After The Discovery

Stitched together by some miracle of glue and porcelain, the pale teal mug was stranded at the far side of a messy desk, lined with a film of scattered papers that had no beginning or end save for the demarcated edges of the table, pinned down by; a set of sleek new thin-tipped pens, a cluster of leather-bound and paperback books, a series of notebooks with an earthy brown cover, some of which were gaping open, a cassette with an abdomen gaping open.
"After their dissatisfaction with our treatment with captured soldiers, they've seemingly taken a stance politically against the inhumane treatment of enemy soldiers by our nation. Typical, latching on to a vulnerable moment like war-cleanup to strongarm us into relinquishing control over manufacturing in the border region. We promised them a handful of months, and they've shortened it to weeks, bastards."
"You shouldn't insult them like that. We would have done the same."
"Yes, that's exactly why it burns me up so damn much."
Kajiko nestled his fingers between two long strands of hair, twisting them about each other in frustration. He didn't look like a military officer, but once his eyes peeked out from between the long wavy bangs that usually dropped across his forehead, the cool sharpness of their shape related a concentrated ambition that couldn't have belonged to any other profession, besides maybe mercenaries. There were rumours he had once travelled as one, too.
Pushing his military cap down, Kajiko turned to fiddle with his glasses, cleaning them with a pale blue square of velvety material.
"Well, that's the pulse report out of the way, anyway. You're being sent with the usual suspects down across the border. There's rumours a splinter of former army personnel from Rusvi are stationed there, imbedded as agricultural landowners that are also kind enough to hand out drug-filled rations to all the poor citizens. Basically, we need you to search and destroy."
"Who am I searching for."
"Their leader."
"Who am I destroying."
"Their leader."
"Hmph."
"Don't get too upset."
"It's easy enough. Why am I going?"
"Hey, don't overestimate your importance. That being said, even the highest regarded officers have to come out on banal missions sometimes. It's got to do with boring old paperwork and laws, so don't concern yourself with it."
"Yet, I never see you out in the field. Perhaps that's indicative of something else, though."
"Just what are you insinuating... get out of here. You're to set off immediately, anyway."
Fyodor turned his back to Kajiko, leaving him standing between the long shafts of tangerine light filtering in from the vast, empty sky outside the military headquarters' intricate walls. Around them were heaving, magnificent rows of immaculately cleaned tomes filled with any subject you could think of as appealing to a military officer, with the dark oak shelves they were on almost creaking with age-old weariness. Fyodor's looming figure cut a dark shadow at the doorway, as he stood and waited a moment, before relenting to the notion that Kajiko had nothing further to say to him, and leaving in a hurry down the ornate marble stairs just outside the velvet-carpeted hall.
Fyodor was expecting something, even a passing mention, of that strange town he had called the Office of War about, but it seemed that nobody wanted to talk about it.
Or nobody knew about it.
Either way it perplexed and worried him.
Fantastical occurrences weren't anything all that fantastical anymore, not since the last war, but Fyodor couldn't shake the unreality of what had led him there, and the vast fear that had clutched his heart like barbed wire when he had laid eyes so recklessly upon the thing.
Everybody knew that it was suicide, condemnation to eternity in a mysterious hell to gaze directly upon a God.
Fyodor felt no different than usual.
Perhaps that effect wears off once the corpse has started rotting.
Well, whatever. He had work to do, something tangible and important, with lives at stake. It was more than could be said of aimless wondering about a subject he knew nothing about.
As he planted his metal boot on the final, sleek white step, a darting figure stopped at his side.
For a moment, Fyodor thought it was Kajiko, but there was no way he would run down so recklessly like that, especially to follow somebody like Fyodor.
And he was right, because the pearly green eyes, a hazel similar to his, belonged to his assistant, who was certainly prone to rushing around everywhere.
"Fyodor, I've got your files!"
"Don't need them."
"Hah!?"
"... I'll take them."
Contrary to popular description as subdued, careful, ditzy but professional, his assistant was harsh, reliable, dangerously unprofessional, and more concerned with her own work than his. The only reason she was so reliable, which most people confuse with being professional, was because she valued her own stake in these affairs so greatly that it would have killed her to put anything than her whole being into it.
Fyodor was more like an extension of that will.
Her bangs didn't reach as far as Kajiko's, but her hair, tied up in thick pigtails that jumped on her shoulders, was certainly longer. Her eyes had that similar sharpness of ambition to them, but somehow, hers were more ferocious than Kajiko.
Fyodor felt that he could predict Kajiko's gaze, whereas Roda's eyes he could barely follow.
As they both entered into the vast entrance hall, glittering with intricate gold weavings on the walls, chandeliers still busily pouring scattered sepia light down into the large chamber, Roda began detailing what exactly he could expect to find in the regional town.
Her steps were light and sharp, whereas Fyodor's boots pounded a heavy rhythm into the carpet.
For some reason, now of all the times he had strolled down the halls of this building, he wondered if it was impolite to wear such heavy footwear inside, and whether he was not contributing to a greater workload for the low-paid cleaners.
"We don't have a name for the place, since it's just outside our borders so it's not on our official records but neither is it on theirs, because until recently it was too small to be worthwhile. Well, the case now is that under the new splinter group's control, they've become a nuisance which is rapidly growing into a threat, and our friendly border nation wants us to secretly take care of it. Since they haven't announced it to anybody but a strict few people stationed there and those higher up that are responsible for cleanup duties, they figure that nobody will need to know who it was that solved the problem for them. That is, it's a job that gets no recognition, because the issue it's solving never existed in the first place."
"I see. Must be a handsome card for us to pull when the time comes, then."
"Well, you would think so."