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The mission to go pick up a couple youma scales had been surprisingly intense, and not in a good way. Sylvite had almost died. Feldspar and Rakovanite had almost died. She was pretty sure it was up to at least three confirmed people who had actually died.

It made Sylvite's head spin if she thought about it too much. She had a lot of feelings about how things had gone down and how things had been handled, .and she wasn't sure what to do with like nintey percent of those feelings, because she was avoiding the General-Sovereigns for different reasons. For a while, she ended up just avoiding a lot of the things like frustration.

She couldn't avoid the worry about her friends and underlings, though. She knew that Feldspar was mostly okay, at least, since she'd been with him the whole time, but Thorite?

He'd been on another team, and she had no idea what he'd been through, but given the overall outcome of things, she'd be pretty surprised if he hadn't almost died. He'd need someone to talk to hafterthat. Shedidn't want him to have to deal with his frustration or whatever all alone.

So she'd called him to her office for a check in.

She tried to make things as welcoming as possible. There were extra plushies on her desk, and a whole case of Oreos just laid out for him. The fairy lights were on, and she sat cross-legged, waiting, even if she couldn't help that she was kind of nervously tapping her fingers on the desk.

Sylvite grinned at Thorite when he finally showed up, even if the smile took a lot more energy to keep up than it usually did. She had worked super hard on turning the office from something standard-issue Negaverse to something much more comfy, fun, and her, and it was nice to see someone notice, even with everything else going on.


She nudged the package of Oreos forwards. "Yeah, you can eat some. You can eat them all, if you want. I bought them for you."

She had a mini pack off to the side for herself, and she grabbed one of them those now. "I feel like we could all use a snack at least, yeah? It's been pretty intense. Like, yeah, it's a war, but I promise it's not always this bad." Then when it was this bad, it was usually because they'd gotten attacked or something, not because they'd annoyed their own youma.

"I just wanted to see you, and see if you're okay."

Sylvite wasn’t really paying attention to how many cookies he ate, or how few. Instead she leaned forwards, resting her hands on her own curled fists as she thought about how everything had gone down.

“Can you tell me what happened?” She asked, voice a little bit quieter than usual. It was still an order, technically. There were still things she needed to know, but she really didn’t want to come off as mean about it, given the circumstances.

“The Generals, Jet and Aquamarine, yeah? Did they take good enough care of you? ‘Cause I’ll talk to them.” She didn’t know a ton about those two, but if they thought lieutenants were disposable or anything other than precious new recruits, they were gonna hear her thoughts on the subject.

“Or was it just the overall situation? ‘Cause yeah, I get that, too. I ended up separated from the group, it’s why I couldn’t check on you. Spent the night in some fish youma’s lair, which, like, yeah. Not fun.”

Not really something that made her want to go back, herself.

Okay. At least she wasn’t gonna have to fight any Generals. Not that it seemed to be making Thorite look much happier about the situation.

“LSD?” She asked, voice almost quiet for once. “I didn’t see hallucinations or anything. Just the people getting turned into youma.”

Also, the people being swarmed after that senshi had pulled out her starseed, and people getting their faces clawed off and people dying. Sylvite bit the insides of her cheeks to keep herself from going there.

This meeting wasn’t about what she’d been through.

Her eyes snapped wide, filled with a new wave of concern. “Wait,” she whispered. “Did you…?”

“You don’t have to,” said Sylvite, voice firm again. It might not technically be up to her, but she didn’t care right now. She’d go have a chat with Axinite if he tried to send him back down there against his will. She’d talk to Metallia.

“I know you’re not okay but I’m really glad you at least made it back safe, Thorite,” she said. “I don’t even wanna think about losing you. You’re too cool,” she said, and her usual smile flickered back through for a second, even if it was pretty weak.

She pulled a plushie from the pile, a tiny palm-sized dog, and she set it on top of the Oreo container, like just maybe it’s cute eyes could make her lieutenant feel better.

“What can I do for you right now?” she asked.

"Yeah, of course," said Sylvite, smiling, since her dog plushie seemed to be helping at least a little bit. "And I think the new hospital has some mental health stuff. People to talk to, I mean, if you ever need that."

She was happy enough not to talk too much about everything that had happened right now, though, to talk about stuffed animals and little wisp things instead.

"Loki?" she said with a giggle. "'Cause you're Thor? That's funny."

Although the orb didn't exactly have horns or constant cocky smirk like that dude in the movies. "Did you get it from Almadel? That space salesman dude? He's got a lot of cool stuff."

Although now that she was thinking about it, she was pretty sure he'd wanted the orbs back.

"Huh. I'm glad you got a buddy."

A monster? Orb things? Under other circumstances, Sylvite would have been excited and curious and would have asked like a thousand questions about it, but she cold tell from the rest of their talk that this probably wasn't a good time.

"That's pretty much what I wanted to ask about," she said. Also to make sure that he was, like, alive, and not a youma for real. "You can take the cookies, like I said. And the dog, for an extra friend."

She smiled, and for once it got up to her eyes. "His name is Mr. Barks."