i command armies

[autokinetic]

Sue graduates from Tactical School a year early, he's barely fifteen. He's toned down the flirting - he treats Aegis completely platonically, in particular - and has cut down on the unhealthy amount of sleeping-with-everything-that-wants. And he's apparently, via his independent study, gotten far enough through the curriculum that they're nudging him along to Command.

They've given Sue a strange old man for a tutor, who appeared in his room and started a physical confrontation, which Sue won; Sue related this story to her with something between amusement and irritation.

And a quicker-than-average flurry of notes has been piling up in the psych data since about that time, according to the timestamps.

Aegis knows before they tell her that they're going to send her to Command early too. She's just barely fifteen herself when she gets another update of the psych files and sees that Sue's had - well, the files aren't terribly clear, some of the communication is happening via in-person conversation and memos that don't get stored in these folders, but Sue's had some kind of breakdown and the only things they can think of to get him out of it, get him back into shape to train and fight, are her friendship and Howlett. They have mixed feelings about both - Howlett's insubordination problem; their bewilderment that Aegis and Sue can be so close when "she's the one person he can't link!" - but they're desperate.

Bird? They don't talk as often over the long distance, just as there was a lull when he went to Tactical ahead of her; their schedules have nothing in common and their contexts less. But he knows her, and he can reach this far if he tries. And she wants to know what's wrong.

Comments

[pythbox]

Sue and Ivy drift off to sleep.

And at some point during the night, there is a brief golden glow, and Ivy disappears.

[autokinetic]

Aegis wakes up, and her arms are empty. She sits up and pats the bed - "Ivy?"

[pythbox]

No Ivy.

There's Sue, though, sleeping as soundly as ever.

[autokinetic]

Perhaps Ivy was a strange dream, perhaps Aegis drifted off to sleep while she was still reading and had a weird dream that included Ivy.

Huh.

She changes uniforms for the day and picks up her Russian novel again.

[pythbox]

Sue wakes up.

He yawns and snuggles into his blanket and looks over at Aegis.

"...Hey, where'd she go?"

[autokinetic]

"...You remember her too? I thought I just had a weird dream," Aegis says.

[pythbox]

"No... whoa," he says, blinking.

A flicker of golden light, and there's a viscacha in his lap.

"Boo!" says Ivy.

[autokinetic]

Aegis doesn't have a body-language startle reaction, but her exo doesn't web over her face. "Eep!"

[pythbox]

"I guess I went back in his head while we were all sleeping," shrugs Ivy. "I can do that, look!"

Golden light—no viscacha.

[autokinetic]

"..."

[pythbox]

"But she's still here," says Sue, gesturing at his head. "I just didn't really notice—it's kind of like I'm linking her all the time, and she's still pretty much me."

[autokinetic]

"That's really strange," Aegis says. "But I guess it'll make her much easier to hide."

[pythbox]

Ivy reappears as a tiny fennec fox just long enough to say, "Yep," and giggle.

[autokinetic]

"So she can go in and out whenever she wants?"

[pythbox]

"She can now," he says. "She couldn't before, because she didn't know she existed."

[autokinetic]

"...That must be weird, not knowing that one exists," remarks Aegis.

[pythbox]

"We thought she was just part of me," he explains. "Well, she is, but—differently than we thought."

[autokinetic]

"Straaaange," says Aegis. "...So you actually went to a weird bar with magic in it and actually went home with a one and a half of me and a one and a half of you and got an Ivy who can be in or out, that's - yeah, I think that's even weirder than the FTL communications and the fact that we're actually invading the bugger worlds."

[pythbox]

Sue grins proudly.