Unit Lyra

There was a golden opportunity with references and you took it <3

The eerie sound of noiseless silence sat heavily on the room. Wafting through the vastness of the space keeping a single entity company, a lone Lyra. A series of strings looped around poles that lined the sides of the training room. Small bells hung from every string. The point was to get from one side of the room to the other without ringing the bells. She'd gone through three times now. Each time only a shade faster than the last. Practice made perfect, or so the humans said, so she thread her foot through the first hole only to be interrupted by the shush of the door opening. She pulled her foot back and watched the individual step foot in her temporary home. Eyes followed but did not greet them, "did you need something?"

"I'm quite aware," Lyra nodded and pushed the nunchuck that controlled her character’s movement towards Lansing’s little identifier. It floated in the distance as Lyra had wandered away from the group. Or rather, the group had wandered away from her. Lyra was too busy checking each and every room.

According to Lansing’s screen, the horde had gathered around their characters. Whoever played Coach’s character was down too leaving Ellis’ player to fend for their downed.

Of course Lyra had been left to save them.

"Scrubs," Ellis’ player was talking over the speakers. What did that mean? Was he addressing Lyra? That seemed to insinuate she scrubbed bathrooms. Hardly the case, the two roommates had employed the FILSS cleaning company. So far they’d been reliable, but that didn’t stop Lyra from inspecting their work afterwards.

Lyra didn’t respond, she never did. Lansing had the occasion retort, but mostly the two women kept to themselves.

She fired several shots into the horde, Nick was Lyra’s character. He was the best in her opinion. Well put together, sleek, and he didn’t always have something to say. Something Ellis was not. Both Ellis and his character always had these little comments and stories to tell and say; which was why Lyra muted the speakers most of the time.

Nick sprinted up to Rochelle - Lansing’s character. Also a very good character. The character was always the one who ended Ellis’ nonsense. Making use of her first aid kit, Lyra healed Lansing and the two battled through the horde.

Lyra’s choice of weapon was a shotgun, Lansing? Lansing had chosen a melee weapon - the Katana.

Their last game, Lansing had gotten her hands on a pan. It seemed impractical at first, but the weapon was just as capable of decapitation as a shotgun.

"Shit fuck! Shoot the fucking tank! Get the tank! Oh my god! Oh my god! Fucking shoot the fucking tank! Come fucking shoot the fucking—"

Lyra muted the speakers. Idiot.

Nick raised his gun and fired several shots. Coach was still down, and Ellis was too busy trying to gain stats on the board to care about the other player. Without a sufficient weapon, Lansing took it upon herself to save Coach. “Why do we play with Ellis? He is annoying.”

"He can hear you," Lansing nodded to the speaker.

Lyra unmuted it for a second and sure enough, “wow! What the fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck!”

Lyra muted him again.

"Fascinating," she continued to work away on the tank. "I vote, in the future we play just the two of us, or without Ellis."

Lansing unmuted the speakers again, “Wow! Shut the fuck up! Fuck you! Fuck you both! You know what fuck each —”

The woman on the screen echoed Charleston not three seconds after he'd said her line. He'd been doing this on and off for the past three hours. Apparently he knew all the lines of the series by heart. It was getting rather annoying as he couldn't restrain himself, but he couldn't get through a sentence without stuttering. Lyra just wanted to watch the show.

"May I ask how many times you've watched this?" She spoke to the tv, but it was fairly obvious she was talking to childlike agent to her right.

"A-a-a-a few t-t-times," he nodded as an underline to his point. She'd be willing to bet it was a bit more than a few times, humans weren't capable of such memory, he must have watched the show obsessively.

That in itself was a strange notion, to obsess over such a bad soap. Surely there were better shows out there to obsess about. It was already a bit of an embarrassment that she found The Vampire Diaries worthwhile entertainment. The atrocity that played across their shared screen was even worse than a pair of immortal brothers in love with a meager human. A meager human who couldn't fend for herself and screamed "help me" at any given chance. She also had an penchant for getting into trouble.

"I don't understand why you like this show so much," she picked up the dvd case from the table. 

Desperate Housewives.

The tacky cover for the even tackier show gleamed back at her. "It-it-it-it's a phenomenal sh-sh-show," Charleston leaned in closer to the tv. "J-j-just wait....Ly-Ly-Lynette's a-about to come - to come in."

Lyra had the covers pulled up to her chin, Winter, Lyra thought was the worst time of the year. It was unnervingly cold and shunned Lyra like she had shunned everyone else. It was hypocritical but she didn’t like being treated the way she treated others. She didn’t like this feeling of coldness when it was thrust upon her. The fact that she had to endure it year after year was not appreciated either.

Her body was wound up tight, knees brought up to her chest, barely kissing the points of her elbows. Her arms were bent upwards clutching at the duvet.

Calvin lay across from her on the bed. He was looking at the ceiling and she was looking at him. Her small toes warmed by the thin heat that came from his body. How nice, human body warmth was always so comforting.

She tucked herself in further. The heater was broken, and Lyra had convinced Calvin that she was totally and completely capable of fixing it on her own. They didn’t need to call any electricians. Lyra knew how to work a manual.

It had been three days and the heater had yet to be fixed. Something they’d argued about just yesterday.

His beating heart was a steady rhythm to which hers could easily match. The heavy thumps only broken by their slow breathing.

"I love you" he blurt out.

Her mind immediately went blank, and then: shit. Lyra liked Calvin. That’s as much as she was willing to admit. She liked waking up to his sleeping form and going to bed beside his warmth. She liked talking to him about books, and movies, and television shows. He was very good at painting her nails...But did she love him? Her heart was so wrapped up in these ties that she didn’t even know her own emotions. Did she love him?

She couldn’t answer him. She most definitely couldn’t say the words back, nor could she hurt him. So she fell back on what she knew, on what was easy.

"I-I-I-I-t means th-th-they’re having a-a lot of feelings I-I-I-I think," Indus pointed to the small grey tag at the bottom of the text post. The entire post read:

‘OMG SO DEAD RIGHT NOW, DELENA KISS!!!1!’

As if that wasn’t a give away to how excited the person writing this was, they’d decided to continue their blurb in the tags.

‘#OTP TO END ALL OTPS, #DELENA, #MY BODY WAS NOT READY #I’M DYING #SEND HELP #CAN’T WITH FEELS’

These people sounded annoying and obnoxious. They didn’t even know how to form proper grammatical sentences and yet Lyra had seen three posts already berating another blogger about the difference between ‘they’re’ and ‘their’. Why was Indus showing her this nonsense? It had zero relevance to either of their lives.

"B-B-B-B-Bismarck showed it to me," Indus looked up at Lyra, obviously pleased with himself that he’d been the one to show Lyra this atrocity. Her face remained impassive, but at least she knew now where this ‘tumblring’ disease had originated.

"S-See, thi-this is Bismarck here," he pointed to a link reading ‘gee-whiz-mark-2941’ a ridiculous name almost as bad as her ‘Lilah’.

"A-a-a-and this one, this i-i-s Peter" he points to a second url. It was completely obvious to Lyra that this was Peter, he was one of two people who was following this tumblr blog Indus had made for her. If it weren’t for Indus none of them would have known Lyra had even gotten herself one of these ridiculous blogs. So it had to be either Bismarck or Peter, and she’d assumed the AI wouldn’t have gone with the url with the puns.

Lyra looked away from the agent, anywhere but at the dark intelligent eyes that glared back at her under the long unkempt strands of hair.

Disappointment 

What an ugly word. Lyra was not a disappointment. How dare she, how dare Madison even suggest that Lyra was anything but triumphant in her endeavors. She was hurt, more so than anything anyone could say to her.

A disappointment.

Spat out like excess saliva. Apparently, Lyra wasn't even worth the effort of an explanation, she was simply a disappointment and nothing more.

Her teeth and clenched together in anger. Not even Jackson had had the audacity to call her a disappointment. Lyra was anything but a disappointment. She was not a disappointment. She was not. She was not. She was not. Lyra wanted to hit the agent, more than she had ever wanted to hit Pegasus for his lustful desire for emotions.

Lyra whipped around to face Madison full on. "Disappointed?" She bit back the extent of her anger, but it was there, lurking in the shadow of her response. "I did everything I could in that pit, I saved more people than you could have. Disappointed? I would like to see you do half the things I have done. How dare you accuse me of such a thing." She'd grown angry as each word spilled from her lips.

Lyra frowned. She didn't even know this agent, was Lyra famous? Was this primal fanatic adoration? Or was the agent truly genuinely serious?

Her eyes narrowed at the agent; flickering between both eyes she searched for some telltale twitch that proclaimed her lies, or the insincerity of her words. She found none, but Lyra still refused to believe it. They didn't know each other, how could you love someone you didn't know?

"Are you feeling alright Agent?" Perhaps she had mistaken Lyra for someone else, that seemed the only logical explanation. "Perhaps I should take you to the medical bay," yes, maybe she was experiencing the same darkly twisted hallucinations Jackson had.

"Come I will--" Lyra gestured down the hall in the direction of the medical bay.

"No Lyra, I'm--"

Lyra didn't want to hear it, it didn't matter what the agent wanted to say or what she was about to. She'd already convinced herself of Olympia's illness. Rather than dealing with the woman's emotions, Lyra reached for her arm and pulled her down the hall. "Are you feeling any other strangeness?" she spoke over the other woman, her mind raced faster than her words, drowning out any attempts Olympia made at interrupting her, "upset stomach, fever, headache, sore muscles..."

That almost sounded like a jingle. Nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea...

Lyra preened silently. Her face an impassive challenge that said 'I'm ready for this, what's next?' She didn’t want to give the old man the impression that she actually cared or worse yet, the impression that she enjoyed herself.

She rested her hands on her hips and watched as the Agent hobbled over to stand on the left of her. A large mirror reflected their images back at them. Lyra an unmoving presence and Bismarck…massaging his leg. He really should have been taking it easier. If Charleston had been any easier to understand, Lyra would have gone to him instead. Alas, Charleston’s stuttering was frustrating to decipher and Lyra was not interested in that task today.

"You ready for this kiddo?" Bismarck smiled at her in the mirror, they were moving on to the next set of moves. A steady trickle of sweat lined his forehead and temples. Giant sweat marks formed darkened circles on his chest back and beneath his arms. He smelled.

And yet the only thing that annoyed Lyra was the fact that he retained the need to call her ‘kiddo’ if he continued in such a manner, she would make an official complaint to Concord.

Lyra nodded, “Yes.”

"Alright so first you have to pop it, and then lock it…" he cycled through the two movements, stumbling a bit on the pop. Maybe it was his hip. Lyra followed his movements effortlessly. Was this supposed to be hard?

"And next we polk-a-dot-it" he waggled his fingers, the small movement making him chuckle. She sighed, was he going to move through all the dance moves so slowly? Maybe she really should have gone with Charleston as her teacher.

Lyra bit down on her emotions manifested in her cheeks and ripped to shreds by the pressure of her clamped jaw. What a time to say such things when Lyra had wanted to tell Madison just the contrary.

It hurt, like a sharp pin prick through her ice cold heart. It felt like it had stopped beating. Beat. beat. break.

Perhaps Lyra had been too distrustful. She'd held back her emotions, held back her secrets, damned them all up behind a brick wall she'd built herself. There had been so many opportunities she could have let Madison in. At the coffee shop last week, when they'd visited the movies two days ago....last night when they'd lay in each others arms...

Lyra had stayed quiet listening to intermingled throbbing of their hearts and the soft cadence of Madison's voice getting quieter and slower in exhaustion. So sweet it had been, so soft. So much different from the usual abrasiveness the girl donned....

Her fists clenched together, rounded nails digging into the flesh of her palm. They'd never fought like this before and yet now...

It was Lyra, of course it had been Lyra. Her fault, she was never really good at the emotions thing anyways.

And before Lyra could speak, could admit any part of herself that would change Madison's mind; the other woman had stormed off. Lyra swallowed, yet another person she had pushed away.