They arrived back at the camp just before sunset. The contract listed six raptors but try as they might they could only find five. That meant a slight pay cut at the end, but a possibility they were prepared for. Contracts were notorious for being wrong on occasion, and no one had a way of confirming whether or not it was fully completed.

Now that would be a handy power.

The bustle had died down, but only by a little. People were still coming and going at all times, and the cook fires remained lit all day and night to feed everyone.

Team Dune-strider and Seras were unsaddling the Heidels at a stable area, and Seras was giving her Heidel a good brush down for bearing her weight all day. Poor thing. If she went out again she might request a different one just to give him a break.

“I’ll turn in the contract,” Linda announced, “Seras, we’ll have a runner deliver your cut to your tent if you want to find your girlfriend.”

Seras blinked, “my, my what?”

Linda looked confused, “the tall girl, you know, the one you were with?”

“Athena and I are not dating. We’ve known each other for a week at most.”

Linda shrugged, “I’ve gotten into shorter relationships.”

Seras had no response to that, she decided that she might just leave them on that awkward note. As she was walking out though the sound of hurried footsteps following after stopped her. Seras turned and saw the Celestine woman with diamond colored hair running after her. “Need something Leyley?” Seras asked.

Leyley glanced back at her team, and Seras noted that Liz had a scowl as she turned to walk away. “Sorry, I meant to ask about this earlier, but, um, your guns. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of them. Do you think you might have time to show me how they worked.”

“You want me to show you how to shoot,” Seras asked hesitantly.

Leyley shrugged, “among other things.”

Seras blinked, and then blinked again. Dead gods, how dense was she? Leyley was hitting on her, how had she missed that?

Seras’ mind flashed back to her last relationship. Dead eyes staring back at her in shock, blood flying through the vacuum of the space station. She shook her head, “look, I can’t believe this is the second time I’ve had to say this, but I’m not really in a place for a relationship right now. Life’s crazy, and I won’t be sticking around-,”

Leyley held up a hand, “I think your misunderstanding. I’m an adventurer, we don’t do long term relationships very well. But it does get cold at night, I wouldn’t mind some company.”

Now that, that was different. Dead gods how long had it been? Seras tapped her foot, “so my tent or yours?”

“Yours, Liz does not like it when I bring company.”

Seras grinned, “well then, shall we?”

The Celestine with glittering hair smirked, “why rush, I was being honest when I said I want to know more about your guns. They look fun to shoot”

“A gal after my own heart, careful or I might fall head over heels here,” Seras teased.

“I’ll try to restrain my charms then, but that’s easier said than done.”

She grinned.

They both wandered off into the camp, so distracted by each other that they forgot certain things. Like how one might offend the feelings of a teammate, or that the other didn’t have a private tent.

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~~~*~~~

By the time that Athena was finally released from the healing tent it was nearly midnight. And she only got let go so early because Sisa was still a normal ranker and needed to get some rest, though she doubted it would be the full amount she needed.

She trudged through the camp, completely lost. She had no idea where the tent they were given was in relation to the Healer tent. So she was left wandering around aimlessly hoping one of the identical looking small tents would jump out to her as theirs.

That’s where she ran into ‘her’. The pale-haired elf girl from team Dune-strider, was marching around the camp in a huff, and nearly strode past Athena. At the last minute though it seemed like the elf, Liz, recognized Athena as she stopped in her tracks and wheeled around to face her.

“You, tall one, where’s your tent?” she demanded.

The wind began to blow her way and Athena caught a whiff of her breath. It smelled like the elf head stuck her whole head into a whiskey barrel. “Why do you want to know where our tent is?”

“So I can kick that whore’s ass.”

Athena balked at the crassness, “Seras?”

Liz scowled, “I meant Leyley, but her too.”

Athena crossed her arms, “I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m not letting you near our tent in your current state.” Mostly because she didn’t know where her tent was.

“Look, your outworlder and Leyley went off to ‘shoot guns’, and she hasn’t come back. I’ve seen the way Leyley was eyeing her and I’m going to knock some shame into that stupid Celestine.”

Athena processed all of that and came to one conclusion. She did not have the patience to deal with this. Today she had been dragged into a healing tent, had a bit of her arm lopped off and regrown, been pushed into helping out at the healing tent, vomited on twice, and was currently lost.

All that on top of the fact that she had zero time to process everything that had happened in the last week underground.

So Athena smothered the whatever painful feelings she might or might not have over Seras and another woman ‘shooting guns’, and said, “fuck off!”

The elf blinked, “what?”

“You heard me, I don’t give any fucks about what you and Leyley got going on, but leave me, and Seras, out of it.”

“I thought you were the nice one?”

“Nice has limits, and I am well past mine,” she retorted. And then seeing the incomprehension still in the elf’s drunken eyes Athena made a mistake, she tried to do one last nice thing for the day.

She activated her abilities to try and sober the Elf up. The problem was she only used [life link] because she didn’t feel like dealing with the Elf’s likely hangover. The elf suddenly became sober, and had all the bad parts of intoxication with nothing to numb it.

She swayed on her feet, vomited on Athena, and then passed out. she slumped onto Athena’s chest, right in the stain of vomit.

Her eye twitched, “god’s fucking dammit all!”

~~~*~~~

Seras was in a daze, the room swam around her, and she hadn’t needed a drop of booze to feel like this. It had really been too long. Way too long.

She felt, well she felt good in too many ways to articulate.

Leyley was besides her, breathing much, much heavier than Seras was. Bionic lungs for the win.

“That, that was, wow.” Leyley said in between gasps.

“Speechless huh, been a while since I’ve done that to a gal,” Seras said with a grin.

“Yeah…” Leyley answered. She eventually recovered enough to reach over to her clothes and dig out a stamina potion, she tilted it back and sucked down the contents within.

Seras watched her back as she let the potion do its work. Long, glittery, almost luminescent hair fell past her shoulders and was plastered with sweat to her rich mocha skin. Celestine’s were strange, though she and them shared a trait for exotic hair colors Seras knew that hers was fully artificial.

Celestines came by their hair naturally. Exotic shades, impossible brightness, and either metallic lusters or gem like luminesce. There had to be some magic at play, just like with Smoulders and Runics. What would happen to these races if they were on a magicless world like Ruin, or would they even evolve there in the first place? Would their features simply dim into more human-like hair colors?

She was so lost in thought that she was caught by complete surprise as Leyley rolled back over and propped herself over Seras with both arms.

Seras felt something warm and soft press against her chest and she grinned, “again?”

“I’m not wasting any chances, you or I might be gone tomorrow,” she said with a sultry purr to her words before sliding lower and pressing her mouth against Seras’ chest.

“You sound like ah… ah… a Ruinite.” Seras only just able to get out that last quip before she became distracted.

Which of course is when someone pushed their way through the tent flaps and a foul odor entered with them.

Leyley jerked up a turned back, Seras’ couldn’t see what she saw from her position, but a shout of “Liz!” gave her a pretty good hint at who it was.

Leyley hopped off from Seras and dashed across the small space and accepted a limp figure from a very irate Athena.

Seras stood up, Athena’s eyes darted to her bare skin, and she scowled before looking back to Leyley. “I don’t know where your team is set up. This one found me wandering around before puking on me and then passing out. Deal with her.” She growled that last part.

Seras sighed, seeing that the rest of tonight’s plans had been thoroughly derailed. She walked over to the pile of hers and Leyley’s clothes and picked out the Celestine’s clothes and handed them over before picking up her own.

Leyley set her teammate down and quickly got dressed. She then looked down at Liz and crinkled her nose in disgust before digging around in a dimensional bag for a potion. She popped the cork and drizzled the contents over her friend and all the filth on the Elf broke down and washed away.

Athena stuck a hand in front of Leyley, and after a long pause Leyley also pulled out another crystal wash potion and handed it over.

Leyley flashed Seras an apologetic smile before shouldering her companion and slipping out into the night.

“Well, there goes that,” Seras muttered.

Athena wheeled around on her and jabbed at her with a single finger. “You!”

“Me?”

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Seras looked back to where Leyley and Liz left, “hey, I had no idea the Elf would find you specifically to puke on,” she said defensively.

“That is not what I mean. Did you even stop to think about me before you went and did whatever you pleased?”

Seras’ eyebrow twitched, “I don’t see why I should have. I’m a grown woman and can fuck whoever I want… with consent of course,” she added belatedly.

Athena only got angrier, “Not. In. Our. Shared. Tent!” she spat through gritted teeth.

Seras blinked, and suddenly the background scent of the tent became very noticeable, “oh.”

“What were you thinking, this is a tent, no walls, no soundproofing, nothing. Where was I supposed to sleep? You didn’t even place a sock on door!”

“Not exactly a place for a sock,” Seras muttered as a sense of shame filled her.

Athena poured a little crystal wash over her clothes, then tossed the rest over Seras’ bed roll.

She then strode right past Seras to flop into her own bed roll.

The silence stretched between them painfully, but Seras had no words to make it right. So she sighed and laid down.

“So…um…”

“Not a word,” Athena snapped from her side of the tent.

Seras shut her mouth.