Just an orange foxxo :D

It’s been a week since Fenrir arrived at Rainbow’s main HQ at Hereford.

Reth liked the codename that the new guy chose for himself. Fenrir from the fabled Norse legend stories, a wolf that could devour both heaven and earth alike and cause massive apocalyptic events. Feared for his name and reputation, how the ol’ wolf got despised by gods and mortals alike.

Except, this new operator feels like he’d topple down if she nudged him slightly, probably.

Fenrir, or Emil as his real name, doesn’t talk as much. He was shunned by almost half of the team, and the rest either offered him friendship or avoided interacting much with him. An overworked man who barely even sleeps in his own room and prefers to rest on his messy desk, observation papers written in Swedish scattered across the surface of his workbench. He eats almost alone most of the time in the cafeteria, with the exception of either Kapkan or Stena would sit together with him and keep the chemist company.

[There was a moment when she heard Nomad talking to Kaid in Arabic during training, and she thought it was just a normal conversation. But as soon as she heard Fenrir and Thermite’s names in there, she figured out they were talking shit.]

With that in mind, she figured out that she wanted to keep the anxiety-riddled man company by—

“No, I don’t need a test subject for now.” Emil didn’t move his head from soldering a circuit board, his voice remained flat and very much tired. Might be because of the damage that Mike caused on his F-NATT device. “I’ve tested the current formula of the fear toxin on myself, and that was good enough for Jordan and Mira.”

…Welp, there goes her plan of accompanying the Swedish operator by helping his lab tests.

She sighed softly, and it seemed that her slightly disappointed expression was noticeable to the other, because Emil gestured towards an empty chair near him. “I don’t mind someone to chat, though. Saif is currently on a mission, and it’s been a quiet evening without him.”

Oh, that’s a new information. It's not surprising, considering how Saif was known as the friendliest being in this hostile environment, but still new information regardless.

With slight hesitation, she pulled the chair close to her and sat down, eyes watching the way he tinkered with the gadget’s inner workings. Calloused hands carefully plucking burnt parts with tweezers and replacing them with new ones. No rushed job. Just slow and steady work.

Reth likes watching the process. She enjoys how machineries work and how people handle them. Little screws got put aside, small cables roughly connected with each other, or in this case, how the Dread Mine’s gas canister casing finally got replaced with a newer and possibly stronger one. Everyone’s gadgets and devices are wonderful by themselves, and it made her heart swell up in pride whenever she saw people taking good care of them.

“You look happy.” Emil’s gruff voice snapped her out of her train of thought. His head finally turned to face her. “Something on your mind, hm?”

Reth smiled widely, her fang peeking out. “This is the first time I saw your gadget close by.” She then let out a nervous laugh, her violet contacts avoiding the chemist’s blue eyes. “The last time I saw it, I got sprayed by your fear gas and got myself knocked out until the end of the practice round.”

“I don’t remember you getting knocked out. You were doing well back then.” He followed by a soft mutter of Swedish, probably a swear word. 

“It’s my thing.” It’s her amnesia that prevented her from remembering lots of parts of her day-to-day basis. You possibly have a dissociative disorder, Harry’s voice rang through her mind. “Speaking of well, how’s F-NATT? Did you fix it?”

The mention of his gadget made the chemist shift his attention back to his work desk, examining the circuit board once again. “I’ll run some tests tomorrow. It’s dinner time.” He sat up and stretched his body, she could hear the subtle crackle and pops of the joints. “If I remember correctly, today’s dinner is steak with steamed carrots and broccoli florets.”

Reth groaned, the previous smile now replaced with a small frown. “I’ll skip. Old man Baker would chase me down to make me eat vegetables.”

Emil raised one of his eyebrows. “That’s unusual, coming from someone with a military background.” The engineer now noticed how tall the chemist was as he came closer. “Now that I think about it, you barely showed up in the cafeteria. What did you eat all this time?”

“Instant cup noodles, my best friend!”

He clicked his tongue; the blue eyes gleamed brighter under the room’s lighting. “Unhealthy. Do you know how much sodium is in there and the health risks if you consume it daily?” Now he reminded her of her late mother, who would nag her whenever she found out about her eating a raw block of instant ramen secretly.

Besides Gustave, Emil’s response is nostalgic to the engineer in a good way.

Another sigh left Reth’s mouth, eyes now shifted to the ground. “Vegetable texture and taste would make me gag. I can’t force them into my mouth unless it’s mashed into other food to mask the yuckiness…” Her voice lowered, thumbs twiddling. A sign of her nervousness.

In all honesty, Reth is embarrassed to tell people about this quirk because of how wildly different people would react to it. Baker went on a rant about how she should’ve gotten her shit together a long time ago and to grow the fuck up, and she decided not to listen to it. Flores was still kind to her, making her try Perico, a Colombian dish consisting of scrambled eggs with chopped vegetables, with the veggies minced more finely than usual. 

[Marius agreed with her since he also can’t stand vegetable texture other than starch roots like potatoes and yams. He just masked his dislike better than her.]

“So you’re telling me…” Emil crossed his arms, tapping his index fingers absentmindedly “...you have food hypersensitivity?” She nodded slowly. He hummed, closing his eyes for a while.

“Emil? You alright?”

“I’m alright, just thinking of something.” She could feel the chemist’s gaze piercing through her. “If I cook you something that wouldn’t make you gag every day, would you eat food properly from now on?”

Blinks. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me right correctly, Espion.” More blinking gestures from the younger operator, and he let out a loud, exasperated sigh. Strands of his jet-black hair fell, and he combed them back up with his fingers. “I will keep track of what you like and don’t like in vegetables and run extensive experiments on them in the kitchen. You’ll be my test subject.”

For a normal person, they would be highly suspicious because of that ominous statement alone. This person previously worked for Deimos, blew up a whole site, and developed a gas that possibly would end up with people killing off each other if inhaled for an extended period with an incorrect amount of formula.

Too bad that Reth is not “normal,” in a sense.

“I don’t mind.” She grinned, an honest smile for the other. “When you start?”

“The kitchen beside the cafeteria would be free of use around nineteen. Walking now would get us extra spare time to talk during the trip.”