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“Right, five minutes are up.” Ezor said with her normal bubbly attitude before crossing over to Lotor. “You are coming with me.” She makes sure to perfectly punctuate each word with a step as she crosses the short distance between herself and the now un-exiled prince.
“Ezor, we went through this; I need to run these simulations to make sure the Sincline ships will actually fly.” Lotor doesn’t even look up from the console as she approaches. He was focused on his work and he had made his generals aware that when in the zone, they were not to disturb him.
And yet, they never listened to him about that.
“And I told you that you could have five more minutes and that was it.” She leans over the monitor. Her long tendril hitting the prince’s hands to make him momentarily stop typing while he moved it out the way.
“
Ezor.
”
“You may be a Prince Lotor, but you’re not getting me to budge on this. You need a break from this.” She folds her arms when she notices that he had started typing again without even looking up at him. This was going to be a lot harder then she had originally thought.
“And what is ‘this’ exactly?” He looks up at this and maintains eye contact with his bubbly general. He knew he probably should listen to them, but he was so close to a breakthrough and he didn’t want to take a break in case he lost the solution he was working on.
“The stress of getting Sincline to run perfectly straight away.” She elaborates before crossing round to look at the monitor. She’s unsurprised to see a series of numbers moving rapidly across the screen and curses herself for being unable to help him figure out a solution.
“Every minute it doesn’t run is a minute that strengthens-“
“The Empire’s grip on the universe.” Ezor doesn’t see the point in letting him continue when she knew exactly what he was going to say. Lotor had given that speech far too many times the past few weeks. It was getting old and she was pretty sure that Axca could recite it in her sleep. “I know. We all know Lotor. You
need
a break.” She adds as she touches his shoulder to reassure him that they had his best interests at heart.
“I can’t just take a break Ezor, it’s so close to being functional.” He keeps his gaze focused on the monitor to carry on with the calculations rather than brushing Ezor’s hand off like usual. He was accepting of the familiar comfort, even if it was only because he was ignoring what she wanted him to do.
“You’ve said that every time someone’s asked about yourself the past few days. You’ve barely slept or ate or talked to any of us about something non-Sincline related.” She says, half hoping that the guilt of ignoring her and the rest of the Generals would get Lotor to look away from the console that he was still typing commands into. Not that it seemed to be working. “Axca, he won’t listen.” She says with a sigh when she hears the bay doors open.
“Lotor, a break will help your brain reset and tackle the problem in a new way.” Axca’s tone is cold, commanding yet, Ezor catches the slight look of love in her eyes. She knew the Altean halfling was doing this out of love, but when she sees how Axca rolls her eyes when Lotor refuses to come away from the console yet again; Ezor has to bite back a laugh. “You either move Lotor or I drag you away from that console by your ear, or Zethrid picks you up.” Her tone becomes a little sharper when Lotor ignores her and she keeps herself stood up straight as she stares him down.
“Or Narti locks you out of the systems.” Ezor adds in her usual chirpy tone when she remembers the threat the other General had told them that afternoon. It wasn’t often that Narti got annoyed with Lotor, but the consistent working was starting to take its toll.
“Fine. I know when I’m beaten.” Lotor says finally as he turns away from the console. Not that either Axca or Ezor knew what threat had finally gotten him to move. To be honest they didn’t really care, they were just glad that the prince had finally listened to them. “Where are you taking me?” He asks as he stands up, unsurprised when Ezor grabs his arm to lead him away from his computer. He had had a feeling that they weren’t going to let him go so easily.
“The kitchen.”
“I’m not hungry Ezor.”
“Who said anything about eating food?” Ezor replies as they walk alongside Axca to the small kitchen on their ship.
“We discovered, via one of those many Altean history books you have, that Alteans used to make sweet treats to get rid of stress.” Axca offers as an explanation when Ezor seems to stay quiet about the traditions they had read about. “There’s nothing about eating them unless you wanted to.”
“Narti suggested that we actually do it with you, sort of as a team bonding.” Ezor adds as she opens the door to the kitchen, blinking at the dark blue mess already covering the walls and the floor. It looked sticky and she didn’t want to think of what could have happened in the five minutes they had left Narti and Zethrid alone.
“What happened?” Axca and Lotor speak at the same time, both with different levels of utter shock in their tone. Lotor seems more appalled that his kitchen was in an absolute state, whereas Axca just sounded tired. She had already dealt with too much today.
“We left you guys for like five minutes!” Ezor cried as she watched Kova lick at a small puddle of the sticky blue mixture. While she was disappointed that most of the mix was covering the floor and walls; at least it was edible.
Small victories.
“Zethrid thought she could punch the mixture into submission.”
Narti broadcasts to the team as she carries on cleaning her forearms free of the blue mess. The spoon she had been using when Ezor had left lay at her clawed feet surrounded by shards of the bowl.
“Hey, it’s not my fault the bowl couldn’t take my strength and shattered.” Zethrid mutters as she finishes mixing up another batch in a sturdier bowl. “Alteans must have had weak bowls, I barely punched it.” She adds as Lotor crossed to her to inspect her mixture.
“Not weak bowls, they used a lot of quintessence in their pottery to reinforce it. We don’t have that in ours.” Lotor said softly as he dipped his finger in the mix to taste it. He tries to hide the fact he nearly threw up at the taste before wiping his mouth carefully. “You haven’t made sweets there…” He said as he turned to face them.
“We followed the recipe though!” Axca said as she brought the book over to him. She was still amazed that the book wasn’t covered in the sticky mess like everything else in the kitchen but that wasn’t her main concern right now. Her main concern was the fact Lotor was doubting the recipe they were following.
“Ah, I see the problem; your Altean is rusty Axca.” He said a few minutes later after reading through the book and checking their ingredients. It was a fairly simple translation error given that Axca hadn’t had to use her Altean skills the past few years.
“Oh, Axca got something wrong?” Ezor asked with a grin on her face. They may be teammates, but she always loved a chance to tease the senior general whenever there was chance to, and this was the perfect opportunity.
“It’s a simple mistake really. You’ve made the sweets they made for the Lion Goddess, which is why Kova can eat it without worry.” He explains as he turns a few pages in the book to find the recipe that he’s certain they had wanted to use. “This is the recipe you wanted to use.”
“
You sound like you have experience with it.”
Narti interjects before any of them can speak. She had a feeling that if they could coax it just right they would be able to distract Lotor with baking.
“I do, I’ve made these before, I can show you all.” Lotor said with a slight smile as he moved round to the counter to start showing them. He doesn’t notice the grin on his generals faces at the fact that he had been sufficiently distracted from Sincline. All he was concerned about was showing them the Altean sweets they had found for him without being told to. After that, maybe he would take their advice and get some sleep before tackling his Sincline problem again.
He could do with a break after all.