your command is our wish

Seren had once heard it said, in the industrial district somewhere just adjacent to Professor B's lab, that L was something of a nothingburger. That for the most mystical of their xenoform encounters, given that there was only one of cir race and never a word of any others, ci sure didn't seem to...do anything interesting.

(Well, so this was probably by comparison to Professor B xerself, which Seren understood. That guy was always doing way too much.)

Seren happily defended this, though, not because they thought that L should be an especial freeloader, but because they didn't do anything interesting themselves. Yeah, yeah, Elma's most special rookie, found in an upright lifepod in the closest possible place, born to toss a knife into the air with the gusto of a professional thief, scourge of all unapproved packs of indigens...

But that was just because they wanted to. Just because they felt like it! Just because they didn't really, really feel like buying into the military protocol's main quest.

Elma could handle it, right? Elma had Lin, and even Tatsu! Elma had any and every BLADE in the force - male or female or otherwise - ready to hop to their ask, even if Danny and Boris couldn't be the ones to do that anymore.

Sorry. Is that too harsh?

The point was that, in their wide blue eyes, Seren's arrival to NLA shouldn't have changed anything. Right? Was there really no one else available and willing to take on these monumental tectonic tasks that Elma had set forth, at the behest of Nagi, Vandham, Chausson? No one else without a team?

...no one else besides Mia, without a team?

But no, of course not. Seren made three (two and a half? but plus potato makes three regardless), and L made four. Which, in its own way, was wonderful. Now the two of them could stay united wherever on Mira the Ganglion attacked, and not have to worry about justifying taking the other along versus some other debatable, apocryphal, actually story-important team member.

Lovely thought, even if it lacked a sort of drive or purpose. And it wasn't as if Seren didn't do, gladly, anything and everything Elma asked. They were disengaged from it somewhat, this they wouldn't deny, as they stood to the rear of the group and offered dry, bit-part opinions when thrust the camera focus. They couldn't be as invested as, say, Lin was, because they had no memories, no attachment.

They had no ethnicity; no passions, no hobbies. The growing knife collection served little point if they still just used the same one the overwhelming majority of the time (and could the pursuit of amassing field weaponry really be called artistic?). They had no particular talents. They had no interesting scars, no amusing anecdotes, no favorite foods. They didn't even wear an eclectic mix of different manufacturers' armor.

They didn't have to fight to be normal, to overcome neuroses, not because they didn't have them, but because the ones they did have didn't matter; they were just...boring. Indeed, what an odd and displasiating realization that had been. But, then, L was a great one for only answering direct questions and never really referring to anyone by name - except for Lin, the once, and Roger.

If Seren were to be the team mascot, something of a bright-minded attack-and-show dog, they'd bear this role with pride. They liked following instructions, and then deviating innovatively. They liked joining in on others' conversations to see what they could offer.

Team Elma didn't need that, though. Team Elma wanted them to be the viewpoint hero of the whole planet. Seren, having once been one of the bitter earth's touchstone stars, didn't like this assumption, conferral, of responsibility. Not that they didn't care! But if they did care, this was on the road to making them not, so much, anymore.

Any other rank-and-file BLADE gossipping on Division Drive about the fate of humanity? Sure, righteous, rock on, man! But to have it hammered in and expected as a topic of every single barracks conversation?

When Elma asked them how they were faring, if there was anything they needed, they had no serious answers. Neither did L - L had happened upon Regina's erstwhile shop and commandeered it, if rudely, with pleasure and with perspicacity.

How did it feel to be the only two BLADEs without a quest? How did it feel to be the only two BLADEs who should have been allowed to feck off and make themselves disposable at their own infinite choice of disposal, but...weren't?

Imagine Seren saying "yes, ma'am." Imagine L saying it.

(Seren counted themselves really, really lucky that Elma didn't seem to take to the term one way or another, unless there were upstarts trying to get smart and fresh with her.)

So what about legacy? What did it matter to asylum all the xenoforms and finish paving the cross-connecting novelist-named roads if you only allowed yourselves to live within the bounds of the crash site, scatter a few base camps about, and survey the wilderness as if that's all it'll ever be?

The Nopon probably really had the right of it, in that sense. Their nomadic ways kept their camps from being idiomatic, idiosyncratic to whatever area surrounded it, with companion potamuses aplenty and all, but they still dug their paws and wings in at the site of the settlement, and then ventured few but far.

We do what we wish. We wish to do quite a many things. We hope to please. We are pleased to hope that humanity will indeed be saved.

Yeah, yeah, nothingburger, schmothingburger. A BLADE was a BLADE was a BLADE, even if cir division was Wanderer. By any other name, the task remain the same.

But not all those who are lost wander, right? Or, no. No, it must be the other way around. Because this way doesn't mean anything at all. It is much more poetic to consider that not all those who wander are lost. They could be doing it at any time, for any reason.

However...so what if they should be lost? What should be the harm? Especially if they didn't deign to wander.

More BLADEs would benefit from this wonderlust. More BLADEs should be like the mysterious amnesiac - and hadn't that, too, been said off corners in every district of the transplanted city? More BLADEs should be like Seren. More BLADEs should suck tough nuts-n-eggs and get lost for the want of a nail.

...maybe that's only to do with the main quest.

So stern and sufficient logic has efficiently thwarted another fine moment of whimsy...