Lunar Awakening, the new moon.

"Major General Suzuki, sir!"

Doppo hated when this happened.

A combat sergeant approached and greeted the redheaded Major General with a textbook salute before firmly folding his arms behind his hips and waited to be addressed. The Major General this sergeant was accosting this time was Chiyuki "Doppo" Suzuki, a twenty-six-year-old redheaded man with an immutable case of bedhead even on his tidiest of days and a severe case of fatigue that seemed to plague him no matter how much rest he got. Beneath the shock of hair that dangled on the top half of his average-sized, round head, were a pair of baby blue eyes above rings upon rings of bags underneath. While his eyes were not bloodshot and his complexion was a healthy pink-peach color, he clearly looked sleep-deprived on his best of days. His speech was sluggish when and if he chose to speak, and his movements seemed forced. He slept when he could and ate and worked when he couldn't. Such was the life of Major General Suzuki.

Doppo stopped when the sergeant approached him as he was beginning to make way into headquarters with a squeezable applesauce packet planted between his lips and a water bottle in his hand. While he did not say anything to the sergeant, he peered over to him with his indifferent gaze.

"Good morning, sir. Sorry to bother you, but there's a new recruit needing to be shown into headquarters, and since you're already heading inside, we thought. . ." the sergeant trailed off into anticipant silence, hoping that Doppo would fill in the blank or answer the question that was so obviously being prompted. However, Doppo didn't respond nor seemed to register the question the sergeant was prompting at all! Several seconds passed before the sergeant awkwardly attempted again. "Sir?" he queried, confused.

Doppo stared at him and grunted noncommittedly, as he normally did. ". . .So. . . why are. . . why are you stopping me. . .?"

The sergeant blushed a bit once realizing that he should've spoken more clearly. "My apologies, sir! I thought that since you were already heading inside, that you could show her in! I'm about to go on patrol, you see. . ."

"Mmm. . ." Doppo grunted again, still noncommittedly.

"M-Mmm? S-So. . .?"

"Mm." he nodded lackadaisically.

Before the sergeant could follow up, Doppo had turned and left without saying a word. He didn't look angry and bothered, but he also didn't look like he had made a decision either. But the sergeant didn't want to have to face him again after that interaction, which was eerily similar to talking to a rock, and hastily left to begin his patrol around Era.

As Doppo approached headquarters, it seemed that the recruit in question showed up herself. Although he was horrible with names, he never seemed to forget faces all too often and couldn't seem to recall this woman's face at all.

He would approach her, or, rather, walk past her before stopping and turning back with the applesauce pouch hanging from his mouth before he could make way to the building. He was wearing a white dress shirt underneath his black uniform.

". . .You're wasting my time. . . come on already. . ."

As soon as the woman began to follow him, her mouth began to move as quickly as their feet did. All at once, the woman barraged the fatigued redhead with queries that seemed too personal to ask a complete stranger—even if they were potential colleagues and the subject was appropriate.

Doppo did not seem to interact well with people of her attitude since many of them tested the very thin patience he had to begin with. The patience and indifference Doppo held for Ms. Linda Fennec, or how he remembered her name anyway, vanished with incredible quickness as he failed to locate a pause between her questions and comments. She kept going and going and going!  

"Yeah."

Doppo seemed to be interested in speaking only this much in response to Ms. Linda Fennec and all of her questions. His voice was low and soft, devoid of any amount of annoyance or irritation, but the shadow casting over his hardly visible eyes made it clear to those who noticed these subtleties that it was taking everything for this testy redhead not to tell her off.

When the pair finally arrived in the building after scaling a somewhat insurmountable flight of stairs, they were greeted with the usual busy noise of headquarters. Phones were ringing and people were talking. Feet were marching and orders were being sputtered. The lighting seemed brighter than the sunshine outside while the uniforms were as black as ink, making the air seem unfriendly or unapproachable to those who weren’t wearing one.

Leading the way, Doppo stopped in front of the reception desk which, while having many vacant chairs lined around the crescent-shaped desk, had only one person seated in the center—Receptionist Valorie, who Doppo promptly knew as “Malorie.”

Despite the chatter going on around the front office, Malorie could somehow hear any person approaching her desk specifically. So, without haste, she swiveled around in her chair to face them. Her eyes were small and her mouth always seemed to rest into a frown. She wore average, round glasses and her uniform was the dullest edition of them all. ”Oh, it’s just you..” Malorie commented while adjusting her glasses, the light from above making both lenses be consumed in a blinding glare which veiled her judgemental gaze.

Doppo’s soft, weary looked did not change with her comment, as he apparently seemed unfazed. ". . .Hi, Mal—"

”It’s Valorie.” Valorie corrected him before letting him finish after being misnamed by Doppo so many times now, but he didn’t seem to be paying enough attention to her to register the correction anyway.

"Do you have any applications with you. . .?" the redhead queried, leaning over the desk with both of his hands placed cutely on the countertop.

"Who's it for?" Malorie pulled out a stack of papers all stapled together along with some others that weren't, all neatly slipped into a folder.

Doppo paused to recall the woman's name before returning his obviously wandering attention back to Malorie. ". . .Linda Fennec. She's right here. . ."


"Fill it out." Malorie swiftly placed the folder onto the desk, peeking over to Linda.

Between the time Malorie and Doppo had exchanged words, Linda appeared to have already completed putting her information down on the paperwork. The redheaded General Major was about to trudge off to his office before Linda caught him just before he could and asked about what was going to happen next.

For a moment, Doppo's expression scrunched a bit as if repulsed by what she had said. But he wasn't repulsed at all! He had struggled so immensely with understanding what Linda had said that the bewilderment suddenly became visible on his countenance, which wasn't uncommon for Doppo, who often had his entire day scripted out in his head, leaving anything unexpectedly added to that routine throwing him for a loop. For a noticeably extensive moment, Doppo paused to think about his answer, but when he finally mustered up the words to respond, it amounted to very little as it normally would with him.

". . .Wait, I guess. . ." Doppo muttered quietly. It wasn't his responsibility to review the applications and paperwork of interested recruits and it wasn't what he came in to work for either, after all.