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Sylvite was decorating.

She'd applied for a slightly bigger office a few weeks after her upgrade, and when her request had been granted, she'd shown up to find it looking very sad and bare compared to the little pink cubicle that had been her Negaspace home for the last few years.

Luckily, the pink part of that was all stick-on wallpaper, and using the edge of one of her knives and as much patience as she could possibly muster, she managed to peel one of the sheets off the old wall and carefully carry it over to stick it on the new one. It bubbled a little bit in the corners. Some of the sticky stuff must have come off in transition. Still, it looked pretty good, and if it meant that Sylvite didn't have to buy any more wallpaper, that was always a plus.

She stepped back out into the hall, ready to go back for a second sheet. That was when she noticed something glowing.

That wasn't necessarily weird on its own, in a castle made of magic crystals, but in an office? Sylvite didn't know of anyone but her who had their offices set up with more than the bare minimum, or with anything that glowed. When she thought about it harder, she didn't think that there had been anyone in that particular office at all.

The wallpaper could wait. Sylvite dashed over to the door and knocked three times. "Hi," she said, then sucked in her cheeks and peeked through the opening without waiting for an answer.

When she saw an unfamiliar guy sitting at a desk, she broke into a grin. "I thought there might be someone new around here," she said, wiggling her fingers in a wave.

Sylvite spent a good three seconds just wide-eyed and staring, her eyes flicking around what she could see of the office before she turned back to the General in the chair. Now she could see that a bunch of the light was actually coming from him.

"That's so many glowsticks," she said, her grin getting even bigger as she took a few steps towards his desk. "I love it. I love everything about your clothes. Wow." If she could borrow some of those elements for her fashion projects without needing Negaverse magic, she'd be set. Still, for now she was more than happy to be office buddies with someone who glowed.

Well, someone who glowed because they had a cool outfit and not in the gross Order way.

"I'm Sylvite, and I guess we're buddies," she said. "I'm moving in down the hall. I just got promoted and the extra space is really nice, since, y'know. Getting promoted and having subordinates and all apparently means more paperwork."

She shrugged, not seeming too frustrated about it. She'd signed up for the paperwork when she'd signed up for Information, and that had been years ago.

Eventually she looked from his clothes to his face, and squinted a little bit. She was pretty sure that she'd never seen him before, even in the big meetings during the administrative turnover back in her Lieutenant days. "Were you off on a mission or something, or just, like, chilling?" she asked, always curious.

Sylvite blinked quickly when he started looking all nervous. That was bad. The last thing she wanted was to make someone feel guilty for being away or something.

"Oh, don't worry, that's not a big deal, either," she said, smiling straight at him now in a way that was supposed to be encouraging. "I get busy sometimes, too." She'd always been pretty good about keeping up with quota, but when school or work picked up, there could be times when she didn't see the office for a couple months. If something more serious than school came up for someone, she wasn't gonna judge.

She might ask questions. The way he was acting had her really curious, but she knew better than to go asking quite yet. She made her way over to the box of glowsticks instead, picking out a couple of pink ones.

"Should I swap you something for these? That's a buddy thing to do, yeah? Let's see."

Without waiting for an answer, she started digging through her subspace pocket. First she pulled out a chunk of quartz that she'd picked out of some gravel. It would've been more impressive if they weren't already surrounded by giant crystals, but she set it on the corner of his desk anyway. Next was a half-finished string bracelet, which she sent back after just a second of squinting at it. Something like that had to be done before it made a good present.

Then she found something better, and she held the little blue bag out towards him.

"I've got Oreos," she said, tilting her head.

"Yeah! We can share them," said Sylvite. There was no hiding just how thrilled she was that this guy seemed to be up for making friends right away, unlike the half of the Negaverse that was annoyingly stuffy and professional.

As she picked a cookie from the package and sent her handful of pink glowsticks off to supspace in its place, she was still smiling. She rocked playfully back on her heels. Of course she noticed that he still seemed kinda nervous about something, and that he wasn't nearly as generous when it came to talking about what had happened to him as he was when it came to giving out trinkets, but that was okay.

At least, it was okay for now. With any luck, he'd open up more after she got some more snacks in him.

In the meantime, she glanced towards the stack of papers on his desk. "Are you reading reports?" she asked. "All at once? That's impressive. They can get kinda, uh, dense." She could read a couple at a time these days, but only with the help of a lot of cute highlighters to keep her focused.

"I'm an Information General," she said. "It's kinda my job to know things and keep agents updated, so if you need a crash course or highlights or something, that's hopefully more interesting than a piece of paper," she wiggled her fingers to emphasize that she was right there.

"Crayons are good, though," said Sylvite, her face falling just a little bit at the thought that any kind of art supply might be discredited. "I was using Walmart highlighters and markers to color code my stuff there for a while, up until I discovered Midiliners."

She wiggled her fingers for emphasis, because yeah, stationary stuff was one of the things that she got weirdly excited about. "Also Tombow markers, and those fancy gel pens with the different effects. It's getting kinda expensive, honestly, but it's so aesthetic that I just can't stop."

She'd gotten her promotion with a report written in gel pen, so it seemed to be working. At least, it wasn't holding her back.

Tangents aside, Sylvite stepped forwards, a little bit more serious, and she rested her fingertips on his desk.

"Okay, so when you say you've been gone for awhile, what does that mean, exactly?" she asked. There was no judgement in her voice, just a professional curiosity. "Like, were you around when Negaspace got invaded?" She didn't think that she'd seen him, even back then. "I think that was the biggest thing that kind of changed the structure of the Negaverse and stuff."

"Wait."

Sylvite's eager-but-almost-professional smile was gone in a second.

"You had to retrieve people?" She blinked, trying to process that. Something shifted in her head, and her voice came out quieter. "Was that. Uh. Was that just a little bit before the invasion, or was it a lot?"

She glanced at him, then shook her head. "I guess you wouldn't know, but I don't think that the ones who took me called themselves the Blood Moon Court or anything, which means-"

Her nose twitched. She felt like she wanted to throw up.

"I guess Order makes a habit of kidnapping people. Probably the torture, too, yeah?" she asked, lips twisting completely to one side of her face. Her scars were old, but talking about this stuff too much made them itch anyway, and she absentmindedly rubbed at her wrist while she talked.

"Ugh. They're so gross," she said with a little huff. "The invasion, too. They, y'know, invaded, here." She gestured to the walls of the castle. "We drove them off, but they killed General-Queen Apatite, and a bunch of other people, too. It was bad."

Sylvite straightened. Of course she'd talk about the nasty stuff, but they didn't have to dwell on it. "But we restructured some afterwards, and I think it's been going better since then?"

It felt weird to say that she didn't know who General-Queen Tanzanite was when he spoke about her with such reverence. Yeah, there might have been a name in the records somewhere, but she'd never seen a person with that name, even back before the administrative turnover. It felt weird to say that she didn't know why he was petting his feather.

Instead, she said, "You don't have to feel awful."

She took a deep breath, giving a little bit of a lopsided smile. "I don't think it was quite that intense when people came to save us, that time. It wasn't, like, okay. I mean, it sucked, but everyone made it out alive."

She tried to smile wider.

She couldn't say the same thing about the invasion. She couldn't say the same thing at all. As a Lieutenant, she'd had to help clean out the castle afterwards, and that was something that she was never scrubbing from her mind. The casualties had been massive, and having another General around probably would have helped a lot, but she didn't need Scheelite focusing on all that right now.

"Order is the worst," she said, because that was the important thing. "I think that's what we can get out of all of this. So gross. So need to be stopped."

She'd been staring off a little bit as she'd thought about the past, but now she met the other General's eyes again. "I'm glad you're back, to help us fight them again."