“I think I’m a little old for the ‘go to your room’ act, aren’t I, Colonel?”
But there she sat, cross-legged on her bed, a half-cocked smirk on her lips—the only indicator of merriment on her sullen face. She was still in her combat uniform. Colonel Elena Rios could tell that it hadn’t been cleaned since her last mission—there was still an acrid smell of soot and burned flesh that clung to it.
“Apparently not,” Rios noted dryly, crossing her arms. She knew it made her look more imposing. Still, she wondered why she tried; Reaper had never responded to methods of intimidation.
Reaper grimaced, her smirk vanishing. “Touche.”
“Look. Reaper. …Ms. Skarsgaard,” the Colonel clarified, using the soldier’s real name for once. Reaper almost looked surprised. “You’re not in here for bad behavior. You’re in here because I need to talk to you. And every time I do, you’re either sparring, sleeping or jogging. So listen to me.”
She ignored the fact that Reaper, very sarcastically, faced her, still sitting down, and put her chin in her hands. A mockery of an attentive school girl. Just when had Reaper become so badly tempered?
“Lately it seems like you’re only alive when you’re out there,” Rios noted, gesturing out at the ruins of the city in the distance. “Killing. That makes me worried, Ms. Skarsgaard. Your mental health should not depend on killing living things—no matter how vile or threatening. It’s not a behavior we like in a soldier.”
Reaper’s blue eyes narrowed. “That’s not what I’ve gathered from Whisper’s tales of black ops, ma’am.”
Well, at least she was using the proper terms, now.
“This isn’t black ops,” Rios sighed. “We’re different. We have a different stake out there. My question to you, Ms. Skarsgaard, is: what happens when we run out of aliens for you to shoot?”
“I stop shooting aliens. Ma’am.”
The snide look in Reaper’s eyes told a very different story than her hunched, submissive frame. She was looking somewhere over Rios’ left shoulder, determinedly.
“I hope that’s all that happens,” Rios noted, putting a little iron into it. She gave her subordinate a knowing look, one that she hoped communicated think about that, before turning. “You are dismissed. Captain.”
(Source: velvetdemon.net)
