320 Downtime 2

Letting out a long and exhausted sounding sigh for the nth time while staring out into empty space, Ke finally prompted one of her friends who had been observing her strange behaviour for the last few days to speak out.

"Ke? Are you really sure you're okay?"

"... Okay? Yeah, I'm fine… Haaaaaaaaaaaa…"

Answering entirely absent mindedly before letting out another long sigh, even Dax would be able to notice that she was feeling down, bordering on outright depressed over something, and it really could only be about one thing.

"Did that man which caught your eye shoot you down?"

"Eh? Ah, Dax? No, he didn't… There's really nothing wrong, so don't mind me… Haaaaaaa…"

Ever since Ke had talked with Ra, her mind had been a mess. Sure, learning so much about Dax and even getting approval to pursue him from his sisters was something she had dreamed about, but she had also learned more than she wanted.

(... He really can't feel those emotions? But he seems so normal?... In the end, I just selfishly pushed all my emotions on to him without even learning anything about him first, I even kissed him before I even knew his name…)

"Haaaaaaaaa…"

After talking to his older sister, Ke realized that she really knew nothing at all about Dax, sure she still liked him, but they were basically strangers and the way she had approached him seemed extremely rude in hindsight, there was no doubt in Ke's mind that Dax hated her after how he had acted.

And why wouldn't he? While Ke couldn't put herself in Dax's shoes, not being able to feel the emotions she could make the way Ke had acted seem strange, possibly even annoying to Dax as he had to deal with her.

(He definitely hates me now… I don't want to meet him, if I do I'll just be a bother anyway…)

Sure, Ke still cared deeply about Dax, that was exactly why she didn't want to bother him unnecessarily, but at the same time Ke wanted him to look at her, she wanted his attention and she wanted to make him happy but had no idea how. All these thoughts had been raging inside her mind for days now, with no clear answer they ate away at everything else Ke was doing and she found herself in a near constant daze.

"Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…"

"My, how pathetic."

(Ghe!-)

Having let her guard down as she was constantly sighing deeply, Ke failed to take notice of her surroundings, that is until she heard a voice belonging to a person definitely didn't want to meet at the moment. As her face cramped up from surprise, Ke finally broke the staring contest she had had with the floor for the past 3 hours to look up and find an angel standing above her with a disgusted look on her face.

"... What the hell do you want?"

Hiding her mouth with a hand as she spoke, Ke definitely felt like Solaris was looking down on her, which she was and had every reason to at the moment, but something about one of her primary rivals looking down on her when she was this lost really pissed Ke off. 

"Then why the hell are you still here!? Fuck off!"

Watching Ke's outburst, Solaris' eyes got even colder than they had already been as she narrowed them slightly.

"I heard that you got Ra's approval to chase Dax so I was actually somewhat impressed, as I know how hard it is to get those sisters to approve… But seeing this sorry sight made me realize Ra must have made some sort of mistake."

"Then how the hell do you expect me to react!? Hearing that the love of my life is unable to ever return my feelings, no matter how hard I try!?"

Raising up her body, Ke towered above Solaris as her anger mixed with the frustration of being unable to find an answer to her current situation took over, but even as she looked down on the angel, Ke felt that the current situation was the opposite.

"Isn't that the simplest thing in the world to answer? You just continue to pursue him and be affectionate. If the love of your life doesn't know what love is, you just show it to them until they get it. Meeting someone as passionate as you who fell in love at first sight and even had the courage to try and steal Dax from me while I'm looking at it, I believed you would understand that instinctively, but I guess I was wrong…. Aaahhh, so disappointing."

Delivering a string of harsh words without even a shred of mercy, Solaris tore into Ke's current insecurities without holding anything back before she seemingly got bored and left, leaving just Ke and her friend who were both speechless for quite a while after.

"... She really is a bitch that one, don't mind what she said Ke… Ke?"

While her friend hadn't realized the true meaning behind Solaris' words, Ke was frozen in place as she finally realized.

(... She came here to cheer me up?... But why?)

While Solaris' words were unmistakably harsh, they did truly help Ke, thus the lamia made the first step out of her current slump as she now was confused for an entirely different reason.

(... That arrogant angel also praised me somewhere in there, didn't she?)

-

"Yo."

"..."

Sticking his head into Ra's office, Dax was greeted with silence by the person inside, but this was actually a good sign.

"I brought your payment."

Holding up a box of sweets he had made, Dax still received no verbal answer from Ra who was busy typing at lightning speed on her keyboard as different non liniar equations and other data flashed on the 20 or so screens she had surrounded herself with, but the avoaxian did raise a free hand to wave Dax over. Having received permission to enter the premises, Dax closed the door after him as he carefully stepped over countless discarded papers and tablets thrown all over the room to make his way to Ra who was currently sitting on the floor with a keyboard on her lap and nearly surrounded by monitors. Taking a seat on the floor behind Ra, Dax opened the box of sweets he had brought Ra and took out an ultra sweet and fruity filled chocolate, reaching over Ra's shoulder he held the piece a bit in front of Ra's mouth until she ate it without any reservations. Continuing in that manner for the next hour, Dax continued to feed Ra sweets in the order that he knew she prefered while she kept working, occasionally taking breaks as he knew she didn't like stuffing herself too fast. After having eaten the entire box of sweets, Ra still continued working in silence, but she did have time to give Dax thumbs up.

"You're welcome. Do you have time now?"

"..."

Once more met with silence, Dax breathed a small sigh before he started meditating, he knew from experience that once Ra started working on a problem she couldn't put it down mid progress. Zoning out the somewhat rhythmic tapping from Ra's keyboard, Dax's mind returned to the battle against the hydra on Marex 4 a few weeks ago. While Dax had come out victorious, even without a single injury on his team, he had lost a lot more air assets doing the battle than he would deem acceptable against such a level of opponent. What if he had used more magic and called in orbital artillery earlier? Or changed the Hornet's swarm pattern? Perhaps if he had them do long range engagements instead of close air support, but if he did that, would they have been able to cover for them? Would someone have gotten injured in that case? What if-

"I'm done now."

"Good work. Is it that 'world engine' you're still working on?"

Snapping out of his mediation as Ra had finished her work, Dax opened his eyes to find Ra now facing him as she had turned off her countless monitors.

"Yeah, that's it. Although I'm just doing the legwork for Mu and cross checking the data while she's doing the actual analysis together with Ling, Ying and Iris."

While Ra was one of the top researchers in the Galactic Empire, the artefact Dax had brought back this time was outside her field of expertise, so she 'just' did 'legwork' for Mu while she worked on understanding the artefact, although that legwork consisted of several petabytes of raw data, it wasn't really a big deal for someone like Ra.

"And thanks for doing the medical examination too, I really was at a loss over what to do."

"No problem, it gave me some nice data to work with too, I think I'm nearing the stage where we can do a complete rehaul of your biological enhancements."

"I'm looking forward to that, did you talk with the representatives too?"

While the primary reason Ra undertook the task of doing the medical examinations was to get new data she could work with, Dax was positive she also did it so she could get to know her new 'test subjects' better.

"Ah, yeah, I learned a lot… Rakan feels really sorry about the way he treated you the first time you guys met but has a hard time apologizing due to his pride. Goran is really just a kid in an adult's body and is just as much a muscle head as you are, so I understand why the two of you bonded so quickly… As for Ke, we talked a bit."

"... You didn't shove her down the trash compactor, did you?"

Knowing how Ra and Mu treated women who approached him without getting their approval first, Dax realized he hadn't seen Ke lately and started getting worried.

"Nope, she passed. But when I told her about how we're wired she seemed to be confused."

"Ah, yeah that happens a lot, doesn't it?"

Having lived as long as they had, both Dax and Ra had come into contact with countless people, the vast majority of them didn't know how to handle their lack of emotions so it was no surprise that Ke would need some time to process it.

"It sure does… Solaris visited earlier to ask how Ke did on the test, when I told her how Ke reacted she seemed to get really angry before storming off."

"... Seems like Solaris has accepted Ke as a rival..."

Dax knew full well that Solaris wouldn't have reacted with anger if she didn't care about Ke, if she had been entirely indifferent about her, she wouldn't have gotten angry like that.

"She's a cute one to be sure, do something about the current situation, will you? And talk with the others about this too."

"Yes ma'am, right away."

Getting the definite impression that Ra wasn't making a request, but ordering him, Dax saluted her as Ra broke into a slight smile.

"Good boy."