Author's note: I love Star Ocean: the Last Hope for so many reasons, not the least of which it Arumat himself. Springing from that exuberant delight is this little story about our favorite Eldarian (poor Faize is just outclassed in every way...). I have finished the game and this fic is set after the ending events, so there may be a couple of spoilers lurking in the text. This is your warning and should be taken as such. It is going to be multi-chapter, say three, possibly four (everyone who has been waiting for my updates on other stories is likely giving up on this right now). ,I should also probably insert my disclaimer here, too, before I forget (I do so quite frequently): I do not own Star Ocean or the characters and plot therein (though I do own a copy of the game, which has a place of honor beside the XBox360), nor am I making any profit from this story aside from my own personal amusement. Having said that, enjoy. It's a present from me to you in honor of my birthday (since I hadn't actually planned on uploading it to the site).

Chapter 1: Always Watching (You're Not Alone)

The creeping sensation of being watched slithered up his back and caused the silky, silvery hair on the nape of his neck to prickle and stand on end. Arumat's golden eyes narrowed and he turned his head slightly, just enough to survey the rest of the Calnus's recreation room from under the thick fall of bangs that covered the right side of his face. His eyes narrowed further at what he saw.

It was her, again. He didn't know why she had taken this sudden interest in studying him at every available moment she didn't think he was looking. The number of times she had assumed he wasn't completely aware of his surroundings galled him: did she really think he had managed to survive for so long by being oblivious? He finished his movement, turning completely to face her directly. Sure enough, she fell to staring at the clipboard in her hands immediately, as though she had been occupied by whatever little notes she was carrying around today.

Across the room from them, the hatch to the gangplank and the outside world slid open with a soft hiss, admitting a rush of warm, moist air that smelled of the sea. Arumat could hear the Axe Beaks' harsh, shrilling cries as the ugly birds milled about on the beach, searching for food among the debris that washed up onto the shore. Their calls were cut off abruptly as the door slid closed again, and Arumat shifted his gaze over to the little group that had just entered.

Edge grinned at him, his usual easy-going nature on display. Behind the young captain were the little girl, the Morphus woman, and the cat-eared nuisance.

"Hello, Reimi, Arumat. Where's Bacchus? Sarah's gone on one of her walks again; I'd like to ask him to go along with her and keep her out of trouble. She seems to find it so easily." Edge's cheerful voice grated on the same nerves that Reimi's staring had been fraying for the last week. The Eldarian growled under his breath and stalked away from them, heading up the ramp to the crew quarters. Behind him he could hear Reimi comment, perhaps more loudly than she thought, "I don't know what's gotten into him lately. He's been so edgy lately—sorry, Edge—and I don't know why. I haven't seen him this tense since we went to fight the Missing Procedure."

"Maybe I should talk to him, find out what's wrong," Edge began, his voice conveying more concern than it had just a few seconds ago when he was reporting that the idiot angel had wandered off yet another time. Arumat growled again—he was going to have to cut back on that little habit, he noted distractedly—and resisted the urge to stomp back down into the rec. room and strangle the little fool.

"I think that would be a bad plan, boy," Myuria interjected. Arumat spared her a fleeting, grudging flicker of appreciation and continued down the hall a short way to the room he shared with the captain. Another spasm of irritation seized him as he crossed the threshold into the room: Edge had left his half in disarray. Again. With his temper now held only by the most tenuous of grips, the Eldarian ex-Captain sprawled out on his own, perfectly-made bed, rolling over to stare at the ceiling. After a while he roused himself enough from his mindless perusal of the ceiling for long enough to shuck off the heavy combat boots he always wore and to slide them under the bed. He was still in a bad mood and he knew exactly why. He was bored, horribly, terribly bored.

He had not crafted his warrior's body through blood and symbology only to while away the last of his few years of life sitting about idly and peacefully. Unfortunately, that was all Edge and the other members of the crew seemed inclined to do and they were also the only ones with the technology that he needed to get back to his own ship—provided, of course, that he still had one. Gaghan had seemed reluctant to allow him to have it back in their last communication—apparently he felt that retaining even a single Eldarian battleship showed a lack of commitment to their vow to surrender their technology before colonizing Lemuris. Arumat caught himself growling again. It was getting ridiculous; he was no animal. He wanted to get up and spend a few hours in the training room slashing apart several hundred holographs, no matter that they were hardly exciting opponents. Still, he knew that if he were to do any such thing, his black mood would become even darker—nothing could get under his skin like an inferior adversary. And that left him only one distraction: sleep. Years of fighting almost non-stop had left him able to drop off in an instant into a light, shallow sleep from which he could awaken fully-alert if need be; rest was rare on a battlefield and all opportunities should be seized with both hands. Besides, it would give him a few moments respite from the clouds of negative thoughts that swooped about his sharply-pointed ears. He didn't even bother to undress, simply allowing himself to relax slightly and closing his eyes. A few slow breaths later, he was dozing.

He was not so deeply asleep, however, that he did not hear the almost-inaudible swoosh of the door opening. He became awake instantly, but remained motionless, hoping that whoever it was would either go away and leave him alone or would do something stupid, like trying to talk to him, that would give him good reason to pretend to the rest of the crew that it was his hair-trigger battle-reflexes that had made him lop off the intruder's head—an unfortunate accident that was most certainly not his fault. His scythe was leaning up against the bed in its usual spot, the sleek, sharp blades currently folded away into one edge. He could have it ready in a heartbeat… But there was no noise from the interloper; they made no attempt to speak and the door hadn't opened to allow them back out. And, more alarmingly, where his mind told him should be the faint electrical signals that marked the area any living body occupied there was simply nothing. That's when the slight weight landed on the end of his bunk. Tiny feet pressed down on his flesh as the thing walked up his legs and onto his bare belly, where it curled up into a little furry ball and started to purr softly. Needle-sharp claws slipped out a fraction of an inch and the small cat kneaded slightly at the taut, scarred flesh of Arumat's abdomen.

Arumat's temper boiled over and he jerked up into a sitting position and grabbed the cat firmly by the scruff of its neck. His amber-gold eyes flared with anger and narrowed into slits and another deep growl rolled in his chest. There was a soft poof, a small cloud of mist, and suddenly the cat became a pouting Meracle who dangled from his grip on her neck, one leg on each side of his and her long tail and soft-furred ears drooping.

"Aw, c'mon, Mattie," she whined, pawing at his restraining hand. "You let me sleep on you before! It's too cold on this ship and you were the only one who was laying still!"

Arumat was a little taken aback by her calling him by the little symbologist's nickname for him, which blunted the edge of his anger enough that he didn't just take up his scythe and do away with the little nuisance once and for all. Still, he wasn't about to let her get away with such flagrant disrespect for his person: he was going to throw her scrawny ass back out into the hall and she could find somewhere else to sleep. No sooner than had he started to swing his legs over the side of the bed so he could stand up, Meracle locked her legs around his waist and wrapped both arms firmly around his head.

"If you throw me out, I'll just have to sneak back in!" she yelled petulantly.

"And I'll throw you out again," Arumat returned, releasing his hold on her neck to try and pry her arms open so that he could retrieve his head from her clutches. She resisted, redoubling her grip and crushing his head to her chest so tightly Arumat could have sworn that he could hear the bones of his skull creak ominously. Damn, the girl is strong, Arumat thought acidly. He had always known that it was so abstractly—it would be impossible to discount her strength after watching her Comet Punch some poor bastard into oblivion—but to be on the receiving end of her disproportionate power was new and, frankly, fairly disconcerting. He was not used to not being able to overwhelm an opponent with his symbologically-boosted strength. Admittedly he was fairly sure that he could have forced her to let go, but Edge and the rest of the crew would become possibly more irritating if they took to scolding him for having broken the cat-girl's arms, even if the blasted angel could heal her easily.

"And every time I snuck in you would have to throw me out again, Mattie, and you would never get any sleep! So there, meow!" Meracle was practically crowing in delight now, seeing that she had struck upon a good argument; Arumat despised inefficiency and waste when it could be avoided, and losing sleep to argue with a crewmate was certainly a waste. The Eldarian wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of having him agree, however, so he simply laid back down, his strong abdominal muscles easily handling the extra weight of the clinging cat-girl on his chest as he returned to his former position.

"Alright, meow!" Meracle celebrated, letting go of him to hoist both fists in the air in victory. He wondered briefly if she did anything quietly—besides sneaking into people's rooms, that is. She grinned down at him, pulling her hands down out of the air to put both palms on his broad chest, just where the metal plates on his upper garment covered the top of his ribcage.

"You're the best, Mattie!" she chirped. "I don't know why, but you're warmer than anyone else onboard, so I always like sleeping with you best. But sleeping with Myuria is okay, too, because she's really soft when I sleep on her chest and—"

"Be silent," Arumat ordered wearily. Honestly, didn't the cat-thing know better than to blather on about another woman's chest? To his surprise, Meracle actually shut up, still grinning so that her little fangs peeked out from under her top lip.

"Change back," he commanded next. Meracle looked suddenly puzzled and tipped her head to one side.

"Why?" she asked, her slit-pupiled green eyes wide with innocent—unless she was an astoundingly good actor—confusion. Arumat was at a loss again, for the second time in less than five minutes. He was always amazed by the ease with which the crew of the Calnus could do that, even if he would rather bite his own tongue off rather than admit to bemusement. But how was he supposed to explain to what should have been an adult woman—albeit one with the mind of a child, courtesy of her many years locked in a cell with limited socialization—that it was socially unacceptable for her to straddle a man's thighs and share his bed aboard the Calnus? That would undoubtedly be a long, convoluted conversation that he definitely wanted no part in, but he also didn't want to be on the receiving end of one of Reimei's screaming fits, so Arumat thought quickly for the first excuse that he thought she might accept.

And he used it: "you'll be warmer with your fur." Meracle frowned at him, her lower lip pouting out. She crossed her arms under her breasts and leaned over him so that they were face to face and her long blue hair fell over her shoulders and slapped him in the face. He brushed it aside irritably, now wishing that he had just thrown her out when he had the chance. He could have used his scythe to melt the computer lock and keep the door closed since he was sure that Meracle didn't know that the manual override existed. The rest of the crew probably was intelligent enough to leave him alone...probably.

"It wouldn't be that much warmer, Mattie," Meracle told him. "I get hungry when I change like that, so I don't want to do it."

Arumat heaved a sigh, a once-rare occurrence that was becoming more frequent now that Meracle had decided that he wasn't as frightening as she had thought and had started talking to, or rather at, him. He reached up, grabbed her collar in one hand and half-rolled, half-twisted, pulling the cat-girl off of his legs and slamming her face-first into the bed next to him. A quick shove with one foot sent her sprawling on to the floor.

"Either change back, or get out." He delivered the ultimatum in his best don't-fuck-with-me voice, low and vibrating with menace. Meracle's tail bushed out and her ears dropped flat against her head, but it had the desired effect. Sort of. She didn't leave, but at least there was the poof of transformation and Meracle leapt back onto his bed as a little cream-colored cat. It looked reproachfully at him as he lay sprawled on his side. Arumat ignored her and rose to pull his blankets back. If he had to work this hard for a nap, it had better be a good one, which meant that he wanted blankets and a pillow. The Eldarian figured that he had worked hard enough during his life to deserve a few luxuries, especially ones everyone else just seemed to take for granted. He would have liked to have stripped out of his armor, too, but he wasn't about to invite catastrophe—which was the only way to describe the hellacious row that would occur if Reimei found out that Meracle, even in cat form, had slept next to him while he was in next to nothing. Golden eyes narrowed with annoyance at that thought; Reimei's fits seemed to be a frequent limiting factor in his actions—especially since the blond brat-captain always sided with her no matter how frivolous her complaint.

The Eldarian settled himself onto the bed, yanking the covers up to his chest suddenly for the simple pleasure of watching the little cat crash to the floor again. Tormenting Meracle was a suitable way for him to vent some of his frustrations. His head sank into the pillow up to his ears and Arumat wondered once again at the pointless extravagances the Earthlings seemed to delight in. The cream cat reappeared into his field of vision and stepped delicately across the coverlet to lie back down on his belly. Meracle blinked at him, tucked her paws under her chest, and went to sleep.

Arumat glowered at her for a bit longer out of principle, then allowed his own piercing golden eyes to slide closed. He relaxed his muscles, consciously easing each part of his body into his preferred sleep-state. Finally, he allowed his mind to drift and he, too, drifted into slumber.

He awoke to screaming a few hours later.

Sure enough, when the Eldarian slitted open one golden eye, there was Reimei, her clipboard clutched to her chest and her mouth open in an ear-splitting tirade. In less than the blink of an eye, Arumat went from the satisfied calm that usually followed a nap to scorching rage. He didn't yet know what she was going off about this time, but he damn sure wasn't going to let her barge in on him in his private quarters, yell at him, and get away with it.

So he sat up, because not even he could cow Reimei into silence from a less-than-dignified prone position—though, his mind supplied with a certain vindictive malice, that's mostly because that bitch has somehow managed to survive without any self-preservation instincts whatsoever. A normal person would shut up and leave me alone. Blankets and cat-girl tumbled off his chest and suddenly Arumat found his anger redoubled. Meracle's shoulders hit the floor, her feet still on the bed next to his thigh, and she blinked green eyes up at him and grinned sheepishly.

"Sorry, Mattie," she said, rubbing the back of her head with one hand, further tousling her already-mussed blue hair. "I was going to ask you if it was okay for me to switch back 'cuz I wanted some of the blanket, too, but you were really deeply asleep and so I figured it would be okay as long as I didn't wake you up. That's why you made me change the first time, right? 'Cuz I take up too much of the bed when I'm not a cat, right?"

Arumat kept very, very still, just knowing that if he let himself move even the slightest, his temper would get the better of even his self-control (really, this crew was ridiculous. His crew had never been such a pain in the ass) and he would kill them both. Gladly.

Reimei was still yelling. When the Eldarian ex-captain finally felt that he had reined in his temper enough to prevent any unfortunate…accidents, he allowed himself to actually pay attention to what the brunette was shrieking loud enough for everyone on the ship—and no doubt on the planet—to hear.

"…and how could you, Arumat? Taking advantage of an innocent young girl like Merry! You probably scared her into doing it. Poor girl, and since she tends to sleep next to the rest of the crew, she was probably easy prey! Don't you know better than to force yourself ont—mph!"

Reimei's shrill voice was muffled when Myuria, alerted by the first mate's howls, appeared silently behind her and covered the brunette's mouth with one hand.

"Girl, you had better think about what you're saying before you just let it all out like that. Do you honestly think that Arumat here would do what you're accusing him of?" Myuria's voice was stern, but Arumat definitely heard an undercurrent of amusement and exasperation. Edge and Lymle arrived on the tail of her sentence, peering into the room around the two women in the doorway. Meracle had stood sometime during the tirade and she took the opportunity provided by Reimei's silence to prop her hands on her hips, give the crowd in the doorway a wide, feline smile, and announce to the world at large: "Don't worry; I wanted to sleep with Mattie." And with that, she leaned over, pecked Arumat on one high cheekbone, and marched out of the room in the direction of the galley. The quartet in the door stared after her and Arumat shook his head at the cat-girl's complete lack of understanding of the situation. After a while, four pairs of eyes turned back toward him. He glared and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Is there some purpose behind the staring, or are you just wasting my time?" He ground out, his voice deeper than usual and roughened by sleep. Myuria smiled to herself at the sound of it; Arumat didn't even want to imagine why. Reimei broke free from the redhead's hold, sucked in a breath, and pointed a finger at him aggressively.

"As first mate of the Calnus, I demand an explanation for your behavior!" She huffed, all affronted propriety. Her cheeks were bright red from embarrassment and anger. Arumat pinned her with his golden stare and raised one silvery brow before he drawled out his answer.

"I went to take a nap, cat-girl jumped on me, we argued, she changed into a cat, I went to sleep, she changed back. Surely you could have deduced that on your own, unless your intellect is softening from disuse."

"Ooh!" she breathed out in annoyance, then turned on her heel and stormed away, gesturing occasionally with her clipboard. Edge started to follow her, but paused just long enough to meet Arumat's gaze with his own worried blue eyes and say: "just try not to let it happen again, okay Arumat?" He left, ostensibly to soothe Reimei's bruised feelings.

"And suddenly this is my fault," Arumat mused aloud, tipping his head back and watching the two females remaining in the doorway from under lowered lids.

"Don't worry about it, 'kay, Mattie?" Lymle urged in her soft, almost whining tones. "Reimei's been kinda weird lately. She'll be better later, promise, and maybe she'll make cookies, 'kay? I'll go ask her." The little girl—young woman, now, Arumat corrected himself—vanished from the doorway, her blond ponytails trailing behind her. Myuria seemed to be waiting for something because after a while she nodded to herself and stepped into the room, closing the door behind her.

She wrinkled her nose. "This place is a mess."

Arumat acknowledged the comment with a soft grunt. "Edge doesn't clean up after himself."

"Ah," the Morphus woman replied, casting about for a place to sit that wasn't covered in clothing or papers or trash. She pulled the chair away from Arumat's desk and positioned it at the foot of the bed, then sat down in it and crossed her legs. "I thought that might be the case: I didn't have you pegged for a messy type."

"I was sleeping," Arumat reminded her in flat, unfriendly tones, hoping she would take the hint and get the hell out.

"I know," Myuria said smiling, deliberately ignoring the not-so-polite suggestion in Arumat's words. "I wanted to talk to you about Reimei."

"I have no desire to talk about the Earthling girl," Arumat nearly hissed, scowling ferociously.

"She likes Edge, you know," the redhead continued, ignoring the Eldarian for the moment and jigging the upper leg up and down gently. The motion was mirrored by her full breasts. "A lot. She would very much like to have a, how shall I say, deeper relationship with him."

"This has nothing to do with me. Get out." Arumat was being deliberately rude and brusque; the so-far one-sided conversation Myuria had instigated was of no interest but of great irritation—he was sick of watching the archer make calf eyes at the captain at every opportunity—and he was trying hard to ignore the Morphus' soft flesh before the situation became more…difficult. It had been a long time since he had left Crowe and his body was taking the chance to remind him of that. The redheaded Earthling had been a very…attentive leader.

Myuria smiled sweetly at him and the ex-captain knew that she was fully aware of his predicament and was enjoying it, that bitch. She leaned forward to prop her elbows on her lifted knee and spoke through her Cheshire-cat grin, "it has a lot to do with you actually." And suddenly the Morphus symbologist leaned back again and was all business. "Don't you get it, Arumat? Reimei's finally decided that she doesn't want to be the little girl who was a childhood friend to Edge anymore. She wants him to see her as the woman she has become, but Edge is, as I'm sure you've noticed, a little slow on the uptake."

Arumat heaved a long suffering sigh before he could stop himself. His long silver bangs fluttered up into the air before resettling over his face and hiding part of the scar that crossed the bridge of his nose. "So tell her to tell him that, get out, and let me sleep."

"Unfriendly today, aren't you?" Myuria teased, shifting in her seat. "Don't worry, I'm not going to try anything. After all, I wouldn't want to force myself on anyone…" He could hear the laughter in her words and was reaching for his scythe when Myuria jumped out of her seat and rested one hand on his forearm. His muscles flexed and raised corded ridges under her palm, but Arumat halted his motion and glared at her. She ignored the look and continued. "I suppose that I haven't made this easier for her: men tend to notice me, and if I can get even cold, focused you riled up, imagine what I do to the boy."

Arumat gritted his teeth. He didn't need to imagine: he knew enough about what Myuria did to the boy's mind to avoid touching anything the captain had tossed onto the floor and to keep a blanket in the storage bay for when Edge got too loud. Myuria noticed the look of disgust that passed across his features and patted his forearm consolingly.

"I'm sorry you have to deal with him, Arumat. But the point is, it's me he's decided to notice, not Reimei. And she thinks that if she can seem more mature, more sensual and experienced, she can get Edge to notice her, too."

The Eldarian jerked his arm out from under Myuria's hand and crossed it with the other across his chest again. "So loan her some of your clothes," he snapped unsympathetically. "That's far more mature than grousing at me all the time."

"She wouldn't fit into them properly," the Morphus symbologist dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand, plopping down on the edge of the bed next to Arumat's thigh. She leaned back so that she could rest her weight on her arms, leaving her upper body bridging the Eldarian's legs. "She's trying to make him jealous so that he'll pay attention to her again. The whole 'you didn't know what you had until you lost it' shtick."

"Because men like to be berated," Arumat sniped back sarcastically.

Myuria patted his knee. Arumat attempted to pull it away, but there wasn't really anywhere to go and he just knew that Myuria would find some way to get back at him if he dumped her onto the floor like he did the cat-girl. "Believe me, she doesn't mean to snap at you; she's just gets embarrassed every time she tries to talk to you since she's trying to find a way into your bed."

"Excuse me?" the frustration that had heated Arumat's tones throughout the conversation vanished, replaced by an icy levelness that promised death and dismemberment in the near future.

"You heard me, unless these things are just for show," Myuria said briskly, actually tweaking one of his long, pointed ears, her thumb caressing the soft skin not protected by the metal protectors. A quiver ran through Arumat's body and the Eldarian's golden eyes fluttered shut for just a moment at the shock of pleasure from the contact. It was distracting, to say the least. The Morphus looked fascinated and she reached for his ear again, muttering, "I'd read in the Morphus archives that an Eldarian's ears were an erogenous zone, but that's pretty impressive given how angry you were just a second ago. I wonder…"

Arumat loosed a snarl worthy of a mountain lion and caught her hand in a crushing grip. "Do. Not. Touch. My. Ears." He emphasized each word by tightening his grip until the woman's face went white, then he let go. Myuria cradled the appendage to her ample chest, staring at him in amazement.

"You really are pissed off, aren't you?" she said wonderingly. Her symbology was already dulling the pain and healing any damage he might have done to her hand. "Relax," she added, waving aside his hostility with her uninjured hand as if it was nothing more dangerous than a cloud of gnats—irritating, but not harmful. "I'm not going to do it again. Still, you would think that those weird coverings you wear would stop that from happening." He glared. She stared back guilelessly, making a show of keeping her hands folded primly in her lap though it forced her to balance precariously as she remained leaning back so that she could meet his gaze.

The moment dragged on and Myuria laughed, "You're just like a kitten puffing itself up to look meaner than it really is. You scare me more when you keep the expressionless face all the time; this way you seem more alive."

The silver-haired man made a soft noise of disgust in the back of his throat, gave up on trying to maintain some semblance of dignity since it clearly wasn't going to change the Morphus's disregard for his personal space one iota, and slumped back down onto his elbows. She was looking down on him now, but, hey, he thought almost ruefully, she'd been doing that the whole time, even when she had to look up to meet his eyes. He frowned at the curvaceous woman and inquired with deceptive patience, "are you done harassing me? Because I have better things to do than gossip with you about this lunatic crew."

"Like what, sleep?" Myuria returned, flashing him a wry grin. "Come on, Arumat. I know you're bored out of your mind, even if the rest of them can't see it. They're too young to understand the need to have something to do; they see the defeat of the Missing Procedure as the end of their journey and this stay on Roak as a well-deserved vacation. It never would occur to them that you might prefer to risk your life hunting down Grigori and killing anything that even looked at you funny."

"I didn't ask for an analysis of my state of mind," Arumat growled at her.

"And I gave you one anyway. You think differently than they do because you're a grown man and have lost so much. They're just now realizing that they're not kids anymore. Which brings us back to Reimei…" Myuria paused for a second to watch as Arumat flopped limply back onto his pillow. His long silver bangs resettled themselves over his face and completely hid his eyes. The redhead pushed the silver hair off of his left eye with one finger, revealing half of an intense glare. "It shouldn't be all that surprising to you, really. She's a young woman trapped on a ship with seven other people and is half in love with the boy. She wants to get experienced, fast, and is trying to figure out what men like, but she doesn't have anyone to ask . Asking me would be too embarrassing and, as far as she is concerned, I happen to be her rival for Edge's affections. Lymle is even younger than her and her only crush was Faize—kind of a sad ending for that little romance—so no help there, either. Sarah's clueless and so is Meracle."

"And it never occurred to her that there is a whole planet full of women conveniently at hand?" The words came out sarcastically: it seemed like such an obvious solution and he was forced once more to entertain the idea that perhaps Reimei wasn't nearly as clever as she had been made out to be.

Myuria—infuriating woman, Arumat noted—laughed at him again. "You don't know much about how women think, do you? You can't ask a stranger how to win a man—that sort of confession is sacrosanct to girls. Sharing it with someone you didn't know would just be wrong. It's personal."

Arumat stared at her blankly. A headache was building in his temples, reminding him that, while this little chat was a mildly interesting diversion from boredom in that it spurred his imagination to new heights in devising ways to kill the posse of fools he was now running around the universe with, it was also aggravating to the nth degree. He was really regretting not just shoving the busty symbologist out the door at the first opportunity.

"Since she didn't have anyone to ask, Reimei's decided that she would just figure it out on her own. Edge has proven oblivious to her advances—though I did warn her that she shouldn't have be so dead set against Edge seeing her in the shower if she planned on snaring him later, since it would just make him leery of spending time with her in any sort of intimate setting—so she has to make do with the other men on the ship. And I'm telling you Arumat, that girls like Reimei don't go planetside to seduce some strange man in some wild scheme to get more experienced."

The last bit was tacked on when the redhead noticed that Arumat was opening his mouth to comment about Reimei's attack on the men of the Calnus. The Eldarian's jaws snapped back together with an audible click, but the ex-captain couldn't suppress the scathing look he gave the symbologist.

"Anyway, that leaves just you and Bacchus. Bacchus's current body presents an immediate problem in Reimei's plans."

"So I'm just the last resort when everything else has failed?" He had meant to say it more sarcastically, but it came out bitterly and the redhead noticed.

"She knew you were the best option from the start, but it's hard to come to terms with that sometimes, given how far removed you are from anything like Edge."

Arumat gazed levelly at Myuria for a beat, than commented in a dry voice, "that's probably the closest you've ever come to actually complimenting me."

The Morphus laughed and tapped him on the chest with one finger. "Sad, isn't it? But you have to admit that you were, and still are, a bit of a social idiot. I couldn't say anything to you without risking being shoved into a wall and breaking a nail."

He didn't even bother to demand if she was mocking him; he already knew she was. Instead, the Eldarian gave a short snort of derision—he knew better than to believe that the redhead would worry overmuch about the state of her nails since, despite all appearances, she didn't actually spend very much time primping in front of a mirror—and commented without a hint of remorse, "so you saw that."

"When you shoved Edge into the wall? Of course; I heard the crates fall and Meracle yelling, so I came to see what was the matter. You and the blond just happened to beat me to it. It gave me something to laugh about for weeks."

The Morphus slid off his bed and stood gracefully, smiling at the memory. She glanced down at him and spoke: "so now you know about Reimei. I don't care what you do either way; it's up to you how you want to deal with her. With all of your years of military experience, you ought to be able to come up with a strategy to use against one woman." Her eyes twinkled merrily as she said it. Arumat sighed; he was being mocked. Again. He didn't have time to dwell on it, though, because she suddenly bent down and pressed her lips against his cheek in the same spot Meracle had earlier. Her pink hair fell around them like a veil and the Morphus's scent—something light and rich and sweet and sensual all at the same time—wrapped around him and he was drowning. He inhaled deeply, drawing the smell into his lungs, and Myuria withdrew and sauntered casually back to the door.

"Think about it," she tossed off-handedly over her shoulder, running one hand through her hair to settle it back into its usual order, and then she was gone. The thick metal plate of the door slid back into place with a soft metallic hiss.

Arumat frowned at the door, his cheek tingling and his nose still full of the smell of her. His headache redoubled. At least he wasn't bored any more.