Our metaphorical curtain opens as the woman with long black hair wakes up. She smiles, stretches, and moans a little at how good it feels to stretch every so often. Then she settles down and looks at her bed-mate, happy to have one who is so close to her heart once again.
There's nothing much planned for the agenda today, so she just sits there for a moment, luxuriating in the peace that is her life at the present moment. Then she gets up and takes a brief shower, as her training shows through in how efficient she is, no matter how much she'd love to luxuriate in the wonder feeling of hot water. Instead, she settles for music as she showers and dries off, a genre of which is an odd variant of the 21st century's "Techno", in this case, a club mix of a song a song made by a YouTube user called Shadowbeatz, the song itself called Break It Down - Dance.
When she's finished, clad in just her bikini-style black leather underwear (which was given to her by a smuggler as thanks for a favor) and a pair of form-fitting black leather pants that she'd picked up special from a friend on Eridanus II (which happened to give a hint of her underwear), she left the bathroom to find her friend already up and completely dressed. Said friend just smiled and rose an eyebrow at her current attire.
"What?" She asked, smiling back. "I just forgot my sports bra is all."
"You know, if you're not careful, I might just make today an indoor day."
"Well, my little redhead," The raven-haired woman said as she stepped closer in a very sultry way that almost had her target blushing. "I'm feeling up to a little fun." She let that sit for a moment before saying, "Wanna know what trouble Gary's stirring up?"
They just laughed as the redhead gently smacked her upside the head for her trouble. "Nah, I've got a lunch date with Donut, and you know how she is about these things." She said as she handed a public-appropriate sports-bra-slash-shirt to the other woman.
"You know," She said as she put the garment on. "I'm still surprised you two are so chummy. I'd almost expect you two at each other's throats."
The redhead gave her an inquisitive look. "Why's that?"
"Well, I mean, you guys were enemies, once upon a time."
The redhead chuckled. "Yeah, but not that much. I mean, seriously. That was mostly us just talking at each other and that's it."
"True." She grabbed a rubber band to bring her unruly waterfall of hair into a ponytail, or, at least pull it to stay completely behind her shoulders, at any rate. Meanwhile her partner put on a hat and a few select pieces of jewelry that weren't necessary technology (a pair of earrings, a fake gold bracelet which also had a homing device, and a blue and silver psuedo-choker that tended to put people off their game, particularly since it was paired with a olive drab military uniform from the Office of Naval Intelligence and it was rather high-quality. It was very simple, just a strip of quality fabric with a clasp that settled behind her neck, but it could still be very startling for those who aren't expecting it.
As she put on a hat, the woman saw this and smiled at her friend. "Need to go make an impression?"
"Yep. A few spooks need a talking to as they give a progress report, so I figure that it'd be a good idea." The redhead looked at the clock on the vanity and jumped slightly. "OOP! Gotta go!" She gave her partner a peck on the cheek and ran off, the other woman still smiling.
After that, she left their relatively luxurious quarters and did a little shopping and grabbed a donut and a Mountain Dew before she went to the training yards to observe the soldiers as they did their thing.
"I still can't believe that you eat that junk."
She smiled a little more strongly as she turned to her new companion. "Hey B. And, you know we all can't live on just plugging ourselves into the wall every so often. For the rest of us, it's caffeine and sugar that makes the world go 'round."
The woman in black armor looked at her before she took off her helmet and showed a face that was half human and half robotic in a dichotomy that mirrored Two-Face's face perfectly. The woman without the armor was tempted to revisit the subject of fixing the damages to the prosthetic parts of her face, but let it be, deciding that today was just too good to ruin with an age-old argument. Instead, they just smiled at each other and went to the safer subjects of what was on their agendas. The armored woman was thinking about putting the Spartan-III's through their paces and maybe start a program to integrate Spartans of every generation into the normal soldier populace through forced intereactions between the two groups, supported by their mutual friends in ONI.
An hour or two after she finished her donut and soda, they said their See-Ya-Laters and went on their way. Her way, today, was just drifting from place to place until a feeling pulled her in one direction. She didn't really pay much attention to where she was, which could end up problematic though she figured she'd be able to find her way around no matter where she ended up.
She went into the semi-nondescript building that exuded warmth (which the feeling was pulling her towards) and followed the feeling until she found what it was that was pulling her to it.
What she found there was a little surprising to her.
There was a man in full military Battle Dress Uniform (though, without the helmet, pack, or weapons that would mark him as a soldier on duty or anything like that) and from the looks of things, he was telling them a story. "Of course, Ghost never got to answer because right about then the entire universe died. Or, in the words of 'Washing-Tub' from Caboose's head, 'The whole world exploded AND everyone died AND the whole world exploded!' "
"Hey!"
In the room, all the children looked away from where their attention was raptly kept to the doorway where she, a tall woman in full military gear with butt-length black hair, stood with a slightly reprimanding look on her face while looking at the current storyteller. She continued to speak. "The actual line is," At this point her face became extremely expressive to over-accentuate the emotions (just like she would've in Caboose's head) while she tried to keep from busting out in a grin. " 'If you tell anyone I told you, the whole world would explode AND everyone would die AND the whole word could explode!' "
After a few seconds, the new arrival gave up and grinned at her friend. "So, what lies have you been telling them Gary?" She asked of the retired ONI operative.
The man with the solidly steel-colored hair smiled at her in a different way than he had been to the children. "Oh, just the story of how we met."
She turned to the children and spoke in a lowered, over-dramatic and conspiratorial voice, "It's all lies! Believe nothing he says!"
That got her a lot of giggles from the kids, which was the point. After listening to the questions of the children for a few moments, she looked at the man questioningly. He picked up on her unasked question and answered. "Well, to be perfectly honest" he ignored her snort here. "I was just setting it up to make sure that you would actually tell your own story yourself."
That surprised her, but she just deflected. "Well, let's be honest here, it's just a piece of history. All in the past. So why should I bother telling everybody about it?"
"Because of all the stories I know of that involve monsters and heroes, yours is one that truly needs telling." He says with his most honest face.
She stares at him, studies him, and finally decides that he's not lying or messing with her head. He's really and truly being honest with her when he says that her story needs telling.
A new voice decides to chip in. "Besides it's not like you've got anything too traumatizing for them."
They all look at the newest arrival, a slightly shorter woman with shoulder-length (and fairly stylish) red hair who was smiling amusedly at everything that she saw in the room. She also happened to be the raven-haired woman's roommate, and was still wearing her BDUs and choker with the rest of her jewelry.
The woman with the black hair looked from the man to the other woman to the children and back. Then, after another few moments, she slumped a little and sighed in defeat. "Fine. I'll do it. But it's not the best story, I'll warn ya."
The children's smiles brightened the room by a few hundred megawatts as they hunkered down for the story.
"Well, it started like this, with an A.I. and a Spartan doing a routine mission to beat bad-guy butt..."