We're off to see the Imperial!

[Rhi-Rhi]

The e-mail had said to be there at 9 AM, but Gabriel got to the Imperial's anteroom at 8:50 AM, just in case. There he paced the floor and checked his cell phone's clock every now and then, feeling too restless to sit down and wait.

The new Imperial. He'd been summoned by the new Imperial. Jittery butterflies stirred in his stomach at the thought and he took a deep breath to fight them back down. He'd met Alexei before, of course. Wasn't a Pilot here he hadn't at least bumped into, and his impression of the guy was the same impression he had of the likes of Dyerlich: kinda creepy. But the dragons had picked him for a reason and they knew what they were doing, obviously, and so far he was better than Soren. Soren had banned coffee and sugar for a week, that bastard, and Alexei hadn't done that yet.

He still couldn't shake the sense of foreboding, though. He'd been summoned by Soren before for "missions", and the last one had sent him off to space to fight in a battle that never happened. What a waste of his time. That time, however, more Pilots had been summoned.

Right now, it was just he and Seiteki.

Kind of weird.

Gabriel sighed and finally stopped his pacing, glancing over at Seiteki, who was standing by preening her feathers, as usual. She'd been here when he'd arrived.

He batted at her hands, just because it was driving him nuts. "Hey, stop that. You keep doing that and you're not gonna have any feathers left," he chided quietly, lips quirking up into a teasing smile that gradually faded as his thoughts drifted again to the situation at hand. After the Axis Point experience, he had a right to be a little nervous about a summons. They all tended to be unpleasant.

"Hrm. Think we're in trouble?" he finally asked with a frown, absently smoothing out the front of his uniform and grimacing. Bleh, stupid scratchy uniform. He'd worn the thing probably a grand total of four times since becoming a Pilot and it sure as hell smelled like it had been buried in the back of his closet for a while, ripe with that stale, old clothes scent. The only thing that would complete it was a hint of mothball. It was a little wrinkled from the other clothes shoving against it, and Gabriel was secretly glad that Roman hadn't been summoned, too, because he'd probably have a cow over that.

He tugged at his collar to straighten it out, ran his hands through his blond hair, the back of which was spiked with gel, and then checked his phone for the hundredth time in what was apparently only eight minutes. Augh. Time needed to go faster; he hated the waiting.

[Sorry for the rambly crap. xD I didn't know what to write!]

[Anonymous]

((Very likely to be silly spelling mistakes... Ignore them... They'll never get corrected 8D ))

Nine a.m.

Seiteki got her a good five minutes or so before Gabriel and not really in the mood to bend awkwardly to sit in a chair, she stood off to the side and preened. Then her beloved Gabriel entered the room... And paced. A black eyebrow rose and Seiteki tilted her head before rolling her eyes and resuming her preening, only for Gabriel to come by and harass her for it. "Hey, I have to do this or I can't fly." She threw a feather that had come lose at Gabriel and stuck out her tongue, "I'm not pulling feathers out, I'm... I'm... Making them pretty." She gave a solemn nod and smiled at Gabriel.

Of course he was zoning out and Seiteki smiled and rolle her eyes before opening her wings and leaning against a wall with her arms across her chest. Like Gabriel she was wearing her Pilot uniform. Her's looked used though, not new and still scratchy like Gabes - and his smelt like the deep dark cavern of an endless closet of old clothes. Seitekis smelt like... Soap. "Gabe... You should air that thing more often. You smell like a grandpa. A stale grandpa." The winged Pilot moved to lean in front of Gabriel and when she did, she wore a serious expression then it bloomed into a smile.

Sling an arm over her friends shoulder, Seiteki gave Gabriel a pat on the chest and protectively curled a wing around him, not to obscure his vision or anything, but just as a comforting gesture. "In trouble? For what? Being better than the other lo-er... Wonderful Pilots? Nah."

Seiteki was quite the recluse, only going places when Gabriel dragged her, of it not many people were going to be there in the first place.  Therefore, she had no idea who Alexei really was, she knew Soren sucked and while it was probably traitorious of her to think it, the blue-black haired woman was fairly glad he got replaced.

" Imperial Alexei better be freaking awesome or Pilot Seiteki Tora will not be impressed. Far to early in the morning for this." She said softly before resting her head against Gabriel and leering at the door, her personal thoughts tightly locked behind thick psychic walls but her senses open to the arrival of the Fresh New Imperial.

[Anonymous]

Alexei sat, and as he sat, he pondered. It had only been some few weeks since his election to this esteemed rank, and during this period he had taken care to review the personel files of all his most immediate subordinates. At first Alexei had had them brought to his table by hand, but after the first five or so he had simply ordered a group of his assistants to read them all and then plucked the residual psychic images straight out of their minds. It was more expedient.

Two in particular had caught his attention. Both were pilots of no great rank, though one seemed to have made it to Echo at a fairly early age. Their service records had proven adequate, but in their recent personal evaluations they had both displayed the same lapse in appropriate conduct. Mercy. A little too much of it, at times, and a predilection toward sanguinity where phlegm was required. At first he had considered disciplining them, but before he had dismissed that idea out of hand. Better to give them a test.

The personal office of the Pilot Imperial was a bleak, utilitarian affair; a high-ceilinged cubic rectangle occupying about a fifth of the Citadel's topmost floor. The walls, five feet thick and made of reinforced blast concrete, had been painted a somber navy blue on the inside, and the only real ornamentation consisted of two large Aedolian flags hung at the back end of the room. Bright white lights strobed silenly through the las-proof glass of the office windows as low-flying patrol craft passed by outside. The only sound was the low wheeze of Alexei's machine-aided breathing.

09:00.

He'd sensed the two pilots' individual presences - one uncertain, the other an ocean of confidence - for the past ten minutes. Still, it paid to encourage punctuality. A flicker of thought caused the heavy doors to slide open. Another pushed the two chairs on the other side of the table out from underneath it.

"Enter," his mental voice deadpanned. It was little more than a sibilant whisper, slightly choked with the effort of holding back his potent psychic broadcast.

[Rhi-Rhi]

Gabriel caught the feather as it fluttered toward the ground, then tucked it behind an ear, just because he could. He stuck his tongue right back out at her and was about to make some comment about having a friend that had a neurotic bird that used to pull its feathers out until it was bald, but that was when Seiteki went and dissed his uniform.

A stale grandpa? He grimaced at the thought, which hadn't crossed his mind previously. He'd just figured he smelled like stale closet, which wasn't too bad. Eww...he was too young to have funky old man scent.

Fixing Seiteki with a flat look, he huffed exaggeratedly and squared his shoulders in mock indignation. "Hey, don't be hatin', alright? It reminds me of my gramps, 'kay? Fond memories and all that. I'm allowed to be sentimental, thank-you-very-much," he said, and as an afterthought he brushed at the front of his uniform again to pat it back down, since the fabric was stiff yet an stuck out where he'd tugged at the front. Maybe he did need to break it in, but that meant wearing it. Maybe he'd at least wash it.

One day.

"And anyway, yours smells like girl. Gross." He wrinkled his nose at her, then grinned and winked to show he was kidding, though she'd know that already. He considered her to be one of his best friends.

When she slung an arm and a wing around him, Gabriel wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her in close for a one-armed hug, the feathers from her wing tickling against his cheek and neck. Gyah. He squirmed a little, trying not to laugh, and randomly thought about what the hell this new Imperial would think if he saw them like this, all cutesy and cuddly and generally not being very serious before the meeting. All Sei's fault, of course. He'd been doing a good job worrying and pacing before she'd started teasing him.

Which he appreciated. He'd been doing too much worrying as of late.

When Seiteki spoke again, Gabriel frowned and shrugged. "Eh. Beats me what for. I'm just suspicious whenever a higher-up calls me. Soren calls me and I go off to a war that never happens, dragons call us and we get mind-raped, Imperial Alexei calls us and...who knows. They never call you to pat you on the back and tell you, 'good job, have some cake', that's for sure." Then he reached with his other hand and tapped her lightly on the nose. "But, missy, you probably shouldn't say that out loud, y'know. The guy's just on the other side of that door I bet and he can probably hear every word we--"

The doors slid open with the command, "Enter."

Gabriel shut his mouth with a slight clicking of teeth and gave Seiteki an "I told you so" look, then untangled himself from her, checked his uniform for feathers, and gave his friend an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "They're always so theatrical..." he muttered, then took a deep breath and strode through the doors.

Stopping by one of the chairs, he saluted Alexei, trying hard to look at the man's face and not stare at everything else, like all the crazy apparatus whatchamacallit stuff around him. He wouldn't be staring out of disrespect because Alexei was a freak or anything--nah, in his case if he stared, it was because he genuinely found it cool. The guy was pretty damned hardcore, he'd give him that.

"Pilot Echo Gabriel Tierney reporting, sir."

Of course, he forgot about the feather in his hair.