#FREETORNA

Chapter 01: Kallian X reader he cures your headache (joke)
Chapter 02: nagi sencha adventures could be fun
Chapter 03: uhmmm uhh fiogil (toxic biting killing each other with sticks and rocks)

High Prince Kallian of the proud High Entia is no stranger to headaches. In fact, the pressure impounding either side of his skull, just ahead of the points from which his wings spring, has become a quiet but insistent companion throughout each day of advisory duties to the emperor and each night of careful consolation to the Bionite Order, lurking their plans just out of reach of his concern.

This does not obviate his sympathy for fellow sufferers, however. Kenz'yth, an attendant of the royal family whose love of detail and accountability for her actions have endeared her to the prince despite the usual severity of their standards (which is to say, the standards of Yumea in contempt of Lorithia), battles headaches with everything she has; ever spirited, ever dogged.

She likes to be called Kenzie. Kallian cannot proceed with this predilection, because it's far too familiar and unusual a diminutive for one such as he to be seen or heard utilizing, but he does find it charming.

More and more, he catches himself calling her that in his head.

At this very moment, Kenzie is standing before him, having entered the throne room to offer an herbal fruit tea of her own creation because she'd made too much and wasn't quite ready to go into greater Alcamoth in order to canvass for preventing waste.

She's still here, though, because Kallian had inquired gently after her health, and she had indeed started in to tell him.

"I'm alright, Your Majesty, as sure as the emperor's wings, only I confess, my head does ache. I thought perhaps that might be down to the work of blending the purees - taking the pits out of Heart Peaches is difficult, you know, because of the veins in them, and if you're not careful you can waste an awful lot of flesh. And then there's the sound of the blender!"

Her wings flutter in indication of a shudder. "I'd tried Cool Lemon yesterday, thinking it would be, well, cool, but I wasn't careful enough to remove the pith, so the tea came out rather bitter? And not in a pleasant way."

Kallian smiles. "We'd better keep you off of Bitter Kiwi, then. Even if my sister would enjoy."

Kenzie stops, stutters, then blushes. "Oh, anything you'd like, Your Majesty, anything at all!"

Kallian doesn't ask her to please, call him Kallian, but he does take a step closer to extend a calming hand, which Kenzie is free to take or not. Instead, her left hand (the right yet holds a pitcher) goes to the base of that side's wing, and then her shoulders relax.

"I think you made me so nervous my headache just disappeared..."

Privately, underneath pounds and pounds of armor, Kallian lets himself shrug. If such be the solution, he will not complain. So long as Kenz'yth remains so unequivocally pleasant and free.

"Matcha, matcha, matcha - this whole habitat's obsessed with matcha! What, does being transferred into a mim make you lose all your patience, or something?"

Nagi couldn't help but smile, just slightly, at Al's cantankerous enthusiasm. "I hate to rag on the younger generation, but it does seem that they don't enjoy making food or drink that must be carefully constructed, and then taken apart once more. Much easier simply to whisk in the powder to your water than to steep and strain."

Really? So simple? Well, and if it's popular, then it's popular, and there's no curbing matcha's widespread, even universal appeal. Grassy green, it even tastes like it's good for you. And who could ever say they'd heard of a sencha latte?

Well, speaking of carefully constructed, the latte-building culture, regardless of planet, truly is cutthroat. Clashes of milks, sweeteners, creamers, foams... From one café to the next is like jumping from one side of the rift to the other.

It was a minor preference. A holdover, if you would. The same as stumping for genoa or soppressata versus plain ol' children's choice pepperoni.

"So I'm an old head, huh?" Al scoffed. "I won't say that it's my taste for the 'finer things' that makes me different."

"Hardly only that, my son. But, when you are older...you have more time to burn, watching the steam rise through the leaves."

The ragged sound of a Machina drawing breath is not phlegmy, not ciliated, not fleshy like the heaves of a Homs. Instead, it is airy, whiny, palpably weak. Fiora can hear Egil's core hum unhappily, wincing for him when he will not let his own eyes take pause.

"Do I have to shake the sense into you? Don't you see what Shulk has done?!"

There is a chance, still a chance, always a chance. Fiora knows, having seen many a schematic over the shoulder of Vanea, that Yaldabaoth can be controlled remotely. That, indeed, Egil does not have to stay. With Mechonis will go his heart, certainly, as Meyneth has already finally left this world.

"You are but a composition of ether reanimated," replies Egil, sneer firmly affixed. "You cannot know anything of pride and loyalty. You switch sides as easily as blinking."

So it's to be like that, is it? Fine then. Sure, have it yours. But it's a sting of spit in the face if Egil only pretends he doesn't know. Fiora would sooner throw her swords and prosthetic drones all at him, playground penance, than let herself leave proudly, grandly, like he's not twisting the dissonance firsthand.