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Axinite might have stress baked. Sylvite stress decorated.

Not that she was overhauling her office look or anything. She liked what she'd built up over time, which was somewhere between Kawaii and Pinterest-Aesthetic. She'd had the pale pink stick on wallpaper for over a year now, and the fairy lights behind gossamer that backlit her shelves. She had framed selfies with friends on the walls and the shelves, and she'd added some inspirational quotes in chunky gold calligraphy back when she'd gotten switched to a bigger office when she hit General.

There was always room for more, though. She'd gone out shopping when the college dorm stuff started hitting clearance, and she'd picked up a very fluffy pink rug for the floor, and matching pillows to dress up the sad office chairs.

She liked having seasonal stuff, too. She was obsessed with mini pumpkins. She'd picked out a whole dozen to shove around on her shelves and such. Of course they were white so they didn't clash with anything, and there were a few fake glittery gold ones to be accents. She'd shoved a ghost squismallow up with the collection of plushies on the shelves that watched over her.

Organizing, on the other hand, was not really something that Sylvite did to chill out, but when she heard that she was getting two new subordinates, she spent an hour or so wrangling her ever-growing pile of reports, and making sure that her cute Japanese pens and highlighters were all in their proper holders.

Then she waited, clicking and unclicking one of those pens like crazy until she heard a knock at her door, at which point she practically jumped over her desk in the scramble to go open it.

The door slammed open, and Sylvite stood on the inside, grinning and looking at the senshi in front of her. This one wasn't Fulgurite, she'd met him before, which meant it must be the other one- "Adonis?"

She nodded towards the extremely cozy office behind her. "Hi! Come on in."

Sylvite just beamed as he looked around the office and looked like he was at least kind of impressed instead of judging her for all the color. She clasped her hands in front of her chest at first, then seemed to remember what she was doing all at once and sprinted back to perch on her desk chair, hands splayed out in front of her, instead.

"Yeah, I'm not really a fan of the whole goth aesthetic," she said. "Like, it's cool, just not for my space, y'know?"

He might not actually know. His outfit had very spooky vibes, and while he hadn't necessarily chosen it, Sylvite had found that senshi usually had some kind of connection with their spheres, and because of that, their outfits.

"You can sit," she said, pointing to the chairs across the table from her which were now sporting fluffy cushions. "Have some candy." Part of the Halloween decor was a plastic bucket filled with sweets, which she nudged in his direction.

Then, she straightened and tried to think about business. "Okay, since this is a getting to know you thing," she said, "First, hi. I'm Sylvite. Second, Do you know why Lepidolite thought we'd be a good fit? I haven't actually talked to him in awhile."

By that, she meant she was pretty sure she'd never spoken to the dude.

“Yeah, I’m pretty great,” said Sylvite, and even though she grinned a lot wider when she said it than someone who was serious might’ve. She was pretty great if you didn’t count the growing list of missing subordinates. That was still kinda weighing on her, even though she had a new face sitting in her cute chair.

It was a little bit of a relief to know that it wasn’t weighing on the General-Kings. Maybe she should’ve been worried about that, actually, since if she was on some kind of top ten list, which she kinda was, more than Adonis knew, it meant whatever other Generals were around were making worse mistakes than she was.

Whatever. She curled her toes into tight little balls in her shoes, where Adonis couldn’t see her fidgeting. If they thought she’d be a good General for him, she’d do her best to be a good General. That was that.

“I don’t think you have to call me Boss?” she said after a second. “You can if you wanna, but General’s probably better when we have to be all formal. Just Sylvite’s okay, too.”

There was, she was finding, a line where stuff got, like, almost too informal? Feldspar had started calling her Livi right away, which she wasn’t sure she loved, but on the other hand, titles made her feel kinda weird, like when a kid called her Miss Alexa and she instantly turned forty.

“I wanna hear about you right now, though,” she said, “your magic, or, like, what you’ve been up to in the Negaverse, why you got transferred. Just fun facts are also cool.”

Fun in general was always allowed, here, and Sylvite tilted her head, very curious about this chill, Halloween-costume dude.

"Oooh, you can peel people's faces off? That's nasty," said Sylvite, but her eyes were sparkling, and her grin widened if anything. Yeah, she might've had a hairbow as part of her uniform and kept plushies in her office, but she was very, very aware that this was a war and that all of them were soldiers. Face-peeling was a great skill to have for a warrior. Maybe it wasn't the fun, sparkly magic that was her absolute favorite, but she could go for practical every once in a while.

"I love it."

Poker seemed actually fun, and Sylvite blinked at the mention of that. "You wanna teach me to play cards?" she asked, except afterwards she processed the rest of what he was saying and puffed out her cheeks a little. When she blew out the air, the rest of her seemed to deflate, too. "Oh, if you have, like, a problem, I guess we shouldn't play cards."

It was a shame. She did like games.

She could see the way that Adonis was winking, though, and shifting around, and moving on quickly like that would make Sylvite ignore whatever he'd been brushing over and move on to talk about how much construction sucked, or something. It wouldn't.

"What happened, exactly?" she asked, tone shifting just slightly into something more serious. "Am I gonna have to worry about you, like, getting into trouble?"

Choosing a branch for him, or training him, or anything like that would all be kinda useless in that case.

Okay. No gambling addiction. That was probably good.

Unless he was lying about that, or like, didn't know. Sylvite was pretty sure that people who were having the worst time with addiction didn't know that they had a problem.

She wasn't sure if that philosophy applied to people who might not have an addiction, exactly, but who might have a problem when it came to using tactics that were borderline illegal in order to get money out of casinos. Which, he was saying was all behind him but he was saying all that without even looking at her, so she was taking most of his words with a grain of salt. Sylvite clicked her tongue a couple times as she tried to wrap her head around just what kind of guy had been dropped into her life.

"Yeah. Teach me to play cards," she said, grabbing one of her many gel pens and scribbling down a note that she didn't let him see. "Then you can play with me, and not some casino that's gonna get all mad at you."

If she could get it out of his system that would maybe help? It was the best thing she could think of on short notice like this.

She clicked her pen. "Anyway, back to Negaverse stuff. You're Infiltration, yeah? If Lepidolite's your boss?" If he wasn't, he probably should be, with that smile and the way he could make anything into a good story.

"How's that?"

Figuring out someone's branch wasn't that hard when you knew who they were reporting to and stuff, but Sylvite looked pretty proud of herself for figuring it out, anyway. She wrote it down on her sticky note, then squinted at Adonis a little bit.

"What's Infiltration like, exactly?" she asked. "I mean, I know it's public relations and stuff, I just always though most of the people in Infiltration got recruited for Infiltration specifically. Like, journalists, and people in the government."

While it seemed pretty likely that the smiley, winky, slightly evasive dude in front of her could probably infiltrate something no problem, she wasn't sure if really good but slightly problematic poker player was the kind of agent that Lepidolite was generally looking for. Then again, she hadn't actually put to much thought into what he was looking for, other than people more together than her.

"And they, like, keep doing their little government things?" she said, and it was only after the words came out of her mouth that she realized that she'd been vastly oversimplifying for a while. Her shoulders drooped. She gave a sharp little sigh through her nose.

She said, "I guess what I'm saying is, do you know what kind of projects you're supposed to be doing? I've got stuff in the works I could put you on, but I'm Information. It might be different."

It also might now be what the General-King wanted, and that was a stressful thought.

The sticky notes scattered around weren't big enough to take notes on a whole branch. Sylvite grabbed a polka-dot spiral notebook from a drawer and kept scribbling, trying to keep up with what Adonis was saying, although she made sure to look up at him every couple of seconds to grin and nod.

It wasn't a fake grin, either. He was interesting.

"I mean, I could ask around if you want," she said, after filling nearly a page with scattered comments, "See if we can get you that job back, but also," she straightened to look him right in the eye, "You're good at this, you know."

Tilting her head, she started counting off traits on her fingertips. "You're charming, you're good at explaining things, and like, explaining them in a way that's, uh, flattering. I'm guessing you have a pretty good poker face."

The most surprising thing to come out of this whole conversation was that whoever had been in charge of him before hadn't let him use all those skills on people who were alive.

"Plus, you're not entry level now. I mean, if you're super invested or something I can probably get you back bagging bodies, but," she shrugged, "You'd probably fit right in to any of those other roles you were talking about. If I'm asking around anyway to try to get you a job, or project, is there anything you're, like, interested in?"