In which Ssorae participates in a lot of bar fights, and a background is established
The thing about searching for the Heterodyne is that – yes, noble purpose, yada yada – it gets boring. And lonely. And boring. Ssorae does not deal well with lonely and boring. So when she hears someone losing a fight and cursing up a storm about it, her first thought is, fun!
...Admittedly, this would have been her first thought anyway.
Fun! Had not always been Ssorae’s first reaction to violence. For a long time, her first reaction was hide. It’s a useful reflex when you’re stick-thin, fast, sneaky... and not much else. Once she’d grown up a bit, well. She was an adventuress’s daughter; she knew how to make herself opportunities. By the time she was twenty, she was a spy. When she was twenty-five, she was sent to spy on the Heterodyne.
Her bosses had been hoping the assignment would kill her; she was a little too good at her job. Instead, it introduced her to Natalie.
Natalie is small, for a Jäger, shorter than Ssorae even as a human. She looks like a werewolf, if werewolves were purple-grey and perpetually half-shifted. With her masses of curly hair, she’s the fluffiest Jäger Ssorae had ever seen, and cute in an I-have-no-self-preservation kind of way. She’s got a sly sort of humor that’s hard to spot through her Jägerness, and she likes it that way. She regards the entirety of life as an opportunity to have fun, often at others’ expense, and the only people she really seems to regard as real people are the Jägerkin and the Heterodynes. Ssorae was instantly smitten. Natalie thought this weird outsider girl was hilarious.
One thing led to another. Before long, Ssorae spent more time with the Jägers than at her work. Her superiors were unable to get another spy in with the Heterodyne. Eventually, she just let them think she was dead.
The more time she spent with the Jägers, the more she found that they spoke to a part of her she normally kept buried under caution and scheming. Charging in like her mother was no way to keep someone like her alive. But...
She joined them playing – “playing”, for Jägers, is friendly brawls – using tactics that let her keep up and won her the label shneaky gorl with a proud grin from Natalie. It wasn’t about Natalie – it stopped being about Natalie weeks in – it was about...
“So,” Natalie said one day, sprawled next to her in bed, “Vhen are hyu goink to take de brau?”
Ssorae froze.
Then bolted.
The next day found her dithering in front of General Gkika, trying to find a way to ask her to support her bid with Lady Heterodyne. Gkika laughed, took her by the shoulder, and brought her to Lady Domnica herself.
The interview with the Lady was terrifying, and quite possibly the last time she was ever afraid.
(The first thing Natalie said when she saw her new form was wow, you’re gorgeous.)
The romantic aspect of her relationship with Natalie didn’t last much longer than that, but mentor-student was, for them, a much stronger bond.