Bestest Friends

Posted on Tue Apr 30th, 2019 @ 11:21pm by Staff Sergeant Rhiannon O'Connor & Civillian Shae

Mission: Interlude 1
Location: Cheyenne Mountain: Shae's Quarters
Timeline: Current

Ree walked through the corridors of the mountain complex, headed for Shae's quarters. She was still in uniform, so she didn't skip. Badass PJs didn't skip. Twenty-Four year old young women didn't skip. But, every now and then, Ree felt like skipping. She also sometimes felt the urge to streak through the halls wearing nothing but her red PJ beret, but if she could resist the urge to do that, she could resist the urge to skip to Shae's quarters. She arrived at her destination and wrapped her knuckles on Shae's door. "Hey, Foxy Lady! It's your favorite person! Well, maybe second favorite, but I'm on the list and I'm here to make your day brighter!"

Shae was always happy to see Ree, so she quickly opened the door. "Hello Ree. Are you off duty?" Shae asked.

"Yep!" Ree said as she hugged Shae. Ree was a hugger generally, but almost every time she saw Shae, she wanted to hug her. "How's my favorite Kitsune babe?" Ree really wanted to needle Shae about Jake Asher, but she resisted that urge, too. If Shae wanted to dish, she would, otherwise Ree would leave it alone. She knew how private Shae was about stuff like that.

Shae knew Ree was a hugger, but it still surprised her every time. "I am well, although a little frustrated; I was just trying to find something in the web thing, but I think I am not doing it right," Shae said as she hugged Ree back.

"Oooh!" Ree said. "Whatcha looking for? Let me in, I'll help."

Shae smiled and let Ree in. She had been sitting on the floor at her low table, but now that Ree was here she took her tablet and sat on the bed where Ree could sit as well. "My kimono is getting quite old; I have sewn and resewn and patched it so many times that it is barely holding together, so I wanted to see if I could get a new kimono, or at least fabric to make a new kimono, and I can find many pictures of kimono but I cannot see how to buy one," Shae explained. The text on the screen was in Japanese, but she was able to fix it so that everything was displayed in English for Ree.

Ree sat on the bed with Shae. "Here, let's try 'buy an authentic kimono' and see what we get. Fair warning, there's going to be a lot of crap. You're going to have to search a bit to get one you like. There. That should do it. Did they give you some money to work with? I'm betting I can't cover it on what I make, but I bet a certain Air Force Major, whose name I shall not mention because my bestest friend Shae gets all blushy and embarrassed when I do, I bet this certain Air Force Major would happily buy you a new kimono, maybe even two. Here, look at some of these sites." Ree handed the tablet back to Shae.

"You mean Asher? Oh no, I cannot ask him," Shae replied, blushing. Then she realized the significance of something Ree said. "Wait, I am your bestest friend? I do not fully understand what that means, but thank you," she said softly.

"You're welcome," Ree said. "But you don't have to thank me for my friendship. It's given freely. And you're right. Asking Asher to buy you stuff all of the time would be insulting and rude and really mean. But if you need help with a new kimono, I think he'd help you out just to put a smile on your face."

"You are my friend too, Ree," Shae admitted, smiling bashfully, then returning her attention to her tablet with a sigh. "I do not want to rely on other people to provide for me. I have been given 'allowance' to buy things I may need, but I do not yet understand the measure of your currency or know if an item is worth the price. Like this, is 126 of your currency very much?" she asked, pointing to a kimono marked as $126.

"That is really pretty," Rhiannon said. "There are a few things to think about when you decide how much money is too much money. First, how much money do you have now, how much do you have coming in and how soon, what else you might need that money for, and whether or not what you want to spend it on is going to be worth what you spend on it. First I guess I need to know how much you have to work with. Then we can decide how much you can afford, then we try to figure out if what you want to buy is good quality or if it's crap. Did they give you a monthly stipend or something like that?"

"The clerk gave me a card to use the money and a program on my tablet to track the money, but I forget what it is called," Shae said. With Ree's help, she was able to find the bank app with her balance. there was a little money left over from the clothes shopping trip, a little over $20, and then a recent deposit of $100 had been made to the account, indicating the amount of her weekly stipend. So she could almost afford that kimono right now, but give it another week and she would be just fine, which was okay for her because she had only just started looking. "So I can almost afford this kimono," Shae said, then started to look through more kimono. "But I want to keep looking; I don't want to just buy the first pretty thing I see," she added, very matter-of-factly. She smiled as she looked over at Ree. "So what are you usually doing this time of the day if you were not visiting me?" she asked, curious about Ree's life.

"Being bored because I'm not hanging out with you?" Ree replied with a grin. "It really depends. Sometimes I go for a run or I go workout, but Major Asher, Lieutenant Williams, and Sergeant Hassan PT'd us half to death today. PT stands for Physical Training. Anyway, they pushed a whole group of us damn hard today. Some of the SFs, including their Phoenix Ravens were in on it. And we did hand to hand, too. Let me tell you that I will never again even consider looking down on the SFs and especially not the Ravens. Those bastards are tough!" Ree thought a moment. "So I was either going to read or listen to music or putter around on the internet, play video games. But really, I wanted company that I could just be myself with and you're my favorite girl-person on the base, so here I am!"

"That's sweet of you to say," Shae said with a smile. "Maybe some time you'll show me one of your games. I have heard many people talking about this 'Call of Duty' thing and I am very curious."

"Sure thing!" Ree said. "Hey! What about one of these? Some of them look nice, and not all of them are super expensive. Kimono Yukata Market Sakura? How badly did I mangle that? Anyway, if you want to go less expensive, and pay less on shipping, you could look for something less authentic. Or, like you said, get the fabric to make a new kimono. There's a place in town that sells fabric by the yard or by the bolt. I bet we could find something there. You could order it, but you wouldn't know how it felt or if it was really what you were looking for."

"Oh, you make a good point," Shae said with a knowing nod. "Maybe the next day we have some free time, you can take me to this place and I can buy some.... OH! That would be an excellent thing to trade! We were talking about trading on Hen Da Ye Huihe and cloth, especially cloth of good quality, is hard to come by on many worlds! And your world has many different kinds of cloth that I have never seen before, if their durability is good then this would be a very good item to start trading!" she said with excitement. "I will have to suggest this to the Wolf General later, but for now I will focus on looking and getting something for myself."

Ree snickered. "Sorry!" she said. "It's just that 'Wolf General' sounds so dramatic. I keep expecting the general to come walking down the corridor in a cloak made of wolf pelts, with the skin of the head as a hood! And he is totally badass when he wants to be. He could pull that look off!"

Shae giggled. "Now that you mention it, I might have enough wolf pelts to make a cloak, but I don't have a wolf head, so I would have to go hunting again... Do you think he would appreciate such a gift?"

Ree laughed. "I'm so tempted to tell you to do just that, but I think your time would be better spent on other things." Ree smirked. "Like making me a fur blanket to snuggle up in!"

"I can do that!" Shae said with a smile. "I was planning on going back to Lethuan to retrieve a nice bear pelt to take to-" Shae stopped herself when she realized she was about to tell Ree that she planned to bring the pelt to Jake's house so they could lounge in front of the fire together, and she blushed crimson. "Uh, take it to a place... for reasons... But I'm sure I have enough pelts suitable for a blanket!" she said, hoping Ree wouldn't notice the awkwardly rushed transition.

Ree grinned. "Okay, you're new to this whole girlfriend, the platonic version between you and me, not whatever you've got going on between you and he who shall not be mentioned, so let me tell you something. It's not nice to keep your best girlfriend in the dark about your love life! I know you left with him Friday afternoon. I know you came back Sunday morning with him, left again, then came in together Monday morning. So spill!"

"Well..." Shae started to say, then nibbled on her lip as her blush deepened. "Yes, I left base with Asher and we went to his house," she admitted without sounding utterly embarrassed. "He was very nice and his house had an extra room which he offered for me to use, but I ended up not needing the extra room and that is all I will say on that particular subject. Outside of that, we cooked for each other and then he taught me how to use a gun and started teaching me to fight."

Ree pouted. "Oh, come on, you big meanie!" she said. She sighed. "Started teaching you with Kali sticks, right?" Ree smirked. "He teaches me some of that, too, sometimes, but it sounds like his Kali stick wasn't the only stick of his that he taught you to use? Or was it more like a tree branch? Tell me it was more like a tree branch, because there's a betting pool on that subject, and my money is on tree branch!"

"Tree branch? What?!" Shae exclaimed as her face turned positively beat red in embarrassment; was Ree asking how big Jake was down there?! "Oh look at this kimono, isn't it pretty?" Shae said as she pointed out a modern kimono in green silk with stalks of bamboo painted in a sumi style watercolors. It wasn’t much of a distraction with the way her voice was cracking, but she was trying. "I think this one is the one I want, but I will still have to wait until I am given more money."

Ree laughed. "Definitely a tree branch!" she said. "And yeah, that one is pretty. I think you could make one prettier. Maybe I could help? And you could help me make one, too? Maybe the whole get up, too? I've got something that will help, I think. I'm having it sent to me because it was in storage. I've got a sewing machine. I know, I know. Big, tough PJ--well, tough, I'm not all that big--anyway, badass PJ has a sewing machine. What can I say? Sometimes I buy ugly clothes cheap and then alter them so they look like I want them to look. My grandmother, the one who taught me Irish Gaelic, taught me to sew. We'd alter my clothes so they showed off my assets. My mother was scandalized, but my grandmother just laughed."

Shae would neither confirm nor deny of Jake was indeed sporting a tree branch or not. "You have a machine that is for sewing?" It made sense that there were machines for sewing, after all she was discovering that there were machines for just about everything else, so might as well have machines for sewing. "I can sew a kimono fairly quickly by hand, but I would like to try this machine, and to see what you've made!"

"Awesome," Ree said. "But don't laugh when I show you, okay? I've got some pictures can show you--here," Ree pulled out her smart phone and called up some pictures of her when she was younger, and some more recent. "My dad was really tall, but not too wide. I used to wear his shirts as nightshirts all the time because they were comfy and they were his. After he died, I just kept doing it. Mom knew how much I missed him, so she kept all of his shirts in the attic. After awhile, I got the idea that I could do things with them, with my grandmother's help at first, then on my own later. So, yeah, I do sometimes buy ugly stuff and alter it now, but I also spend a lot of time just altering his old shirts. My first experiments were just to make cuter stuff for me to wear around the house, but then I got creative." Ree laughed. "Mom about had a heart attack when she saw how high up the side slits went on that one. She calmed down a little when I told her I was going to wear tights under it, but not much. I eventually lowered the side slits so I could wear it without tights if I want to. I still show a lot of skin, but I'm less likely to put everything on display now." Ree smiled wistfully. "At the end of secondary school, there's a dance that teenagers have. It's kind of a rite of passage. It's called the prom. The guys just rent their tuxedos, but the girls buy a new dress or make one. For prom, I took one of my dad's silk shirts and made my prom dress out of it." Ree swiped to the picture she was looking for. When she found it, she showed Shae.

"Oh wow," Shae said as she saw the different pictures. "You are quite creative!" she said in awe of her friend. Then Ree came to the prom dress picture and Shae was stunned speechless: that was a small dress, but quite beautiful! "You are very pretty," Shae finally said when she found her voice, smiling at the prom picture. "But I do not understand what this 'prom' is. Is it a festival?"

"Well," Ree said. "Here in the US, anyway, formal education for children starts at age 5 in what we call Kindergarten, and ends at 18, which is your senior year in high school. High school is one of the most difficult four years, because that's when your grades start going on record for colleges and universities and even the military to use to evaluate your fitness for further education and training. Good grades aren't the only thing they look at. They look at other activities you participated in. Sports, music, art, theatre, science clubs, chess club, social action groups. So the people that want to get into a really good school, really work hard for those four years, and their parents push them hard, too, because they want their kids to be successful. By the time of the prom, most kids know what school they're going to, or whether they're joining the military, or the Coast Guard or the Merchant Marine, or whatever. Hell, this boy I knew in High School joined the French Foreign Legion! Anyway, at that point, almost all of the hard work is done. So prom is basically a celebration where the Seniors finally get to relax and have fun before having to go off and do adult things. Some of the people you're at Prom with you maybe known for over a dozen years, and after High School, you may never see them again. So, it's kind of special."

"Your schooling sounds complicated," Shae remarked, but she was clearly impressed. "There was one village that had a school. I had been trying to keep my distance, but I was discovered and taken in by a family when I tried to leave some game I'd hunted in exchange for a robe I had stolen; they sent me to school along with their children and I learned to use a brush to write. I was constantly teased because of my hair, and a priest thought I was possessed and tried to banish the demon from me. He nearly drowned me and this caused me to change, and this was all the proof he needed that I was a demon. After that, the village wanted to kill me, so I fled and I have never had the chance to go back to school since then." As she spoke, she was still quite engrossed by Ree's pictures. "I like this shirt," she said, pointing to a shirt; with the way the shirt was gathered at the shoulders, it looked like a tunic of Greek cultures.

Ree looked at the picture Shae was looking at. She smiled. "Yeah, that one was fun," she said. "Some of them I can still fit into, but others, not so much. These," Ree indicated her breasts. "Got bigger, and I built up muscle mass training to be a PJ. I've been able to alter some so I can wear them, but that was in Flordia, where it's warm all the time. Here, I'll have to wait til late spring or early summer to wear them. But I do have some of the one's I made into nightgowns if you need one. My dad would have liked you, so I don't think he'd mind if I gave you one." Ree looked at Shae, then hugged her tightly. "And the next person who calls you a witch and wants to drown you is going to answer to me," she said. Then she smiled evilly and tickled Shae. "Even if you won't share all the steamy details of what it's like to bed he whose name I shall not mention...this time!"

"What are you doing?" Shae asked with wide-eyed astonishment as she looked at what Ree's hands were doing, then she tried to wriggle away from the unusual sensation.

Ree stopped when she realized Shae looked uncomfortable. "Huh," she said. "I'm sorry. I should have thought of that. You've never been tickled before, have you? Of course not. Oh, Shae, I'm sorry. Sometimes I forget that while I was playing with finger paints and playing baseball and being tickled and flirting with boys, you were struggling to stay alive. Tickling feels good to some people in small doses. It usually makes people laugh, but that's not always a sign that they like it. Some people just react that way to being touched like that. Some people sort of like it, other people just don't mind, and others really hate it. I won't do it again if it makes you uncomfortable."

"I have simply never felt anything like that before," Shae said as she settled down. She went back to looking at kimono. "So, thanks for your offer, but I do not need sleeping clothes. I have a robe I sleep in. I bought some cotton cloth years ago, and I brushed one side of the fabric for days until it was soft and fuzzy and then I sewed my robe with this fuzzy side inside. It is so comfortable to sleep in!"

"Hmmm..." Ree said. "If I got my hands on some cotton cloth, could you show me what you did? I'm thinking I could line the inside of one some of the long sleeved tops I made out of his flannel shirts, that I wear with leggings, or maybe one of the nightshirts or nightgowns! That would make them even warmer without getting uncomfortable."

"What I did is basically like flannel," Shae said with a shrug. She hopped up from her bed to get a small square of brightly colored flannel from her dresser drawer that she had been using to carry her lunch from the dining facility to the rec room where she liked to read. Then she pulled out her nemaki, or sleeping robe, from its drawer and set both on the bed for Ree to see. "I have seen people wear pants like this for sleeping, but the fuzzy side is out, and it is very colorful, but on mine the fuzzy side is in, and it is very plain but I like my nemaki plain," she explained, showing how the two fabrics felt very similar. "So, if you take your flannel and you brush the inside enough, it will feel fuzzy on both sides."

"Awesome!" Ree said. "Now I have a dumb question. What kind of brush? Sorry. I've never thought about doing this until now. I might need to get a brush so I can do that."

"Oh, um, I do not have it here to show you, but I have a long, narrow brush made with stiff bristles of straw that I use to brush fur when I am tanning pelts, and this worked quite well on the fabric as well, but if you have a different kind of brush then give it a try," Shae replied, then put away her robe and lunch cloth. "So, we will have to find some time to go look at cloth. Maybe after all these interviews are over? I know we're not supposed to talk about those, but it's not like I'm talking about what I said in my interview..."

"Yeah," Ree said. "They suck. But those guys pretending to be CDC could have killed us, they almost got away with what we call a weapon of mass destruction, which might have been better, because then we'd have an idea on where to start looking. As it is, we have no idea where they came from, who they worked for, or where the WMD went, so we get to deal with counterspooks--um--counterspies? People who catch spies and traitors, or just figure out how the bad guys know stuff about us that they shouldn't know. Anyway, that's part of what OSI does, and most of what they do here. They can be a pain, but if I'm being honest, they're really good at what they do and I feel a little better about this whole thing knowing they're looking into it." Ree grinned. "But yeah, we'll find time. We're going to be on a heavy training schedule this week and I assume you're spending the 48 hours before with Major Tree Branch, but we've got a couple of Sundays off in that training schedule. I figure you're probably spending those Saturday nights with Major Tree Branch, too, but maybe he could drive you into town one of those Sundays, we'll ditch him and go fabric hunting and then, like any good tree branch bearing Major, he can drive us all back to base with our prey."

"Ree! Shae exclaimed. "Are you trying to make my face match your hat?" she asked, covering her face with her hands to try to hide her embarrassment.

"Maybe," Ree said, laughing. "You are adorable. Anyway, I've got to start getting you acclimated to Earth life! As far as I know, the Major is a nice guy, and I'm nice, and there are a lot of nice people on base...well, good people, anyway. A bunch of us shoot people for a living or call in drone strikes on their heads. I don't know how nice that is. Anyway, there are a lot of creeps. You need a buddy out there to look out for you while you're learning the ropes, and I volunteer! It'll be fun! I mean, you already survived one shopping trip with me. How bad could another one be?"

"I graciously accept the offer, but could you stop not using Asher's name? We both know who he is, and referring to him as 'tree branch' is not helping matters," Shae said, trying to smile. She was embarrassed, but it was still funny.

"Sure," Ree said with a grin. "And I'll resist the urge to respond to his orders by saying 'yessir, TB' just because I like you so much!"

Shae covered her face again and shook her head, but at least this time Ree could hear her laughing. "You are crazy, Ree!"

"Uh, Shae?" Ree said. "I let the Air Force teach me how to jump out of perfectly functioning aircraft! How sane could I possibly be?!?"

"I am suddenly doubting how much I want to be part of this team," Shae muttered, still too red to show her face.

Ree hugged Shae and held onto her a bit. Ree hugged Shae a lot because she didn't get to hug people a lot anymore, and because she missed hugs, and because every now and then, she thought about things that made her want a hug. "Shae," she said, suddenly not so full of humor. "Could I just hang out here for a little bit longer? You don't have to talk to me or anything, just, could I just sit here a while longer with you?"

Now that had Shae's full attention; Ree was always so energetic and full of life, and Shae wondered what happened to make her so somber now. "Of course," Shae answered without needing to know the why's. "You're always welcome to spend time with me," she affirmed, leaning into another hug.

Ree didn't say anything. She just clung to Shae and let the little Kitsune's presence ease her mind.