Leaning against the lintel, Cryptomelane glanced down and over at Ympe. Always something of a scamp, he seemed quite enthralled with the cart full of supplies tonight. Didn’t matter that he struggled to pull himself up into the cart (but refused an offer of help when Cryptomelane put it on the table). Didn’t matter that, once he made it into the cart, Ympe would find neither starseeds for him to eat nor shiny trinkets for him to steal. Didn’t even matter that the two of them had gone out to run an errand in the Rift like this before, a quick in and out mission to restock one of the outposts that wasn’t too far from the Hall of Shadows.
All that mattered in Ympe’s mind, or so it seemed, was rifling through the boxes and bags of things he couldn’t identify and didn’t really want. Someone had placed said things in the supply cart and left them where Ympe could inspect them, so he wanted to do that, no matter how much he understood or didn’t. Occasionally, Cryptomelane glanced over from the faux-leather-bound, pen-and-paper journal in his hands to make sure that Ympe wasn’t opening anything—but since his little companion wasn’t up to that kind of mischief, Cryptomelane saw no reason to interrupt his fun.
Good thing that Ympe knew how to behave, really. He’d been trying to keep better track of his starseeds ever since the fight with that transcended Eternal, and more so since Ympe had admonished him for not eating them enough despite their alleged health benefits. Cryptomelane……didn’t know how he felt about Ympe’s claims on that matter. Whenever he ate a starseed, he did feel better—faster, stronger, more powerful than he’d ever known, as though nothing could touch or scare him ever again—but……he didn’t know.
Trying to explain why he’d wound up in the Negaverse’s infirmary after the fight with that Eternal senshi hadn’t left him feeling particularly secure about any of this. Anything he’d said about the situation had only dug him into a deeper hole of questions whose fundamentally reasonable nature he couldn’t deny: Captain, why did you attempt to fight a transcended White Moon Eternal without calling for backup? Why didn’t you simply teleport out without the starseeds you’d gathered? What do you mean that you started laughing about his attacks against you?
That had carried on until he’d shut down and started flatly asking if he was allowed to have either Industria or General Amazonite with him while the infirmary staff did their work. For whatever reason, they had seemed even less at ease with that answer than he had felt.
As of yet, Cryptomelane didn’t know what the counts he’d kept of his starseed collection and consumption rates suggested. He didn’t know how to broach the subject with Industria for the sake of a second opinion either. Personal affection meant he trusted her input more than anyone else’s save maybe their General’s—and Amazonite only won out due to her greater breadth of experience—but……what would Industria think about this? Cryptomelane owed her the respect of not deciding how she felt on her behalf, but even so, the potential that his truth might have upset or disappointed Industria……
Well.
It put in his chest a heavy chill like few other fears had ever previously managed.
“Melly!” Over in the cart, Ympe now sat perched atop a large box of non-perishable snacks in single-serving containers. Eyes bright, he grinned and idly kicked his little legs at nothing, fussing with the red star charm that Cryptomelane had picked up in town earlier. “Who’s we waitin’ for this time, huh? Is it Brassy? Ympe hopes it’s Brassy.”
“Apologies, dear friend. Brassite hasn’t been assigned to accompany us this time. Tonight, we’re waiting for……” With one hand, Cryptomelane held his place in his journal, keeping a finger tucked into the pages. The other, he used to summon his communicator pen, then shift it into its tablet form. Clicking around was an awkward process, but he managed it easily enough, and said, “Captain Vesuvianite.… I’ve never worked with him before, but he’s apparently a part of General-King Faustite’s team, so I imagine he’s quite competent.”
At the mention of the Negaverse’s half-youma General-Sovereign, Ympe grinned even more delightedly and clapped his long-fingered hands. “Anybody from the Best Boss’s team? ‘s gotta be good people, yeah yeah.”
Ympe was, and they both knew this, biased by the fact that Faustite was half-youma. All things considered, though, Cryptomelane didn’t feel that anyone could hold that against him. With a soft sigh, he dismissed his tablet and returned to jotting notes down in his longhand journal. Whenever Vesuvianite arrived, they could get to work, but until he did so, this personal log carried great, heavy importance for Cryptomelane.
genovianxzprince
