failing fine
Chapter 01: blainke
Chapter 02: chrobin
Chapter 03: dunbanea
Chapter 04: irinaraghid
Chapter 05: ruslade
Chapter 06: wulfaeon
Chapter 07: midzelia
Chapter 08: botelma
Chapter 09: galade
Chapter 10: floraseer
"I just... I feel like a gimmick."
Gimmick? What gimmick? Everyone in NLA was a caricature of their former self. That was kind of how it worked, considering that the former selves were no longer there to reference against, and hadn't been for two years running.
Lain was no more grounded than Blake, but he at least had the fortune to realize that things being temporary was a blessing, not a curse.
So wide-eyed, but panicky. Unaware, she pleaded for the mirror's guiding hand.
Not always better to be cool-headed, then, right? Sometimes a little warmth was all you needed.
A trusting man. Naturally. That's why the Shepherds are named as they are: vigilantes, yes, but never plunderers of the same sort that they seek to defend against.
The leader of such a diverse band should necessarily be intelligent, commanding, multitalented; Robin's common sense provides the measure.
Meanwhile, their reality shows Chrom to be somewhat uselessly unassuming, as handsome as he is harmless. He holds little weight in reserve.
Chrom is carried by conviction alone, as that conviction brings him allies and partners beyond fate. Robin knows they're not being swayed, but swept. There is a much greater thread here.
Dunban's working theory is that male and female Machina are not so obviously diverged as male and female Homs. Machina are all the same height, all wear the same hair, all speak with the same evenness of tone.
In that Dunban is attracted to the calm and staid tendencies of royalty, he supposes courting Vanea would at least be worth a try.
It's the both of them that soon find what an asinine experiment that is. Dunban, who cannot be charmed. Vanea, who cannot be stunned.
"You're a fascinating man," Vanea lies.
"And you..." Dunban doesn't lie, because he can't.
Irina would hate to be lost in love, but for the fact that there's too much going on within BLADE's administrative conceits already. Lifehold Core here, fallen teammates there. Ganglion everywhere. Really, she's already lost enough in life.
She won't show it, though. Won't let Mòrag think that she's lost her edge. Won't let Brighid see her marks anything but doubly decisive.
She'll remember, because she's a good soldier (the best): you draw strength from your close comrades, rather than push them away. You rise to their example.
And the three of you, tight-lipped superwomen, look damn good doing it.
"What, no fight in you, old man?"
Addam chuckles, huffs out a breath as he finishes tying the last bandage. "Never so much as you, young buck." He's barely gotten his lips around the sardonic epithet before the split of a smile returns.
Rusl knows his friend to be a born leader and an easy fit for any team. However, he also prefers protecting the home front with a passion and simply doesn't know the rest of the Resistance like the more...experienced Rusl does.
Well. He allows Addam the favor, knowing that if he should fall, backup is a-waiting.
"Aegaeon. You cook better than Nopon in Argentum Trade Guild."
Aegaeon, who loved Nopon almost as dearly as he loved His Majesty the Emperor, was made no more quizzical by this astonishingly direct yet remarkably side-handed compliment than he would expect anyone else to be, had he told them something similar.
He knew, or at least he thought he had deduced, that if Wulfric had nothing nice to say, he would say nothing at all. They certainly had starkly opposed temperaments, and yet they understood each other.
Put another way, Aegaeon knew how much this meant, and he did blush.
There were probably other princesses in other timelines who would be flustered at the way Midna spun spiderweb circles around them, delighting their every sense with a single flicker at the hem of her cloak.
Hyrule's princess of the era, however, had a nose as regal as Midna's, and she gave many a patient gaze down its length.
So Ilia, then - surely she would be susceptible to the twilight princess's flirtations, no?
No. Surely not. Ilia just smiled that enigmatic smile of her own, linking arms with Zelda the better for the both of them to torment their shadowy love.
Telling Bo that, in no uncertain terms, she was only interested in ladies, be they bald or otherwise, was, in Bo's opinion, a particularly derogatory thing for Telma to do. He might have been from Ordon, but he wasn't dumb. Wrong kind of wrestling, lady. Not the kind of business I've got with you.
"Now, just because you were motherin' Ilia don't mean--"
And yet, Bo was also flattered that she thought him worthy of brushing off. You know, funny sort of story for later, once they'd gotten congenial.
"Don't mean nothin', Bo dear."
Naw, it didn't mean a thing.
Addam might have been the jolly type, but he wasn't nearly as, well, fatherly as Gala had expected. Certainly, he was much more like a prince than a king.
And she was fine with that, she decided. She wouldn't scuttle and curtsey like a green-furred mouse. No, she'd dignify herself with the time of day, at the very least.
Actually, what she ended up doing was dignifying the fields with fertilizing treatments, and discussing the role of nitrogen in the oxygen cycle.
"I'm no chemist, Gala," he'd laughed, "but I do try myself at a green thumb. Good for the soul."
Mischievous. Clever. Lion-hearted, if lions were slinky medium-sized cats.
Flora, too, was this way, and though she often made points to steer clear of Seer Torna's curatorial antics (more than enough missions to go around; she functioned well as a sort of miscellaneous auxiliary support), she'd still check in on xem every now and then. Just to see how the anthropomorphic Ares was doing.
Of course, when he wasn't doing so fine, it probably wasn't anything she could help with. But when he was, a little kiss on the (pale, pale, barely freckled) forehead for good luck never hurt.