[TAS] Volume 2 - Chapter 108 - Idol

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

RR has received Intermission 106.3 - Worth today with no major changes.

For the Wolf Lords, this chapter has seen no major changes.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Finally with another chapter, yaaay.

I'm also here to announce that Hell-October is officially coming to a close tomorrow, as the restructuring at my work has, in-fact, finished on-time, believe it or not.

In another twist of strange fate, the restructuring is actually a positive thing for once as well. Starting November, I will likely have a bit less stress from my work responsibilities as a result of all the stress I just tanked this month; so that's great!

Now, to the bad news:

I'll be taking the rest of October off, to fully recover from this ordeal.

Next week was going to be ADMIN WEEK for October either way, but I'm also adding a 2nd week onto the back of that one, as a sort of mini-vacation for myself.

I haven't taken any real days off of writing in a long, long time and the Hell-October absolutely broke my back.

For the longevity of the novels, I need to prioritize myself here this time.

As such, the next chapter will unfortunately only be releasing on November 2nd / November 3rd for ND / TAS respectively.

Thank you for your patience with me this month; it means the world to me! 

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Today's chapter took me a long while to figure out and always ended up with an A and a B version. But I gamed out the discussion with IRL friends and 2/2 times, we ended up with the current iteration, declaring it the "realism" winner!

People DO, in-fact, speak exactly like this about these topics.

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SPOILERS FOR THE CHAPTER, TO EXPLAIN WHAT I MEAN, SPECIFICALLY:

Specifically in regards to Desmond proclaiming Thea, instead of namedropping MMM. People don't actually use the online nickname, when talking in situations like that, unless there's a larger percentage of people that actually care about the game in question; I've checked.

As such, Corvus still does not learn about MMM here.

It might seem strangely convoluted, but it's actually quite literally how it works.

I'm also very much aware of how much y'all want Corvus to learn about this. Just rest assured that short-term satisfaction almost never beats long-term gratification.

I DID almost write an A chapter where he learns about MMM; and then the B chapter, which would be this one, and let people decide how it goes... But after doing 2 separate tests with my friendgroups, both ended up as Chapter B (this one).

Ultimately, the realism option here, as much as people might want the fiction option where characters behave irrationally to further the plot, is by far the superior option; as it also allows me to have the reveal that was originally planned.

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NmFYOIVVKu0v2WuefEB4TUFkK829TEe7RslNzlWOoz4/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 108 - Idol

[TRANSCRIPT — "THE MOONLIGHT FILES" — Episode 447: "SHE'S BACK! AND THE TIMING IS NOT A COINCIDENCE."]

GalNet Channel: TruthSeeker_Halvo — 42,644,209 subscribers — Broadcast from Undisclosed Location, PFC 943

"—and we're LIVE! Okay. Okay okay okay… Seekers! If you're just tuning in, drop whatever you're doing. Put down the nutrient pack! Sit down! Because… After TWO YEARS of radio silence, two years of this channel being called—and I quote the comment section here—'a sad shrine run by a man who desperately needs a hobby'—we have actual MOVEMENT on the MMM file!!!

"For the newcomers—first of all, welcome, the merch link is below, the Moonlight Files hoodies are back in stock—the short version: MissyMoonlightMayhem. Greatest Build Maker in the history of competitive gaming. Completely vanishes off the face of the GalNet two years ago… No farewell post, no final build, nothing. The account goes dark and STAYS dark…

"Until four days ago.”

[HOLO DISPLAY: Wildmaws profile screenshot]

"Last login: FOUR. MOONLIGHT-DAMNED. DAYS. AGO. 

“And before you comment 'it's edited, Halvo, lick dust'—the admins already verified it. This is confirmed. It’s only one server tick long... Which we all know means it’s a handshake login. Which means—say it with me, veterans of this channel—a PRIVATE server! Not Terra infrastructure.

"Now... Who owns private Wildmaws servers? Corps. Legacies… And the MILITARY.

"And here's where I need you to put your tinfoil helmets on, Seekers, because the TIMING. THE TIMING!!!

"Item one!”

[HOLO: APNN headline] 

“Two months ago, the Stellar Republic launches the largest offensive into UHF space since the Ravenhearst—may the Emperor continue to guide those unfortunate Souls…”

[Brief moment of silence] 

“Then, punches through two sector lines almost immediately like they KNEW our fleet dispositions! Who stops them, just this week? A fairly unremarkable Captain by the name of Seyne Ardara, that barely anybody had ever heard of, and the Eternal Colossus, in what the Navy is calling a 'miracle defensive action.' 

“Now—two possibilities, and both of them keep me up at night. Possibility A: The Freaks got that far because they had a Build-genius running doctrine optimization for their boarding elements. You know who's THE Build genius, unaccounted for, for two years? Yeah. Exactly. 

“Possibility B—and this is MY read—MMM is UHF. MMM is ON the Eternal Colossus RIGHT NOW, and that 'miracle' wasn't a miracle. It was simply an OPTIMIZED DEFENSE. You don't turn back a fleet action like that on vibes, Seekers. You do it with THE RIGHT BUILDS!!!

"Item two!”

[HOLO: UHF Recruitment statistics] 

“The UHF quietly expanded Recruitment Drive capacity across the entire Faction this year. Biggest training cohort since the Revolutionary War back in PFC 213. 

“You're telling me they're massing Marines at historic rates and the greatest optimization mind of our generation just HAPPENS to resurface the same season? On a PRIVATE server? That's a training server, Seekers, I’m telling you! She's writing the damn doctrine! She's writing the NEXT META, and the next meta is THE WAR.

"Item three!”

[HOLO: Grainy chat screenshot] 

“Leaked chat messages from a news agency near one of the UHF Legacy Galas—yes, THE Legacy Galas—show a distinct lack of communication from several of the Recruit Ships near the South-Western quadrants. Now I'm not SAYING that's MMM being kept a secret on a warship. I'm just saying nobody has so far DENIED it.

“Think about it, Seekers. When has the UHF ever denied Legacy communication, hmm? NEVER, I tell you! Legacies ARE the UHF. If there wasn’t something special about this Recruitment Drive, then why would they try to HIDE it?!

"Item four! The Celestial Dominion abruptly recalled two of their Dreadnought-class-flagships from the border THE SAME WEEK the login pinged! Now, we all know that The Celestial Dominion doesn't simply move Dreadnoughts for the stormy space-weather, Seekers. They move them when something fundamentally changes on the board. Something CHANGED ON THE BOARD!!! Something MASSIVE!

"Item five—and this one's for my day-one Seekers—Terra themselves released a Wildmaws balance patch two days after the login. Completely unscheduled and mid-season. When has Terra EVER patched mid-season?! I'll tell you when: PFC 941, the LAST time an MMM-adjacent rumor moved markets!!! They're pre-balancing her, Seekers! They KNOW she’s coming back! It’s SO OBVIOUS, for those with the EYES to see!

"Now the skeptics—hi, GalNet-Mod-Piotr, I see you in chat—will say: 'Halvo, maybe she just works for some Legacy now. Private coaching. Making good with the rich kids.'

"No. NO! And I will die on this hill: MissyMoonlightMayhem did NOT abandon public play, abandon her fans, abandon the LADDER, to become some Legacy's lap-dog build-tutor for a spoiled heir!!! She turned down every single sponsorship offer for like a DECADE! You know what she never turned down? A CHALLENGE.

"And there is exactly ONE challenge in this galaxy big enough…

"Connect it all, Seekers! Do the RESEARCH!!! 

“The offensive… The recruitment surge… The classified communications… The Celestial Dominion blinking… Terra flinching… One private server handshake in the middle of it all… 

“This is NOT a coincidence, I tell you! There ARE no coincidences at this level!

"MMM is inside a classified unit of the UHF military! Navy or Marines—my credits are on the Marines, and you know why? Because Marines ARE builds, baby. Builds all the way down. 

“She's not gone. She was never gone!!! She's been drafted into the final sprint of the Galactic War, and somewhere out there, on some ship whose name we won't learn for probably ten more years, the greatest gamer of our generation is min-maxing HUMANITY ITSELF!!!

"You heard it here first… You ALWAYS hear it here first.

"Smash the subscribe button and check out the Moonlight hoodies in the link below.

"And… Most importantly of all: 

“Always stay seeking the Moonlight, Seekers!"

[END TRANSCRIPT]

[Excerpt from "The Moonlight Files," Episode 447 — GalNet Channel TruthSeeker_Halvo, PFC 943.]

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A few minutes had passed since Captain Cross’ announcement, and Alpha Squad was still arranged squarely around the kitchen counter of their dorm—with one notable exception.

Isabella remained seated on the ground, her back pressed firmly against the counter’s base, arms crossed, utterly unbothered by the five sets of eyes that kept drifting down to her.

“You can all stare as much as you want. I know I’m irresistible to look at,” she declared. “Last time this fucking ship did a bit of a wiggle, I turned into soup. Not doing that shit again.” 

She jabbed a finger upward at nobody in particular. “The floor doesn’t betray you, people. The floor is honest. And I’m staying down here until we’re back inside the Void and I hear the ‘all-clear’ from the good Captain.”

“The announcement said that’ll take like five hours, Isabella…” Desmond noted.

“Then it looks like I’ll be damn comfortable for five hours then, no? Continue the briefing.”

“You—You can’t just sit down there for five hours!” 

“Watch me.”

Thea snorted despite herself—but only with half her attention.

The other half was still stuck on something she’d picked up during the announcement itself, and couldn’t let go of since: Corvus.

The moment Captain Cross had said the words ‘unscheduled course-alteration,’ their ever-stoic leader had gone exceedingly, abnormally still—and his heartbeat had skyrocketed. 

She hadn’t even been trying to listen to it specifically, but with her Perception, the sudden hammering of it had simply arrived, spiking hard before he’d wrestled it back down over the course of a long minute of quiet, deep breaths. 

His face, naturally, had shown none of it. If she hadn’t heard it with her own enhanced senses, she’d have sworn he had barely registered the announcement at all.

‘He probably knows exactly what this means, or at least he thinks he does—and it scared the shit out of him?’ She thought, watching him tap through his datapad with perfectly steady fingers. ‘But he’s not saying anything… Corvus not saying anything always has a purpose… I think… I hope, at least. Either way—I’m asking him about it later. Privately.’

She filed it away for now and tuned back into the squad’s ongoing speculation—which had been running in heated circles for several minutes now, only briefly interrupted by Desmond’s questioning of Isabella’s choice of seating.

“—all I’m saying is, the most obvious reason a troop transporter changes course is that troops are needed somewhere,” Isabella was arguing from the floor. “UHF line breaks down somewhere close to where we were headed, suddenly our route’s a warzone, and boom—course change! Which means we might be getting our feet wet in Freak blood way earlier than expected.” 

She cracked her knuckles with entirely too much enthusiasm, eliciting a series of loud, wet cracks. “I can’t fucking wait.”

“We’re Recruits, Isa… They’re not routing a Recruitment Drive toward a collapsed front,” Desmond shot back, leaning on the counter and staring down at her. “If anything, it’s probably the opposite—personally, I think something’s sitting in our path that the Navy doesn’t want to fly a few thousand half-trained Marines through. My Credits are on a Void-storm. I mean—” he waved a hand vaguely at the ceiling, “—how many of those damn things have there already been since we boarded, eh? Void weather’s been fucking weird lately, is all I’m saying.”

Thea and Kara’s eyes met, covertly, for exactly a fraction of a second—then slid apart again with absolute innocence.

‘Yep… Mhm. Space weather. Truly inexplicable, mysterious space weather that nobody could ever predict,’ Thea thought, keeping her face arranged into something thoughtfully neutral while her stomach performed a small, guilty somersault. ‘We can never let him know…’

“Whatever the reason is,” Kara spoke up abruptly then—and Thea noted it was her first real contribution of the entire evening that wasn’t tinged with the strange awkwardness that had clung to her since the topic of Eve had come up, “the more immediately relevant consequence is one nobody’s mentioned yet.” 

She’d pulled up her datapad, a rough trajectory sketch glowing on its surface. “I ran the numbers: A detour big enough to justify killing every DM and Time Dilation on the ship for hours isn’t a small correction in the least. Which means our rendezvous with Eonon Station probably just moved—and by a lot.” 

She looked up, letting her eyes sweep the squad. “We were scheduled to dock and take on the rest of the Recruits before the Challenges. But with any detour of meaningful size, that’s no longer possible and given the length of this one? It’s probably a large one. Which means the station rendezvous now lands after them. Whatever anyone was planning to buy, requisition, or potentially learn from the Eonon crew before the Challenge window—that plan is dead as of twenty minutes ago.”

A beat of silence followed her announcement.

“…Well, shit,” Isabella summarised from the floor.

“Which,” Corvus said, setting his datapad down, “actually brings us neatly back to the topic we were so rudely interrupted on—because the Challenges are also exactly where Evelyne’s interests and ours started overlapping in the first place, and you all need to understand her motivations before you can decide if accepting her help is worth it or not. But—” he raised one finger, “—minor detour first. Because none of her motivations will make sense until everyone at this table understands what the Sen actually are—in the sense of what they do.”

He swept his eyes around the counter once.

“The short and pretty of it is: They’re information brokers and spies.”

Thea blinked. 

She’d expected the information broker part, considering what Eve had done for them so far, but “spy” was hitting somewhere she didn’t know exactly what to do with quite yet.

“…Spies,” Desmond repeated flatly. “The family where every single heir has the same face, the same name, and a glowing sign under their eye that says ‘Heir of the Sen’? That’s the UHF’s great spy dynasty? That’s like painting your Scout bright orange…”

“Yes. Exactly like that,” Corvus said, entirely unbothered. “Think it through for a second, Desmond. What do you actually know about the Sen? You know the Matriarch exists. You know what she looks like—everyone does. You know the Heirs carry the mark and the name. That’s the entire public surface of a Major Legacy that’s been operating for the better part of half a millennium. Compare that to the Masters though—we know their estates, their general build archetype, a lot of their doctrine, their favourite colours, practically their entire breakfast orders. The Sen have a grand total of one visible person per generation.” 

He tapped the counter. “The Matriarch isn’t the spy. The Matriarch is a beacon. A single point of obviousness so bright that every eye in the Galaxy lands on her—and stays there—while everything else the Sen do happens in the dark behind her. You’re supposed to have that exact reaction.”

“And the everything else, then?” Lucas asked quietly.

“Everyone who isn’t the Matriarch or the marked Heir,” Corvus said, shrugging. “Nobody really knows how many Sen there actually are or how wide their web stretches. Nobody knows what they look like, where they’re placed, or what names they’re living under—because on top of all of it, they’re held to be the finest masters of disguise humanity has ever produced. Truly top-of-the-line work. Faces, voices, gaits, service records, entire lives built and worn like nothing but clothing… If the rumors are to be believed, a Sen can live as your very spouse for months before you notice anything off.” 

He paused, then tilted his head in concession. “And yes—I said rumors. And believing rumors about the Sen is usually a fool’s game, since most of them were likely authored by the Sen themselves. But rumors are, quite literally, the only source of information about them that exists, really. That alone should tell you quite a bit.”

“That tells me they’re either the best in the Galaxy, or extremely good at making people think they’re the best in the Galaxy,” Desmond noted.

“Correct. But, ultimately, it doesn’t matter which one is true, because the outcome is identical either way: We don’t know for certain.” Corvus leaned forward slightly. “There’s one more part though, which should hopefully drive home how truly dangerous the Sen are: The rumored Sen disguise-craft and tradecraft—their actual teachings, doctrine, and methods? Supposedly Terra is interested in obtaining them. Has been for generations, allegedly, and has allegedly never managed it.” 

He let that sit as his eyes met each of theirs individually. “The single most resource-rich institution humanity possesses, with every conceivable intelligence apparatus in existence at its disposal—and the going rumor is that it still cannot replicate or extract everything the Sen can do.”

The squad went very quiet. 

Name-dropping Terra had that effect on people, Thea had noticed.

She simply stared at Corvus, her mental image of Eve rearranging itself for what felt like the fifth time that evening—the trembling autograph-seeker, the composed information broker during their training sessions, the de-facto Heir, and now this: The single visible thread of an invisible web that even Terra couldn’t untangle.

‘… And she carries intel files on random Recruits “for her squad.” Sure… A lot about her is starting to make a whole lot more sense now.’

“So… Her motivations,” Corvus said, steepling his fingers. “Let’s start with the obvious one, because Isabella already laid it out earlier, and frankly better than I would have: Collection. 

“The Sen gather and hoard promising individuals the way other Legacies wish they could. Every one of us at this table is, by any measure, a long-term asset worth having on their ledger—and a Sen Heir spending a Recruit year getting comfortable with the Drive’s leading squad is the single cheapest acquisition window that will probably ever exist for them. In ten years, we’ll all be expensive, politically speaking, if things go according to plan. Right now, however, all we cost is some time and some intel hand-outs.” 

He inclined his head toward the floor. “So—what she said. That theory requires no further evidence, because it’s simply what the Sen do. It’s as close to a guaranteed baseline motivation as we’ll get.”

“Damn straight, Bossman!” Came Isabella’s voice from below and behind the counter.

“But,” Corvus continued, raising a finger, “there are at least two possibilities that are more directly political—things the Sen could achieve inside the UHF specifically, with our help, in the near term. And the first one, I’d wager, none of you have really thought all-too-much about once since the day you received it.”

He looked around the table.

“Your Celestial Bodies.”

Thea blinked at him.

‘The celestial bodies…? What celestial—Oh. OHH...’

“Every single member of this squad holds an outstanding reward from Proprietor Quinn: One Celestial Body. Of choice.” He punctuated the last words with a slap of his hand onto the counter. “A moon… A mining asteroid in a resource belt, a waypoint rock on a trade lane, a whole planet, or maybe even a star—of choice. I’d imagine that basically none of you have the faintest idea what that reward is worth to a Legacy. Understandably so. You are not Legacies. 

“So let me tell you: Families have schemed for several generations to acquire the mineral rights to a single barren moon. Wars between Minor Legacies have been fought—not openly, of course, instead politically, but still fought with tooth-and-nail—over much less. And the six of us are walking around with one each, completely unclaimed, barely even thinking about them because we have no idea what to even do with one.” 

A humourless little smile. “There is no Legacy in the Galaxy that wouldn’t absolutely love to snatch up a free Celestial Body of choice. Especially when all it potentially requires is getting cozy with a few clueless Recruits for a year or two—steering, ever so gently, which body they choose and what gets done with it afterward. A friendly expert voice at the exact moment you’re overwhelmed by the choice: ‘Oh, you should pick this one, it’s a wonderful system, my family can even help you administrate it, so it wouldn’t even be much overhead for you…’”

The room had gone noticeably quiet.

“The second possibility is even simpler, honestly: Proximity. We are—like it or not—the most-watched squad of the most-watched Drive in this Sector. Command’s attention flows through us constantly. Medals, special treatment, special attention by very important people.” His eyes flicked, very briefly, in Thea’s direction. “For a family whose entire trade is information, a seat next to Alpha Squad isn’t just random friendship but a prime-grade listening post. Everything the UHF does with us, around us, and to us is intelligence that no insignificant amount of Credits could ever buy on the open market. Evelyne doesn’t even need to extract a single secret from our mouths directly. Just being near us, watching what happens to us, is already a massively profitable product for her, most likely.”

He spread his hands.

“Those are my thoughts, at least... The floor’s open—what do the rest of you think she’s after? Let’s brainstorm a little.”

Thea, for her part, barely heard the question land.

Because somewhere between collection and Celestial Bodies, a thought had quietly assembled itself in the back of her head and had, since then, simply stood there, fully formed and refusing to leave: 

She was fairly certain she knew exactly what Eve’s intentions were.

The epiphany from their last training session came flooding back again—the realization that Eve had somehow known she was MMM from the get-go. 

At the time, it had all mostly been an unsettling loose thread. 

But now, with the whole Major-almost-Prime Legacy business and the spies plus galaxy’s-finest-information-brokers context wrapped around it… it was starting to make perfect sense. 

Of course somebody like a Sen could connect a “nonexistent” Recruit to a suddenly retired gamer handle. That was probably nothing but a slow Tuesday for them.

The problem was that she had absolutely no idea how to bring it up without sounding completely, unbearably weird.

‘“Hey guys, I think the scariest Legacy’s Heir is here because of me, specifically. ‘Cause I’m good at games.” Yeah... Great. Fantastic way to sound like I’ve got an ego the size of the fucking Runepriest himself…’

So she waited, and listened, as the others took their turns, hoping against hope that someone else might broach the topic for her.

“Easy: She’s scouting the Challenges for Beta Squad,” Lucas offered. “She told us herself she wants to climb, no? Knowing exactly how Alpha trains and fights is the best prep that exists in that regard. She can sell it to Beta, then potentially make her own way into the squad, too, with the right leverage.”

“Recruiting for her own squad, long-term, maybe?” Desmond countered. “Poach one of us after the Recruit year is over.”

“I got no fucking idea. But it stinks,” Isabella said from the floor. “Ain’t like any of that politics stuff; even if it’s important. Would rather stay away from it entirely, not gonna lie.”

“She’s going to steal Corvus!” Desmond escalated immediately. “Think about it—strategist genes for the next clone batch!”

At some point, Desmond and Isabella seemed to lose track of the purpose of the brainstorming, Thea noted with some amusement, as their potential reasons started spiralling as they attempted to one-up each other for some reason.

“Nah, nah—she’s secretly the Matriarch herself, hiding from her job! You heard him, they all have the same exact face—”

“—she’s three Sen in a trench coat and the scar is the zipper—”

Meanwhile, Kara, Thea couldn’t help but notice with a small pang of worry, contributed nothing at all—eyes down, buried in her datapad, the same careful non-presence she’d maintained through every other Eve portion.

‘She’ll tell me someday… She promised,’ Thea reminded herself firmly, and let it go for now. ‘Kara can handle herself. And if she can’t, she knows where to find me.’

“Hey, focus you two,” Corvus said flatly, and the one-upmanship died mid-sentence. “This is the single most dangerous individual on this ship, and whether we cooperate with her decides Lucas’ Challenge preparation. Serious suggestions or shut up, people.”

Silence settled over the counter.

And in that silence, Thea’s indignant rage at her own social cowardice, mixed with her worry for Kara’s own awkwardness surrounding this topic, finally boiled over the edge.

“IknowwhatEvelynewants!”

Everyone’s eyes darted to her immediately.

She shifted uncomfortably on her chair, ears heating, realising she’d basically just straight up yelled it into the quiet room.

“I… Ahem… I think I know what Eve wants,” she repeated, much quieter. “But… it’s going to sound… It’s going to sound a bit weird.”

“Thea,” Corvus said evenly. “We just entertained the theory that she’s three spies in a trench coat. You will not be ridiculed—well, not more than Desmond, at least.”

Which was… honestly a very fair point to make, really.

So Thea took a deep breath.

“As self-aggrandizing as it’s going to sound—she wants me.”

She heard Kara’s heartrate spike for a fraction of a second—a single sharp uptick, there and gone again—and her eyes instantly darted toward her friend. But Kara was buried deep in her datapad, exactly as she had been the entire discussion, face betraying nothing.

Lucas coughed a bit awkwardly. “Ehh… Wants you… how, exactly? What does that mean, Thea? I think you’re leaving a bit too much up for interpretation here…”

“Right—okay, from the beginning.” Thea straightened. “The very first time I met Eve, she came up to me on the digital mission deck with a poster to sign. A poster commemorating one of my Galactic Championship wins. I figured it was a coincidence at the time—I’ve signed thousands of those over the years, they used to be absolutely everywhere in the game social hubs—so I didn’t spend any real mental energy on it. But—”

“Wait.” Corvus’ voice came out slightly strangled. “Wait, wait—your what? What, exactly, do you mean, ‘Galactic Championship wins’ Thea—”

Before Thea could answer, Desmond burst out laughing, clapped his hands once, and was already out of his seat.

“That’s fucking right! Corvus doesn’t even know yet!”

He scurried around the counter, planted himself behind Thea, grabbed her wrist, and hoisted her arm into the air like a referee declaring a knockout—Thea too perplexed by the sheer series of events to even bother resisting.

“Corvus Leander Sylarion,” Desmond proclaimed theatrically, “allow me to introduce Alpha Squad’s very own five-time Galactic Champion and certified, ludicrous UHF Marine star Recruit—Theaaaaa! McKaaaaaay!”

Corvus simply stared at the two of them, slack-jawed.

Then he took several deep breaths, raised one hand, and slowly massaged his temples.

Thea ripped her arm back down and shot Desmond a withering stink-eye, her face burning with second-hand—no, actually, entirely first-hand—embarrassment. Desmond retreated to his seat at the side of the counter at speed, shit-eating grin fully deployed.

“Thea,” Corvus finally managed, very slowly. “How come you never, like… mentioned any of this?”

“I did say I was pretty good at games!” she shot back, immediately on the defensive. “Several times, even!”

Everyone simply stared at her.

“I did!” she repeated indignantly, to no apparent avail.

“Pretty good… Pretty good, she says…” Corvus echoed hollowly. His eyes tracked over to Desmond’s grin. “And you knew about this, Desmond?”

Desmond’s hands went straight up in surrender. “Everyone did! We all heard about it during the last training session!”

Corvus’ gaze swept across every single member of Alpha Squad, one by one. “You all knew we had a five-time Galactic Champion in our squad… And not a single one of you bothered to inform me…”

“Technically it was only four…” Thea offered meekly, feeling the record needed correcting. “The fifth I got on a technicality, ’cause somebody cheated…”

Corvus stared at her again.

For a long, long time.

It made her profoundly uncomfortable, and she sank deeper into her chair under the weight of it, so she offered, in her own defense: “Well… it’s only pretty good because people like NyxianFelzir won fourteen back-to-back, you know? Or LykanthropyEmerged—he got twelve. I can’t exactly claim I’m anywhere near their level now, can I…?”

Unfortunately, somehow, that did not seem to get Corvus’ eyes off of her. At all.

He finally closed them, for a long few moments, and took several deliberate, audible breaths.

“Alright… That aside, then,” he said, visibly filing an entire crisis away for later. “And we will all be talking about this whole thing in detail at some point in the future, once we’ve dealt with all the Challenge nonsense, mark my words… Assuming you’re correct, Thea—what is it that Evelyne wants, precisely, then?”

Thea, feeling marginally less awkward now that the spotlight had shifted even a few degrees, answered.

“She—she’s a fan. Like… a mega-fan.”

That only earned her a renewed round of staring, from everyone.

Kara included, this time.

“It—it’s true!” she protested. “She asked for an autograph, like I said! And think about it—she’s only ever asked me stuff about Builds! How I come up with them, how I handle different investments, how I’d approach this or that kit… That’s all she’s ever asked about with her rewards! Not UHF stuff, not squad stuff, not politics stuff at all. Literally just Build theory. Every single time without fail.”

Corvus got up from his chair without a word, walked to the caf dispenser, punched in the largest size it offered, and waited for it to pour.

Then he came back, sat down, and sipped at it slowly.

Nobody had spoken since Thea’s last words.

“You’re telling me,” he said at last, very slowly, “that the Sen Heir… is a groupie of yours? The Heir to probably the most dangerous Legacy in all of UHF space is so unshakably, catastrophically a fan of yours that she’s effectively disobeying her entire upbringing—her programming—to just… what… help you out? To bask in the light of her idol? Is that what you’re telling me, Thea?”

Well.

When he put it that way, it did sound pretty ridiculous, Thea had to admit. She had no real proof of any of it, either... Just a signed poster, a pattern of questions, and a feeling.

“I think she’s right,” Kara suddenly interjected.

Everyone’s eyes darted to her.

“It would explain why I could never figure Evelyne out,” Kara continued, finally looking up from her datapad. “I ran every standard motivation against her behaviour and none of them fit cleanly—because I never once considered this as an actual possibility… But now that I do…” 

She tilted her head slightly, eyes going briefly distant in that familiar, calculating way of hers. “It actually does line up—retroactively. Her approach vector, the question patterns, the asymmetric generosity… I actually think Thea’s right, Corvus. As crazy as that sounds.”

There was surprisingly little awkwardness in her voice, despite the topic—the first clean, full-strength Kara assessment on the subject of Evelyne all evening.

And that, it seemed, was enough to convince Corvus.

Whatever deal those two had with each other in this regard, he seemed to put an almost unfathomable amount of trust in Kara’s judgment.

‘Not that I blame him for that one bit…’

“Alright.” Corvus set his caf down, and nodded slowly. “Then the only real question left—the one that actually decides whether Evelyne’s help is worth its cost—is this, I guess:” 

His eyes settled on Thea. “Do you think you can handle her, Thea? And understand—normally, don’t get me wrong, I would not even ask you, with one hundred percent certainty. Nobody handles a Sen... But based on what you and Kara have laid out…” 

He exhaled, shaking his head slightly, as though he couldn’t quite believe the sentence he was about to say. “It seems that, at least for right now, you might genuinely be the only person aboard this ship who can not just handle a social engagement with the Sen—but straight up win one…”

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