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 Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 5:49 pm
Roselite was to supervise, not help.
It wasn’t the worst punishment General King Jet could have given them by any stretch of the imagination, but Roselite knew it had been given to them with a purpose all the same. For Bloodstone, it was meant to demean; for Jasper, it was meant to remind him of his place; and for Roselite, it was meant to give him a taste of leading rather than following.
Roselite wanted to be useful. He liked to follow orders. He felt the most pride in a job well done.
Which was exactly why he was not allowed to help now. Rather than useful, he felt useless. He sat on a chair in the hallway while Bloodstone and Jasper cleaned, as watchful and alert as he could be while he recovered from assisting with Jasper’s recruitment, with his hands wedged beneath his thighs to stop his own fidgeting.
Between all the complaining Bloodstone and Jasper had been engaging in, Roselite was fairly certain this would have gone much faster if he’d been allowed to clean by himself.
“Um… don’t forget to dust the sconces,” he said, meek with the reminder.
Jasper spent their hours out in the halls fuming.
Damn Jet. Damn Ilian Jones. Damn the Negaverse. Damn everything. Damn Bloodstone in particular, who dragged Jasper into this, who stood around all cunning and smug while Jasper was prodded and coaxed, then had the nerve to act all high and mighty when Jasper’s actions inevitably inconvenienced him. Wasn’t that part of being a General? Accepting responsibility for one’s subordinate?
Jasper hoped Bloodstone regretted recruiting him now.
Swearing under his breath, Jasper followed Roselite’s directions and took a duster to the sconces. The hall was dim, barely lit at this time of early morning, which made cleaning no easier.
That was probably the point.
“So much for power,” he grumbled. “Instead of being a soldier, I get to be a maid.”
He had about as much experience with cleaning as he did with fighting, which was little to none.
Carnallite arrived just before dawn, after several hours of deep, comfortable sleep that left her refreshed enough for the day ahead. She wouldn’t have bothered dropping by the Dark Kingdom at all, but she hadn’t heard from August since she’d left the night before; usually, she would have gotten at least one bitchy text about some idiotic patient they would both then lob abuse at. So she made a pit stop before work, and, after asking around when Bloodstone’s office offered no answers, found them toiling away in a random hall.
“Is this why you haven’t been answering your phone?” she asked, purposefully coming to a stop on a freshly cleaned patch of floor. “How quaint. What’s got you playing Cinderella?”
She had a single takeout cup of coffee in her hand. Carnallite made a show of bringing it to her mouth for a loud, exaggerated sip.
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 5:53 pm
Bloodstone was furious. He was a General. He was a doctor. He did not deserve to be made to clean like some pathetic janitor. He’d been digging his broom rather aggressively into the edge between wall and floor when Carnallite not only decided to have the audacity to show up, but with coffee for no one but herself.
That was the breaking point. He’d been resisting doing it all night but he finally threw his broom down on the ground.
“I’m going to talk to the Queen,” Bloodstone snarled. They’d been doing this long enough. He had better things to do. The Queen would have never allowed this nonsense. This was probably why they had so many people defecting, because they didn’t take being told to do things they didn’t want to!
It wasn’t like the White Moon could do anything to people who didn’t listen. There was no structure among them, and maybe that was a good thing. He wouldn’t have had to listen to some stupid snivvling Princess if he didn’t want to.
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:01 pm
Roselite jumped to his feet.
“No!” he said, a bit too loud.
He shrank in on himself, immediately uncomfortable with his own outburst. His mouth worked for a few moments, staring at Bloodstone with wide, vaguely horrified eyes.
“I… I mean…”
Roselite dropped his gaze. His fingers twitched when his eyes landed on the discarded broom. He wished, desperately, that he could take it in hand and help.
“We… We should just finish,” he said, trying to be placating. “The Queen won’t—... We’ve received our punishment and now we have to see it through.” Roselite looked up and down the hall, then added in a small, quiet voice, “We’re almost done.”Carnallite’s eyebrows rose so high, they threatened to escape her forehead.
“Punishment for what?” she asked. She glanced from Bloodstone to Roselite, then to Jasper. In the shadows, her initial glimpse of his face offered little outside the norm, but closer inspection revealed unmistakable traces of bruising and swelling.
“What did you do to your face?”Jasper grit his teeth together. He would’ve kicked Bloodstone for pitching a fit, but that would only earn him another punch to the face.
He was sore, and tired, and in no condition to be doing manual labor. He should’ve gotten some rest after his recruitment. He should’ve gone home and slept. Maybe he could’ve had a bottle of wine, drowned his anger and annoyance with alcohol and returned with a clearer head after a good twelve hours of unconsciousness.
“I punched Jet,” he lied.“You punched…” Carnallite sputtered. She blinked, disbelieving. Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Jasper refused to meet her gaze.
“No, you didn’t,” she said. She looked back toward Bloodstone and Roselite. “Tell me he didn’t.”“He didn’t,” Roselite said, ever the obedient one. “But he tried.”Carnallite laughed, short and scathing. “You tried to punch a General King and you’re complaining about a bit of cleaning? You realize he could’ve done much worse. He probably should have.”
She almost wished she’d been there to see it happen, then thought better of it. She might’ve gotten roped into cleaning, too.
“That settles it, then. Assign Jasper to Roselite,” she told Bloodstone. “I’m not ruining my good standing with Jet.”Jasper sneered. “You’re a traitor.”
The temptation to join Bloodstone in throwing things was strong. Half of him wanted to march back to Jet’s office, throw the dirty duster into his face, and tell him to go ******** himself again.
Who in their right mind let Ilian Jones have any sort of authority over anyone? He must have sucked up to the right people. Perhaps he’d batted his lashes at the Queen enough that she’d thought a gift of power was deserving. Jasper knew nothing about the Queen, so anything seemed plausible.
“He dragged Leigh into this,” Jasper continued to snarl.“Oh, shut up,” Carnallite said, losing patience. “Leigh was a mouthy brat and you know it. No one could’ve forced him to do anything he didn’t want to. Maybe he had little choice at the start, given the situation, but he’s more than made the most of it. He’s tortured people, you know. Killed people, too. Helped Jet catch a Princess. You’ll hear all the gossip. General Aquamarine riding Jet’s coattails, and all that. It’s bullshit. He’s done his part. He’s a b***h, but he’s competent. Smarter than you, too, if you’re going around throwing hands at General Sovereigns.”
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:05 pm
He hated this. He hated cleaning. He’d never had to clean anything in his life. He’d had people come in and clean for him. What was the point of having money if he had to do anything that he didn’t want to do?
The shout from Roselite had him turning and snarling -- misdirected at someone who was only ever nice to him. But he couldn’t help it. He was frustrated and angry and didn’t think Jet had any right to order them to do this.
What was he going to do if they didn’t? Turn them into youma? Unlikely. They were more valuable than that.
The only reason Bloodstone bent down to snatch the broom back up was because he didn’t want Roselite getting more stressed than he already was.
“Next time he needs help, like hell I’m doing anything for him,” he growled. Jet was just a kid, especially compared to the rest of them there. How was it that he got more power before Bloodstone?
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:10 pm
Tears sprang into Roselite’s eyes. He tried not to take Bloodstone’s snarl personally, but he wasn’t the type of person that could brush those things off with ease. He immediately felt like a disappointment. Obviously he’d done something wrong to earn Bloodstone’s aggravation, especially when Bloodstone was normally so patient with him.
The rest of the conversation might as well have fallen on deaf ears. Roselite sniffled quietly and retook his seat.Great. Now Roselite was going to cry about it. That was Carnallite’s cue to leave. The less time she showed her face around the three pariahs, the better.
“You’ll do whatever he asks if you’ve got any sense,” she told Bloodstone. “You think the Queen made him a General King because he talked back and bitched about his superior officers? Bitching and moaning won’t get you anywhere in a militarized hierarchy. You don’t get to stomp your feet and run to the Queen every time you’re made to do something you disagree with. Suck it up, prove you can be effective even when you find the task demeaning, and maybe then you’ll be rewarded.”
Rather than waste any more of her day in the presence of three man babies, Carnallite turned on her heel.
“I have work,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t get into more trouble while I’m gone. Maybe draft an apology while you’re at it. Send Jet a gift. It’s his word against yours when it comes to the Queen. I don’t think I need to remind you whose word currently carries more weight.”
Carnallite walked halfway down the hall with a few more loud sips of her coffee. When the cup was empty, she tossed it back for Jasper to deal with, then teleported out of sight.Jasper managed to catch the cup before it could hit the floor, sputtering curses at Carnallite’s departing form.
He would agree with Bloodstone, if he wasn’t currently furious with him, so he kept it to himself. Jasper didn’t care what anyone said. Leigh being in the Negaverse was the fault of one man and one man only. It didn’t matter if Leigh was successful as Aquamarine. None of the things he’d done while in service to the Negaverse made a difference. He never should have been recruited in the first place, and the only reason he had been was because he happened to be associated with Ilian Jones.
Leigh might have been a brat, but he was still a good kid. Good kids didn’t join secret military organizations, even if those organizations specialized in fighting off aliens. Leigh would’ve scoffed at the very idea of it. He wouldn’t have wanted to get his hands dirty. Whoever he’d become since the death of Sorin Jones wasn’t the person he would have been if he’d been allowed to live a normal life.
He should have been allowed to live a normal life.
With another snarl, Jasper tossed Carnallite’s empty cup into a nearby bag of tash, grumbling further obscenities under his breath.Lifting his feet onto the chair, Roselite curled up and wrapped his arms around his legs. He wiped at his eyes before the tears could fall, unwilling to look even more pathetic. To distract himself, he summoned his communicator and pulled open his tablet to check the time.
“We have an hour left,” he announced, voice weak with sadness and misery. When he was sure he could control his wavering tone, Roselite added what he hoped would serve as a peace offering, “I… I can make coffee when we’re done.”
In the meantime, he’d take Carnallite’s advice and draft a more formal apology. He didn’t want to lose his good standing with Jet either, and hoped his sudden fall from grace wasn’t irreparable.
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:14 pm
Bloodstone wasn’t blind. Of course he saw the way Roselite seemed crestfallen and hurt from the snarl. At the moment, Bloodstone was too angry to care. He was doing what he could to not throw his broom after Carnallite, especially when she decided to mock them.
He would stomp his feet however much he wanted to. He didn’t need her lecturing as if he was a child. He knew he deserved the power he’d received. How dare Jet decide he was to be demeaned by trivial tasks such as cleaning?
Maybe he would apologize to Roselite later. Or maybe he just wouldn’t care still, because Roselite should know by now that he didn’t mean anything by it. Not at him. Either way, he hadn’t decided yet.
Instead, he just grunted in agreement that coffee was a good idea once they were done with this bullshit assignment.
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