Dead Star Dockyards

"Hmm . . ." Diana hummed as she washed Titanyana's back. ". . . so dirty."

Titanyana had been covered in a thin film of dirt, her pores being caked with so much of it that Diana had resorted to scratching Titanyana's back to clear them out. Fortunately, Diana's nails weren't particularly sharp, and Titanyana was enjoying the experience immensely. Arching her back while her tail twitched, Diana could almost swear she heard purring.

"What were you doing?" Diana was still a bit baffled by this. It was rare for Titanyana to enter the washroom dirty, and even when she did the damage tended to be focused around the parts of her body not covered by clothing, her arms and legs. "How did you get so filthy?"

"We were - ei! - testing a new tactic."

"Oho? Did this tactic involve you digging beneath your opponent?"

"Am I really that dirty?"

"No, well, maybe it's a slight exaggeration, but from how much dirt is coming off of you I can only imagine you were buried." To emphasize her point, Diana moved her hand so that Titanyana could see the brown and black residue built up under her nails. "Either way, I'm curious. Is this new tactic the reason you seem so happy?"

"Uh, mm, I guess."

"Explain. I'll try my best to understand what you're saying, but I won't make any promises."

"It isn't that complicated. Donovan had Sanna make a cloud of dirt and dust cover the battlefield." Titanyana's ears wiggled as Diana's fingernails approached the nape of her neck. "He had me wear that sunglasses thing so I could still see and made Nemo wrap my head in cloth to protect my face, then had me use the cloud to hide from my opponent."

"Hide? Aren't you strong enough to not need that?"

"I struggle when faced with a group of people who have decent coordination. Donovan's idea was that the cloud could help make opportunities for me to strike." Diana's fingernails moved to Titanyana's ribs, causing her to seize up. "I fink it has potential!"

"Potential, eh? Are you sure you aren't being influenced by Donovan?" Diana began to lightly tickle Titanyana, causing her to squirm. "Don't think you'll only need to agree with him to get his approval."

"N-no! I really think it could work! I can hear them over the - HII- over the sound of the dust and dirt!" Diana was ramping up the assault as Titanyana explained. "I can see better than them with the s-sunglasses too!"

"Oho! So you want Donovan's sunglasses, is that it?"

"H-huh?"

"I don't blame you, they look pretty good, but those are his! I won't let you steal them."

"I, huh? No! WAIT!"

Disaster!

Diana rapidly scratched around Titanyana's ribs with one hand, bringing the other to the base of her tail. The ensuing sensation forced the little queen to collapse. Diana didn't hesitate to pounce on her, continuing to torment Titanyana.

"STOP! PLEASE!" For all her combat prowess, Titanyana was helpless against the art of tickling. "I'M NOT - nyooooooo!!!"

- - - - -

". . . this isn't enough."

"I said I was sorry!"

"Mrrrgh."

Titanyana was understandably ticked off by Diana's actions, and had resorted to the cold shoulder to punish her. Diana offered to scratch her ears as compensation, the heat of the bath relaxing her that much more, but Titanyana wasn't going to let her off so easy. She didn't want to say that tickles were off limits, just not when they were both in the nude. Something about that didn't feel right to Titanyana.

"What if I gave you one of his shirts?" Titanyana's ears perked up before immediately returning to normal. She knew it was too late though, Diana had definitely noticed. "Some of the clothing we got for him when we arrived here has started to fit a little bit tighter than I would like, what with his muscled growing an all that. I think it would be possible for me to nab one he has recently worn before he gets more. I doubt he would even notice it's gone. . ."

Despite Titanyana's desire to punish Diana for her transgressions, she was unable to resist that temptation. Already she was imagining herself going to sleep in the shirt, door tightly closed, letting his scent surround her. Diana's ability to identify Titanyana's weaknesses was quickly becoming a talent she considered to be dangerous.

". . . deal."

"You'll have your compensation in a day or two." Diana increased the intensity of her scritches for a moment. "Don't let him find out."

"I will only ever have it out behind closed doors." 

"Mhm. I'll make sure ARC is aware of our arrangement as well. I wouldn't want it snitching on you. He'll be able to see everything that happens on that ship."

Titanyana shivered a little. Despite all of Donovan's explanations, ARC was still an enigma to her. He, Arc, supposedly wasn't a person, and yet he was more personable than most of the people she had met. How did that work? Donovan said something about lightning, metal, and mathematics, but that meant next to nothing to her.  

"Anyways, how are you feeling about the trip to our new home? Are you nervous? Excited?"

"I don't know. I haven't put much thought into it."

"Scared?"

"Maybe a little." Titanyana rolled off of Diana's lap, submerging most of her body in the bathwater. "What do I do if my people don't like it?"

"I wouldn't know. It isn't like they have much of a choice if they want to survive." Titanyana gave Diana a pleading look. "If its a problem of climate we can make adjustments to our air conditioning systems, but terraforming is a bit too far out of our budget right now."

Titanyana tilted her head, not quite understanding what those words meant.

"Eh, is it something else you're worried about?"

"Yeah? I was wondering if they wouldn't like living under your rule."

"Oh . . . yeah, I haven't thought too much about that." 

Titanyana felt herself frown, not sure as to why. Were her expectations betrayed? Was she miffed that Diana didn't believe it important enough to think about? Was it disappointment in the way she perceived how Diana thought? Could it, perhaps, be because Diana seemed wholly unconcerned about the matter? Well, 'unconcerned' was a bit of a strong word. She was concerned, Diana was just so confident that she would be accepted that rejection didn't cross her mind anymore.

"I still need an idea, you know, of how your people operate and communicate. This isn't to demean you knowledge of your people's customs, but there is bound to be a difference between what you say and how it actually happens, so I can only plan so far." Diana stretched out as she too lowered herself into the bath. "That isn't to say I'm not working, I'm swamped with all the research I need to do. I can't justify thinking about it right now."

". . ." Titanyana wasn't wholly satisfied with that answer, but she didn't raise a fuss. 

"Be prepared Titanyana! Once Arc can free up some industrial capacity for textiles and food processing, I am introducing you to how a girl is supposed to live!" Titanyana recoiled from the sudden shift in tone. "We might not have a shopping mall for a while, but I will have Arc make us fancy clothes to wear and delicious food to eat!"

"Huh?"

"It's the dream of every Terran woman to live like a 2000's high schooler!" Diana mockingly hugged herself, exaggerating whatever emotion she was meaning to convey. "I would have loved nothing more than to stroll through a mall with my posse of girlfriends, sampling seasonal sweets, trying on new outfits, gossiping about recent drama, and talking about all the hot boys in our classes!"

Titanyana felt a bit confused about what Diana was saying. Some parts were confusing due to her lack of familiarity with topics like 'a mall' and 'classes', the rest befuddled the Nekh Queen because she thought Diana could do them already. Why would she express this level of excitement about something she already had? 

Diana had a clique of female friends already, including Nemo, Zhoie, Cherry, and Titanyana. She had a staff of chefs who could make any number of exotic dish - sweets included - and unless Titanyana was missing something important here, Diana already had the freedom to go to a boutique and spend a day trying on different clothes. Diana also gossiped quite a bit with the maids.

The final desire of Diana's was the segment that confounded Titanyana to no end. Diana wanted to talk about 'hot boys'? Didn't she already have Donovan? Was Donovan the 'hot boy' she wanted to talk about? How many conversations could she possibly have about Donovan? Titanyana assumed there was something missing here, but she didn't feel the need to bring it up.

Diana's excited mood dropped as fast at it had risen, her head now limply resting on the lip of the tub.

- - - - -

A little bit too late to correct for it, Diana had decided that bringing up the past was a mistake. She had been too eager and reckless in her bid to mitigate her souring of Titanyana's mood. She had planned to tease Titanyana with hints of the future they had in store, to raise her hopes up and make her more amenable to a lighter atmosphere.

Now she was reminiscing about the past, a past she never had. She said that it was the dream of every Terran woman to live 'like a 2000's high schooler', but that wasn't the truth. That was her dream, the 'was' genuinely implying past tense. In truth, she didn't know much about the dream of the average Terran woman.

Diana wasn't quite as restricted as Donovan with regards to social interaction on account of the requirements of her field and the fact that women were inherently more social creatures than men, but she never exactly had a 'normal' social life. Diana wasn't stupid, she figured out her 'friends' were carefully curated, and the circumstances by which they met and built rapport were by no means coincidental. Were they being paid to be her friends? Diana didn't think so at the time, but they certainly weren't 'natural'. As per usual, the prime suspect was her grandfather. 

The really sad part was that she didn't realize the deception until about four months before she left. Diana didn't ask her grandfather to confirm it, not wanting to be hurt that little bit more before she lost everything else, not wanting to make her grandfather feel even more guilt about it in their final days together. She had managed the scruples to ask Arc about it in private during their days on the Oberlux, desiring some level of closure once she had Donovan to keep her stable. The only surprise was that all they all worked for the government, each being payed a hefty sum for their time. Two or three of them even expressed less than favorable remarks about her on the job.

". . . are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

Thus, this dream of hers was fairly new. Should her friends have been genuine to some extent, she might have been satisfied with the restrictions and pressure she had lived her life under. Painful on an emotional and mental level maybe, but acceptable given the circumstances. She would have been able to live happily knowing that she had made memories, good and bad, with a group of people she knew to be kindred spirits. Now she felt justified in demanding that she get to live a little bit of the life she wanted. 

The only thing she had to work off of was movies now, so that was what she was going to do.

Despite how much she liked the 'Twilight', she wasn't about to ask for a competitor to Donovan. As far as she was concerned, he was already perfect. She could definitely go with some 'Legally Blonde', the setting of the film definitely fit her line of work better than most other films during the golden age. For now, her biggest desire was to make up for the period of time she 'lost', her teens. This meant that she would be modeling her leisure on a show rather than a movie. Diana thought the television programs about 'the life of a teenage girl' were better than full length films, primarily because they had more time to let the groups get up to no good.

"I was just thinking about home . . . Earth. There was so much I wanted to do." Diana sighed. "So much that I won't ever be able to do now."

"Like what?"

"Besides the mall?"

"Myeah."

Diana managed an unconvincing smile. How had their positions switched so quickly?

"Well, I wanted to see the world, so to speak. It was one of my biggest dreams to see all of the wonders, both constructed and natural. I wanted to admire Mount Fuji over a cup of sake, to waltz beneath the Eifel Tower with my grandfather, to drive down the dried up riverbed of the Grand Canyon with a group of friends, to ice-skate in the East African Climate Dome, and spend a week in a cabin near one of the poles, spending my days constructing a snow-fort and my nights staring at the starry night sky with a cup of hot cocoa in hand, letting the light of the Aurora Borealis wash over me."

Diana found one of her arms extended out into the air, reaching for something that no longer existed. Her tear ducts had long since dried though, all that was left was a sense of emptiness.

"It's all gone now. I'm never going to get those back." Diana felt like going up to her room and taking a nap now. In fact, she was going to do just that. "How about you? Does Nekh have any natural wonders you want to see?"

"Mm. Maybe? My mother always spoke fondly of the snow fields, and my uncle raved about the mountain near the capitol, but I don't remember anybody speaking about a specific feature. . ."

". . . a shame." Diana wasn't quite sure what she should say to that. Should she be surprised that there was nothing significant enough to receive a name? Maybe Nekh just didn't have something like the Grand Canyon? She felt that was unlikely given the supposed age of their planet, though she could see how the age of the planet might make everything look similar. "I'll be in my room."