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feral philosopher bug

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#all my made-up mech pilots

(h/t: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots / @Scampir)

#Denis Urban, fictional sports pundit


caffeinatedOtter
@caffeinatedOtter

The camp inspection by a genuine cleric of warfare is going about as usual; all the mess and cut corners that the usual skiving suspects kicked under various rugs instead of fixing is ruthlessly brought to light, holy medals glinting on the cleric's chest as she marches about pointing imperiously at things and declaring that THIS is not a place of honour and THIS is not a place of honour and THIS—

The kentarch's face is increasingly stormy, and his barks of, "Make a note of that, optio!" have plummeted through dour to sour to dire.

"Yessir!" Janis says, crisply saluting the back of his and the cleric's heads, and efficiently jabs another note with her wax tablet and stylus. She's keeping two running columns of infraction and perp; the infraction column is threatening to overflow at the bottom of the tablet.

(The perp column contains much less information, being both repetitive and extremely predictable.)

Everybody will be getting it in the fucking neck, later.


After the cleric and the kentarch have disappeared to have a private officerly chat, and Janis has done aidely bawling at people to set the general tenor of the bawling at other people that's going to flow downhill, and Janis has done a truly heroic amount of paperwork, she slopes off-camp and installs herself in a local taverna with a flask of moderately awful wine, and kills about an hour.

"Hello, soldier," someone says eventually, behind her shoulder, and Janis smirks and makes a little space for the cleric to sit.

"Hello, your holiness," she says, and the cleric, smiling, punches her savagely in the arm.

"Don't cheek me."

"Woudn't dream of it." She waves for a second cup, and pours. "Been a few years, eh?"

They're interrupted, then, by a faintly embarrassed legionary. "Sorry, optio," he says. "Priestess, could you...." He hesitantly holds out a sheathed dagger.

The cleric holds her hand out over it, makes some portentious humming noises, and pronounces it blessed.

"Happens a lot, does it?" Janis says, watching over her cup.

"Oh, some days it feels like more than the rest of the job combined. Priestess, bless my sword! Priestess, bless my helmet! Priestess, bless my lucky denarius! Priestess, bless our company standard!"

"Beats honest soldiering," Janis says, grinning.

"That'd be the thing I spent all morning yelling about, would it?" the cleric shoots back, and Janis salutes with her wine in acknowledgement of the point, takes a sip and lets it roll around her mouth, contemplating how much of their old contubernia mischief she feels like chancing, before swallowing.

"Ooh, priestess," she drawls, and tugs at the neck of her tunic. "Bless my tits?"

"I've got a purview, you know," her long-ago tentmate says dryly. "Are they a strategic military asset?"

Janis peers down the front of her own shirt. "I'm a simple soldier, ma'am," she says, affectedly innocent. "What's the difference between that and tactical?"

The cleric sighs exaggeratedly, and falls into playing along. "Tactical asset tits is when you lean over and wiggle a bit and get yourself a free drink," she says loftily. "Strategic is when your decanus goes undo that top button and lean over and get us all cheap drinks all night—"

"Oh! What is it when you jiggle 'em against a stern cleric's arm and bat your eyelashes?"

"Fraternisation," the cleric drawls.

Janis widens her eyes and nibbles theatrically on a thumbnail. "If she takes you upstairs and makes you yip like a kobold, is that officer training?"

She thinks, for a second, she's chanced a little far, and then the cleric reaches out, calmly and casually, and closes a fist in the hair at Janis's nape, firm enough for her breath to catch.

"It's like that, is it?"

Janis means to say something, but only lets out a shivery sigh.

"Have you been good, soldier?" the cleric says, low, and shakes Janis a little by the grip on her hair.

"Soldiers lie about that kind of thing, holiness," Janis breathes. "Maybe you'd better inspect my place of honour—"

The cleric stands, her steady arm obliging Janis to scramble up too, and then she simply strides through the taverna holding Janis by a fistful of hair, calm and self-assured while Janis's face burns.

"I don't think you've been good," the cleric says. "...But you will be."


"It would set a terrible example for an optio to sneak back into camp late," the cleric says softly in the pre-dawn, fingertips daubing unseeable designs across Janis's ribs.

"Five more minutes, decanus," Janis mumbles into the cleric's neck, then squeaks at a tweaked nipple. "All right, all right, I'm up—" and hovers for a moment, raised on her hands over an old, dear, sleepy friend, face serious. "We're being sent east, aren't we?" she says.

The cleric gives a slow, hooded blink.

"You don't have a century inspected and blessed for nothing. Ruvia's a sausage-grinder." Janis sighs, gnaws her lip. "If I don't make it back—"

The cleric stops her with the pad of a thumb across her lips; draws her down with a hand behind her neck, and replaces the silencing digit with her own mouth.

"You'll be back," she says firmly. "You'll be fine. You've got cleric-blessed tits."


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