quite possibly the start of a new series, though not entirely sure if i will be continuing this yet. enjoy if you're reading!
She was like a hurricane. He didn't know what had been said to offend her – Pascale, the poor sod who had the misfortune of being the victim of her extraordinary fit of temper, wasn't exactly the brightest of the new batch of Generals and barely ever said anything substantial enough to cause joy or grief to anyone. As far as Mika had seen, he was more of a workhorse type – vocabulary consisting of the twenty words he needed to survive, and he communicated the rest as eloquently as a dog. He was thick-set, heavily muscled and his heart was in the right place; he had proved useful to a variety of masters on a variety of occasions, but he seemed painfully unlikely to ever achieve anything out of the ordinary on his own initiative. He was a perfect foot-soldier, but nothing else. Perhaps that was what had made her take such a dislike towards him, Mika considered, but this whirlwind of fury seemed an overreaction if she merely resented his lack of ambition.
Watching her as she drew in close to him, spitting insults, shoving him back, baiting him, Mika thought how hard he'd hit her if he had been the one in the young General's position. She was ridiculously impudent – how dare an assistant behave this way towards one of her betters? – and he was tempted to step in and tell her so, but then stopped himself. The whole arrangement was distantly fascinating. Pascale backed away, unable to stop himself from shifting back on his left foot as she faced him up. She must have been a third of his size, tall for a woman but with a waist the size of one of the General's arms – and yet, faced with her tirade, this hulk of a man shrunk back, unwilling to do anything to stop her (Mika supposed he couldn't have said anything to stop her, what with his incredibly limited use of words). Laughable, really. There was something terribly human and uneducated about striking a defenceless woman, but this little slip of an assistant certainly did not qualify for that category. He couldn't tell from this far away whether she was fully-blooded or not, and he couldn't remember if he had ever been told her name or who her master was, but he would not have placed her as a half-vampire from her sheer lack of fear. She simply didn't seem to care at all if Pascale Reuitter decided to knock her out for speaking to him like he was a speck of dirt in front of a whole hall of his peers. She didn't care to look around to see if anyone was watching them. There was a spark of fire in her eyes that simply didn't care about anything outside of her current battle. Fascinating, Mika thought, taking another sip of bat broth. For a second he wondered if she was mad, but then he was sure she wasn't – there was a difference between being mad and being wild, careless and frustrated.
Mika was entirely disappointed when the ageing Luca Alsgaard approached the pair.
"You keep better control of her, Luca," Pascale muttered gruffly, glaring at the young assistant over her mentor's shoulder.
"You keep better control of your hands, Reuitter," the girl spat, unaffected by her mentor's presence. Mika could see it in her stance – this was her battle, not Luca's, and she resented the interference, but wasn't disrespectful enough to tell him as such. "And stay away from me from now on."
"I'm sorry," Luca interrupted, holding his hands up as a makeshift surrender for his assistant, who folded her arms – surrender had clearly been the last thing on her mind. He looked completely weary. Alsgaard had been a wonderful General in his time, or so the story was told. Even Mika was too young to remember any such brilliance on Luca's part. All he really knew about him was that they avoided sending him on many missions now, preferring the younger Generals. The Princes called upon the services of the older man only exceptionally occasionally when his extensive experience might come in useful. Mika, a young General himself, felt bad for the old vampire, but couldn't help wondering how he had ended up with such a spitfire of an assistant. Pascale had accepted Luca's apology on her behalf, grateful to be free of the situation, and was scuttling out of the Hall, vaguely perturbed by his encounter with the fierce young vampiress.
"What is wrong with you?" Luca growled, the moment he felt the eyes of the Hall were turned away from them. She had the decency to look a little ashamed at her own behaviour, but there was still a glint of mischief in her eyes when Luca averted his. "I warn you, Arra, your temper will be the death of you one of these nights. You expect me to believe that The Lady of the Wilds put up with such shameful behaviour when you were her assistant?"
"I never had any need of it then," she replied, unapologetic. "Reuitter won't cross me again after all, will he?"
Not bothering to dignify that with a response, her exhausted mentor slapped a hand over his eyes in total exasperation. He waved his other hand at her as a gesture of complete despair, leaving the Hall with a flourish of his long cloak. Mika distantly realized that nobody else was still looking at their interaction, but he couldn't tear his eyes away – especially when she caught him looking and challenged him with a cocked eyebrow and a daring quirk of her lips. When he couldn't help but chuckle, she let her withering glare drop, giving him one last look over before following her mentor out of the arched doorway.
"Fascinating," Mika chuckled to himself out loud, not concerned about anyone else at the table hearing him. His bat broth had gone cold and he no longer cared – he had found something far more interesting than bat broth to focus his mind on.