Eko squealed louder than she ever had before in her life, instantly throwing the tablet from her body, utterly embarrassed at what she had said out loud. The tablet's crushing sound meant it had smashed heavily against the ground. It left Mya leaning against the doorframe, perplexed at what startled the woman before her and why she had thrown the tablet in response to all things.

"It's just me," she laughed, "I heard you talking to yourself." Pushing herself from the door frame, Eko watched as she strolled towards the broken tablet.

"You just ah- scared me... snuck up on me, really, to be honest."

The high ponytailed woman, slick and athletic in her black soldier's suit, bent down, picking up the destroyed tablet that barely even looked like a tablet anymore from the floor, and studied it momentarily before directing her attention to Eko, holding up the offending object.

"Were you looking at porn?" She raised an eyebrow accusingly.

Eko chuckled nervously, "not porn. Why would you first think it was porn, Mya? Why is that even your first thought?"

"The way you acted," she shrugged as she threw the tablet onto the bed. "Very suspicious. Your cheeks are red. Hence I assumed it was porn."

"My cheeks, naturally, just, you know. They go red like any normal person, and secondly... isn't it early to be stalking me in this manner?"

"You were talking to yourself."

"And that's a crime these days?"

Again she shrugged; she really didn't care.

"I'll get you the uniform you'll need for today." And with the softest tap of her flats, she exited the room leaving Eko to her own devices.

The said brunette leaned into the pillows. The brunette grasped the second pillow beside her, covered it over her face, and half screamed into it. That seriously did not just happen!

---- ----

Mya returned sometime later when the morning had broken, a standard uniform in hand, and Eko took a wild punt that was the same as the one she had been wearing. What she was more excited about was that she also had two takeaway coffee cups.

"Here," she offered, handing Eko the coffee. "Cappuccino. I assume you wouldn't mind. There isn't much variety living on base."

"So, I assume you needed coffee to be a decent human being?"

"It's been a long night, do not start." Mya's condescending tone began having glared at the brunette. With an indignant exhale, she threw the uniform on the bed, "get dressed. We're leaving in forty-five minutes."

Eko took a sip of the beautiful substance that electrified her core when it hit her lips. She savoured the heavenly taste for a few moments before placing it on the table beside her.

Mya watched as the woman scurried from the bed with the uniform in hand and made her way to the adjoined bathroom. It allowed her to take a long sip of her coffee before she collapsed into the comfortable grey high back fabric chair.

This life-saving substance was only now hitting her core, and she found herself snuggling into the chair, the coffee cup grasped to her chest. It had been a long twenty-four hours, and she barely had slept, so right now, while the woman who had a death sentence had been in the bathroom getting ready, she could have a cat nap.

Just for five minutes.

Mya drifted off, somewhere between a ringing of laughter on a warm summer's day and an icy chill of being submerged into ice that plagued her.

--- ---

Eko wrestled on the other side of the door to the bathroom; she turned relentlessly as she struggled continuously with the uniform. For her life, she could not figure out why dressing in some of the soldier's gear had been this hard.

Like, sure, her injuries were healed, and she was thankful that they were only minor by the time the soldiers got to her, which meant that she could divert the attention to the fact that she had superhuman healing capabilities.

That would have been an entirely different conversation if anyone figured that out, but it did not explain why she had been struggling in this manner for the love of God, powers and all at her fingertips.

Why it had felt like her bones were aching as she tried to get the uniform on in a sprawling wriggling worm type of manner. Dancing around the bathroom like a spastic, she finally pulled the last part of the black tightened uniform around her and found that it held her body very firmly together.

"The fuck designed these things, honestly," how the hell was she meant to breathe in this incredibly uncomfortable thing?

"Mya, is it meant to suffocate you?"

No answer.

"Mya! I swear to God if I pass out from this suit," she made her way out of the bathroom and found the woman curled into the chair, snoring and unaware of her world.

"Myaaaa..." the said woman snapped awake when her body had been shaken, "you fell asleep."

Sky blue stared intently at the raven-haired maiden who was wide-eyed and lost in her surroundings.

"Oh hey," Mya smiled softly, "does it fit out? Do you need a different size?"

"Is it meant to suffocate you?"

"Stop being such a whinge," Mya stood up from the chair and took another swing of her coffee before she placed it down on a nearby table, "come here."

"Why, so you can abuse me some more?"

Mya smirked; she pulled at one of the long sleeves of Eko's elbow and stretched the material down to her wrist. Her fingers moved to the collar around her neck, then adjusted the settings to loosen the material.

Eko instantly felt like her airways had come back to her. She managed to get her elongated fingers into the collar of her uniform and stretched it outwards; with ease this time, the material adjusted to what she had required. She was surprised that the suits held the kind of technology to compress the body's size.

"Mecotek," Mya explained to the woman, who was confused at what had just happened.

"Mecotek, what?"

"Some guy developed the software for our suits. The academy funded him to produce their entire range, and Jesse equipped our basic tracking system with its structure. Monitoring, live feeds, things like that."

"Right," slender fingers pulled at her collar again. A deep breath in, she tried to find comfort within it. At this point, her corseted dresses were more comfortable than this death suit.

"Hey," scolding her as her mother would, "you wanted to come. This means you need to wear this gear for where we are going. Why you offered is beyond me. After everything."

Eko folded her arms; surely, this soldier would understand her intent. Their commander had.

"Would you give up on knowing and seeing what I saw? After your home was destroyed to nothing?"

"Honestly," Mya scoffed, shaking her head at that question as she continued to adjust the settings on Eko's suit, "I wouldn't want to return. Not to that. The bodies, their state. Our morgues are overrun. Did you know the remaining council elected for mass graves to be allocated to the fallen?"

Stopping suddenly, Eko cocked her head suspiciously, "what do you mean they elected for mass graves?"

"Once the bodies are processed through the system, and we can identify their identities, then everyone is going to be buried in Kamada, the only place land size was big enough to accommodate."

"Right," Eko shook her head, "makes sense, I guess. Burying everyone."

Mya nodded, grasping Eko's left hand and fastening a small black bracelet to her outwear suit.

"Tracking," she demonstrated, "these are fitted to all the suits as a standardized thing now. This is an older one, so you'll need to wear the attachment. We don't have the new supply until the month's end."

Holding up her hand, Mya indicated it was standard procedure and that her suit had been the same as what Eko's currently had been.

"Right, well whatever," the brunette didn't care about the semantics, "the sooner I get out there to search for her, the quicker we can understand what the next steps will be in this war with Ezra."

"She might be dead. Then what?"

"I grew up with her my whole life; I guess I need closure if that's what's happened. If she is, if she isn't. I want to find out either way," offering a rare insight into her thoughts with the woman she also barely knew.

"Closure is a bitch."

Eko laughed softly at that statement, "honestly, this has been my life's biggest wake-up call. It's not something that I can go through again like this. I can't be a part of that. So, I'm not going to sit idly by."

"I'm assuming you lost parents as well from that statement?" Mya studied Eko's facial expression. There wasn't anyone she hadn't met that wasn't affected by the war when they were children.

"Both parents. Who hasn't, right?" Eko confirmed without flinching in emotion, though her fingers were back on the collar of her suit, annoyed with the itching tightness she felt.

"Same," Mya shook her head, knocking Eko's fingers from the collar, and again began to adjust the suit, reminiscing on the time when she was a child.

"I don't think I've ever met anyone with both parents. Most of the soldiers here had one parent, lost them to suicide, or died in the war. The consensus, however, of the soldiers here are indeed orphans."

"At least you have a home that's still intact," Eko muttered.

This war ripped her home again, and the only remaining piece of her family was out there.

"You could always stay?"

Eko snapped her attention to Mya, "stay here?" it wasn't something she had ever considered or thought to consider.

"Not necessarily here, but yea, why not," Mya scowled, straightening the bottom of Eko's suit against her stomach.

"I'm sure the Headmaster could make something happen. You would need to take some courses and become a soldier. It's not the ideal life you can imagine, but it is home here or whatever academy you choose. All I'm saying is that it is far better and safer behind the walls of an academy than being out there instead."

Eko allowed herself to nod, "I'll consider that. Thank you." She smiled warmly for the first time in hours, having truly relaxed into the comfort of the woman before her.

"No sweat," then Mya placed a small device around Eko's other wrist, the last part of the equipment needed for what they were about to head into, and she stepped back smiling.

"You really are a different person with some coffee in your system, aren't you?"

"Shut up," Mya teased, "come on, let's move. We're on a tight schedule here, so no dilly-dallying."

Eyebrow raised, she took the coffee cup from the stand beside them and proceeded out of the room, ushering Eko to follow her.

On Mya's heel instantly, Eko found that it was where she finally got to see the extent of the academy for the first time since she had awoken. Not even as a Princess was, she ever allowed to leave the Moon, technically.

And she's never had a reason to see Allegiant, especially what she knew of the academy.

The elite above all others. A world within itself. A training system that eclipsed anything else that had been built.

The mysteries of this place were something she wanted to uncover while she had the time. In truth, it had been on a list of things she wanted to tick off instead of always reading about it from a world away.

Perhaps being here, perhaps now, it had been when Eko also decided that that's what she would do once she killed Ezra and finally stopped this war.

She was going to cross everything off her bucket list and finally live.

VOTE so that both girls can cross things off their bucket list and I don't just kill them offfff....