L X T, one-shot -- unless I can find enough time to convert the rest of my very-very-so-brief snatches of a draft into prose.
You know the disclaimers.
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"Why do you do that?"
An irritated glare shearing past the edge of those large spectacles, fiery enough to set any target smouldering.
"No particular reason."
-- There he goes again, those same old pointless and meaningless impulses of real human beings, frustratingly opaque but, damn it, and embarrassingly enticing Lockon can almost read the line of thought brooding over the pristine mind behind those clear ruby eyes, which gave their thoughts away as clear as daylight.
Humans are transparent to Lockon like programmes and systems are to the one who is currently trying to exorcise his presence with visual powers alone. While other crews have failed again and again to comprehend how they have ended up a miserable crumpled heap at the knife-sharp edge of Tieria's searing disapproval, he had immediately shifted back into familiar gears, gliding past the hidden mines while reading Tieria like an open book with ultra-large font.
And it thus is his joy and utmost his alone, to excavate the loose edges and hidden cracks in that shield of almost immortal disdain for humanity, and tap on them for a most exquisite form of entertainment while waiting for missions quite a forgiveable act, given that there are not many choices between tossing haro and drinking with their strategy forecaster who looked under-aged for her forever-scarred love life and over-aged for the gusto she down her alcoholic fix.
"I do not feel cold as you humans do" -- The explanation, on its way to losing patience, to an extra blanket on cold nights, delivered at the inopportune moment when the target in question was between bathrobe and night-gown. Water-droplets, quickly cooling in the inorganic cabin air, dangle and drip off the tip of newly-washed hair so deliciously purple.
"My eyesight is perfect; it does not deteriorate as human vision does." -- The rebuttal, heedlessly sharp without the normal veil of human sociability, shatters another failed advice against the evils of prolonged exposure to glowing screens. The room lapses into silence as before, data crawling without an end, and the inorganic glow throwing a shroud of incandescence round the fluorescence-bleached curves and angles sinfully oblivious to their own mesmerised victim.
But for the large majority of the time, when the rationale of the matter on hand fails to turn up an answer against a brief search of whatever terminal data he bothered to carry off Veda, it is simply a "Why?", packaged with an almost confrontational stare of technical curiosity, the hunger for data without desire for the explanation in itself.
There are crews who have taken to avoid Tieria for that look of his that surface once in a while, a blatant revelation of his true nature that proffers the last shattering blow to the wobbly and tepid social play-pretend that has become customary to maintain around him. Sometimes Lockon wonders if the true reason why Veda has made Tieria look the way he is now is not of any sheer happy coincidence, but deliberate calculation on its part. For if Tieria had not looked the way he is, Lockon suspects that no one would actually even bother to put up that paper-thin jovial pretence around him, of taking him to be the same as any other quite-human member of this revolutionary force.
Lockon is probably the only person ever who has restlessly practised perfecting his craft of pushing the correct buttons, to get that look, part that feline-like irritation and part simple transparent surprise, unknown to its possessor an irresistible invitation for provocation -- chilling, burning, and enough to stop a particular heart in mid-beat.
And enough, to make that thought occur to him, again and again, a broken tape on eternal rewind.
Enough, that he finally yield to his own incessant curiosity to put a toe beyond the line.
"Because I love you."
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do forgive me for the excessive word usage and entangling phrasing...pray blame the incessant heat if you wish to. It's not been raining properly for a while and getting on my nerves.
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10May -- oops.. I forgot to paste a paragraph across _. Many thanks to Cademy Sadence; error fixed.