Summon The Boring Man

He moved to a bench and reached for a waiting cup. Water was dull on his tongue, but it hydrated better than syrup. After a long drink, he wiped his lips and dabbed a stiff cloth over his face to remove the sweat, grimacing. Synthetic fibers were hardly gentle to the touch. But he had no reason to think on that any longer, as his break from reality ended; his eyes traveled to the door, where beyond, Pa-5 and Ni-6 waited. She was back, though this was far from how he imagined welcoming her back after her compulsory service ended. He'd gone through many scenarios after the first few months of missing her.

He didn't know why the thought of going to look at her again was so dreadful. He had seen friends and comrades ripped open neck to hip before him or punctured by Aud barbs and crushed under heavy bodies. Many more he hadn't discovered what they looked like in death; their WAVs gave them some decency, though it would've been better if they offered superior protection. He had lost family to the Aud as well. He didn't know anyone that hadn't.

And she wasn't lost to him. She was still kicking, each minute growing stronger and recovering from her ordeals. He didn't know how she would adapt to her new…state, or if she'd be capable of it. Very few survived with such terrible marks, mementos of their time in the war.

It struck him, then, that this could be it. She hardly ended up at Fort Io due to personal volition. No. He shook his head, pressing fists into his brow. No. She could've been safe here, stationed on the city's walls as a member of the patrols, or assigned as an aide to one of the ray representatives. With her performance in engineering courses, it wouldn't have been beyond her own capabilities to secure a spot in a Titan's engineering squad.

But were any of those places where she went? No, rather than those illustrious options, he decided for her. He'd told her what a stable position it was, how the bastion outposts never had anything exciting. Looking back at it now…stupid. Callisto and Calypso were plenty examples enough to go by. He should've recognized the time the four outposts guarded humanity was coming to an end, as there was nothing to guard them, should Aud hordes settle for smaller targets than the Last Light.

"'How are you able to avoid seeing the misery you cause?'" Quoting the Fifth Headman felt strange and unnatural, like forcing a cube through a cylindrical opening. And for some reason, he couldn't find fault with it then and there. A tense chuckle followed. Following that still was his communicator, buzzing on the bench beside him. It startled him and roused a grin. Only the dead knew how much he needed it.

"Hurry up to your office, boring man." Eighth Headman was on the other end. From the way her voice echoed, she had let herself into his office. "The Third needs its staff on hand with the return of the Nyx Breaker and your…recent activities, so I'm all you're getting. Hurry, before I make your office less boring." The headman left open the call after that, and he could hear muffled comments and shuffling feet.

"Not a single piece of art here. It isn't hard to make an office interesting. He must have talent or dedication to make everything around him as boring as he is…"

He made a trip to the refresher and slipped back into his skinsuit. The training blade returned to its rack, and he powered down the lights before making his office the next destination. He must have taken too long for Eighth Headman's liking because she did make his office more interesting when he entered.

He found nothing moved, added, or removed; it looked exactly like his office should. Though there was an extra, say, uninvited guest. Eighth Headman lounged across the length of the sofa. Curled up in her lap and sleeping was Ch-4. Ch-4.

Ch-4 was in his office, in Eighth Headman's lap, sleeping. All three things shouldn't be possible. Direct representatives of opposing blocs rarely met face-to-face outside of meets, and even more rarely met in locations distinct in belonging to one faction or another. He had seen Eighth Headman sleep plenty over his years of coming into her friendship, though never had she held someone else like that. And…now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen any headman aside from the Eighth's sleeping. Ever.

He wore his confusion on his sleeve. Eighth Headman looked up upon his arrival and grinned with cheeky chagrin, looking years younger than she had any right to. Did her continued disregard for his constitution bring her this much benefit? She poked the free side of the sofa with her foot; he sat, coming to stare at the other headman, still unconscious in her slumbers.

Though all headmen were unique in some way or another, most of them Ancients that carried the Old Man's Blessing, to say one of them was more incongruous than Ch-4 was appropriate as a falsity alone in every sense of the word. Where to begin? Age was the simplest: the average age of the headmen was sixty, with him almost not qualifying as an outlier and Eighth Headman eligible as a technical one. But Ch-4 had yet to see twenty years in the Gaiss Hollow. She hadn't even completed her compulsory service!

Then there was the matter of her status: she was the youngest human in history to receive the Old Man's Blessing and found capable of using her Vigor not long after. For comparison, humanity considered him to be a miracle already at fifty for showing the effects of it. If someone told him when he was twenty that one day someone like her would enter humanity's twisted reality, he wouldn't laugh them off alone, he'd then sign them up for wall patrols behind their back.

Finally, there was the most normal thing about her: she was cutthroat, even compared to the other shrewd leaders in the One-Light Directory. He was confident in besting every single one of them, even many at once, should things come to either harsh words or blows. But that confidence vanished whenever he thought of what would happen if the two were trapped in a room together, with their tongues and wits the only permitted weapons.

She had displayed this quality many times over her tenure as the Second Headman, the most recent being her unveiling she had sensitive information on his…activities, that she, without doubt, shouldn't have. And now she was here. In his office.