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[h1]Blossoming Relationships[/h1]
[sub][@Lazo][@Awesomoman64][@Crimmy][@Abillioncats][/sub][/center]

Despite Ms. Aristeas' rather kind evaluation of their results, Robert was not as happy. Of course, no one in their team was hurt or killed, which was always optimal, but he still felt like they could have done better. No, he could have done better. Everything was going perfectly until he had gotten too far away from the others and almost thrown off the edge of the ship. He was alive only through the support of his comrades, not through his own efforts.

The young student turned to his team leader though to try and read her reaction to the evaluation. He'd been in charge once and he didn't envy his admittedly much more worthy replacement. He still knew how it felt to succeed but still feel there was room for improvement. To do everything you could do right, yet still see nothing but more needing to be fixed. The worst part about being leader though, at least a good one in his opinion, was that you often found fault in your own actions first. Sand struck Robert as the sort of person who'd think the same way. So as she left to return their borrowed weaponry, he began contemplating possible words of encouragement so she knew how glad he was to have her in charge.

Those words would be forgotten though once Sand was back, giving the team her own debriefing, which felt very much targeted at his screw up. Perhaps he was solely in the wrong here. He was, after all, the only one who had needed saving. He had thought he was being cautious like asked and the incident was only caused by bad roll of the dice, but maybe he was the problem. [b]"Sorry, guys,"[/b] he said, embarrassed.

When the ship landed, Robert did his best to push away the creeping self-doubt and refocus on the objective. Being distracted would only lead to more mistakes, past missions had taught him that. Still, while he certainly looked serious and ready in appearance, he didn't seem to yet notice the odd behavior of the facility's employees. Though perhaps it was better to say lack of behavior as only the one man seemed to be working here for all they knew.