There were many… many things Crescent expected when she was beamed up to Mr Evilson's office… this was not one. To be fully honest, she knew her "time off" BS was a total sham. Victor Evilson giving them even a moment of peace? A single second away from work? Unheard of. Not in his nature. So with the whiplash of having some decently hot guy's tongue down her throat to the sleek white landscape of her boss's office, Crescent could only look up and scowl, having fallen back from no longer having the wall holding her up.
"You rat-faced prick…. Ugghhh. This crap better be worth it…" She mumbles, standing up straight and dusting herself off. Victor watched in mild amusement, his elbows propped on his desk as he rested his chin on his fingers. His legs crossed like a princess as he tilts his head slightly to the left.
"Oh dear, little moon girl. Seems you were… busy." He says, an almost mocking grin planted on his face as she rolls her eyes and crosses her arms, her head tilting, ushering him to get to the point.
"You'll be doing a trio mission to recruit a girl in dimension #3000. Another gifted person." He continues after an annoyingly long, defiant pause. Crescent looks up at him sceptically.
"You need 3 people to get one girl…? Will I need a gun?" She asked, watching as Victor chuckled, his face contorted into that stupid know-it-all smirk. He finally takes his elbows off the desk and stands up, stalking over to the window wall.
"I figured all teammates should meet her at similar times~ Dusk is already there and your other teammate—" He says, before being quickly interrupted, finally turning to face Crescent once more, a shit-eating grin plastered on his wrinkled face as he gazes at her one of confusion and unease.
"Woah, woah, wait… I never agreed to teams. I already have to deal with Dusk; what's this about another one and some new girl that doesn't even work here? I swear on everything, I'm not training a newbie again." The prick smirks once again, his hands behind his back like a stupid Disney villain and the same stupid smile on his stupid, rattish face– Maybe she just hates his face, but I digress. With a smile too wide to be innocent and shut eyes, he speaks once more.
"Come on, moon girl. Have some team spirit! Your new partner will be here any minute now. It'd be a shame if he came to hear you sound so unenthusiastic. Show some team-... Ah, here he comes now." Crescent's eyes flick towards the door that has now swung open without a knock. Unsurprising, seeing as everyone shares the same lack of respect for the walking migraine that is the boss. However, upon seeing the man said to be her partner for this apparent 3-man mission, her face dropped. A wave of horror, annoyance and another emotion she prefers to keep locked up crashed over and drowned her. In this moment of anger, confusion, and begrudging pain, she could only utter one sentence.
"What… the… fu-"
"Language, Arvella~ a pretty little princesa shouldn't use such naughty words." The mocking words ring in Crescent's ears as she's cut off, a sharp scowl painted on her face as the man of the hour walks over and props himself next to her, his tall frame towering over hers.
She hoped – prayed – that this was a joke. That Victor didn't cut her two days of vacation time into 9 hours to pull this actual shit from his ass. Riven fucking Arvelo. She had to work with Riven Daniel fucking Arvelo, aka her former partner and personal pain in the ass, who decides to use all seven days he can spend outside his dimension not so subtly stalking her in hers.
"You're shitting me." Crescent manages to say after a moment of shocked silence, earning a pompous chuckle from Victor.
"Moon girl! Such language in the workplace?" He says it with no real bite in his words, but that same unyielding, smug asshole smirk is absolutely beaming from his very clearly amused face. Making the mistake of looking to the side, Crescent's scowl only deepens as the giant prick glances down at her in almost equal, if not higher, amusement.
"Listen, Arvella, I was also yanked out of my lovely 5-day vacation many hours too soon; at least let me bask in the little enjoyment I can get from this~ We haven't worked together in sooo long. Haven't you missed me since I've gone solo?" The tall man quips, his tone far, far too positive for the mood Crescent was in. She wanted opened her mouth like the gates of Hades and let every vile little curse she wished to say fly free… But she was also nowhere near drunk enough to say them and cause a confrontation. There is nothing she hated more than confrontation. Sighing begrudgingly as she crossed her arms once more and bit her tongue.
"What's the mission?" She mumbled, rolling her eyes as Victor's Cheshire grin widened. He put his hands together like a silent clap before he sat back at his desk.
"Wonderful! I knew you'd come around, dear little Moon." At his words, Crescent's eyes narrowed in annoyance and impatience. She clenches her fist and groans.
"Get to the point; I don't have time for this." She demands. Victor puts his hands up in mock surrender as a stifled chuckle sounds from Riven's direction before the latter swiftly looks to the other side, admiring the plain, uninteresting white wall while he feigns innocence.
"You'll be going undercover at the university F.I.U. to recruit a girl named Solar Hartwell. She's been causing a fair bit of trouble across dimensions, but I'm feeling benevolent enough to forgive her transgressions and hire her instead of imprisoning her. The mission shouldn't be too hard. She's in recovery after spending too long in a different dimension, so her power is weak right now." Victor states. That same annoyingly eerie, unreadable smirk plastered on the bastard's face. Sceptical as usual, Crescent raises a brow.
"She's weak but needs three of us to get her… And she's apparently a troublemaker, but you don't care? It's unusual for you, of all people, to be so merciful… What's your angle, rat face?" She questions, eyes narrow, head tilted. And just when we needed him least, Riven decided to grace us with his ear-bleeding voice.
"The longer we stay and chat, the more she heals. Why don't we head on off while she's still an easy catch, Arvella dear? We should be glad the prick is gaining a heart." He says, wearing an even more annoying, unreadable smirk on his slightly less stupid face. The look Crescent gave him was almost enough to burn a hole through his face. If she were even the slightest bit confrontational (or absolutely wasted), she would have spoken up. Pressing the issue till Victor's eerie, unusual behaviour got an answer. She'd tear the place down if she had to, all because she knew in her blood that something was really off. But she'd rather set herself on fire than be at the center of a conflict, so she bites her tongue. Again.
"Whatever… Let's go, asshole." The duo files out into the mirror room. The room was gorgeous. So gorgeous it pissed them off to know that rat-faced prick designed it. Waterfalls behind the array of semi-transparent floating mirrors in various sizes with light grey and white marble walls and quartz floors. Fountain statues of celestial bodies and a permanent, soft, glittering mist. Breathtaking doesn't even begin to cover it; it's so annoyingly beautiful. They put in the dimension needed and swipe through the available mirrors they can enter from."
"I can do one in one of the dorm bathrooms. Got any near that?" Crescent states, selecting the location and watching as the mirror faintly glows an electric blue.
"Ew, no, bathroom mirrors are gross. I'm finding where the nearest hotel is~" Riven answers back, earning a glare. If anything, it was more irritated and sick of his pretty-boy shit than actual anger. As the tall man takes his time finding the quote, "Closest mirror that isn't gross." Crescent informs him that she'll go ahead and look for the girl, planning to meet up in the courtyard after an hour of looking.
Going through the mirror, she lands in the aforementioned bathroom. Not horrible, but far from prestigious or grand. She ties her knee-length dreadlocks into a ponytail, the blue streaks lightly greenish in the obscenely yellow light as an odd feeling overwhelms her.
The feeling is difficult to explain, and it keeps fluctuating, but it feels… bright? Like the sun. And she feels hot. A kind of heat she isn't used too. If you were to check her temperature, she'd be at a regular level. But for crescent, that's hot. She usually runs at about 34°C, making what she's feeling now strange. So so strange.
Not having time to unpack whatever this weird feeling is, Crescent goes out into the rest of the campus. The heat keeps fluctuating the more she walks. She goes one way, she goes back to her usual, she goes another and the heat returns. That useless rat-faced fuckhead didn't give any description of her, so finding her ended up being a huge pain in the metaphorical dick. Deciding to try to use this odd warmth to her advantage, she played a game of hot and cold with herself. Hoping it was what she was theorising, she used the heat emanating from her to decipher how far she is from the target.
Anytime she started cooling down, she turned back, repeating this process until the heat got so unbearable that she had to simply look around the courtyard she was in and scout. Then… she saw her. A girl slightly shorter than herself, around 5 '3 maybe, with a large beautiful split-dyed afro, the left side being black and the right being a goldish blonde. And for whatever reason, she looked cold. Really, really cold. While she felt like she should be sweating from every orifice on her body, this girl was quite literally shivering, and it felt so… strange.
Despite every introverted, people hating bone in her body telling her to wait till Riven gets here so he can do all the talking, she peeled herself off the wall and made the heavy, humid feeling walk to the potential troublemaker, feeling her body heat rise and rise as she got closer
And then… she saw it. Her nose. The girl's nose was bleeding. She's red-blooded.