Bloody Doomcap

Noah stepped back from the shower head with a shiver, finding the steamy air of the bathhouse now subtracted the cold, clear stream somehow confoundingly chillier than it had been just a second ago. He fought the urge to clasp his hands over his chest or to reach for a towel to huddle into.

It was all efficiency, in here. Either you scrubbed yourself off at an individual stall and woke yourself right up from the tiring wear of the day in the process, or you fell asleep in the hot tub with five other soldiers and a few Nopon to boot awkwardly maneuvering around you.

Or, you took in a combo, but they didn't always have time for that. Despite the colony being their home, for all intents and purposes, any relaxation they got, day to day, was more of a side effect of tempering the battle-worn. And oh, how they needed their tempering.

When Noah turned to make his way over to the hot tub, where they'd all three, he and Lanz and Eunie, agreed to gather once clean, he was greeted by a...strange sight.

It was Eunie, he gathered soon enough from the unmistakable set of her shoulders (and her eyes, as well), but there was something...off.

Well, really there was something on. A cap, of sorts, round and puffy and almost globular, in a pretty deep green color, adorned Eunie's head, her hair that wavered incessantly between a honey blonde and a dirty blonde currently too invisible for Noah to make any further judgement about its tone.

Only the very tips of her side-swept bangs poked out, and just after she'd stepped a few paces away from the mirror, Eunie crossed her eyes up at the wayward fringe, muttering an expletive or two before abandoning fiddling with it in favor of taking an exploratory swipe of ashy, flaking skin from her forehead. Likely, it had settled there when she'd ducked toward the aftermath of a blast from an Agnus Levnis in order to heal the soldiers who'd been hit.

Her wings, too, had been carefully tucked away; the shower cap's elastic was tight enough to keep everything snugly contained but the fabric loosely crinkled enough so that anyone with thicker hair or a bigger head could use it, standard issue from the commissary, just the same.

Noah had had long hair all his life, so he wasn't particularly fazed by the sight. Since he kept it tied up, he didn't often worry about keeping it above the water in the bath, but Eunie apparently did. He...wouldn't exactly have thought it. Maybe this was the first mission in a while they'd come back from so late that she didn't want to be dragging wet hair around in the sack.

Or maybe she'd only recently decided. Good for her. They weren't as close as they really should be, even after all those years. Things like everyday habits, especially indulgence in new ones, just sort of got...forgotten. There was always a new op to wake up to, new scouting to do. Some days it felt like all they really talked about was the war, and the state of it, and whether or not the monsters they'd just offed (but hadn't seen off) were challenge enough to keep them going.

Noah shrugged, and went back to discreetly shucking off his muddy-soled boots.

Sometimes it took a little while to figure out your own personality, once you'd been started off on your first term. From what he'd seen, anyway. Being in the training drills sometimes made you feel pinned to one role or another, and it was tough to separate.

Some animals, like the Volff, he'd seen raising young. It honestly seemed a little inefficient. Why waste time alive in the world growing out your limbs and teeth, and muscles and all, when you were still, already, vulnerable? The new cadets were always so fragile...

It was a rough business, and Noah hadn't come out of it meek. Soft-spoken, yes - or rather, outspoken only when he chose his moments just right - but not broken to the point of undercurrent bitterness. Not yet, anyway.

Lanz, however?

"You look like a sparkin' mushroom!"

"I what? Say that again, you mudder, and I'll-"

If Noah didn't know better, he'd almost say they were taking battle stances, and technically there was nothing stopping them from manifesting their Blades, too. They were all of them still too tricked up from the day's advancements to remember, he'd bet. Sometimes the smallest things...

Such as Eunie's fists curling.

"Guys!"

Yeah, Noah would probably call himself something of a pacifist (certainly more so than Lanz, in the everyday), but usually he didn't mind when they got to bickering. Not enough to do anything about it, anyway. If they didn't let off steam off-duty, who knew when or where they'd crack in the field? He'd had the thought more than once.

So, all things considered, this argument was probably harmless, but it wasn't exactly one he wanted to endure, on the sidelines or in the thick, in the bathhouse, without any clothes on. Much as the steam covered, he was more self-conscious than either of his friends.

Not ever so much as Mwamba, though, who'd walked right over to join them, all finished washing up himself, just as Eunie's pointer finger went jabbing up into Lanz's face.

"Well? You gonna say it again?"

Lanz scoffed. "No, I'm not gonna say it again. It was only funny the first time, anyway."

Eunie just kept glaring. Maybe he was right. Maybe she was just mad she hadn't thought of it first. She didn't talk about her wings often. Maybe it had something to do with that.

All thoughts of Noah, ever the quiet analyst. Mwamba, watching him for a reaction as he always did, quirked his lips and brows.

Something go wrong? He counted on Noah to keep the stock, and to understand him when he got nervous himself. While he was glad of Eunie and Lanz's easy friendship and proffered place on their team as a bolstering attacker, he tried not to get in the way of scuffles. If this was a bad one, then he'd consider staying around for backup. Moral support, you know?

But no, it was just...the usual. Not always a bad thing, but not always a good thing either. Noah signaled as much, and Mwamba smiled before ducking out into the quiet, dusky colony.

"Spark, I never saw a mushroom that bites, before," muttered Lanz. He came out of his annoyance just a little too late to clap Mwamba on the back, and grimaced as he went to slip into the tub. Something in Eunie's stance twitched.

"Don't worry about it, Eunie, he was just teasing. I think it-" looks? "-I think it's nice."

"Yeah?" She wheeled around to face him. The absence of her wings trailing in the wake really was a little distracting, even if the "mushroom" look was cute. "Then why don't you put one on?"

Oh. Cute. Right. "Erm...have you got another?"

Up flung her arms in time with the phantom gesture of wings flicking. "No, I haven't got another, do I look like a pack Armu to you?!"

Noah held out his hands, a gesture of "and there's your answer, innit" that Eunie accepted with a rueful laugh. Her hand almost went up to scratch at the back of her head, just below the root of a wing, but only almost. Pretty silly that a handful of words, accompanied by a laugh (or at the very least a laughing tone) that she really should have noticed, in retrospect, had gotten her bent for this long. Wasn't very practical, now was it?

"Better a bloody doomcap than a cow, eh? Thanks, Noah."

"Anytime."