers instead. These were the ones she'd shoved aside earlier, but Sylvite was nothing without her organized chaos, and within a couple seconds she had the handbook page on recruiting members of Order picked out. This one she laid flat on the desk and spun it around so that the other captain could see.

"I was kinda curious about how it worked, too," she said. "The Chaos did a lot of the work. She doesn't remember much at all from before, but she knows we're her friends." Sylvite's smile brightened at that. The pride was practically radiating off of her. "Obviously she had questions at first, but I pretty much just told her the truth. We're giving her a second chance."

It was a little more complicated than that. Sylvite was careful not to say anything too weird or shocking, but if someone was on their side now, there wasn't much to hide.

The advancement comment got her blinking a couple of times, way too fast, but she didn't say anything because she was trying really, really hard not to hope too much. She did nod when he mentioned his senshi.

"Cervantite's a nice name," she said. "I'd love to meet him sometime!" She grinned, then topped and squinted instead. "I mean, unless he's like, super mean."

Although, it would still be good to have information on someone, even if they weren't nice.

While Rakovanite just squinted a little at her claims, Sylvite's look of confusion at his response was not at all subtle. Her lips were twisted, her nose was all scrunched up, and she even tilted her head before she shook it.

"Of course it's smart to tell someone the truth," she said. "Like, I get that stuff's more complex here than the whole kindergarten 'don't lie' rule, and there's definitely stuff we haven't talked about yet."

Like, the fact that when they'd met, Cybele had shot her in the back with every intention of killing her, or that after her capture, she'd kicked and spit at Sylvite every time she'd woken up from the energy draining. Sometimes during their sessions, Sylvite wondered if she was ever going to ask about the moments right before her coming over, and also what she was going to say if she did, but so far it hadn't come up.

"But we gotta build trust now that she's one of us," said Sylvite, leaning forwards over the mess of papers and resting her chin on her hands. "I wasn't gonna come up with some dumb answer when she asked why she was recruited as an Eternal."

She sucked her cheeks in for a few seconds and actually seemed to consider. "Maybe you could blank-slate it with someone freshly awakened, but Cybele's got a history. If I didn't tell her, she'd find out from the database, or like, someone she used to know who thinks it's so awful that we stole her."

Sylvite rolled her eyes, clearly not impressed by any hypothetical members of Order.

Her smile came back when he talked about trading senshi, only for her to raise an eyebrow half a second later. "Wait, you recruited someone unmanageable?" Her grin only got bigger at the thought. "Okay, now I'm really curious about all this."

Sylvite tilted her head, her grin only going a little bit smug when Rakovanite finally seemed to be admitting that she'd made the right call with Cybele. Like, he was still being a little bit critical, but Sylvite was willing to take what she could get. She was starting to realize that this was kinda par for the course with him. He was always gonna ask questions. He was always gonna try to find the best solutions to things.

Sylvite understood. She got like that, too, sometimes. She just knew that she was right about this one.

Although the details of Cybele's conversion and training were momentarily forgotten as he started talking a little more about this senshi that he had found.

"Wait, there was an Order cat there?" Sylvite asked, leaning forwards even more as her eyes went wide. "Okay, yeah. That changes everything. I mean, it's good to get as many senshi as we can, anyway, but like, if he was about to get awakened?" Her face was practically glowing. "You totally sniped him! Take that, Order! No wonder you got a promotion!" She sat up straight again and gave a little golf clap.

"Sorry you don't get along, though," she said, going a little bit quieter. It wasn't totally lost on her that she was loud, and kind of impulsive, and that he was here, talking to her in her office, anyway, so that maybe there was more to the story, but she decided not to mention that.

"You can always get him another officer if it's really bad," she said, her tone getting somewhere close to steady and serious. "Or you can at least ask for help." Her smiled widened again. "Like, I can do training, and I'm not scared of loud people."

"Wait, you got a senshi and a cat?"

Rakovanite didn't seem all that impressed, but Sylvite was still a little bit slack jawed. Like, yeah, she got the concept of not wanting to recruit every single person on the street, but this was a case where they'd gotten two allies instead of two enemies.

"That means you're doing better than me. Wow. No wonder you got a promotion," she said, grinning as she nodded at the new pieces on his uniform again. She hadn't done anything nearly that impressive back when she'd first made Captain, just an internal investigation that had come up inconclusive and a couple of database entries.

Something about the cold way he said belligerent made her smile flicker, though. She glanced down at an empty spot on her desk and was actually quiet for a couple seconds.

"Look," she said. "It's not about being inept. It's not even about skillsets, really. You're obviously doing something right. I'm sure you've got plenty to teach people that I wouldn't even think about. You can do it." She looked up at him again, although her smile was smaller.

"There's a frustration tolerance, though. If you get too worked up, or tired or whatever, you become less effective, especially at leadership. It's a whole thing. I, uh, saw it with the guy who recruited me."

It hadn't been firsthand. She'd been too hyper and unfocused for him to even try with, but she knew some of the people he'd actually trained, and they'd all turned out weird.

"So if you get to that point, the smart thing to do is to ask for help," she said with a deep nod, not wanting to dwell on all that too much.

While there might be more to the story of this "belligerent" senshi and his pet Mauvian, Sylvite didn't push any farther for answers, yet. There was plenty of time to figure it all out, especially once she got to talk to the boy in question.

Her fingers were getting twitchy, and she reached for a rogue sticky note, folding it in half and then in half again. "Umber," she said as she made another little crease. Her nose wrinkled, a little bit from focus on her project and a little bit from the memories. Sylvite wasn't usually the type to keep things to herself, but she stayed quiet for a second since he was dead and all and she didn't have anything nice to say.

Then again, he'd made his choices. He didn't exactly deserve to have people saying nice stuff in his memory.

"I didn't get the worst of it, but he beat people up. Agents. Broke their bones and everything, like, a lot." Once the words started, they came faster and faster. "The girl who actually did my training? He brought her over from the White Moon, and then he was mean to her! After all that. She was really smart, too, and good at this stuff. She didn't deserve that." She blew out a breath so sharp that some of her papers rustled.

"I guess it doesn't matter, though," she said, pressing down a crease hard with her thumb. "He's been gone a long time."

Another second passed, and Sylvite took a softer breath before looking back to Rakovanite. "I dunno if I'm good at leadership or whatever, either, but I want to think that I can do better than that."