//------------------------------//
// 3: Lost in Translation 
// Story: Feathered Hearts - Continuation and Chronicles 
// by Firesight 
//------------------------------//

“I’m really hungry,” Fortrakt muttered as he stood with her at their guard post, reaching back to rub his belly with his talons. “So why are we in this shift and not the earlier one? I bet Schultz is eating up all the meat right now. He’s probably laughing his flanks off, maybe even trying to eat everything and leave nothing for us.”

“Schultz? That overweight oaf? He hears nothing and he knows nothing except food,” Gilda rolled her eyes, to some snickers from her next two nearest decade soldiers. “They should have made him a chef, not a Second Spear.”

“Great. So once he’s had his fill, there’ll be nothing left for us, then,” Fotrakt groused.

“I’m pretty sure that the Kingdom ordered quite a large amount,” Gilda replied dryly, not letting her eyes off the tables set in front of them, watching the present humans. Their orders were to simply stand guard and observe, but to take no action unless the humans attacked the Queen—which even after that short time, she found highly unlikely given it would quickly result in all assailants dead, courtesy of the Queen’s personal mage and red-armored Praetorian Guard—or they were ordered by Giraldi or some other authority to do something else. 

“You think so?” Fortrakt asked dubiously.

“I know so. And not even Schultz’s enormous appetite could eat it all. We’ll have our share when our shift is over. Until then, stop salivating like a starved cub and stand straight, Gladio!”

Fortrakt harrumphed. “I’m not salivating.”

“Sure you weren’t. And besides, I thought you weren’t a fan of cooked meat?” Gilda pointed out.

“Well, yeah, I mean, I don’t really prefer cooked meat, but I’m so hungry, I’d eat anything now!” His stomach audibly grumbled to emphasize the point.

“Tough. It’s your own fault,” she reminded him with an amused smile. Fortrakt hadn’t eaten lunch, saying he wanted to save his stomach for a savory meat dinner, and he was now feeling it. Ever since he was assigned with the rest of her decade to stand guard over the dining hall, he had spent most of his time with his eyes closed, beak slightly open as he took deep breaths, as if trying to absorb the aromas in the air. “Next time, at least have a snack.”

It was nearly evening by then; a few hours had passed since the humans arrived. Their Ambassador and his entourage had been given a tour of the city while Gilda, Fortrakt, and other Guards in Giraldi’s unit were assigned to stand guard around the prepared receiving area. The air now smelled of wood smoke and roast as apparently, the humans preferred cooked meat instead of raw.

Once more, the Kingdom had accommodated them, leaving Gilda starting to think again that the whole deal was a bit one-sided. But as a mere Decanus in charge of but nine other soldiers, she knew her opinion counted for little with either the Queen or the rest of the Kingdom’s leadership as she took in the scene in front of her. From the way the seating arrangements were done, she knew which humans were higher in their hierarchy by how close they were sitting to Queen Molyneux. 

The Queen herself looked regal and confident in her elevated chair at the end of the central table, draped with Royal Blue cloth under a gilded hide that had been polished to a shine. Her feathers were dyed and styled in dark blue and orange, and she had golden feathers dipped in diamond dust adorning the sides of her crown, giving her head some additional sparkle. 

On her left sat Salva Strenus, her Ambassador to Equestria, who had acted as liaison to the humans and escorted them to the Kingdom all the way from the Portal. Along his left side, in turn, were the humans, the nearest being the human ambassador—what was his name? She heard it once but couldn’t remember; it was too unlike either pony or griffon names to easily recall—who clasped forelegs with the Tribune, followed by the rest of their diplomats and civilians, including Marco. On the Queen’s right were the High Lords and Ladies, all dressed in white cloth secured with golden buttons on their shoulders.

Gilda took one last look towards Marco, who was sitting beside the red-haired Chris. Both were done eating and were talking animatedly with each other; the female Tara then joined in a few moments later. Gilda narrowed her eyes as she observed them. She still didn’t like him, but at least the brown ape was behaving.

The surrounding tables were occupied by griffon and human soldiers; the latter rotating in Turma-sized units to eat every half-hour or so. According  to a passing Wind Knight, the bulk of the human soldiers rode out with the ground coaches and traveled two-fifths of a league away from the city. 

They were apparently building their own encampment, which Gilda hoped to visit and see with her own eyes. When asked about the diplomats and the non-uniformed humans, a Fortis Knight advised that the humans had reserved a place for them and their armed escorts to stay somewhere on the Third Level, which contained the markets, hotels, and entertainment areas.

Gilda was now definitely sure those black tubes the human soldiers brought were weapons, given they carried them even during dinner. So far, they only seemed comfortable enough talking amongst themselves, though they did give some of the griffon soldiers a look; their gazes especially setting on the Wind Knights with their scimitars and crossbows.

They were... raucous, was how she could best describe them. Not violent, though. They hadn’t once made any overly aggressive move or gave off any hostile signals that she could detect. Their body language was similar if not identical to ponies, and though there were almost certainly some nuances she was missing, they were loud and spoke in obnoxious tones. 

She couldn’t tell their ages, and between their identical uniforms and short-cut manes, a whole lot of them looked alike to the point she was having trouble telling them apart except where skin tones were concerned. But given their brashness was definitely something she associated with youthful griffons, she was certain they were generally quite young, and they seemed to denote rank by the darker stripes on their sleeves.

“Hey!” Fortrakt called out. 

Gilda blinked. She looked at her partner, who was staring at her, his head signaling her to move. She was about to ask why when she saw a very happy-looking Schultz and the Guard soldiers who were about to relieve them emerge from the canteen, fresh from their meal.

“There’s our relief! Come on, Gilda, I’m hungry!” Fortrakt all but begged with a fresh rumble of his stomach.

“Alright, alright,” Gilda muttered as the replacement decade arrived and she simultaneously exchanged salutes with their Decanus, the latter to the same depth as befit their identical ranks. “Come on, Guard, fall out and let’s go eat!” she called out to not just Fortrakt, but the other eight members of her decade, who quickly and eagerly did so, chatting amicably amongst themselves.

A short trip later, they were in the temporarily built pantry; a designated eating area for soldiers, which was filled with tables of uncooked meat. At the sight of it, Fortrakt was in awe.

“Ancestors bless us,” he declared, and Gilda was hard-pressed to disagree with the sentiment.

Without preamble, he immediately rushed towards a free seat, leaving Gilda behind. She just snorted and looked around for a moment, seeing a few Talons and Knights around, most likely not appreciative of cooked meats. It took her a moment, but she found a seat next to a male Wind Knight, cleaved off a slice of a freshly killed flying boar (or at least it had been when the preservation spell was applied) with a blade set in the table for the purpose, and then tore off a piece with her beak.

It was blessedly bloody and fatty, and for the first time, Gilda allowed herself to think that maybe the arrival of the humans wasn’t so bad after all.





“Would you give it a rest already?” Gilda declared to Fortrakt as both of them walked out of the pantry. She tried to sound scolding, but she couldn’t keep the smile out of her face as she watched Fortrakt continue singing.

Dinner had been festive—in Gilda’s opinion, far more so than the one with the humans. A few minutes after she had sat down, fresh kegs of mariner rum were opened and someone broke out a lute and began to pluck strings in tune with a lot of common songs the Gauntlet taught: battle songs to keep morale and marching tunes that staved off boredom.

Fortrakt himself had sung together with a young female Talon, who seemed to laugh at all his jokes. Things had gone well enough that he finally asked the eagless if she would be available for a Round; a day where they could ‘spar’. To his delight, she had said yes, and now he was irrepressible.

“March off to the land of ice and snow, where only the bravest griffons go...” Fortrakt continued to sing a marching song, joined in by the rest of the very happy decade, some of whom were leaning on each other and swaying heavily, gorged on meat and drunk on rum. 

“Over land and sea, by blade and bow, rule the skies and the ground below!” they rejoined, then looked expectantly to Gilda, waiting for her to sing the next stanza.

But her beak stayed closed. “Come on, Decanus, join in already!” Fortrakt invited.

Gilda rolled her eyes. “No, Gladio, I won’t make a fool of myself. I already had a bellyful of spontaneous singing during my time in Equestria,” she recalled to an eruption of laughter from her soldiers, to which she then formally dismissed them with an admonishment to sober up, and to make sure they were on time and presentable for roll call the next morning. “Any soldier who is late or unkempt gets latrine duty for a week!” she added, to which her decade only chuckled, in too good a mood to be bothered.

Before leaving, her youngest Spear then teasingly asked her if she’d ever participated in pony singing, to which she responded with an angry glare that silenced him but only caused his smile to broaden as he walked off.

Fortrakt waited until they were gone before speaking again. “Always so strict, Decanus. Maybe you need a pad-warmer to help loosen you up,” he suggested with a glance back at the other two departing griffons of his three-soldier Fuga, who Gilda had already noted seemed to have picked up his casual manner and willingness to tease her. “How about that Wind Knight you sat beside?”

She stopped short and turned to him. “Cub, the sun will melt all the snow in the North before I let you start playing matchmaker for me,” Gilda told him. “Besides, that Wind Knight had a mate. He was wearing a colored primary that wasn’t his.”

“So? I bet you can take her out, and claim him as your own!” he gave her a playful nudge in the side, away from her wing feathers and flight muscles—he’d at least learned his lesson not to touch those, even teasingly.

“Right. Because we don’t know if they’re Uxorem. Or maybe they are just Desponsata and either way, challenging her may just insult him,” an unamused Gilda replied. “Or maybe we don’t live in Imperial times anymore and it’s considered dishonorable to poach mates from other griffons?”

“Oh, come on, Gilda. You have to live a little!” Fortrakt shook his head as they exited the building and headed for the barracks. “For the five moons I’ve known you, I haven’t once seen you spend time with anycreature else. Five moons, and I haven’t seen you even try to look for a tiercel. Or maybe it’s because you’re into eaglesses instead?” Gilda narrowed her eyes at him, and he raised a single set of claws in defense. “Hey, nothing wrong with it if you are.”

“Maybe you ought to worry about your own romantic pursuits before you worry about mine. Or did you forget that I could tell that Talon eagless all your most embarrassing stories? How about I start with the time you tried to impress Giraldi with how fast you could arm your crossbow but then loaded a bolt backwards?” she suggested with a smirk, causing Fortrakt’s cheeks to flush. “That was the best laugh I’d had in months. Or maybe I should tell her how you had a little accident during an afternoon combat drill after you ate too much at lunch?”

Fortrakt looked at her with narrowed eyes and huffed. “You play dirty, Decanus!”

“Only when you get condescending, cub,” Gilda smirked.

Before Fortrakt could reply, they heard someone speaking Equish, and not with Caleponian accents. Gilda and Fortrakt immediately crouched, claws out as they spotted three figures walking towards them. The low lighting made it difficult to discern their features from afar, even with their eagle eyes, but as they approached, Gilda recognized one of them.

“Great,” Gilda muttered darkly as she realized that Marco, Chris and Tara were making their way to them, with the brown-skinned human looking a bit... ruffled. 

“Cool!” Fortrakt rejoined in Equish, leaving Gilda wondering where he’d picked up that particular pony vernacular.

Their presence went initially unnoticed by the three humans. “Come on, Marco, just ignore her,” Chris declared in what Gilda took as a consoling voice.

“I’m trying,” a clearly unhappy Marco muttered in a forlorn tone. “I left her alone at her table, hanging out with you guys. And what does that Whiskey Tango brat do? She rubs it in my face where they placed her!”

“Whiskey Tango?” Tara asked, confused.

“It means ‘white trash’. He learned it from his Marine friends,” Chris replied with a frown, giving Gilda two more unfamiliar terms to catalog. 

White trash? Marine? She knew the latter was a word used by Equestrians in relation to the ocean, but she had no idea how that context was valid here.

“Swear to God, Marco, you hang out way too much with them. Besides, Dana’s a damn brat,” Tara declared, and that word Gilda knew. “She knows how to push your buttons, and she really likes doing it. When you react, she’s just going to do more of it.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t mind her going at me, but she was insulting you guys too,” an unhappy Marco replied, raising Gilda’s estimation of him slightly—at least he was loyal to his friends, unlike Rainbow Dash.

“Yeah, well that’s—hey, Marco! Look!” The red-haired human started pointing one of his spindly digits towards Gilda and Fortrakt. 

Tara looked a moment before she smiled. “Marco! Marco! Here’s our chance!” 

“Chance for what?” Fortrakt asked with a low whisper.

“We’re about to find out,” Gilda answered with a baleful stare at the brown-skinned human leading the group as they approached.

“Hi, there!” Marco greeted with an upraised paw as Gilda and Fortrakt waited, the former disdainfully and the latter expectantly. “Uh, do you two speak our language?”

“Sure do!” Fortrakt answered. Gilda had thought of pretending otherwise to make them go away until his junior partner spoke up in Equish on their behalf, making her want to cuff him, hard.

The human just gave a slightly nervous smile. His eyes flitted between Gilda and Fortrakt repeatedly, the former guessing he recognized her irritation. “Cool! I was just, uh, wondering... me and my friends were hoping to take a few pictures with you guys? I hope that’s okay?”

“We’re not all males,” Gilda replied shortly in the same pony tongue they spoke, but she still winced to hear it—her Equish sounded quite rough after not speaking it regularly for several years. 

She was understood, though. Her statement even earned a laugh from Tara, though much to her growing annoyance, Marco didn’t seem to be discouraged. His smile got even larger as he looked at his female friend.

“Oh you like that, eh?” he asked his female companion.

“Hell, yeah!” Tara replied between her guffaws.

“To be fair, she’s right, Marco,” Chris said with a smile. “They aren’t all ‘guys’.”

Marco responded by sticking his tongue out at both of them before he coughed. Turning back to the griffons, he nodded. “Okay, uh… we’re not trying to offend either of you, I swear! As I was saying, my friends and I were wondering if it was okay if we took pictures of ourselves with such fine and majestic griffons.”

Before Gilda could tell him where to shove it—that was easily the corniest and most condescending thing she’d ever heard!—Fortrakt lit up. “Of course!”

“Fortrakt!”

“Oh, come on Gilda,” Fortrakt replied back in Aeric, nudging his head towards Marco encouragingly. “He called us fine and majestic specimens. That’s a compliment, right? They’re trying to be friendly, so surely you can stand taking a picture with him?”

Marco took a step forward and then knelt down as Gilda stared at him, apprehensive. What was he doing now?

“We come in peace,” he declared as behind him, Gilda noticed Chris grimace as Tara buried her head in her talons—apparently, they found whatever he was doing as annoying and clumsily offensive as she did. “Look, I’m really sorry if calling you a guy offended you.” He then made a loose fist with his blunt talons. “Friends?” He bumped it gently on the side of Gilda’s throat.

There was a sudden sound of air being sucked in as Fortrakt froze and Gilda’s eyes shrank dangerously, her feathers instantly ruffling in warming. Marco’s eyes widened as he wisely backed away as quickly as he could. 

“Holy crap, she looks pissed,” Tara declared, moving fractionally behind Chris.

“What the hell, I thought you said bumping them with your fist was a friendly greeting?” Marco asked.

“I swear, that’s what the Ambassador said,” a suddenly-nervous Chris replied, taking a step back of his own.

Fortrakt blinked. He stepped in front of Gilda, looking between Marco and Chris. “Hold on a minute. What do you mean by... bumping with the fist?” he asked in Equestrian.

Chris looked at him warily. “Um, I kinda asked your Ambassador what’s the best way to greet griffons, and he mentioned that the younger ones seemed to bump each other with their fists as a greeting.”

“Bump fists… oh! You mean like this?” Fortrakt slowly approached the still apprehensive Marco, who comically still had his enclosed fist held out, and the griffon bumped his own fist to the human’s. “The younger cubs will do that, sure—we think they picked it up from ponies—but older griffons prefer to clasp forelegs.” He reared back to demonstrate the gesture by clasping his forelegs together, then offered his right foreleg with his talons open. 

Marco stared at it, but finally duplicated the gesture, grasping Fortrakt’s foreleg only to hiss sharply as avian claws dug in slightly to his soft skin. “Ow…” he said, flexing his dull talons while looking at the red welts that were rising. “Yeah, I think we’ll stick to fist bumps. Forearm clasps with your claws are probably not a good idea on bare skin. We either bow or shake hands, for the record, depending on culture.” He showed the latter gesture by example with Chris, making Gilda realize he meant the same gesture that the human Ambassador had greeted the Tribune with.

“Oh… sorry. I was trying to be gentle.” It was Fortrakt’s turn to apologize as Chris and Tara could only stare, their expression utterly dumbfounded. “I’m sorry for the earlier misunderstanding, but the Equestrian Ambassador is really old,” Fortrakt explained, which earned a hard nudge from Gilda—respect to elders was very much a thing in griffon society, doubly so in the military. “What? He is! He probably didn’t know that it was called a fist-bump.”

“Okay... so what the hell did I do, then?” Marco asked, rubbing the scratches on his arm while still staring at Gilda warily.

Fortrakt chuckled, though Gilda didn’t know what he found so funny. “You basically insulted her. It’s… well, a griffon thing. Jabbing a griffon in the neck like that is saying they’re stupid or submissive, and is taken as an invitation to fight.”

“Oh!” A worried Marco backed away fractionally from a still-ruffled Gilda, who slowly relaxed. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I swear.”

Gilda sighed and nodded. “Fine,” she muttered in Equestrian, plodding forward to stand to his right, close enough she could more fully smell him—they’d apparently bathed before dinner, she noted, judging by the undertone of soap and some other cleaners over his usual earthy smells, which she still didn’t want to admit she found strangely pleasant. “If you want a picture, we’ll give you one. Let’s just get it over with before there are any more misunderstandings.”

“Nice!” Fortrakt exclaimed as he also walked up to Marco, standing next to the taller human on his left side.

“Alright, game on!” Marco declared in relief. “Would you do the honors, Chris?”

Game on? Gilda wondered, but even given the opportunity, she declined to ask what it meant, deciding it was just an invitation to even more conversation she wasn’t interested in.

“My pleasure.” Chris took out a black box, and Gilda hesitated for a moment. Whatever the red-haired human was holding, it was not the camera she had come to recognize. And with all the black metallic weapons the humans held, a suspicious thought entered her mind.

“Wait—what’s that?” she asked, warily motioning with her beak to the object.

Chris, who was removing a cap that was covering a tube that extended outwards, paused and blinked. “It’s a camera.”

Fortrakt’s eyes widened. “A camera? I thought...” he blinked. His beak opened and closed slightly. “I... wow. I thought they’d be bigger. Gilda talked about how they even had a stand and big light bulbs and all.”

Tara chuckled. “Oh my God, yeah. Equestrian cameras, you mean? I swear, I thought we’d stepped back in time sixty years. We stopped using those kinds of cameras ages ago. Show them by taking a picture of the building, Chris,” she directed.

“You got it!” Chris then pointed the camera away from them, up towards the Grand Hall and clicked a button, causing the object to emit a bright flash. He then turned the back of the box towards them to show them… a glowing image of the picture they’d just taken, the detail so fine Gilda couldn’t even make out the individual grains. “There you go.”

“That’s incredible!” Fortrakt marveled aloud, to Gilda’s great annoyance—why did he keep encouraging them? “How does that even work? Does it use film like pony cameras?”

“Nope. We don’t use film now,” Marco chimed in from above them. “Well, most people don’t, anyway. It’s hard to explain, but basically, we can take hundreds, even thousands of photographs with these cameras and then print them out later.”

Chris showed them some of the other pictures he had stored by making lateral movements with his talon across the flat glowing surface of the camera’s rear, causing the existing picture to be replaced by an earlier one with each motion.

“Amazing!” Fortrakt muttered in renewed awe. Gilda was grudgingly impressed as well, but she didn’t want to show it—maybe the ponies were right and humans really were technologically superior? But if so, why were the weapons of their soldiers apparently melee? Before she could think about it too deeply, Chris was already pointing the lens at them.

“Smile!” the ginger-haired human invited.

Gilda was about to give a very forced smile when she felt a touch at the base of her shoulders, where her flight muscles were present. It was an extremely sensual spot, something she knew pegasi had as well, and on contact, she felt jolted, like a lightning bolt had just lit up her spine and wings—she had never been touched there, in all her life! 

Her eyes narrowed and her breath caught, fire bursting from her cheeks and stomach as she stared at Marco, who she interpreted as grinning like a depraved and indecent idiot; his hand and arm ever-so-casually caressing one of her most intimate erogenous areas.

There was a flash of bright light and, for a moment, she was blinded. In that moment, her thoughts took a far darker turn—Marco, the human she had determined to be a perverted coward... was now taking advantage of her? He was groping her! 

Tired after a long day and uncomfortably constrained by her dress uniform, all logical thought processes were cast aside as she immediately shifted her whole body to her side and announced an attack with an outraged roar.

Without further warning or preamble, she jumped him as another flash of light burst out again. But she ignored it as she reared up to grab the offending human by his shirt front. She then threw him down to the ground hard, her beak open to trill out a battle-cry as she stared into his features, including unnaturally wide eyes. She could feel him shiver as she held him down, his mouth opening in shock and face contorting in sheer terror; she could all but smell his fear.

She raised a set of talons to deliver a set of punishing slashes to his face, but before she could do anything, something slammed into her hard from the side. She was forcefully thrown off the human and was then pinned down beneath another griffon’s considerable weight and strength. She immediately began to defend herself, her hind claws out attempting to rake his midsection and her wings trying to find an angle she could escape from.

“Gilda! Stop!” Fortrakt’s voice sounded in her head clearly as he got leverage on her and pinned her to the floor with his weight and wings, holding her down despite the damage he was taking. Even with his advantageous position, he was still only barely able to restrain her, trying to hold her back long enough to allow the humans to escape. 

When she continued to snarl and struggle, threatening to throw him off, he finally cuffed her hard, like a parent to a cub, to snap her out of it. “Enough!” he shouted again in Aeric, raising a closed set of talons to deliver another blow if needed. It took her a moment, but she finally fully registered his presence and stopped. Her heart slowed back down and the flames began to recede from her cheeks and stomach, but only when she was still for a minute did a clawed-up Fortrakt let her go, his dress uniform torn with some lines of blood visible through them.

Once released, Gilda immediately flipped upward with a thrust of her wings and hips, scanning the area with her still-dilated gold pupils. The humans were gone, though she could see their shadowed figures fleeing at their rather feeble top speed into the distance. Despite their hasty departure, she could still smell him; still feel his offending paw on her back. Part of her wanted to give chase, a hunt for the thrill, while another wanted never to see him again, willing him as far away from her as possible. 

Unable to reconcile the conflicting feelings in her head and body, she began to scratch the stone ground with her claws, trying to do away with the ugly urges and the stiff feelings in her wings. “Bucking degenerate dweeb…” she resorted to the nearly-forgotten pony invective.

“Crows take it.” Fortrakt sighed, continuing to block her way to him even as he licked one of his arm wounds. “Gilda, it was an accident—he touched me there too! He wasn’t trying to grope you; he was just trying to be friendly but had no idea what he was doing!”

“Sure he was.” Gilda grunted skeptically. That was all well and good for a mister nice griffon like him, but he wasn’t an eagless feeling a male presence—worse, an uninvited and alien male presence—where it didn’t belong.

“You saw how afraid he was—do you really think he would have done it deliberately if he knew?” he asked her pointedly. “By the Gods and Ancestors, you could have just grabbed his arm and explained it—you didn’t need to go all to crows about it!”

“I know,” Gilda replied with an edged tone, only to find that despite his explanation— which she knew perfectly well was true—she wasn’t calming down. Ancestors, she still wanted to chase Marco. Maybe it was the too-tight dress uniform that made her aggressive, or maybe it was the adrenaline still surging through her, but she wanted to confront him one more time; have a more decisive conclusion without Fortrakt getting in the way. 

“Your wings and tail tell me differently,” Fortrakt stated as he continued to watch her warily, noting the former twitching and the latter lashing, but Gilda just stared at him. “Ancestors, I can’t believe he got you so easily. You weren’t like this when I got too forward with your wings!”

“That’s because I drove you through a table,” Gilda replied stiffly. Her body shook, wanting to release the tension that was built up inside her but finding no ready outlets. “And also because I didn’t have this stupid dress uniform on.” She shook again, trying to calm down her stiff wings, but they wouldn’t subside. “Crows take it.”

“Come on, Gilda,” Fortrakt said as he turned away from her, perhaps trying to spare her further embarrassment. “Let’s just head back to the barracks and report this to Giraldi. I’ll tell him what happened. Hopefully he’ll understand, and then we can get these damned dress uniforms off and get some sleep, okay?” 

“Right,” Gilda nodded, though she found her eyes drawn once more towards the direction where the humans had run off. 

But her attention was quickly diverted as Fortrakt snapped his claws together repeatedly, producing a sharp sound that got her attention. “Just let him go, Gilda. That human won’t bother you again. You scared the droppings out of him and I’m sure he’s going to do his best to avoid you from now on. It won’t happen again, so just forget about him, okay?” he asked, his wings flared for flight in case she didn’t, and he had to chase after her.

Gilda sighed and nodded, feeling her remaining anger start to ebb. Then, to her own surprise, she chuckled. “Look at you, Gladio. You snare an eagless for a Round and then you go acting all mature? You’re either bucking for promotion, or had too much drink earlier.”

“Well, drink or no, someone has to be the adult here, Decanus.” Fortrakt replied with a slightly forced smirk, no longer acting even slightly inebriated. “Excuse me if I’m just trying to keep my superior from doing something we’ll both regret!”

She exhaled sharply, feeling a strong sense of chagrin for the first time at having to be saved from herself by an underling. “And to think, the only thing it took for you to grow a sack was to get a yes from a Talon,” Gilda declared as she walked towards their destination, worried she wouldn’t have her rank for much longer—three years of work had just gone to the crows over one grabby, culturally ignorant ape. “You’ve grown up, cub. Really grown up.”

Fortrakt uttered a sound; a mix of disbelief and sputtering before he finally found his voice. “Oh, piss off on the flattery, Miss ‘Assault-The-Alien-Guest’,” he replied somewhat tersely as he followed her steps, though he continued to keep carefully between her and the direction the humans had fled. “I probably just lost her—why would a Talon associate with some low-ranked Guard soldier who was implicated in an attack on diplomatic visitors?” he groused, and she fell silent, worried he was probably right. 

“You know, they’ll either bust us both back to Spear, or maybe even throw us out of the Guard and into the mines for this. And just for that, I’ll pray to the Ancestors that you’re going to be stuck with that brown-skinned human, one way or another!” Despite his worry—which she now shared—he found his sense of humor again.

Gilda smirked. “Hah! Like that will ever happen,” she retorted to steady her own still-raw nerves. Me, hang out with that ignorant and offensive human? I’d sooner reconcile with RAINBOW DASH!