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It was all kind of a lot.

She'd finally come face to face with the dumb, ungrateful, traitor, Cybele, and that hadn't gone well at all. Her senshi was definitely back in white, she'd gotten away again, and her new little friend had given Sylvite a face full of bruises.

On top of that, her other charge and her closest Negaverse ally had both come this close to dying during the rift mission. That had been its own whole mess. She still saw masses of writhing faces coming out of holes in the walls and floor if she closed her eyes for too long.

It made sleep hard, so she went out instead, almost every night.

She was kinda still looking for people to put in the database. Things had been so much easier, back when that had been her only job.

Mostly, though, she was sprinting through the parks and doing flips off of things, hoping that it would make her feel better the way it used to. It did help, but only a little bit.

At least after a few hours of parkour she was usually tired enough to finally get some rest.

She'd found a playground this time, and she leapt to the top of the swirly slide, then jumped off of it and did a double flip on the way down. Then she did it again, and again, and again.

Sylvite was doing everything she could in order to not think. The repetitive motion helped. The feeling of being upside down when she flipped helped. After a good thirty minutes, when the extreme magical stamina was finally starting to wear out, the beginnings of exhaustion and the ache in her muscles helped.

She was doing so good at not thinking that she didn't notice the aura getting closer, like, at all.

She barely noticed the little lieutenant even when he talked to her. The thoughts she hadn't managed to chase off yet were somewhere far, far away, and his voice was not very loud.

When she turned to climb up the stairs again, though, she saw a blur of black fabric almost right in front of her. She'd just about run him right over, but instead she caught herself in time and blinked until her head cleared just a little and the blur turned into a face.

A Lieutenant. Oh.

He was asking if she was okay.

"Maybe?" she said, blinking a couple more times and not sounding all that convinced. "Maybe not, but y'know."

She took a deep breath, because she wasn't always great with rank stuff, but she knew it probably wasn't right to dump all her problems on some Lieutenant.

"What's your name? I don't think I know you yet."

It turned out that talking was also an okay way to clear your head. Like, maybe it wasn’t quite as effective as doing parkour until you collapsed in a heap, because you were still thinking some, but at least you weren’t worrying about your own life if you were worrying about someone else’s.

Also, flaky Generals were one of those things that always made Sylvite’s skin crawl. She got that it was a hard job to make people feel cared about and supported in such an awful hot mess of a war. She apparently hadn’t done a good job of it with Cybele, but at least she’d been there.

There was really no excuse for running off and abandoning lieutenants, but it still happened like, all the time. It had still happened to her.

“I’m not gonna report you,” she said, doing her best not to be quite as loud as usual. “It’s good to say hi to people, okay? We wanna all be connected as possible.”

This dude seemed like he was going through almost as much as she was, and Sylvite stepped forward, not really smiling but not scowling quite so much either. She summoned her tablet. “Might have to report your General missing, though, and the Captain. It’s extra weird if they both vanished, yeah?” There might be something deeper happening than them just getting busy.

She pressed her lips together hard, trying to keep from getting sucked back into thinking about her own little traitor.

“How long have you been in the Negaverse, Gismodine?”

“Ugh,” said Sylvite, her face scrunching up more and more the more he talked. “Order is so gross. The worst. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

She exhaled, giving up on the attempt to have her mind be all zen and blank, and instead she let herself think bout her old problems instead of her new ones. “They’re all like that. They don’t even care if you’re new, or like, young. Nah. It’s all about, like, conquest or whatever. Killing people, or, like, torturing them.” Just thinking about it made her throat feel tight, and the nervous energy came back, to her hands this time.

“That’s what happened to me right after I got recruited. Torture.” She rubbed at her wrists with all the intensity that had been going into her flips just a few minutes ago.

“It doesn’t sound like the guy who brought you in was that nice either, though.”

It was no wonder he’d been afraid she was gonna snap at him or something worse if he’d already been used as a literal meat shield. There wasn’t much information on his other superiors, and maybe they weren’t gross, and they’d died honorably or something, but they’d still abandoned their lieutenant in one way or another.

This one reminded her of Feldspar. Not his personality. That didn’t match up at all, but they’d been recruited, ended up in terrible situations, and then been left behind by people who were supposed to be supporting them. Sylvite wasn’t gonna stand for that, for people being left alone when they didn’t have to be, not when there was something she could do about it.

Which there was.

“Do you want someone to make sure you don’t get strangled?” She asked. “Like, to protect you and check up on you? ‘Cause, I’m here.” She looked over at him, purple eyes bright. “I’m still kinda a new General, but I could try.”

When he scootched away, Sylvite's nose wrinkled. She wasn't trying to be scary. She was never trying to be scary. She just related to some of the awful stuff he'd been through. He deserved to know that he wasn't alone.

She was being too much, though. She had a tendency to do that, and then people got all weirded out. Gismodine wasn't the first one.

She bit the insides of her cheek, hard, to keep from saying anything else that might worry him. Instead, she just nodded twice when he asked if she wanted a hug. Then she stepped forwards, wrapping her arms around him.

It turned out that hugs helped a lot more than rubbing at her wrists did, or biting her cheeks, or jumping off of playgrounds until her head spun. Some of the tension that she'd been carrying for days finally, finally eased.

"You're not useless," she said as she stepped away again, finally smiling. "You made me feel better already. That boyfriend of yours sounds pretty cool. You should listen to him." She made sure to actually pause and take a deep breath and let that sink in before she added, "Okay. Now I'm emotionally invested. I have to keep you from getting strangled."

He seemed so nervous, and Sylvite was quick to nod at his question.

"Yeah, of course I'll be your new General," she said.

That was why she'd gotten her upgrade in the first place. It was so she could be there for the people who had slipped through the cracks in one way or another, so that she could help the people that other people and situations had failed. It was so she could protect them.

"We can do check ins when you turn in your quota, and training so that you can keep yourself from getting hurt. Also, so you can keep me from getting hurt, I guess. 'Cause yeah, no. I don't wanna get strangled."

She smiled at that, even thought what they were talking about was serious. Gismodine seemed like the type of person who deserved to be smiled at.

"I can do the paperwork tonight, if you want."

That would give her something to do.

Sylvite sucked her cheeks in while she looked over the boy in front of her, this time with the eyes of a General who wanted what was best for her Lieutenant.

Was he intimidating? Okay, no, not exactly, but he also didn't stand out as weak, or useless, or anything like that. He looked like a normal lieutenant, with a crisp suit and cute hair. It was only when he'd opened his mouth that Sylvite had started worrying about him.

"Hmm," she said. "Muscles are okay, but maybe not the first thing people are gonna notice? I mean, I work out, but you can't really tell 'cause the uniform's so puffy." Not that she was even gonna be physically intimidating, being five foot even, so she went the other way and tried to get people to underestimate people when she could.

She'd do her best to help her new Lieutenant with any of his goals, though, including if he wanted that whole tough aesthetic.

"A lip ring would probably help," she agreed, "But you know what would really help?" She paused for a second, to give him some time to think about it.

"A knife!"

She grinned as she summoned her daggers, and she offered one over to him. "Of course you can come patrol with me until you're feeling a little bit more confident. I dunno what days fit your schedule best, but we can figure that out. Plus you can hold one of these while we're out, so if someone does decide to mess with us, you can surprise them!"

Maybe that would help him feel less useless.

Gismodine might have been trying to make a joke about his awkward Lieutenant weapons, but Sylvite's eyes lit up anyway. She clapped her hands as best she could, careful of the knife she was still holding.

"A picnic could be great!" she said, "Maybe for one of those check-ins? Then we could talk about stuff, but with snacks." Snacks, in Sylvite's opinion, made everything better. Even just the thought of having a picnic with her sweet new subordinate was enough to snap her thoughts away from the viscous cycle they'd been going through earlier. At least, mostly.

"Also, those are better than what a lot of the Lieutenants get. You could poke someone pretty good. We can practice that, too."

For a couple seconds, Sylvite squinted off into the distance, mentally going over her calendar. "We can do Thursdays. I get off early," she said. "We can even start this week if you want. Nothing scary, just a basic energy patrol and we can go over how far you got in your training under your old superiors."