A/N: I deeply apologize for how late this update is! School has been hard and I've spent the past couple of weeks writing a college English paper. But now it's done and I can finally breathe! Hopefully, I can get back in the kick of writing more of these themes.
Disclaimer: characters not mine.
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Day 3~ Kaleidoscope
By Xsasara
Beauty is almost always in the eye of the beholder. True beauty doesn't have a definition, and colors are never quite the same to every person. Being a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, Caterina knows too well about beauty. Inside and outside the church gleams with pleasant colors, light reds and whites, bronze and silver, browns and tans. While outside reveals blues, greens, yellows...bright, natural colors. The simple tints, a heartbeat away.
Sighing in a frustrated way, Cateringa Sforza rubs at her temples, not really paying attention to the useless argument playing out before her. What a downer on her day.
"I'm not sure why you're so upset at me all of a sudden, Kate!" the professor, always seemingly calm and sofisticated in manner, now spoke with a distastfulness as he glares at the holografic nun with hands positioned at her waist, tapping her foot as if she were scolding her very own child.
"You know very well what it was you did, William! Best you admit it yourself!" Kate raises her voice, crossing her arms, glaring right back.
Honestly, Caterina thinks, one would think this to be a middle school classroom. She watches in slight amusement at their fight. Caterina know it has something to do with another invention of the Professor's. She also knows how much Kate hates to be around when he "tests" them.
This little invention, however not even considered an invention to some standards, has been the cause of most of the discomfort the whole day. Personally, Caterina hasn't seen the "dangers" and fussing enough to really bother looking into.
"It was /just/ a color telescope!" the professor makes a note to stress the 'just' in his sentense, making it out as if Kate's reaction is over the top.
Which Caterina knows very well it is. Despite Kate looking as young as she did, she's known William for years. Surely she'd be a little used to his random inventing by now.
Apparently not.
"/Just/ a color telescope?" Kate practically shouts this time, "well that little /thing/ of yours nearly brought down the Iron Maiden!" Her picture distorts for a moment, before flashing back into focus.
"Ohh, I'm sure /that/ wasn't the reason, my dear Kate. Surely something much more powerful than a 'little' telescope can bring down such a ship as mighty fine as yours." The professor attempts a smile of consideration, despite Kate's angered face.
"Don't try fancy talking your way out of this, William!" she threatens, pointing a finger in his direction and narrowing her eyes, "I never want to see that thing again on my ship. How could you be so careless?"
Caterina looks to the professor suddenly, eyes growing wider and hand moving to stifle a small chuckle. So /that/ was the cause of all this trouble, eh? Looking in the professor's left hand, she eyes the mysterious cylinder object curiously. The color, fine and gold as it is, has dust marks where it apparently hit some sort of mechanical part of the ship. How'd he ever manage to get it back? Caterina wondered to herself, ignoring Kate's open mouthed gaze in her direction when hearing the interjection.
"Pardon me, Lady Caterina, for my rudeness, but it seems as if you find my ship troubles to be humorous?" the girl inquires, raising an eyebrow and temporarily forgetting her anger at a now nervous looking professor.
Caterina immediately realizes her mistake and her eyes soften slightly. Sister Kate hmphs a little at the gesture, not buying it one bit.
"Father Tres," Caterina calls, motioning her hand towards a corner of the room, where emotionless male stood almost invisibly quiet and still. Moving his enhanced eyes towards his lady, he speaks at her side, "My lady has requested me presence." Looking down at her from the side, Caterina can feel herself growing strangely warm at the gaze, noticing Sister Kate giving William a strange look.
Shaking her head slightly, she holds her hand outward towards William's. "The color telescope, if you will, please." She firmly says, resisting the urge to roll her eyes as she sees his restrained look of disappointment mixed with dismay. Nevertheless William shakes off the feeling, holding his head high and moving directly in front of her, giving her the politest of bows.
"As you wish, your grace," he says a bit flatly, obviously annoyed at Sister Kate's lack of a sense of humor, and feels a bit on edge, but realizes his mistake. Respecting the wishes of the Vatican always came first before his little inventions, even if he could not always stick to that. He sets the little device on her desk and instantly turns away, bowing again at Sister Kate despite her grumpiness. As the door softly closes, Sister Kate curtsies herself before dissolving into nothing.
Now completely alone with her bodyguard, Caterina stares at the object rather curiously, not wanting Tres to confiscate it just yet. Using a frail hand to scratch over the carvings on the side, she holds the cylinder object in her hand and removes her monocole. Bright colors invaded her left eye and she blinked back for a moment, before sitcking the cylinder closer to her face. It was like stained glass, only plastic? Except she could see small beads twist around inside when she moves her fingers to shift it. She's intranced and almost forgets Tres standing there until she feels someone brush her red sleeve.
"Requesting information, Lady Caterina." Although his phrase is still robotic enough, she can tell by his tone that he has once again turned off his emotions inhibitor when talking to her. She wonders why she's the only one he does this for, but never really wants to question him about it. After all, Tres still has secrets he keeps from her, but it's the trust she allows in herself and in him that makes their relationship almost beyong human speech. She remembers he wants an answer, but almost doesn't speak because of her obvious redness in the face.
This has to be one of the few times she is thankful Tres is a cyborg and not at all considered "up to date" on forms of interaction with others. Frankly, she still hasn't figured out how he gets along with Abel so well (so to speak).
"It's nothing, Tres," she shakes off, taking her eyes away from the entrancing coloration. She looks up to give Tres a soft glance and wonders how he's taking her rather rare behavior.
I must seem so foolish she scolds herself, first I turn red, and now I don't have anything to say back to him. Obviously, Tres is patient enough to wait for orders, but an idea cannot help cross over her mind.
"Take a look through this," she says, not really meaning it to sound demanding, though years of habitual forcefulness leaks into those words when she feels Tres reach for the object in her smaller hands.
"I see no reason to, My lady." The cyborg doesn't flinch when Caterina rolls her eyes, but he can't help being logical about something like this. Fascinating colors or not, Tres finds no figure in the point of Caterina's new excitable activity.
Blues and reds meet his artificial eyes as he stares quite breiftly through the small looking glass, noticing the beads inside shift as well under his metallic touch. They move so quickly, each color apprearing and disappearing the second his hand shifts again. They are brief, but they are beautiful. Tres doesn't understand.
"You don't have to always have a reason for admiring beauty, Tres," the woman of steel says somewhat absently, tilting her head to the side and gazing upon the featurs of her bodyguard as he continues to twist the object in front of his eyes.
Tres tenses after she speaks, immediately taking the object away from his eye. He frowns vaguely, and Caterina wonders if she has upset him in some way. But of course, where would the fault lie?
Finally lifting herself from the chair, she slowly takes the object from him, surprised that her hands had to almost pry at it. Is his grip really this strong? Locking eyes with the Dutches of Milan, a softness comes and goes in a small incrimint of time, leaving Caterina to do nothing but share in his struggle to regain "lost" emotion. That color in which she finds fascinating doubles with the understanding she grasps whenever his inhibitor reaches a breaking point in his system.
That invisible color shared in the kaleidoscope magnifies in the office when Caterina finally clears her throat and sits back down with the toy, narrowing her eyes in thought at what it seems to symbolize. Perhaps it's significance is fake and unimportant, perhaps not. But the rooms spins with the fleeting emotion of her cyborg friend, a kaleidoscope of color indeed.
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A/N: I had a rather hard time finishing this little oneshot. Perhaps it's because it's been a while since I've updated and forgot how the original plot went. For starters, the ending did not come out the way I originally wanted it to, but that seems to happen in a lot of stuff I write nowadays. I apologize for OOC-ness on Caterina and Tres' part. I'm new at writing for them.