Ametheliana
Well-known member
Tami
Ryusei Ranch
12日 9月 YE 46
Steam lifted off of the fields as the first golden rods of sun pierced over the distant mountains and onto the grazing land. Alight with the rays of warmth, there was no doubt why the Tami’s Flammendan region was given the name of the “Flaming Valley” in these first moments of morning time.
Never tiring of the precious space in the day when the slate blue desaturated purples of pre-dawn were replaced with the light of day, Hoshi was toiling away around her ranch even as she took long peeks through her pale bangs to take in the sights as the night turned over to day. Her fingers closed around the latch on the yak’s pen to let them out of their warm hutch and to graze among where the fiery rays were just touching down.
It was then that the bleating cackle of a nearby enemy raised her alarm and she turned, assisted by her own gravity manipulation to do so inhumanely fast, to stare into the face of the least familiar of her animals. Rusty in color and shaggier than most of his kind, he had been brought to breed with Hoshi’s own handful of goats. His escape skills were not lacking, though, and he had managed to break free of the goat pen every morning for a week now. With a sigh and a lighthearted call to him, she set to begin the process of fixing the enclosure’s latest new and unique exit that the stud had no doubt created.
An hour later, the turkey was wandering idly behind the pink-skinned farmer. Behind the white fowl was a smattering of hens that treated the great bird like their very own rooster, happily basking in the protection it offered.
“A bird as big as you ought to move a bit out of the way,” Hoshi chided to the turkey after she had almost backed up into it. And when it obliged with slow but calculated steps out of her path as she tilled the wet soil it had been on, she offered it a warm but offhand thanks.
She continued to wack into the muck with her hand hoe until her pink-skinned Neko ears swiveled and she stood up from her work. Her pert nose turned up even more than usual as if trying to catch a scent on the wind. She was at a low point of her land near the stream where the wasabi thrived in the shade of cherry trees and willows, but the wind barely blew the flowers off the limbs of the dark branches, let alone a scent.
“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you here,” Hoshi said, though she didn’t quite see anyone yet.
“Tragic I haven’t made a visit sooner, it’s so quaint,” came the response and by voice alone, Hoshi was able to place the person it belonged to. Jinja Emi, right hand to Director of Intelligence and a woman Hoshi had never spoken with alone.
No good reason for a home visit from her. Hoshi thought.
She folded at the hips, back to work whacking into the soil before she took a sprouting ginger plant and stuck it into the deepest recess of the mud that she could. The muck around it folded into the hole, but Hoshi still scooped some she had just dug up back over the plant.
“Quaint as that ranching planet you recently secured from the NMX,” Jinja said.
“I thought that we weren’t capturing it,” Hoshi said, back stiffening.
Jinja said, “Well, no. I didn’t say that exactly. Anyway, I’ve come to ask a few questions about that.”
“I’m quite happy with my SAINT handler,” Hoshi quipped. Saiga had usually been the one to detail her missions since he had become chief for the Uesureyan theater and even before that when she had taken on missions for special personnel projects. What’s more, he handled her quite well as a boyfriend in all the places one would expect for her to be handled well by him.
“Surely.”
“Besides, I’ve sent a report.” Hoshi added, “What more would you like to know?”
“The special mission to find those amongst the NMX that harbor pro-Yamataian sentiments?” Jinja made her tone flair upward like she was asking a question without asking one.
“What of it? My crewmen failed on that front,” Hoshi said. And almost failed staying pro-Yamataian themselves during such, she thought as she turned away from Jinja to let her face grow cloudy. She whacked into the mud with her right hand and sloughed the soil that had loosened up away with her left as she mulled on what more to say.
“I had my own hopes for a special asset I’ve encountered. An Overseer named Charbon, but she was killed in the flurry of battle. I was told it was by one of my own, who would have not known her face from the many other of the NMX, but they deny as much.” Hoshi’s speech had gotten to be more polished and tactful than her usual verbiage around crew and friends alike, but not in a way she would have noticed.
“I’ve reviewed the memories of your crew,” Jinja Emi said.
This was not exceedingly odd, but the impaired state that her embedded crew found themselves in while in that NMX base made Hoshi bristle with a need to protect her people. Some of them had been almost hostile to Yamataian ideals during the mission. What would Jinja Emi do knowing that? What would her crew do if they were aware that SAINT had taken an interest in their somewhat tempestuous recollections.
“Charbon very clearly made herself appear to never have helped you if viewed from the perspective of the base’s NUCLEON sensors.” Jinja had been on a short wooden bridge that adjoined plateaus of heavier soil where the trees were planted between the streams and mud beds of wasabi, but floated over to Hoshi as she spoke.
“Yes, I know of her conversation with William and your SAINT operative in the field while outside of the NUCLEON sensor's area of operation,” Hoshi barely nodded, relieved a bit that Jinja was more interested in Charbon than, say, Molli.
“There’s more.”
Hoshi straightened without speaking and just made a little sound, “Eh?”
“Calling your people in to fill out paperwork, thus separating them from the NMX and allowing you to head into the base unperturbed. Calling her armorer out on some business when it was clear where you were headed. We even believe she is the reason the warning to evacuate the base was widely received by the rescued Nekovalkyrja.”
So she was removing the evidence of her own betrayal. Hoshi had let her hands stay in the hole she was digging, unmoving. She finished her own thought slowly, By killing herself somewhere in that base.
Jinja affirmed Hoshi's thoughts, "It is most likely her masters would have reviewed her memories as we did those of your crew and found her deceit. No doubt she was protecting her own future endeavors and, as some at SAINT see it, the actions of untold others."
Some of the mud started spilling back into the hole Hoshi had made and she looked at it topple over the metal edge of her tool then her hand opposite it before slowly removing both.
She shook out her hand, trying to shake off the muck, before speaking. “Thank you for telling me.”
Ryusei Ranch
12日 9月 YE 46
Steam lifted off of the fields as the first golden rods of sun pierced over the distant mountains and onto the grazing land. Alight with the rays of warmth, there was no doubt why the Tami’s Flammendan region was given the name of the “Flaming Valley” in these first moments of morning time.
Never tiring of the precious space in the day when the slate blue desaturated purples of pre-dawn were replaced with the light of day, Hoshi was toiling away around her ranch even as she took long peeks through her pale bangs to take in the sights as the night turned over to day. Her fingers closed around the latch on the yak’s pen to let them out of their warm hutch and to graze among where the fiery rays were just touching down.
It was then that the bleating cackle of a nearby enemy raised her alarm and she turned, assisted by her own gravity manipulation to do so inhumanely fast, to stare into the face of the least familiar of her animals. Rusty in color and shaggier than most of his kind, he had been brought to breed with Hoshi’s own handful of goats. His escape skills were not lacking, though, and he had managed to break free of the goat pen every morning for a week now. With a sigh and a lighthearted call to him, she set to begin the process of fixing the enclosure’s latest new and unique exit that the stud had no doubt created.
An hour later, the turkey was wandering idly behind the pink-skinned farmer. Behind the white fowl was a smattering of hens that treated the great bird like their very own rooster, happily basking in the protection it offered.
“A bird as big as you ought to move a bit out of the way,” Hoshi chided to the turkey after she had almost backed up into it. And when it obliged with slow but calculated steps out of her path as she tilled the wet soil it had been on, she offered it a warm but offhand thanks.
She continued to wack into the muck with her hand hoe until her pink-skinned Neko ears swiveled and she stood up from her work. Her pert nose turned up even more than usual as if trying to catch a scent on the wind. She was at a low point of her land near the stream where the wasabi thrived in the shade of cherry trees and willows, but the wind barely blew the flowers off the limbs of the dark branches, let alone a scent.
“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you here,” Hoshi said, though she didn’t quite see anyone yet.
“Tragic I haven’t made a visit sooner, it’s so quaint,” came the response and by voice alone, Hoshi was able to place the person it belonged to. Jinja Emi, right hand to Director of Intelligence and a woman Hoshi had never spoken with alone.
No good reason for a home visit from her. Hoshi thought.
She folded at the hips, back to work whacking into the soil before she took a sprouting ginger plant and stuck it into the deepest recess of the mud that she could. The muck around it folded into the hole, but Hoshi still scooped some she had just dug up back over the plant.
“Quaint as that ranching planet you recently secured from the NMX,” Jinja said.
“I thought that we weren’t capturing it,” Hoshi said, back stiffening.
Jinja said, “Well, no. I didn’t say that exactly. Anyway, I’ve come to ask a few questions about that.”
“I’m quite happy with my SAINT handler,” Hoshi quipped. Saiga had usually been the one to detail her missions since he had become chief for the Uesureyan theater and even before that when she had taken on missions for special personnel projects. What’s more, he handled her quite well as a boyfriend in all the places one would expect for her to be handled well by him.
“Surely.”
“Besides, I’ve sent a report.” Hoshi added, “What more would you like to know?”
“The special mission to find those amongst the NMX that harbor pro-Yamataian sentiments?” Jinja made her tone flair upward like she was asking a question without asking one.
“What of it? My crewmen failed on that front,” Hoshi said. And almost failed staying pro-Yamataian themselves during such, she thought as she turned away from Jinja to let her face grow cloudy. She whacked into the mud with her right hand and sloughed the soil that had loosened up away with her left as she mulled on what more to say.
“I had my own hopes for a special asset I’ve encountered. An Overseer named Charbon, but she was killed in the flurry of battle. I was told it was by one of my own, who would have not known her face from the many other of the NMX, but they deny as much.” Hoshi’s speech had gotten to be more polished and tactful than her usual verbiage around crew and friends alike, but not in a way she would have noticed.
“I’ve reviewed the memories of your crew,” Jinja Emi said.
This was not exceedingly odd, but the impaired state that her embedded crew found themselves in while in that NMX base made Hoshi bristle with a need to protect her people. Some of them had been almost hostile to Yamataian ideals during the mission. What would Jinja Emi do knowing that? What would her crew do if they were aware that SAINT had taken an interest in their somewhat tempestuous recollections.
“Charbon very clearly made herself appear to never have helped you if viewed from the perspective of the base’s NUCLEON sensors.” Jinja had been on a short wooden bridge that adjoined plateaus of heavier soil where the trees were planted between the streams and mud beds of wasabi, but floated over to Hoshi as she spoke.
“Yes, I know of her conversation with William and your SAINT operative in the field while outside of the NUCLEON sensor's area of operation,” Hoshi barely nodded, relieved a bit that Jinja was more interested in Charbon than, say, Molli.
“There’s more.”
Hoshi straightened without speaking and just made a little sound, “Eh?”
“Calling your people in to fill out paperwork, thus separating them from the NMX and allowing you to head into the base unperturbed. Calling her armorer out on some business when it was clear where you were headed. We even believe she is the reason the warning to evacuate the base was widely received by the rescued Nekovalkyrja.”
So she was removing the evidence of her own betrayal. Hoshi had let her hands stay in the hole she was digging, unmoving. She finished her own thought slowly, By killing herself somewhere in that base.
Jinja affirmed Hoshi's thoughts, "It is most likely her masters would have reviewed her memories as we did those of your crew and found her deceit. No doubt she was protecting her own future endeavors and, as some at SAINT see it, the actions of untold others."
Some of the mud started spilling back into the hole Hoshi had made and she looked at it topple over the metal edge of her tool then her hand opposite it before slowly removing both.
She shook out her hand, trying to shake off the muck, before speaking. “Thank you for telling me.”