shortest path

"Well, well, well - you cleaned up nice, Eunie!"

It was true, Eunie had dressed to impress, but now that Ashera was crowing about it, she rather wished she hadn't.

Ghondor's advice on date dress code had been that it "depends on the chick, but also, just be yourself, and if that's not good enough, screw 'em!"

Eunie had interpreted this to mean that Ghondor hadn't wanted to actually be helpful, just sound impassioned, and was far less concerned with how the pairing appeared and gelled, from one to the other or as one to others, than with how much action she could score. Whatever that meant.

So she'd decided not to overthink and just layered a red jacket pinched (knowingly!) from Rozana over clean, unstriped and unseamed black leggings and tank, with red boots because, again, her green sneakers were all scuffed.

Ashera, meanwhile, had obviously sought or taken advice from exactly no one, and just penned this appointment in her Iris as "time to hang out with Eunie"; she'd had the good sense to shed the bulkier pieces of her armor, which Eunie actually rarely saw her without, but her gloves remained, as if she were ready to draw her Blade at any moment.

Knowing Ashera, which Eunie begrudgingly admitted to herself that she was starting to do, maybe that was the whole idea.

"Did you think we were gonna spar after this?"

"Not think, exactly. Say...hope."

Or maybe she was saving it to bust Cracker Nuts.

Though they'd met at the canteen, Eunie didn't particularly feel like terrorizing the rest of Michiba's patrons with her and Ashera's antics, just then. In fact, "I feel like goin' on a walk. That suit you?"

Ashera grinned. "What, trying to get me alone?"

"Nah. Think if I wanted to kill you I could just do it right here."

"Right here? Aw, but where's the fun in that?"

Eunie knew the "fun" was in spending time with Ashera, and sparring verbally over things that didn't matter, as well as those that did. But she'd never tell.