Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Five (section)

===Teen Life===


She smiled.  “Yeah, I imagine that would be…wait, ‘brassholes?’”

“What?  It works.  Not all the brass forget about the little guys, but some of them do.  I think there’s a conditional amnesia illness that kicks in when a person’s pay grade goes above Lieutenant Commander,” Kines groused.  “They forget where they came from.”

“What about those guys, the…what are they called…Warrant Officers?  Do they forget their enlisted roots?” Remilia asked.

“Hell no, a good Warrant Officer is your best friend, your father, your guardian spirit, and your own personal daemon, all at once,” Kines said.  “Being a good friend to a Warrant Officer is the best possible way to make yourself useful on long tours, those guys are indispensable.  A Chief Warrant Officer Fifth can tell a Commander to fuck himself and get away with it, in the context of actually doing something involving the operations of the ship.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, the lifers, the ones who get juvenats and re-enlist, those guys are better than techpriests when it comes to making the ship keep flying.”  Kines smiled at some un-elaborated memory.  “Which makes it super-awkward, let me tell you.  Technically, I outrank guys a hundred and ten years older than me and with a full, uninterrupted century more experience.  I feel absolutely awful when I have to order them to do something.”

“When do you even need to do that?” Remilia asked.

“Fire drills, boarding drills…any place where chain of command is more important than experience when we’re being timed.”  Kines shook his head in her lap.  “Well.  Enough about that.”

“Yeah…I’m tired,” Remilia said.  “When do you need to be up?”

“Mid-shift tomorrow…I need to be at the bar by 1000 hours,” Kines said.

“Oh, you’ve got all night,” she said.  “Stay with me, huh?  I love just talking with you,” she said.

Kines smiled up at her.  “Love to.”  He looked aside as what he had just said registered.  “‘Love.’  Hmm.”

She cocked her head.  “What?”

“How many men get to say that to a Lady Primarch in the flesh?” he asked happily, beaming up at her.

Remilia sighed with an air of patently false strained patience.  “You’d be amazed.  When I transferred in to Imperator from the private school I started in, half of the freshman class was proclaiming their undying love for me, in the most passive-aggressive, hormonally-fueled ways you can imagine.”

“The male half,” Kines guessed.

“Not…entirely, actually, I remember a few lustful glances from the girls too,” Remilia admitted.  Kines’ eyebrows rose.

“Say, that’s…fun to think about,” he said upon reflection.

“Sure, except then you’d have to split your attention between me and…well, someone else,” Remilia sniffed, all airs and class.

Kines rolled his eyes.  “My poor heart.”

“Besides, I’m not into girls.”  Remilia looked down at her.  “You know…I’ve had boyfriends before, but we all broke up over the dumbest shit.  Makes me wonder if I’ve ever really been in true love.  I think to myself I’d know it if I saw it…and I have seen it, too.  Jake and Venus are forever, I bet…I know Angela and Michael are, too.  But would I know it if I wasn’t seeing it from a distance?”

“You know something, sweetheart?  I bet if you peel back the skin on those ‘perfect’ relationships, you’d see stress lines,” Kines asserted.  “Nobody’s really perfect.”

Remilia shrugged.  “I guess, though I’d argue it for Angela and Michael.  I just want to know I’ll not, you know…screw it up when I find it for myself, if I ever do.”

Kines sighed.  “Why would you do that?”

“Well, I don’t always take the most…reasonable approach to hard choices,” Remilia muttered.

“No, I mean why would you beat yourself up over it?” Kines asked.  “Come on.  That’s not helping anything.”

“I suppose, it’s just hard to avoid some times,” she sighed.

He sat up and turned to face her.  “Come on.  You’re a brilliant, beautiful girl.  If you forget that you’re maybe not all that confident in social situations, you’ll master them easy.  You think I don’t get a bit nervous when a guy with oak leaves walks into the bar?”

“I guess I just don’t like thinking about it.”

“Who does?” Kines asked.  He half-rose and shucked his uniform for bed.  “But you know, I’m serious.  Just don’t worry about it.  Look forward to it.”

She shook her head again.  “How do you seem so much smarter than me when you’re less than two years older than I am?”

“I’m a gifted liar,” he deadpanned.

Remilia laughed.  “Gee, how reassuring.”

“It can get you out of anything,” Kines remarked.