[b][indent][color=#800000][h3]Shipmaster Chur'R-Jev,[/h3]Tec, & Nol
Anvil Station, Commissary[/color][/indent][/b][hr]
It’d been a time since he’d last taken a ship by force, for real stakes. There was something exhilarating about the idea that offset the risk somehow, that put a finger on the scales. Of course, the Shipmaster knew that it was normally a foregone conclusion and yet…and yet there was something to it still. The human training rooms gave a good enough simile of the idea, but there was always something missing to it. There wasn’t the whole of the brutality towards it, the rush, the cutting away. There wasn’t the movements through new holes punched in the hull, the blood coagulating in the zero-g. There wasn’t a look of things.

They’d done well in any case, acting out a boarding that had gone particularly well. Zero-g, occasional losses of power, shrapnel throughout the whole of it that their combat harnesses shrugged off, and then the small team had moved through maintenance passages to bypass the normal thermal sensors. Holograph enemies - humans under the Banished with a few of the Jiralhanae - moved well enough but failed to realize the ambush before it had already begun. One grenade had taken Nol, though, and they’d taken engineering long enough to plant explosives before leaving quickly. Well. Quickly. The Shipmaster could feel his quills prick at the experience, which had gone somewhat poorly. Things to be improved upon. They hadn’t the normal resources that Chur’R-Jev would expect to be at hand. Something missing, always. Something lacking.

He shrugged the idea away, leaning against the hallway. One clawed hand reached in a pouch, drawing out a long, grey-gold wrapped cigar clenched between two thin fingers. A pause as the other hand activated the personal shielding, hitting a light fist against the shield before swiping the tip of the cigar against it. Cigar smoke wafted up as the shielding died down, the Shipmaster taking a long, satisfied drag.

[color=#800000]”You should have taken their back ranks. That human with the armor - could have punched through him. You know that,”[/color] complained Nol to Tec, shaking his head at it. The grenade had enough of a flash and bang to it that his hearing was still ringing, something that the Kig-Yar certainly didn’t appreciate.

[color=#800000]”Had a Jiralhanae to deal with. Didn’t think he’d throw a grenade with the ape right there. Stupid humans, you know, even when they aren’t real.”[/color]

A snort - or really the closest equal to it - followed from both. There really was something absolutely foolish about the whole of the endeavor, though the Shipmaster still felt like there was some profit, [i]somewhere[/i], that could be found. He’d already set up the smallest of black markets to move goods from one species to another, the cigars a closing bargain with the opening deal; one of the UNSC supply clerks who had a bit of space to stow bits of things here or there on a transport from ‘back home’. Good enough merchant, all things told, though Chur’R-Jev felt that they were too young to have been around for the great and mighty War of Annihilation.

[color=#800000]”Come on, then. Could do with some food.”[/color]

And off they were, down the hallways of the ‘Anvil Station’, the Shipmaster puffing away with that cigar. It had a certain quality to it, the natural, dried leaves smelling like some of the plants from…where was it…one human world or another that he’d set foot on. He couldn’t recall the name, but they’d been farming there too. Reminded him of a few meals he’d had before, too, though the Shipmaster couldn’t quite place how. Human things were strange like that, nostalgic like that, but he enjoyed the sensation of it enough. It was calming, in a way, enlightening in another. Maybe if the Prophets had a few human cigars they wouldn’t have been so absolutely [i]stupid[/i]. Well. Unlikely. He puffed on it a bit more.

Humans along the way gave funny little looks here or there when they thought he wasn’t looking. Some of them exhaled out the smells - even if Chur’R-Jev insisted that his crew not smell like absolute animals, the idea of bathing eluded most. Some of them had adopted his own style of sulphur-scrub, something that technically made for a clean Kig-Yar but certainly did not make for a pleasant-smelling one…at least, if the humans were anything to go by. He found them to smell just as, floral and artificial and absolutely [i]toxic[/i]. Some smelled like they had just been rutting, sweat and stink, and others smelled like they were still in the station’s laundering facilities, cleaner and the rest of it clinging to them like clouds. He exhaled it away all the same. One day, maybe the Shipmaster would get used to them. One day. Unlikely. He puffed on the cigar all the same as they made their way through the station, outpacing most of the humans.

They found themselves in the Commissary - humans had such strange naming methods, really - with groups already here and there among the tables. He paused at the entrance, eyes scanning through all of them, from the humans to the Sangheili to the Unggoy to a few others of his own type. The last were normally of his own crew, the Shipmaster had found, or had already found themselves in want to go elsewhere. He’d made his position with them very clear, even if it was somewhat discretely, and those who weren’t on Anvil for the same reason had more than enough reason to be elsewhere anyways. No, they’d come to their understandings well enough. 

The humans set themselves apart too, though, the Demons in one location, the…helljumpers, Chur’R-Jev could never quite reason with the human way for acronyms, in another, and then their standard troops elsewhere. Demons. He chuckled to himself at the thought, that they’d once quaked away at the idea, but those sort of humans had been long dead. The War of Annihilation had seen to their passing, even if they had left a mark of every species of the Covenant, and those who still claimed ‘Spartan’ were far inferior in the terror they could inflict. At least, that’s as the Shipmaster saw it. He considered that he might very well be wrong, and yet there was still something missing from those that the Demons before had. Another drag of the cigar, enjoying the last of it before he put the half-dead grey-gold out with the tips of his claws. 

Pocketing the thing, they got into line, got food that was…well, it was cooked, really. Chur’R-Jev could recall when they’d ate the dead and the living with little enough care, though the latter was a rare instance indeed considering his career, but the idea of cooked meat had grown on the Shipmaster and a few others. It was, as the humans said, steak. Red juices ran freely onto the tray, that pink middle of the meat smelling like animals the Shipmaster had never seen before, and Chur’R-Jev fixed the attending Unggoy on the line with a brief enough look. The portion was not very much.

[color=#800000]”Another slice? This is all I am getting.”[/color]

A mask stared back with those beady little eyes as the figure seemed to contemplate enacting oh-sweet-revenge, the smallest of getting back, the most minor of inconveniences to the Kig-Yar who had never been met before but surely had been brutal enough to other Unggoy. Finally, a huff through the methane mask as the tongs reached out to deposit another piece of steak onto the Shipmaster’s tray, one half the size of the first. He exhaled, nodding to the Unggoy before moving on. Of all the things Chur’R-Jev had needed to purchase that was the most costly, it seemed to be patience. Dealing with the Unggoy as they had before wasn’t an option anymore, and one had to get used to that.

A pause again, considering where to sit. Nol gestured to an open table across from a few of the other Kig-Yar who seemed to be devouring several eggs at a breakneck pace, and Chur’R-Jev was tempted enough, before he considered what would be more entertaining as a whole. He beckoned the two follow, and slowly the trio wound their way to a table next to the humans who the Shipmaster knew had just been in training as they’d had. Sitting down, he watched as Nol picked up his, a snap of the mouth removing a good quarter of the steak in one go.

Turning to the humans - Marines, as the Shipmaster understood them - he chuckled. Speaking in English, that stupid human language that never could make sense, Chur’R-Jev said with a rasp, [color=#800000]”Have you been enjoying the Sangheili training?”[/color]