322 Downtime 4

"... Okay, lead the way."

Feeling a sudden burst of bloodlust, Ke found herself unable to decline Lilly's sudden request. As Ke agreed to Lilly's request, the elver's bloodlust subsided considerably, something which only served to further confuse Ke as she had absolutely no idea what Lilly wanted with her. 

(It doesn't seem like she wants to fight, but I better make some precautions, just in case.)

Having witnessed plenty of serious competition between members of her village growing up, Ke wasn't naive enough to think that Lilly was just going to accept her with open arms.

Leaving the part of the Lazarus station Ke and the other lamia's had access to, Lilly silently lead her to what seemed like a meeting room with a long table and multiple chairs, the wall oppersid of were they entered being no more than a thin plane of glass separating them from the cruel vacuum of space and providing a full view of the Lazarus automounts battlecruiser that had brought them to the station currently undergoing a complete retrofit. Sitting down in one of the empty chairs, Lilly's golden eyes stared disinterestedly out in space in front of her, with seemingly no interest in answering Ke's questions, Ke worked out that they were waiting for someone and made herself comfortable.

"What are we doing here exactly?"

But even when 10 minutes had passed and nothing had happened yet, Ke found herself unable to remain silent any longer out of sheer boredom. Before Lilly even thought of entertaining that pointless question, the door into the meeting room opened as Lux entered in casual wear, taking a seat next to Lilly before addressing Ke.

"I don't need to tell you what we're talking about, do I?"

Emitting a strange sort of pressure with her words and overall attitude, Lux put Ke on edge in a way she couldn't quite pinpoint, but this feeling was definitely similar to that of a bloodthirsty beast staring down its next meal, even as Lux's body language or aura seemed that way.

"N-no, I'm pretty sure what this is about."

Realizing that she knew very little about Lux except for the fact that she was Dax's adopted daughter and second in command, Ke decided to exercise the better part of valour and take extreme caution when dealing with her.

"Is Solaris also coming or?"

Having finished addressing Ke, Lux turned to Lilly who shrugged in response.

"Okay then let's start. Alice, take a seat."

"Sure…"

(!!! When did she!?)

Suddenly realizing that there had been a person right behind her for a while, Ke broke out in a cold sweat as she struggled to appear calm on the surface. With Alice taking a seat next to Ke, Lux's aura changed as she put on a slight smile before finally addressing Ke and telling her what was going on.

"I find that hard to just believe outright…"

Glancing to Lilly which clearly still harboured negative feelings towards her, Ke put on a wry smile as her heartbeat slowed down slightly.

"Ra and Mu have accepted you, but that doesn't mean we do, okay!? Even if you fooled them, it is clear to me that you just wanted to tie Dax around your finger, I clearly see through your intentions!"

Bringing the entire room at a loss for words with a barrage of unsubstantiated claims, Lilly created quite an awkward atmosphere with her clearly hostile attitude towards Ke, this made Lux breathe a deep sigh as she moved to sidestep the jealous elver.

"... Sorry about that, you can just ignore Lilly for the moment."

"What do you mean 'ignore me'!? Why are you even here Lux!? I- … I'm sorry, I overreacted."

Continuing her child like outburst, Lilly was quickly silenced by Lux when she released her bloodlust in the elves' direction. With the room once more falling into an awkward silence, Alice faked a cough before showing Ke a bright smile.

"Lilly's current attitude aside, this was just meant as an opportunity for the 4 of us to get to know each other better."

With her straightforward honesty and bright smile, Alice succeeded in easing the current situation, but at the same time, she left Ke feeling quite perplexed.

"I'm sorry, but I lied earlier… I have no idea what is currently going on here, could someone explain?"

Making the room fall silent once more, both Alice and Lux glanced at Lilly who suddenly got a lot smaller in her chair as her face flushed red.

"I'm sorry."

"Haaaaa. We wanted to talk with you Ke and get to know you better because we've accepted you. Chief among the things I want to know is if you still want to approach Dax after getting to know about his lack of feelings."

Bringing the conversation back on topic, Lux pressed Ke with the answer to a question she wasn't even sure of herself. Sure, Ke felt like she was still in love with Dax, she had been ever since she first laid eyes on him and that feeling still remained even before Solaris motivated her to stop worrying, but Ke had also realized she was basically just one sidedly pushing her feelings onto Dax, so she was still at a loss for words.

"I-I don't really know, to be honest… If it's not a bother I would love to get closer to Dax, but I don't want to make him uncomfortable so I don't really know how to proceed…"

Baring her own honest feelings, Ke felt her own face heart up slightly, something which made Lux sigh deeply before throwing a curveball towards her.

"Just how pure hearted are you?"

"Eh?"

"If Dax was even bothered by you in the slightest he would have let you know a long time ago, he's really thick headed when it comes to things like that… Or rather, he's too stupid when it comes to things like that to even attempt to word it nicely."

"That he is indeed…"

With both Alice and Lilly offering a collective sigh, Ke quickly understood that Lux was not exaggerating in the slightest.

"Before you go see him we just want to get to know you better."

Continuing on without getting stuck on a topic, Lux leaned forward in her chair and placed her elbows on the table with a smile on her face, she seemed like an overly excited schoolgirl that would stay up all night to talk about love with her friends.

"Ehm… There's really not much to say, I grew up in my village which I never really ventured outside. Born as the heir to the title of village leader, my elders doted on me while my peers looked up to me with high expectations which I had to meet, so I spent most of my time studying leadership and increasing my own strength. Before I realized I had spent more time studying leadership than actually practising it, so when I became the village leader I struggled at first, but I quickly learned to become self reliant and follow my own intuition above all."

Despite starting out by stating that there really wasn't much to her, Ke nevertheless loved to talk about herself, as everyone did when given the right prompt.

"Hmm~ So you're more the type to draw on your own knowledge and experience than anything else? In that case, you're somewhat like Lilly, although you don't seem quite as headstrong."

"What the hell do you mean 'headstrong'!? I'm a kind, calm and honest girl!"

"Anyway, I'm saying that you two might have more in common than you think, as long as you are willing to open up to each other, just be patient with Lilly, she's not that honest with herself."

"Um, I am actually up for getting to know you better Ke, I hope we can get to know each other and get along from now on."

"... Thanks Alice, I'm also looking forward to getting to know you better."

In the midst of Lux teasing Lilly, Ke and Alice forged a tender beginning of a friendship.

-

(Other than the attempt to recover a mana forge doing the Cyprex Alpha raid there has been little evidence that the Emergence has consistent access to either mana or advanced technology, but someone is definitely bestowing the Emergence with lost technology, furthermore there seems to be at least a semblance of cooperation between the Emergence and this unknown party…)

While Dax and his unit had been kicking back and relaxing, the reconquest of the Emergence occupied space had been progressing mostly as planned. While admiral Simmon's blitz offensive to cripple the Emergence's strategic production output had been successful, the Emergence had nevertheless found some way to rebuild its fleet and maintain its numbers enough to limit the advance of the galactic navy, but they were still starting to envelop the dark systems which had been determined to be the home of the Emergence's main body, or at least a high concentration of it neuron clusters.

(Judging the way the war is going right now, the situation is bound to become hopeless for the Emergence within the next month?... No, Simmons is rotating crews so he'll delay the final offensive by a few weeks… In that case, something is bound to happen 2 months from now, at a critical point on the front line, either this unknown 3rd party directly intervenes or they lose the Emergence… I guess I need to get the 125th back on the front lines then, with vast improvements to overall performance and combat effectiveness too.) 

Feeling that the ground beneath him was rapidly shrinking even from his own comfortable position, Dax decided to start taking steps and taking precautions for the possibility that the ground beneath him was becoming a whole lot smaller.

"We're at the dawn of a new age, huh?... Feels like it has been a while since that last happened."

"... What are you talking about Dax?"

"Ah, nothing, I'm just talking to myself, sorry about that Ke."

Opening his eyes as he once more focused on what was in front of him instead of the further, Dax sat face to face with Ke who had been following him throughout his day with great interest. Ke who had wanted to get to know more about Dax requested to follow him throughout the day, and to her surprise, he accepted that unreasonable request without batting an eye. Throughout the day, Dax trained, meditated, cooked and did weapons development with Ra before finally sitting down for the first time with Ke talking a seat and watching him with a smile on her face.

"Then from here I pretty much have nothing going on except for responding to urgent requests from command, but they rarely come through these days… Was this really that entertaining to watch?"

"It was! I felt like I've learned a lot about this world, especially cooking. I had no idea you could use bones which were leftover for so many things."

With a smile on her face as the tip of her tail slowly moved back and forth as she spoke about the stock and demi glace Dax was working on, it was clear to him that Ke was genuinely interested in what he had been doing all day.

"Then, seeing as you were so interested in this, do you want to grab a bite to eat with me? I'm working on some new experiments."

"Eh? Me?"

"Yeah, I'll whip up something real quick, what do you want?"

With an entirely frank expression on his face, Dax made it clear to Ke that he thought nothing special about cooking for her, something which left Ke with quite mixed feelings.

"... T-then I'll leave the menu up to you."