Chapter Text
Most Irken interactions could have been e-mails.
Reports could have just been typed up and sent. Requests could have just been typed up and sent.
Rewards, punishments, instructions.
Most Irken interaction could have been done virtually, through an e-mail.
It just made since what with the technological advancement and the pure distance between irk and the rest of the worlds under their control.
But no matter what, Irkens will strive with the power and energy of a dog on a leash to do whatever they can in person, or in failing that, on video.
Irkens love attention, love to be seen, to be witnessed, to put on a show.
They want all eyes on them!
Even when they’re being punished or belittled, they still bask in the attention of others.
Pinq really could not fucking get it.
It had to be something cultural, and not instinctual, because even when she had first been struggling to deal with her brand-new body, when all of her instincts were unstoppable urges-
She had never wanted to be the center of attention.
Hell, she had made it her goal in life to be so far from the center of attention that she fell out of orbit.
Ha.
Yeah, that had been the goal.
Funny how things work out.
Pinq was currently standing on a stage, in front of a working crowd of Irkens, her fingers and antenna’s twitching and flexing as she summoned and discarded information as needed.
What was currently happening was-
Well.
Here’s the thing.
It looked like some kind of concert, with her, Red, and Purple being the stars of the show, put up on a stage with lights, camera and no action at all.
But it was actually a meeting.
Their advisors were supposed to be in front of them, informing them of the achievements of the areas they oversaw.
But none of them had any advisors.
They were a cycle deep into being the Tallest of the empire, and they still just had what was left over from Tallest Spork’s short reign, and whoever had managed to escape the culling of Tallest Miyuki’s reign.
It was a third of what they needed, and most of them were . . . not incompetent.
But they were not working with her.
They didn’t want Pinq overlooking their work.
Mostly because both she and they knew that there would be disagreements between them.
Like, they wanted to drag every non-essential Irken into the army and invade the known and unknown universe for the glory of the empire.
And she wanted them to please just make sure that the interstellar highways were making deliveries like they were supposed to.
But no, why make sure that the empire was working correctly when you could just bring the issue directly to the Tallests and make them fix it?!? Why do your job when you could be a passive aggressive pain in her ass?!?
. . .
Pinq was barely keeping herself afloat.
She was drowning in a million cascading problems.
For every issue she set to rights, a dozen others were unsettled.
She made sure that one planet had packaged up the food to send to Irk, only to learn that there were no vehicles to pick it up.
Why were there no ships to take and deliver the food?
Because there was a shortage of fuel in that section of the universe.
Why was there a fuel shortage?
Because the price had gone up and the allotment of monies for it wasn’t buying as much.
Why had the price of fuel gone up?
~shrug~.
And at that point in that conversation Pinq had taken a breath so deep it had hurt, and then pointed at a random Irken, gotten a quick reflexive file on them, and assigned them the task of getting that food to Irk at a specific time and with as little loss as possible.
The Irken, (3’8, Yule, office drone) had saluted and scurried off.
Pinq had put a pin in this train of thought, an orange one signifying its middling importance, and a timer to remind herself to check to see if it was completed and reward Yule if it had been, or figure out what had caused them to fail, and then turned to the next problem.
The Empire wasn’t falling apart, no there were too many stop-gap measures, and emergency standards put in place to keep that from happening.
But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t limping.
When Tallest Miyuki had died, she had not gone out alone. A significant portion of her advisors had died with her.
The Empire had a Tallest that called the shots, but below the tallest was a hydra of advisors who all would handle different parts of the empire and keep track of their specific areas.
Some things could only be done by the tallest themselves, but a great many other things could be handed off.
And because of the death of one tallest and the other only a cycle after, a great many things had been fumbled and left on the floor.
Pinq knew exactly what had happened, and she was still angry about it.
Tallest Spork, an advisor who was toward the bottom, and had never expected to become the tallest, suddenly had a thousand deals and debts all come calling.
He was overwhelmed, probably blackmailed, and just pressured from all directions to pay up what he owed, because suddenly he had a way to really make all of those favors that he owed worth more than his former position as a waste management head.
This meant that a lot of power had been traded around between Irkens who didn’t deserve it or didn’t know what to do with it.
Under Tallest Miyuki, the Tallers with all of the power had worked in management positions. Worked as scientists and academics, researchers and intellectuals who were working on things inside of the empire and not on its expansion.
But under Tallest Spork?
Who had lived in a vast web of favors and debts?
The hierarchy had flipped.
Now it was the military that was calling the shots.
All of the military tallers, who had never had a chance of being an advisor of Miyuki, all strongarmed their ways into the position under Tallest Spork.
And then, they had made sure that there wouldn’t be anyone to take their spots once Tallest Spork got his feet under him.
An enforced military service period for everyone over 8 foot, doesn’t sound like a death sentence, until you realize that all of the Irkens who had gotten used to their soft cushy life-style were literally walking targets.
All of the tallers who had been favored by the last regime were now in the cross hairs of the next.
And they were very good shots.
They had dropped like flies, nearly every single one of the various managers and scientists had been wiped out in the single year that it had been enforced.
Pinq had only survived by virtue of Red and Purple deciding that they wanted to keep her as more than a smear on the ground.
But she had survived, she had managed to live long enough to see Tallest Spork die, and then to see the two get labeled the Tallest.
And she had ended up getting called such herself.
But, even though Tallest Spork had died in a . . . similar way that Tallest Miyuki had, it hadn’t been a total party wipe of the advisors.
And one doesn’t just get rid of an advisor.
It was-
It was sorta like a social expectation, and a little bit like how when you get certain jobs, you get those jobs until you are labeled no longer able to complete them.
To remove an advisor wasn’t just telling them to get a new job, but it was like telling them that they no longer had use.
It was more than an insult. It was nearly a death sentence.
If she cleared out the advisors that tried to kill her, not only would she make all of them her enemies, but she would also be gutting the power of some of the last people in the empire who ACTUALLY KNEW HOW TO RUN IT.
If she got rid of them, then she would have less opposition, but then someone would have to fill their spots and overlook what they had been in charge of.
And while Pinq hated to admit it, her hands were full.
She couldn’t take on more jobs, she couldn’t keep track of more things.
Not by herself.
And the boys were not going to help.
Pinq darted an eye toward where Red and Purple laid nearly on top of each other as they stared blankly at the far wall.
They were-
They were trying.
But they had been soldiers, they were trained, experienced soldiers. And those skills didn’t do much with helping run an empire.
This was made slightly worse by the fact that Pinq also didn’t know how to run an empire.
She knew she was micromanaging things that she didn’t need to, she knew that the advisors that had been doing these jobs could do these jobs. That there was enough of a head on their shoulders to get these damn things done.
But they wouldn’t obey her.
Pinq was-
She was the ‘least tall’.
That was what they were saying about her.
That between the three of them, she was the one who was lacking, that she was the one who didn’t deserve to be on the pedestal.
And, despite how that still meant that she was taller than them, they had decided to use that as an excuse to disregard her orders.
Oh, they never said it flat out, never denied that they got the order.
But then they would send something to one of the boys, a message, a call- something- and then her boys would be led into giving a different order.
And just like that, her words were weightless compared to the other ‘more’ Tallest.
. . .
Pinq was . . . fairly certain that Red and Purple didn’t know what was going on.
That they didn’t know that they were being used as a tool to undermine her power in the empire.
They didn’t really do subtle like that.
She had spent a lot of time with them; in parties, in training, in fights, in downtime.
She had seen how they plan.
Purple doesn’t plan as much as he reacts. He can certainly follow a goal to an end, but most of his goals are very short term. Hours at most, days if there is a need.
Red can make a longer plan. But he likes to do them in plain view. He likes to tell you exactly how things are going to happen, and then watch as you try desperately to change the unstoppable future.
No.
They didn’t plan with subtility and patience in mind.
That was her wheel house.
Her plans were often never noticed. The prey never realizing that their misfortune was orchestrated by an outside force.
Her plans happened softly, gently, and over the course of weeks.
(over the course of decades. A wait time so long you could barely connect the threads back to her.)
So, no.
Pinq didn’t think that they knew they were being used like this.
They were just trying to deal with the Irkens who came to them instead of her. Trying to lighten her load.
There were too many tasks in the empire for her take care of them all, too much space and time to always be with the boys so that they could ask her opinion on a request.
They few times she had tried to follow up on her orders being ignored with them, they rarely remembered the interaction at all, never knew that they had been asked after she had made a decision.
And it would undermine their own authority if she changed the decisions back.
But there were some orders that Pinq refused to shift on.
Which is why this meeting was happening at all.
Why Pinq had Red and Purple here with her on this pedestal, why there were cameras and a full audience.
Why she had called a meeting instead of sent an email.
She needed everyone, the entire empire to see, hear, know that she had made a decision about this.
Because this was an order that she would not allow to be disregarded.
This was a decision that could save the Irken people, and shift them away from their path of ruin.
It was the biggest change that she had ever made, on purpose, in this cursed life she was living.
It might be the change needed to save her, to save them all.
And she would not let some petty fucking cunt wreck everything.
And as an internal clock ticked over, it was finally time to deal with Advisor Fratii.
She wished it would be for the last time, but if this meeting went the way she wanted it to, there would be a lot more times.
Advisor Fratii (9’1, 562 cycles, Favorite food: Chilled Sugar Gushers) had been put in charge of finishing the construction of the Massive.
The Massive was . . . too huge to put into words. It was a purely mechanical, planet sized ship. It dwarfed many planets in fact. It had to be specially constructed to deal with the fact that its own gravitational output would mean that no matter where you were in the ship, you had to stand with your feet toward the middle, toward the core.
It was an impossible feat, a marvel and what Tallest Miyuki had thought to be an answer to the overpopulation issue.
Irkens were no longer natural creatures. They could survive on planets, survive easily, but now their natural state after uncountable years of living on a mechanized Irk, was metal.
They no longer felt comfortable or at home near large amounts of organic matter. They no long felt a need for dirt.
Irk had become a metal hive, and it was one of the few places in the greater universe that could make an Irken feel at home.
This meant that Irkens often tried to stay on Irk.
This meant that often the jobs that needed to be filled in the greater universe were left vacant.
This meant that despite how expansive the Irken empire was, it was staffed by a skeleton crew of individuals who were outliers in their desire to stay at their post.
Or simply were not tall enough to leave their position.
The Massive was meant to fix that.
It was meant to be a new home for Irkens, to make a circuit through the empire and give Irkens the familiar atmosphere that they desired. It was supposed to help spread the work force around the universe and keep a large crew that could trade in and out with each new stop.
Advisor Fratii wanted to add cannons to it and send it out into the universe as a flag ship of the military to conquer everything.
To kick off a little something called “Impending DOOM”.
. . .
Like HELL.
Pinq knows, knows that the boys would have lunged at that without a single thought in their heads. She knows what they like, knows that if they knew that Advisor Fratii wanted to use the Massive to take over the universe . . .
Pinq knows that her boys would argue with her.
Which is why she was doing this here and now. She wasn’t going to let Advisor Fratii have a single moment to get a word in, she was going to end this here and now.
Because.
As the Tallest. Even as the ‘least’ Tallest.
She could do something that was frankly cheating.
Advisor Fratii stepped out of the crowd, their adjusted robes dragging behind them, their curled antennas bobbing.
Most Irkens fell into four categories.
First there were ‘Perfect’ Irkens. The standard. The straight spined, straight antennae, the straight and narrow. The Irkens who had their shit together and were exactly what the empire wanted.
(who often had some kind of mental defect that they kept quiet and controlled)
Second was the . . . ‘Fat’. The Irkens that widened out, that became as immovable as a tank. The ones who, if Pinq’s research was correct and not biased from what she remembered from the show, the best and most resilient fighters in the empire.
And some of the most shit on.
The third were the ‘Curly’. The ones whose antennas spiral and who have long eyelashes. They were often the most vicious and sneaky of the bunch. The ones who don’t just salt the earth, but make you watch the whole time.
And the last and least were the . . . “Slumped’. The Irkens who had trouble standing up straight. The ones who mostly populated the lower jobs, the ones who spoke the quietest and had the least amount of impact.
. . .
Pinq flexed the muscles in her back, feeling the posture rings and the slates that she added to her robes to keep her from curling into herself rub harshly on her skin.
. . . yeah.
Just guess where Pinq was on that list.
. . .
But that didn’t matter.
What mattered right now was keeping her cool and putting on a show.
Advisor Fratii took the speaking position at the tip of the stage, and gave a low bow to Pinq and the boys behind her.
Pinq couldn’t give her the opportunity to rise. She needed to start strong, go hard, and use all of her tricks and underhanded tactics to keep Advisor Fratii’s dirty mouth shut.
Pinq raised her chin, squared her shoulders, bared her teeth, and let out a rattling hissssssss-
Letting the whole room know-
That their Tallest was displeased.
The Irkens who had been rushing around all froze. Steps didn’t land, words were choked in throats-
Even the hovering cameras had a stutter in their movements as the room and the empire beyond all had the instinctive reaction to an angry noise coming from their tallest.
Even Advisor Fratii stilled, antenna’s flinching and curling close to their head before being force into a relaxed position once more.
The room was frozen.
The room was in her control.
(Pinq did he absolute best to ignore the lack of movement behind her, ignore how she could feel Red and Purple’s attention on her back.)
(. . . she would be cornered later, the moment they were away from eyes, but they wouldn’t do anything right now.)
(probably)
“Advisor Fratii . . .” Pinq said on the end of the hiss, letting the name keep the rattle.
They pulled up out of their bow, keeping their spine as straight as they could make it, a congenial look on their face.
“My Tallest it is a ho- “
“Shut up.” Pinq snarled, taking a step forward.
And they did. Mouth clamping shut like it was a bear trap.
But their eyes were still sharp. They weren’t cowed yet.
Pinq took a step. Another.
Walking slowly but with purpose as she got closer and closer to the Advisor. Making sure to keep up that eye contact as Advisor Fratii’s head had to tilt farther and farther back.
“Advisor Fratii. I have requested your appearance before me, not to hear your excuses or your attempts at flattery.”
Pinq was trying to really rub in the difference in height. Trying to accentuate the fact that it was Pinq who was taller here.
That between the two of them, it was Pinq who gave the orders.
“You have already been given your orders, your questions have been answered, and your ideas have been refused.”
A thought, a twitch of her shoulders, and a thin metal limb reached from Pinq’s PAK toward Advisor Fratii. The arm’s sharp edge hovering close to their face, nearly touching their mechanical attachment, the device that was inserted into their temple.
“Your desire for adjustments and improvements,” Pinq put as much stank as she possibly could on that word, channeling her inner Red, “has been noted and disregarded. Your project will follow the blueprints that I approved, without any extra add-ons.”
Pinq let her metal arm make contact, let the jolt of electricity pass from the arm to the device in Advisor Fratii’s temple, and was grudgingly impressed that outside of their antennas jolting, they didn’t flinch at all.
“You have your orders.”
Pinq turned away, putting her back to them as she began to walk back to where she had been standing. She lowered her gaze to a screen that she pulled up to give her an excuse to not look at the boys as she went back toward them.
Pinq finished it all off with a clear dismissal.
“Now. Do your job and bring glory to the empire.”
Pinq’s stomach was still tied in knots, but she had done it!
She hadn’t let the advisor get a word in, she had managed to keep the boys from hearing about what Advisor Fratii was in charge of, what changes they wanted to make.
She had done it!!
Or that’s what she had thought for the next four steps-
Until Advisor Fratii judged her far enough away.
“But did your fellow Tallest’s agree with your decision?”
Pinq stumbled, trying to whip around to bark at her to shut up, but only ended up stumbling over her feet, giving them the seconds they needed to say-
“Their thoughts on the matter haven’t been heard.”
This bitch. This bastard. No no no, shut up shut up-
“They might disagree on your vision for the empire.”
Silence could not be had in a room as filled with creatures as this one.
But it made a good fucking attempt.
Pinq knew that her jaw, her antennas, her hands-
Had all slackened in shock.
Had this-
Had this motherfucker really just done that?
Had this shit stain really just-
Asked for a-
For a second opinion?
Advisor Fratii was smug and relaxed, looking behind Pinq and toward where the boys sat.
They looked like they knew they were going to win, like they knew how this story would play out.
Like they knew that soldiers would side with soldiers, and that a war was a bait that one could ignore the trap for.
And Pinq-
Pinq didn’t know what would happen now.
She had been so careful to keep this bitch away from the boys. To have all messages blocked, to have every single one of their minions banned from where the boys would go.
Just so that they would never know what she was keeping them from. What war she was strangling in the cradle, what battle she was avoiding, the fight that she was surrendering before it even begun.
She didn’t know what would happen now.
Now that this- this-
-this shorter-
-had been given an order from a Taller- from the Tallest- and had just turned and bluntly asked for different marching orders from the other Tallests.
Advisor Fratii was all but saying out loud to the full room, to the millions of eyes through the camera lenses-
Tallest Pinq can be ignored. Tallest Pinq can be insulted.
Tallest Pinq can only make noise and it’s Tallest Red and Tallest Purple who are the ones that actually hold power.
Only Tallest Red and Tallest Purple give orders you have to listen to.
You can ignore Pinq.
I did~.
Pinq’s head was buzzing, her PAK tossing up a variety of warning messages as a dozen back-end programs activated to keep her here- to keep her present.
To keep her from hiding in her metal mind.
Programs that were first made to keep her in her meat when the lasers started blazing and the screaming of the enemy echoed close enough to ring in her antennas.
Programs that were made to keep her moving, to force her to stay aware instead of hiding in her metal, to keep her present and quick. To obey orders that would keep her alive, and not just orders to serve her empire.
To ensure that she kept running, that she stayed between Red and Purple when they ripped apart everything around them.
They were Red’s work.
A labor of- of something- that he had created in what little down time they had managed to acquire during her ‘training period’. The small moments of rest that she had whittled out of the suffering during Tallest Spork’s reign.
The many down cycles that could have been spent actually relaxing, were instead spent with Pinq shivering and crying in Purple’s hold while Red used the improper tools to open up her PAK and adjust her body and mind.
To add lines of codes and triggers that would shunt her mind away from the hole her mind always tried to crawl into when she was overcome, and keep her in the moment. To stop the machine from controlling the meat.
Because the machine would do its duty and die for its empire.
And the Boys had more use for the meat.
Pinq was horribly horribly aware of her twitching claws, her flinching antennas.
Programs made for battlefields activating on a stage.
In a meeting.
She was just as scared here, in this moment, then she was when she was staring down gunfire and justified rage from a species at war.
Maybe she was as pathetic as Advisor Fratii wanted the empire to think she was.
Pinq didn’t know how long she might have stayed in her head, how long her mind might have rolled and rebelled, for as much as the programs kept her aware and, in her meat, they couldn’t make her do anything.
But time moved even if she didn’t, and Pinq was shoved back into crystal clear clarity by the swish of robes one either side of her.
Her boys had joined her on the stage.
Fuck.
Fuck.
They had joined her on the stage.
They had joined the meeting, they had acknowledged Advisor Fratii.
Shit, fuck, fuckfuck!
Pinq twitched her antenna’s before forcing them still.
This was bad.
The only way that Pinq might have been able to salvage this whole interaction was if they had ignored Advisor Fratii, if they had truly not paid attention like she had asked -encouraged- (ordered)- them to.
Just by responding to the Advisor’s words they had given them weight.
Now-
Now Pinq was fucked.
Best case scenario? They backed her up, they threw their weight behind her, they actually agreed with her decision.
But that still wouldn’t undo the fact that the boys had needed to back her up, that her word alone wasn’t enough to move an advisor to do her bidding.
Others would try this, others would try to turn an order back to the Tallest. Back to her boys in an attempt to get a different answer, to undermine her.
And eventually there is no question that there would be a time when the boys would not back her up.
Her power would rely on if they supported her or not, and would disappear the moment that they had a disagreement in front of the eyes of the empire.
Worst case scenario?
They went against her.
They learned what she was trying to keep them out of, they learned that she had been hiding things from them.
If they said yes where she said no . . .
Then that would divide them-, possibly irreparably.
There had never been more than one Tallest before, never been a reason for the Irkens to have to choose a side.
And they would choose a side, and like the conquerors they were, they would choose the side that seemed strongest.
Most would choose the boys, the soldiers, the two against one, the fighters, the ones who had the favor of the advisors, the ones who were shining examples of what the most popular vision of the empire was, the Tallests who were ‘More’.
But others still would choose her. The ones with longer memories, the ones who had seen the ways that the empire changes over time.
The ones who viewed soldiers as nuisances, the ones who could see past the warfront, the ones who could see the problems that were actually plaguing the empire, the ones who wanted something closer to what Tallest Miyuki had been working toward.
The ones who had clearly seen the military class cull who had been left of her reign, the ones who had seen her works turned to weapons.
The ones who wanted to, in true Irken fashion, get revenge on the ones who had toppled them from their seats of power.
Fuck-
Fuck!
Maybe she was overreacting, maybe this would be nothing?
But-
But they were still so new! They were still getting settled into this job, into being at the top.
Pinq didn’t know how it worked, if things could fall apart so easily as just having differing opinions.
Fuck-
Fuck-
What were they meant to do? How could she fix this?
. . .
Could she fix this?
Pinq was frozen in indecision for too long.
There was a touch to her shoulder, a pressure on her hip. A buzz in her antennas as information was traded between the Irkens who had ghosted up behind her and trapped her between them.
0they leaned on her, draping their long bodies all over her, their arms hanging slack in front of her, even as their chests pressed into her shoulders and their head into her temples.
She almost flinched, almost turned her claws against them. But she managed to control herself, managed to arrest the instinctive attack.
She knew who was touching her.
She knew she wouldn’t be able to hurt them, even if she tried.
She . . . had learned that it was . . . safest to have their hands on her.
Her survival had often hinged on her being within reach, on her going slack at a touch.
. . . the programs kept her in her meat, kept her from hiding in the machinery.
And the meat had its own trained responses.
Like going slack and blurry eyed at the feeling of the boy’s hands on her. Like relaxing and nearly purring at the feeling of being squished between them, no matter the danger she faced.
Advisor Fratii smiled at the arrival of the boys, of the Tallests that they really wanted to be dealing with.
“My Tallests, you honor me with your presence.”
They gave them a deep bow, deeper than they had given her when they had first greeted her.
Fucker.
Pinq took a deep breath, feeling her shoulders relax with the exhale, felt her lower back unknot with a slight lean into the ones pressed up against her.
The boys had taken up their places beside of her, boxing her in the middle. Caging her between them.
Confining her, blocking her movement.
Keeping her in the safest position.
Pinq breathed in one more time, and then took the signal that they were giving. She locked her jaw, hooded her eyes, and let the boys make their own decision, control their own actions.
She had tried to do it quick and clean. To make it an easy task.
But now the boys were involved, and they made things messy.
As with most things the boys did, Purple made the first move.
Pinq watched from the edges of her senses as he leaned toward the Irken Advisor. He was acting like he was hanging off of her, letting her shoulder his weight, using her for balance.
. . . Purple wasn’t even letting her feel the weight of his arms, only the pressure of his hand on her shoulder and the brush of his robes.
“Say~ what was your name again?”
Advisor Fratii didn’t even flinch at the insult, most advisors were already familiar with how quickly names and faces left Purple’s mind. This was far from the first time the two had met, but they had to be reintroduced each time.
Advisor Fratii raised their chin, preparing to once more make a grand presentation of themselves to the Tallests that they actually wanted to impress.
“I am Advisor-”
“Actually, I don’t care!”
A sharp exclamation, the volume making Pinq’s antenna angle away and Advisor Fratii’s antennas slam to their head.
A moment of quiet confusion, and then-
“My Tallest, I was asking about your opinion on Tallest Pinq’s orders for the adjustments to the Mass- “
“Nah! I don’t care!”
Another abrupt interruption, another swift dismissal.
Purple was now leaning even farther down, looking like for all of the world that he was just a lackadaisical fop and was just letting Pinq handle all of his weight.
Making Pinq support him.
. . .
Was he trying to be . . . symbolic?
Pinq couldn’t see his face but she was familiar with how manic his smile could become when he was being cruel.
But Advisor Fratii was a former solider. They had fought battles and they were experience with the political scene.
They considered this a setback not a loss.
They were still trying to reach a goal.
“My Tallest, I just wish to know what you both want the Massive . . . to . . . be . . . used . . . “
Advisor Fratii’s words cut off slowly, and then they stumbled back a step to get farther away from the threats in front of them.
This time it was Red who had interrupted Advisor Fratii, his body swooping down slowly to be closer to the Advisor’s eye level even as he kept his grip on Pinq’s hip.
There was nothing explicitly violent about Red’s motion, he had often lowered himself to speak to other Irkens before, but maybe Advisor Fratii’s experience as a soldier let them read something else in the motion.
Or maybe, judging by the expressions on the other Irkens in the crowd, the fear, the bloodlust and the elation at seeing someone else get in trouble, it was the look on his face, hidden from Pinq’s own view.
Whatever it was, Red finished the motion when he was nearly bent in half, needing to go that far just to look Advisor Fratii in the eye.
“You were given an order.”
Red’s voice was low, was certain.
This was not a question, this was a statement of fact.
“Yeah~ Get to work!”
Purple’s voice was shrill and cruel.
That was a bully’s taunt, not an order from a superior to a subordinate.
The room waited in anticipation for what would come next, but neither of the boys said anything else. They just kept up their body contact with Pinq while Purple smiled with teeth and Red didn’t emote at all.
Hands on her shoulders, hands on her hips. Red leaning toward the advisor and Purple hanging from her, leaving Pinq as the one standing tall in-between them.
Leaving Pinq as the Tallest in the room.
. . . oh.
Oh. Those rat bastards.
Pinq made a million adjustments in her head, reshuffled a thousand ideas and rerouted a hundred trains of thought.
She had forgotten, these boys didn’t want to work.
They would, they knew that she needed help, knew that they had all inherited a gutted empire.
But they ultimately wanted the power without the work.
They were young, they were short sighted, they just wanted to enjoy themselves.
They didn’t care about the minute details of the empire, about the small things they must do to keep it running.
That’s what they had her for.
They needed her respected, needed her to have authority over the empire.
Because they knew that she cared, that she would take care of all of the little details that they didn’t want to bother with.
So yes.
They outnumbered her.
They could over power her.
They had the popularity and favor of the masses.
But they didn’t want to do the actual work.
So, it would serve them best to give the impression of a united front.
But-
More importantly-
To imply that whatever orders that Pinq gave were not to be questioned. That Pinq was trusted, and that they wouldn’t even listen to anyone who tried to go against her.
Pinq knew it was just to save them more effort.
But . . .
Pinq let a smile spread over her face, let her eyes squint a little as the warmth dripped into her stomach.
She let herself lean a little more into the pressure on her body, let herself play into the fantasy of being an unquestionable ruler of an intergalactic empire with a pair of warriors who would act as her sword and shield.
A pair of vicious, blood thirsty, remorseless monsters who would slaughter to keep her safe, turn their teeth and claws against her enemies.
Who were thoughtlessly loyal, unthinkingly trusting.
It was nice.
It was all an act.
But an act was all that she needed right now.
“Well, Advisor Fratii? Are you going to obey your leaders?”