The Lieutenant finished explaining the situation that had transpired earlier that afternoon to the Commander, having started upon his and Skasis’s arrival. The Commander paced about at a slower pace than normal, and has definitively irked look about her face, although that had already been present when the two of them returned.

“I trust you used your best judgment, Lieutenant,” she assured him, “and I undoubtedly trust Skasis with what he’s permanently assigned to do, thus the matter is of no concern to me. Only bring it to me again if the situation changes for the worse in any manner.”

“Yes Sir,” he responded and raised a salute.

“You’re dismissed, Lieutenant,” she informed him immediately after returning the salute.

“Sir,” he confirmed with a nod.

“The Private will be under my personal charge tomorrow since I’m requiring him to attend the unity celebration assembly. You have no duties whatsoever for tomorrow, Lieutenant, take our new holiday as a day of leave time,” The Commander told him.

“Sir,” he just repeated, but now with a very grateful smile. He lingered a few seconds to chance his commanding officer had anything more to say, and when she didn’t he departed for the evening.

Skasis was left with the Commander as always once the Lieutenant left for his own home. He took a more careful notice of the Commander’s slightly off-set behavior when she glanced at him in mid pace with a look that would have spurred fear had he just done something he believed would have angered her.

“Are waiting for an invitation to speak, Private Prissy Hooves?” she questioned him, and did so sounding more aggravated than he though she should have been, especially since he hadn’t done anything.

She didn’t exactly catch him ready to respond, so he only just barely created one. “Ah . . . no Sir, I-I was just . . .” he couldn’t even finish his sentence.

She stopped and turned to face Skasis directly, glaring at him as she had been at everything Skasis had seen her look at since that morning. He was forced to contemplate quickly how to not exactly let anything come out wrong to her of all ponies, under fear of death.

“Yes?” she prodded him on, only growing in irriation.

“. . . you looks as if you’re bothered by something,” he worded his observation as carefully into a suggestion as he could.
“It’s nothing,” she said after a horse-snort, “just a meager amount of pain, nothing that I can’t deal with.”

“Oh,” he started to say back, perking up at the potential to help her, “I can give you something for it if you want; Tramadol if it’s enough to bother you, or if it’s really nothing just some Ibuprofen or Acetamino . . . phen?” his last word broke apart as he just watched her expression shift into fury.

“I’ve given you an indefinite order to treat my soldiers and the other tribes’ citizens, Private! I will not be part of any such medical treatment, however. I’ve survived twenty-eight years without it, I’ll live another day!” she shouted in pure and plain defiance.
Skasis may have been suspicious of the claim were Hurricane any other pony, but she wasn’t, and he doubtlessly believed her, at least given the combination of the time period and the mare he knew her to be. It didn’t stop him from retaining his underlying concern about her being in any kind of ill condition or quiet suffering though . . . his suppressed feelings for her wouldn’t allow for that.

One quick idea coalesced in his mind upon remembering that the anniversary assembly of The Founding was tomorrow. “Um, Sir, the assembly—” he tried to say, but fell short again, only this time from her cutting him off.

“Is that clear, Private?” she demanded a positive confirmation out of him before he ever finished attempting to speak.

“Yes Sir,” he submitted as he always did to her, though for the first time ever he did so with reluctance.

“Now, you’ll leave the matter of my condition aside. I recommend you catch some rack time as soon you’re permitted; tomorrow is going to be a longer day than you’re used to even under MY command,” she informed him then, starting to calm down.

“Yes Sir,” he just confirmed again.

When the Commander finally took her focus off of him, stepping away to look out just over the outer balcony’s edge from the balcony exitway, Skasis hurried trying to activate his still-new medical insight spell quietly, wanting to know what exactly was wrong with the Commander, regardless of whether or not she didn’t.

Skasis had already mentally noted that it appeared to only be her two back legs that she displayed evidence of pain when stepping with, so that’s where he started, from the hooves up.

“No splits, sprangs, pulls, tears, fractures, joint displacements, hemoraging . . . nothing,” Skasis thought to himself as he peered into her hind legs from the distance he stood.

Everything appeared fine, until Skasis continued to raise his gaze without complete realization and passed over the Commander’s flank. When his medical vision came over it he suddenly a fierce red aura flaring out, one he’d come to recognize as a signature of bacteria. It was urinary tract infection. On one hoof Skasis is relieved to discover that’s all it is, although his inexpressible sympathy becomes endearing as he has some unpleasant comprehension of how painful they can be.

“Nothing a good course of Aminoglycoside antibiotics won’t solve . . . but, she’d never willingly take med—” Skasis froze in the midst of his thoughts, his face flushing and turning red swiftly at the sudden, dawning realization that despite the fact that it was through a medical diagnosing spell, he was still by all means just staring right at Commander Hurricane’s flank. He shut his eyes tight faster than he ever had before and deactivated the medical insight spell, opening them again only after he’d made sure to turn his head in a different direction.

Skasis jumped then, at the sudden voice of his and the Commander’s usual rations courier. “Commander,” the stallion said, drawing the mare’s attention, “yours and the Private’s evening rations.”

The Commander nodded a brief response back, “Dismissed, Corporal.”

The courier put down their rations and then saluted before leaving. Skasis eyed the bland food and decided that this could be his best chance, and hoped so desperately that the Commander will look away from her food right at that moment just long enough for him to transmute a few milligrams of it into Aminoglycoside.

“I assume you have already renewed your cloud-walking spell per usual?” the Commander asked him, forcing him to turn away from her plate and back to her.

“Yes Sir,” he confirmed with a very proper, affirmative nod she had been drilling into him.

“Then as far as I’m concerned, you’re dismissed for the evening from this point onward,” she told him, turning back to her viewing of the landscape out below.

“Yes Sir, thank you, sir,” he said back, waiting to see if she was about to turn back again, but she didn’t; she nodded in response to what he said, but without actually looking back over at him, leading his hopes to quickly rise.

Skasis’s mind warped and his heart accelerated at a nearly dangerous rate, faced with the potentially seriously risky choice. He had never disobeyed her, and he had never heard of any pony who ever had, so he had no idea what would become of him if he did . . . but still . . .

Skasis made his choice in the end, choosing to risk himself for her sake. He fired up the sparking fingers of his alchemical influence, and did his best to work a minor spell to quiet the sound of them at the same time. The attempt succeeded, for most of the transmutation at least, and he was able to convert a scattered portion of the food into clusters of Aminoglycoside molecules: none of any noticeable size.

Just as Skasis was ending the process, however, the Commander begins to turn around enough to the point that he realized she was guaranteed to see something. The circumstance cornered him, and for once in his life he managed to think quickly, throwing his energy into a raw creation spell directly in front of his own face and beginning forming a ceramic tea mug.

“And just what are you doing, Private Prissy Hooves?” she shot her question at him harshly, with a scowl left on her face in its wake.

Upon the situation turning into a social interaction, Skasis’s wits fled away.

“Uh . . . I-I-I was just making this . . .” he stuttered out to her, indicating the tea mug.

The Commander’s eyes narrowed, significantly. “Tea?” she asked with disdain in her voice that would have made her opinion of tea quite clear in itself had Skasis not already known it.

“I was going to make my own . . . natural derrivatives taste a whole lot better than alchemical fabrications personally . . . but . . .” Skasis went on, dragging out his turn of speaking and actually just begging inside for the Commander to just take over the whole conversation and begin berating him about weakness already. Standing there trying to pretend to explain himself to her was agonizing in its level of embarrassment, and he was already completely overheating under his fur.

Eventually, after the Commander’s eyes narrow by another margin, Skasis knew nothing else to do and just threw on a sour look and lets his eyes defocus and drift downward and away from hers while he canceled out the spell he’d begun to cover up what he had really been doing, in turn annihilating the floating half of a tea mug he had formed. By the time he has finished wiping his half-creation from existence, Skasis looked back up to find her already walking away from him without having said anything, taking her altered food with her.

“I expect you up at 0500, Prissy Hooves, the assembly and celebrations begin at dawn,” she said in cold sternness as she walked away.

“Yes Sir . . .” he responded with a weakened, crushed voice, not needing her to hear him since she had already gone.

With her having gone into her own quarters, Skasis, as always had nothing left to do but wander into his, taking his rations with him as well. He did as he has done for the past two and a half months: he laid down on his cloud cot, with no access to listen to the night sky . . . and still without Himmel. He just laid there wondering: wondering about Himmel, and . . . about Hurricane.

Desperation clogged his heart and a part of his mind as it had every night and almost every day since he first fell into the TARDIS: desperation to even sense his pet’s presence again, let alone possess his beyond-brotherly company. Now though there was even more mixed into his thoughts; he wondered Commander Hurricane . . . and about whatever possible future he might have here in this time . . . and with her. He even fantasized about the two of them, to a point.

In his own conclusion, Skasis arrived at the hardened reality that none of even his most plausible fantasies had any chance at all of becoming any kind of reality. Even if he had even only a few hundred of the parts per million of courage necessary to approach a mare, any mare to begin with, though the thought of approaching her of all mares . . . in his heart he still refused even to hop that her response to him would be anything positive or accepting.

***

Skasis awoke drearily over the course of a moment, though not to the sound of the Commander admonishing him for not already being awake, however. He instead opened his eyes to look up and see her standing next to his cot glaring irately down at him.

“On your hooves, Private!” she ordered him at the first opening of his eyes.

Skasis obeyed, moving with dread, but at an acceptable pace. He tossed himself out onto the cloud floor and snapped into an at-attention position in front of her.

“You created something, didn’t you: last night, in my evening rations?” she demanded to know, though from the way Skasis’s expression fell she gained her answer without him even saying anything.

Skasis’s heart sank even further than it already had bottomed out at, and his voice all but gave that away too “. . . Yes Sir.”
“You, disobeyed, my direct orders. Explain yourself!” she exploded at him so threateningly, even to the point the thought raced through Skasis’s mind of whether or not he might actually be about to be harmed. He fought so hard against the inhibition he felt right then, trying to say something, anything . . . the truth, “I-I . . . I-I just wanted to do something for you to make sure you felt more well today than you did last night, be-because of . . . ah the ceremonies today, and . . .”

Skasis brought himself to a stop in the middle of his half-truthed explanation, defeated by her furiously unimpressed look. He knew, she knew he was lying, at least partly lying. Mentally, his last standing defense mechanisms broke down, and all he saw left to do is admit what he believed to be the real truth behind most of his actions, even though he himself only just saw it fully right there and then, no matter how pathetic she might find the sentiment.

So he spoke the truth as he knew it, in his broken-most, practically miserable-sounding voice, “It . . . has nothing to do with the ceremonies. It’s just you: you in pain, you suffering somehow, anypony suffering,” he broke for an instant only to sigh, “I’m an arrogant, condescending, know it all; I take everything seriously and every negative comment offensively, even from my friends when it’s just supposed to be a joke. I misunderstand almost everything anypony says that isn’t direct and clear, and I don’t even have any communicating of social skills to begin with. I’m not a pony other ponies really enjoy being around or like putting up with . . . except for a few. But I care about other ponies besides myself, despite how intolerable I may be, and how disgustingly stuck-up and selfish I know I seem like . . . and really am. I can’t stand watching other ponies suffer, or at least not anymore. I’ve never been able to act or behave or talk like a likable pony, but I’m still going to try to help ponies . . . regardless of whether or not they appreciate me for it."

A moment of silence passes as Skasis looks at the Commander across the terrifying short space separating their faces. She was reading him, reading him so thoroughly, reading into his face while in her head overlaying its changes with the words he had spoken just then.

After a moment, she looked as if she was in the midst of relaxing her glare, that was until the sound of trumpets was heard by the both of them from a distance outside. Then her glare returned, though not entirely as intense as before.

“There will consequences for these actions later,” was all she left him with before forcing him out to be flown off with her to the ceremonies.

***

Skasis stood before the pacing Commander, something that had become a frequent procedure for the two of them.

“You disobeyed MY direct orders, Private Prissy Hooves. Do you have any idea at all how serious the actions you took were? The strength and functioning of this Pegasi society, and of MY military relies on proper military discipline,” she said, stopping her motion at the those three words to slap one hoof down into the other, once for each word for emphasis. She immediately resumed afterwards, “And one of the things that has always been included in that, above all else is following orders. You broke that most fundamental principal.”

Skasis braced himself, even physically, expecting only the harshest ramifications . . . until she proceeded on with the words, “I commend your actions.”

Skasis was so beyond dumfounded that he had no reaction whatsoever, not even a single alteration to the expression he held.
Commander Hurricane simply went on into an explanation typical of her: concise and straightforward, but still thorough. She explained to him, “When you observed that I was under an ill condition last night, you still decided to covertly provide treatment even though I had explicitly ordered you not to. You put yourself at risk, albeit it’s not as if the actions you took were endangering your life, you still offered yourself willingly to harm for the sake another. That, is something every soldier should always do, and that is something of far greater importance than obeying orders.”

Skasis remained without a worded reaction to this situation, although his face finally underwent and expression shifting sequence, running through bewildered, regular surprise, and settling for the moment on a restrained version of aweing.

“You’re a real soldier, Skasis,” the Commander kept on, “you’re not as fit as one, don’t know any proper drills, and as far I’m aware have no particular skill or belonging in combat, but, you possess the true fundamental qualities of one, and I have no regret for making you one. As of this moment, I’m promoting you to Corporal.”

Skasis’s mouth was quite open by that time, which with him meant about halfway, and his eyes were locked wide open with rippling shimmers glossing over them.

“And . . .” Hurricane redrew Skasis’s attention yet again, though before she said what she intended to her eyes went down and away from his. “I offer you my apology,” she said, “my orders last night were not in the interest of everypony I represented today, while your decision was. What I ordered you last night was self-conceited and stubborn, and I expect you make aware if and when those same conditions are so again, and remind me of this conversation. Is that clear, Corporal Prissy Hooves?”

“Y-yes Sir,” he answered, through unsteady breathing.

“Good,” she affirmed almost instantly, “now, there’s something we need to discuss.” She waited right after, until Skasis had removed every other expression from his face except for a serious and obediently attentive one, which he did not take long to return to. Once he had completely, she went on once more “I have been what I consider compassionate with you Prissy Hooves, and I’ve granted you more reprieve than I should have. But now your time is effectively up, and you ARE going to obey this order blindly.”

Skasis could do nothing but shortly nod.

“Anser me,” she ordered in a perfectly calm voice, for her, but one that bore more underlying sternness and authority than Skasis had ever heard, “Who are you? Where are you from? What, are you doing here?”

It took Skasis only a few seconds to start speaking out his reply, much to his own surprise. “Alright . . .” he initially began, pausing for another second to think just a little bit longer, “I’ll tell you everything, just please . . . please believe me.”

Skasis proceeded on to tell the Commander the entire story of his generalized life up to his University years, and then the greater complexity of those, and most particularly the last few months of it consisting of what he could only really call random adventures, led by The Doctor, and now his brief military service in a time period two thousand years in the past from his own.

The Commander’s eyes waxed and waned from wide in momentary disbelief to her normal calm glare throughout the two-hour audio auto biography, also nodding a few times.

At the end, Skasis nervously held her gaze, having no idea what kind of reaction to expect, but at least perceiving it to be negative. She studied him for more than a minute even afterward, and then turned away, for the first time in the past two hours, from staring him down.

“I believe you,” she said, as simply as could be.

“. . . What?!” Skasis actually almost shouted at her belief of the utter nonsense he had just told her, the fact that it was the truth holding practically no weight to him in the assumption of how she or really anypony should have reacted.

“You’ve given me nothing to believe that you’re lying,” she told him further, “. . . and you certainly are outlandish enough to fit your story.”

“Really?” Skasis had to question again, as his own disbelief at her lack of disbelief was unsubsiding.

“I can read ponies, Prissy Hooves,” she told him what he’d already been able to tell for a while, “I find it easy to see who’s lying and who isn’t . . . and you weren’t. For all I know, you could just be a deranged pony, but your actions and behavior have been far too coherent to ever convince me of that.”

The Commander took a pause amidst Skasis’s silence. She looked down at the ground in front of her, away from him so he couldn’t see her face. Her eyelid fall for once, instead of narrowing, and her face takes on a glum demeanor.

“There is nopony you know then, alive now, that you wish to spend this evening of celebration with?” she asked, sounding . . . like she actually was feeling sympathy for him.

“No,” he said with a brief second of silence after, “nopony I know is even going to be born for another nineteen centuries.”

The Commander nodded solemnly, though still facing away. “You’ll just have to remain here for this holiday’s passing then,” she told him, though for the first time she removed the forceful implication her voice always held towards him.

“I’m fine with that . . . Sir,” he responded. Her eyes opened completely back up in a slow and weary manor when Skasis calls her sir again. For a moment she holds it, and then her expression returns to her natural appearance of mild agitation, and she turns around to approach him again. “So be it,” she began, once again directly facing him, “do not take my proceeding actions lightly, Prissy Hooves, and do NOT expect them to become a frequent allowance either.”

Skasis couldn’t help but inch his head forward in rising curiosity.

“We may not hold such a high value on possesions and things of the matter up here, but I understand well enough the rest of you do,” she started to lead, “ . . . and that during celebrations of this significance you, and even some of my own Pegasi have made it a custom to give gifts with some kind of meaning to each other. So because your exemplary service thus far . . . and what you’ve done for me, I’ve done so for you.”

Skasis was left utterly clueless for a few seconds, hearing such a thing coming from her, until she reached into her pony pocket with the tip of her wing and pulled a hoof-full of something out with her feathers. When she extended her wing forward to drop them on her hoof, and then holds it out to Skasis he saw that it was four tea packets and his head shot back up at her in complete surprise.

“I never restricted you from it, but I did make it clear to you that I viewed it as weak and something for ponies with unsettled nerves, and that hasn’t changed,” she started, “however so it may be, it’s more than obvious it’s something you particularly enjoy, or used to, so I’m allowing you that privilege now . . . and I may again in the future, if continue your service as you have been doing.”

“Thank you Sir,” Skasis responded gratefully, and wasted little time surrounding the little pouches of tea with his levitation aura, though he didn’t notice that Hurricane flinched and shivered, albeit only for a brief instant when his magic actually contacted her hoof.

“Now I have a request to make of you, Corporal,” she said, after he transferred the gifted tea to his own pocket. “Sir?” he asked for her to go on.

This time, she actually closed her eyes before she spoke. “I would like to make you my officer’s assistant,” she said to him.

Skasis was thrown into his millionth shock of the evening, being askd to take the position that Private Pansy once held, to the point of not being to pull out any response to what she’d just said other than the obvious question, “You really want ME to—”

“Accompany me and answer directly to me except when specified otherwise,” she cut him off with the specifics of the position.

The Commander took another pause, and intentionally looked down away from Skasis, though only with her eyes, still keeping her head raised and level with his.

"I haven’t had one since Private Pansy was discharged. I haven’t had any other pony resembling that role. As procedural as I am . . . I’m not without some flawed desire for at least conversation beyond being answered with yes or no sir,” she said, a bit to his shock, specifically just for the fact that she’d admitted as much about herself.

“She was my only friend,” Hurricane told Skasis, “and she still is one to me even though she’ll never return to service. But now . . .”

The Commander cringed almost, like a little filly or colt being forced to say sorry for something they don’t believe is wrong.
“. . . I’m asking you if you desire to become a new one,” she asked with an edgy tone, as if she were displeased with her own asking such.

“I’ve . . . thought you were a friend,” he said to her, quietly and nervously.

The Commander stops, more surprised than Skasis previously was. “You already gave me that kind of designation?” she asked, sounding somewhat close to being as surprised as she looked.

“Of course I did,” he said, “of everypony I know here, you’re the pony that cares about me the most.”

The Commander for once was literally left without understanding of the context of what Skasis had said, and for the first time Skasis had seen, her mouth dropped open, though only by little more than a mere centimeter.

When he saw, he kept going, trying to spell clearly what he meant, “I’ve changed . . . from who I was, a good portion, I’ve changed more under you than I ever have in my life. You’ve pointed out flaw after flaw, found everything that was wrong with me and just threw it in my face . . . you . . . just crushed me, every day, so many bucking times.”

Skasis stopped and motioned his head to shake a few times, though only moving it so by an inch or so each way. His mouth hung a third of the way open while his analytical mind searched for his next desired set of words.

“I can’t stand it when anypony does that; it’s so . . .” he said with a cringe, “it’s just one of the feelings I have the least tolerance for. But every time you did it, whatever you would say was so true,” he broke again, but into a brief snicker of all things this time, “I-I just felt guilty, for whatever it was.”

The Commander’s face had returned to normal over the course of Skasis’s words and she looked at him intently as he went on.

“I had no humility,” he confessed onward, “not before. But now . . . I finally just realized looking back on it just a few days ago: I took it so much more deeply when you said it because you were doing it to try to help me. Cause after every time, whatever it was that showed me: I buried it. I stopped it. I though long, and hard about it . . . and I don’t know . . . I think I realized just what I was really like.”

“There are a lot of changes in you I have noticed,” she spoke up to tell him, “and many of them you would be considered honorable to have made so willingly.”

“Oh I’ve changed,” he agreed with another quiet, nervous snicker, “hah you saw to that.”

The Commander was left wearing a mild grin of satisfaction.

“Whoever I came here as . . . he’s dead,” Skasis declared, “just two months—just TWO months, and you’ve killed me . . . and replaced me.”

Skasis’s word choice that time left the Commander actually agitated at him for that particular moment “Is this one of you unicorns’ pointless word arts of saying something that could have easily been spoken exactly?” she interpreted.

“Yes, Sir . . .” he responded, becoming almost instantaneously sullen, “sorry Sir.”

“Hmph, I build soldiers, Prissy Hooves,” she declared of herself, “I am the Commander of this army, of this Air Force of Pegasi, in whatever purpose we choose to serve. I can turn anypony entering service from a self-serving, arrogant, disrespectful civilian into a selfless, disciplined, contributing officer, but I hardly do it out of . . . care.”

That one time, Skasis actually spoke a kind of sternness in his own voice, “you have to care somehow, or else you wouldn’t act.”

“I doubt it’s the same as what YOU think,” she insisted bitterly, “. . . I no longer carry such sentiments; I can not allow myself to, not in this position, through the times that all pony kind has just gone through.”

“You cared enough to want to change me; it would have been a lot easier just to have dumped me on the ground where I belong,” he insisted right back.

“How dare you speak of yourself in such a manor, Corporal!” she snapped out of nowhere, “you are a second-ranked officer of the Air Force of Pegasopolis, you belong here,” she stomped her hoof into the floor, “in the clouds! With US!”

Skasis was shocked and caught off guard by the Commander’s sudden hostility, after such a long, meaningful conversation. The fact that they had been speaking in such a personal manner then also struck him, and he quickly regrets potentially damaging what had been their loose relationship by doing so.

“. . . Ah, uh-I’m sorry, Sir, and for speaking to you openly—freely, without your permission like I’ve been doing for the past few minutes,” he said.

The Commander raised her eyes in an odd manner of unexpected regret at Skasis’s reaction.

“Your casual manner of speaking is . . . fine, here . . . Skasis, though never on duty.” she told him, at which his eyes widened.

“I-I can speak to you personally?” Skasis was nearly stranded in disbelief yet again.

“We’re friends now, Prissy Hooves,” she admitted herself, and went on to answer him, “your needing my permission to speak freely when it is you and I alone is henceforth nullified. Within these walls from 1700 to 2000 hours you may speak as you will.”

“Commander, then, uh . . . can I ask something of you?” he approached his own question with caution. “At will,” she responded, clarifying his new freedom.

“Nopony back in my time really knows anything about you, or any of you, or I . . .” he stopped and realized he had to confess to a plausibility, “probably just never cared to study history extensively all that much, but, can you tell me your story?”

The Commander’s head uplifts and retracts, and her eyes stay the same, but somehow gave off the appearance of uncomprehending surprise. “Why?” she asked.

“Because I care about you . . .” he admitted to the sentiment, but not to its magnitude, “regardless of whether or not you think you care about me or anypony else.”

Skasis hesitated when he went to go on. His heartrate rose and rose into ranges it had never been before, spreading that familiar flushing heat of nervousness and pre-embarrassment. He struggled so hard against his emotional and mental blocks, he wanted in that moment to say what he really desired to more than anything else . . . but he couln’t.

“You’re my friend, Commander,” Skasis told her, and followed with a gentle salute.

“That will no longer be necessary, Prissy Hooves, not after 1700 hours, and not in here . . . if we are friends . . .” she said in reaction to it, almost sounding tentative.

“Thank you Sir, for putting me through all this, and forcing me to change . . . and letting me be your friend now. Ha-even though it mostly consists of me having my identity destroyed, I really enjoy being with you,” he admitted to her without venturing anywhere near the full reality of how he felt.

“. . . I’ve come to prefer your company as well,” she said back, “disciplining you and molding somepony with your . . . former living accustomment’s proven quite the odd challenge, and it’s been a good sport facing it.”

A semi-awkward moment passed between the two afterwards, at the end of which the Commander quells her ever-firey eyes before she grants Skasis his request. “Very well, Skasis Paradigm, if you truly desire to listen . . . and if this is what a friend would do, I’ll tell you the short end of my memories. Understand plainly though . . . there are things still that I will not be telling you of.”

After she spoke, the two of them ended up migrating towards the fire and sitting down. Skasis made himself a cup of tea, a drinks it slowly over the course the next hour or so, in which Commander Hurricane tells him her life story, or a summarized overlay as it were.

Author's Note

Well, here I am, finally uploading another chapter of something. I'm sorry all of you, I'm not stopping anything by any means, but I'll forewarn everypony now, my upload rate is going to probably decrease to one new chapter per week of any of my three stories, and sometimes the delay may be near two weeks. My Fall Semester is starting at my University, and I have an 18 credit courseload this semester, including Organic Chemistry (year-long), Human Anatomy and Physiology (year-long), as well as Chemical Equilibrium and Acidity and Pharmacology of Vitamins and Essential Minerals, the first three of which have labs as well. AND I'm constantly working on my world lore and maps/adventure/campaign layouts and designs for my Dungeons&Dragons group that I'm the DM of. (Yeah, I'm like a hardcore humiliated-to-exist-type nerd; D&D, Diablo, Diablo 2, Call of Duty, I'm pursuing a Pharm D (Doctor of Pharmacy = Pharmacist ) of all things, yeah) Point is, things are picking up.