étoile études

"I dunno, Mi. Last I heard, they were runnin' around shoutin' from mountaintops about...God knows what. And then they just...disappeared. Without telling anyone! Not even L!"

Mimi nodded. This would track with their observations. Seren did as Seren would do. Seren, less quick-witted and more quick with the trigger, responded to impulses.

(Had L been hurt by this action and accompanying revelation? Well, if ci had been, ci'd had no intention of showing it. It made one wonder about the specific tensile strength of cir everpresent jolly façade, which never seemed to be dimmed by anything. It was most of the reason that Mimi had believed the two of them to be perfect together. But Seren, apparently, had deeper ideas.)

"Personally," said Yelv, shaking his head, "I think they're crazy."

And let's talk of pegs and holes, then! Wouldn't you be crazy if the last thing you remembered was burning at some ten thousand degrees centigrade? Literally, hotter than the sun. Or, what if you didn't have any memories to speak of at all? If you were even conscious of the fact, of course.

(Anyway, Yelv was crazy without knowing something was up. Just part of his...infinite charm.)

As she'd procured it, Mimi withheld this information from Yelv not because she secretly wanted (needed) to strike an advantage, but because she loved him too much to let him down uneasy like that. Put another way, she just wasn't quite poised to topple Eleonora's tabletop shell game yet. The time would come, eventually. She just needed to keep staying one step ahead.

Hence, the current conversation and what drove it: the gambit to demonstrate her leadership prowess by gathering together the multicolor threads of hyperactive attention from one of their brightest single-shiner mimeosomes and refining Seren's gung-ho nature into one that didn't shy away from establishing its own worth for even a fraction of a superstar second.

Yelv would have all but washed his hands of it, were his darling Mi not still looking riled up about something he had no hope of guessing at. He knew her well, or as well as anyone could, but some mysteries just had to be left in chalk. So, while he couldn't understand what she was on about, he could at least attempt to derail.

"Like, they're weird."

Yelv's every other doubt, Mimi would quell. She had answers for everything; she couldn't function if she didn't, or if she didn't have a plan to find. She kept her calm, stayed on top of things. But this, for Mimi, who already struggled with people not believing that she was weird, was too much.

"Exactly!" she cried, wheeling on Yelv and leveling him with a laser-logic glance. "They have potential."

"But Mi..." Yelv sighed, remembering what happened last time he'd tried to reach out, unprompted, and wrap his big hands around Mimi's little waist. To his mind, it was like they'd - both sets of parts - been made for just such a purpose, like feet were made to have shoes put on. To Mimi, he was just asking to be slapped.

(Sue a guy if he did, sometimes, ask for just that. C'mon, now...)

Finding Seren was a task too tall for anyone but Mirabilis, petite in her Ma-non make kitten heels. It wasn't that Mx. Sirius needed to be lured out of hiding, like a cat, or tracked down as if one were a particularly proficient private eye.

No, you just had to know. You just had to ask yourself, if I were a Seren, where would I be?

And the answer would be obvious.

Mimi entered the Delusians with a photon saber in one hand and a packet of old-timey astronaut ice cream in the other. Nothing here would be too much trouble for her, considering that she knew exactly how to tame any wild Sylooths come a-marching and that she wasn't here to pet Gerrids in the Den of the Dead. Another time, maybe. But not right now.

Though the sand crunched incriminatingly beneath her feet, she patterned her gait to make as few treads as possible. Did she know why she did this? Honestly, at this point, not really. But any effective supersoldier was super at all times.

Just like Seren! Seren never slacked off, never quit a mission halfway through. Could they be known to drag their feet when Elma clicked her heels for a rendezvous? Well, yes, but that was the mark of a master, that they knew exactly when to apply themselves, and saved their energy for when the time was right.

Well, maybe. Mimi could find her way clear to praise or to condemn anyone, in alternate strides. The only ones she couldn't get along with were Murderess and H.B., and even they had their redeeming qualities which she not-all-that-begrudgingly would admit.

It was just this innate feeling they had about Seren, that their (admittedly apocryphal) talent was too good to waste. Their inherent charm, inimitable. Their star power, if you would.

And Mimi would indeed. She would find Seren if it took three complete day-night cycles. After that, though, she had some in-progress experiments to supervise.

She'd do it. She'd find them. She'd look for signs of disturbed flora and demolished fauna, stardust sprinkled across the soft-packed ground, maybe a raygun tossed to the side in anguish.

Anguish was probably the only Seren emotion that got any more human-psyche dark than simply "bummed". And Seren, to Mimi's mind, had been a bit more than bummer, in recent weeks.

It was a clear evening, just flipping the dial over into night. The leaves of Shaman Cervus would just be beginning to glow, at this time - and there were no spores, of course. Mimi hadn't planned upon it, so it wasn't so.

Sure enough, there were the Cervus (Cervi?), but where each one usually established its own pondlet within which to hydrate, here there were five, six, maybe eight all clustered together, their horns arranged into a patchwork starburst around some object huddled in the center of the puddle.

Some object, right. Some very obvious, blue-haired, glowing object.

"Seren?"

One Cervus extricated its horns from the circle and made a long, low bleat at the calling Mimi. In response, she pursed her lips and took advantage of the opening to push her way through.

Seren's head was bowed, their halo misshapen, and their knees were haphazardly wrangled into some hybrid of a butterfly pose and, indeed, the stance of the deer, with calf crossed over thigh.

What a miserable way to be. Unless, somehow...they enjoyed it?

"I need a Longevity Bough to graft together with the new Great Tree," Mimi announced. "So I suppose I'll just be harvesting that and taking my snacks back to NLA with me."

Seren, who was very straightforward but also very dramatic, unfurled at this mention of metaphorical roughage, extending their short arms back as far as they would go until they lay supine, staring up at the motionless Cervus gathered around.

"I want snacks..."

Mimi was about to reply, "Well, you can have them if you come with me," and dismiss the business of the tree monkey business altogether just as quickly as it had come to her, but then she noticed something amiss.

Now, for the first time not just figuratively, she saw that there were stars in Seren's eyes.

"Seren...!"

They made eye contact with her for a few empty moments, then sprang up with an ungainly splash.

"I'm here!" Then they remembered their histrionics. "I guess."

Mimi shook her head, laid fingertips to forehead. Maybe this one would be next for the slapping. If there were other ways to gain sense, she was all ears.

"I was looking for you. I wanted to do some missions with you."

"...why?" Seren might have left earthly things behind, for a while, but they couldn't forget Yelv. No one, as hard as they tried, could ever really forget Yelv.

"Just...just because I miss you!" Mimi stamped a trudger emphatically. "And because Yelv needs to learn how to work on his own, I decided."

"Ohhh, right." An easy line. But also, could be true. Lots of things could be true. Lots of people could have their opinions and their own lives and ways about them. Seren didn't like to intrude.

Except when it was easy, like it was now. "Mr. and Mrs. Heart-Eyes, tracing chemtrails in the sky with their lightsabers." Seren struck a space-warrior pose and proclaimed in a deep voice, "Do Not Separate!"

What was this, now? Emissions concerns, for beam-based weapons? Well, primarily beam-based, anyway. Maybe Nopon weapons were under inspection. But the NCG didn't make photon sabers!

Mimi shook it off. "I suppose it's your business whether or not you believe me. But speaking of eyes - your pupils! I know they weren't always star-shaped."

They had been intricate, yes, with rings and rings of sharks-teeth freckles just like the ones that dotted Seren's olive-skinned face, but they'd certainly never been so angular.

Of course, while Mimi tried to screw her own sockets closer to get a clearer look, Seren just darted their gaze around every which other place to obfuscate. Acting really innocent there, friend. Super inculpable. "Y-yeah they were. Just like yours have always been heart-shaped."

Oh. OH. Mimi's hands flew to her mouth, then to her eyes, then back to her mouth again. "You can see that?!"

"Ummm, obviously?"

"But...but Yelv never mentioned a thing!"

For this, Seren leaned in - like way, way in. "I think," they whispered, over-loudly, "that maybe Yelv can notice things too. And not always tell you."