“Good evening, General!”
Relkir looked up from their work. It was pretty late, but the Legion of Advisors had needed to assist the Legion of External Affairs in a teleconference call with the Athren leadership, namely the Distant Moon Singers, who dealt with foreign affairs. However, standing at their desk right now was Rethais, the High General, both Relkir’s boss and Relkir’s sibling. Clearly a member of staff had let Rethais in, and, peering through the glass wall of Relkir’s office, they spotted one of their captains chatting with Rethais’s security personnel.
Today, Rethais had a happy face on, which was unusual. The normally cold, stoic leader of the Rethavok always kept their feelings hidden away, in order to keep everyone else calm.
“Hello, sibling. It still throws me off that I am a General now.”
“Oh? How comes?”
“I am just not used to it yet. My staff are all fine, I let them all just use my name because I dislike pulling rank on them, but we get a lot of other Generals coming in and it is weird that I am an equal to them, especially since I have always been subservient to you. Anyway, what brings you to my office today?”
“Nothing much…” Rethais shrugged a bit. “I am only here for two reasons, the first being a quick check-in to see how you and Gath are doing.”
Relkir frowned. “Gath is doing their pre-exam morale booster speeches for most of the 900th sub-Legions, so I have not seen much of Gath at all. That makes me a little upset, but I do very much understand why Gath does these tours. Makes the kids feel better.”
“Fair. But Gath will be back soon, once the 900th Legion starts doing their exams.”
“I know, I know…” Relkir trailed off, then tutted. “So, what was the other reason that you were here?”
Rethais paused. “Oh. There were three reasons, actually. General Tessar has been busy, but they asked me to pass on a message of thanks, for helping to get Litvir settled down.”
Relkir started smiling. “Hah, that amuses me. Litvir is a little sweetheart, just very, very curious. I find it interesting that it started off with us seeing Litvir as a younger sibling and that shifted and changed to the point that I now see Litvir as a child. A child we are adopting. Pretty much a baby, now I think about it.”
“As long as you are all happy, I am sure it is fine!” Rethais went back to smiling as well. “Anyway, the major reason I am here is because Vaksavar is a little annoyed that you have not decided on specific uniform armour for the 99th Legion.”
“Oh. Was I supposed to get that done? Being advisors, I would not think my Legion and I would need uniforms. At least, not urgently.”
Rethais shrugged. “Vaksavar believes that Legion-specific armour is both good for morale and makes you all look more professional, as well as being a good indicator of your rank.” Rethais glanced at a familiar gold band on Relkir’s desk. “Also, you keep on not wearing your General’s Insignia.”
“I feel I do not need to wear it if I am here on my own.”
“You ought to wear it most of the time, specifically at work. It was fine when you were a captain, but you are a powerful General now and everyone else should know that at a glance.”
Relkir sighed, then put their General’s Insignia back on. “That is understandable. But why are you here, asking me about new armour?”
Rethais’s smile returned. They reached into their satchel and pulled out a catalogue of some sort. “I wanted to discuss some looks with you.”
“Why… why would you do that? Are you… hinting at something?”
“I am, yes. You are a great person but your sense of fashion is not the best. I mean, the years you spent in the 47th Legion, your armour was always too big for you and you constantly refused to get your armour altered.”
Rethais placed the catalogue down on the table, then pulled a chair round so they could sit next to Relkir.
“I do not need-”
“You do need a little help, and you are well aware that a second opinion is always a good thing…” Rethais opened up the catalogue to the first page. Most Rethan armour catalogues were arranged by colour. “First question, what is your favourite colour?”
“Are we really doing this?”
“Yes.”
Relkir rolled their eyes. “Alright, fine. I like red. Would be wrong for a Rethianos to not like or wear red.”
“You are aware that Retvik wore white and gold armour for about a decade, yes?”
“Hmph. Retvik sadly always just wore what they were given. I will admit though that Retvik looked good in black and gold with the tertiary red stripe. But I am not sure if I want an entire legion in red.”
Rethais shrugged. “We can just make red the secondary or tertiary colour. But I do actually think that a similar design would look good on you. The gold matches your strips and the red would not be too heavy.”
“I would look too much like I am wearing 47th Legion armour though!” Relkir exclaimed.
“Hm, yes, good point. I think a better question would be, if you could have any set of armour you wanted, what would you get?”
This question made Relkir go completely silent. They started flicking through the armour catalogue on their own, inspecting each page. Eventually though, Relkir spoke.
“I have a very silly idea…” Relkir muttered.
“Oh? What is it?”
Relkir pointed at a page with very light grey armour on it, not too far in. It was simple, armour, mostly made of a thick plastic, with smaller pauldrons.
“Hm, that is rather basic. It is also casual armour rather than Below Two Hundred military armour.”
Relkir nodded. “I know, yes. But I am the General of a Legion that will most likely never be in heavy combat.”
“That does still look basic though.”
“Ah, well, that is just the base colour!” Relkir smiled. “What I want is this pale grey armour but with an off-centre strip of colour down the chest and legs.”
“Like what Retvik wore?”
“Yes, just like that, with this design of armour. But I want that off-centre strip to be the seven colours of a rainbow.”
Rethais glanced at the choice of armour, then back at Relkir. “Why a rainbow?”
“Because my Legion helps everyone!” Relkir grinned. “I want both me and my staff to look approachable and friendly and always willing to give people advice!”
“Well, I suppose… Alright, how about you go to an armoury tomorrow and get a mock up made. Does that sound alright?”
“That sounds great!” Relkir had really perked up. “Will you come with me?”
“Uh, sure. Let me check my-”
Before Rethais had finished, Relkir had already found their schedule. “You have an open slot at 1100 hours.”
“Fine. I will arrange something. My guard will need to know.”
Relkir immediately got up and hugged Rethais. “Thank you!”
“No worries, little sibling.”