SUITE
HEART

When was the last time Suiteheart had done anything like chasing butterflies? She tried to recall, tried to think back to the days when things had been simpler, easier, kinder. A vision burned in her mind's eye. A tiny girl with fur of cinnamon and eyes of the brightest emerald. She wore a pink pastel bow around her tail and a lopsided grin just as Suite always did. The pair of them had played games like this together.

Arizona. Little Ari. She had been taken before her time. The bittersweet memories tugged on her heart strings as she silently watched Carolina chase after the tiny butterfly. The white feline let a paw drift to her locket, and she opened it. The small picture inside of it included many bright, smiling faces. Arizona rested within the family portrait. Suite let a smile wash over her lips.

When her eyes returned to Carolina, she saw others had gathered: Myliu, Versaillespalace, Imperia. Pushing herself off the ground, the Ecliptic Admiral padded towards the group. She let her smile remain upon her alabaster features. "You look like you feel better, Carolina," Suiteheart meowed, voice holding onto notes of gladness.

© [color=black]MADI

Fun wasn't something that really happened with their group. Relaxation was usually permitted of course, and the Freelancers were allowed to have downtime if it was within their schedule. Their schedules were usually full of the different trainings that they were going to end up doing. The program was entirely that of a military, meaning that there were no means for them to enjoy their life while they were inside said military. They were there for one job and one job only, and that was there to help them save the human race from extinction of an enemy that would happily watch them die underneath their feet. Something that humans weren't exactly readily wanting to go through and wanted to have some peace on Earth. They fought hard for their freedom, and with the idea of extinction on the table, they all had to work with one another if they all didn't want to die. Sure, there were others on different planets, but he wouldn't doubt that the aliens would go after them as well.

Soldiers were usually on a strict schedule or kept themselves on a strict schedule just so that they wouldn't get out of shape. In the time of war, one needed to be prepared for anything to happen. There could easily be a patrol from the enemy that could figure out where their base was and said a raiding party to simply destroy the place. Something that the UNSC didn't exactly want to have happened, so they were always prepared with different protocols to follow when it came to their gear and whether or not they would win the fight in the first place. If they couldn't win the fight, they were usually commanded to gather as much gear as they possibly could, and then from there destroy the rest of it so that it wouldn't get into the hands of enemies. Washington knew that there were a couple instances during the war that they got their hands on some of the alien technology and were able to reverse engineer it so that they could figure out how to use it for themselves.

Although, it was the Spartans that got that kind of weaponry and not the Freelancer as they were an independent project from the likes of the rest of the military. When he was in the military there was little that he did when it came to his downtime. Cleaning his weapons was something that was almost considered therapeutic to him, while he would occasionally read anything that was going in the news. Washington had been given the mentality of a soldier during this time and had hidden the way that he truly acted around others. There was no reason for him to try and crack jokes when he would get yelled at about it for not taking the situation seriously. He always did of course, but there were some times that morale mattered just as much as the rest of the strategies that they had. Washington learned to follow orders though after the several instances that he was punished for not doing so. They broke him like any other human being that joined the army, and a part of him didn't really matter.

He had a purpose after all, and this meant that he knew what was expected of him. He, of course, wanted to constantly better himself as he never wanted to consider himself constantly average. It was when he joined Freelancer though that he saw the potential that he did have when it regards to a soldier, and how good of a shot he was. Sure, he was no long distance shooter like North was with his sniper rifle, but he had his battle rifle and he was good enough at that to get him onto the leaderboard. Carolina had always been more competitive than Washington, as Washington wanted to get better, but he knew that he would never become the best. He was limited with the amount of skill that he had and was limited with the amount of hand to hand combat that he had as well. That was more Carolina's forte, although now he wasn't sure what she would really be capable of taking on. The Freelancer knew that she was strong, she always was strong. Washington didn't have enough time to analyze her mental health or where she was physically in her new body.

Hell, he had to conduct research just to figure out what she even was. Something called a Serval, that was supposedly really fast and great with hearing. He figured the hearing part was implied considering that her ears were as big as a dinner plate. Washington had yet to make fun of her goofy ears, as he felt like it would potentially make her uncomfortable in the new body. She had just come back after death, and it was obviously something that had put both of them through a lot of stress. Washington didn't want to be alone, and having Carolina around certainly did help him a lot. Familiarity to latch onto so that he didn't exactly go insane either. Carolina was going through a lot, and he bet it was only made worse in her new bodies. She didn't have to worry about the injuries she had thought. The Freelancer still had his broken arm from his own mistake, although, he was starting to be able to put a little pressure on the arm without it hurting like hell. It was only a little bit of pressure and he didn't want to risk breaking his leg on accident again. He already didn't like the body that he was already in. The armored smilodon was on his daily patrols during the middle of the day, his morning runs becoming difficult when he only had three legs.

Forcing him to have to trot half of the time. It wasn't a surprise that he saw what was going on, as he remained at the edge of the treeline as he heard several familiar voices and familiar faces. Except for one and they were a child. The type of creature that he didn't enjoy interacting with and often avoided half of the time. What was everyone looking at? The armored smilodon followed their gaze as he noticed a black serval was chasing a butterfly. Well.... he wasn't expecting that. Honestly, he was just glad to see Carolina taking it easy. She was harder on herself than others would ever know, constantly training till her bones would probably break. They couldn't have that in this world though, she needed to take care of herself. R&R being one of those. Washington was a hypocrite though as he refused to relax as long as he had his broken leg. The former human sat on the opposite side of where everyone was watching Carolina, his appearance not all that surprising thanks to all the heavy noises he made. A small tired grin was hidden behind the helmet that he was wearing. "Man, if only I had a laser pointer." Washington would tease his comrade a little bit. He had cats when he was younger and watched them chase various insects. Including laser pointers that still existed on Earth during his time. It was funny to watch them chase it and not realize that it wasn't exactly real. "speech"

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Being the rookie that he was during Project Freelancer, Washington had plenty of embarrassing moments that he would prefer not to have spoken of ever again. Because they were just that, embarrassing. When he joined the group, he had been incredibly naive and gullible and believed everything that the rest of the Freelancers were telling him. Washington wasn't sure whether or not to believe them, but he considered it better for them to believe it better than to risk getting hurt in some way. York and North were the ones that messed with him the most and in the beginning even CT. He remembered being told that there were cameras in the showerhead, and that was just horrible to think about. So every time he took a shower, he had to constantly look over the shower head to see if he was being watched, and he was certain that if he saw the shower head move he would immediately get out of there without a second thought. There was an instance on a raid that they infiltrated another insurrectionist ship where he was supposed to get the controls to close the hangar doors and just to get into the system in general. Ultimately, he had no idea what he was doing and ended up turning off of the gravity.

They were lucky that they had gravity boots that tethered them to the ground like they were magnets. He was pretty sure that someone had thrown a car at him during that time too when all the enemies were floating in the air and Carolina making quick work of them. He had managed to get the gravity back on, although it took him several minutes to do just that. During the same mission a nuke ended up being planted in the middle of the asteroid field that the ship had been hiding in, and all of Alpha team were outside of the ship and using their jetpacks to get back into the ship. It hadn't been easy, and Washington was the last one to even get inside of the damned ship because he was afraid of using his jetpack wrong and being sent into space. Just like Georgia. Ultimately, Carolina ended up saving him by using her grappling gun on him. Which just so happened to attach itself to his crotch. Yes, it wasn't exactly his best moments and his friends had made fun of him for it. Not like they had a whole lot of time to make fun of him because they were on a timetable. It was incredibly embarrassing and a moment that he didn't like to talk about that moment. No one likes talking about something they had done that was embarrassing. Then there was something that Delta ended up telling him about caffeine while he was with York.

The AI telling him that if he were to go to sleep after drinking too much caffeine and already having a lack of sleep, it would kill him. Something that Washington had immediately believed until he told North what Delta said. Only for North to break out laughing at how gullible Washington was and the Freelancer just confused by the other's laughter. North then explained to him that York had told Delta to tell him that, and Washington felt like the dumbest person in the world. Before Washington ended up getting his own AI implantation, York went over the side effects of what happened with getting an AI. Headaches, bleeding through the eyes, and some organs would be inverted. Washington believed everything that York told him, he didn't know why he just trusted the guy. When he had reacted disgustingly, York was quick to say that none of that happened other than just the headaches here and there. Washington had sighed with relief at that news as he didn't want that to happen to him. Not like it matters when he finally got Epsilon and his mind was basically completed destroyed to the point of insanity. It was funny to see how Carolina was reacting to what was happening to her.

She was surrounded by people that would most definitely remember what had just happened today. And for once it wasn't him. A surprise for the Freelancer, but that didn't mean he was going to escalate the situation further to where she didn't want to do stuff like this. Washington didn't even bother to try and let loose. He believed it to be a waste of time, but he was used to working constantly with no fun. He wasn't sure about Carolina's background all that much. There was a tired smirk underneath his helmet as he listened to her responses before turning toward him. A low chuckle escaped his jaws as he shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. [b]"Is that a challenge? I could get you a ball of yarn if you wanted." Washington questioned the other with a hint in his tone toward the serval. He raised his good right arm and adjusted the helmet that was on top of his head before speaking again. "For once the tables seemed to have turned." Washington pointed out toward his comrade, his short tail flicking behind him. Of course, he was considering this a little bit of a revenge for what had happened during the Project. Probably the only times that had actually been relaxing and fun to laugh about.