Challenge: take the last story you wrote and write a new story, inverting one of the elements of the previous story.
What a diabolical challenge, especially as the end of the month. Funnily enough, I drank coffee too late yesterday (knowing the risks) and thus wound up staying up into the small hours and wrote over 600 words of this before going to bed. It was a nice head start (although the addition to my sleep debt is not lol).
Since yesterday’s story was exposition-heavy, there wasn’t much for me to invert. Enjoy a non-canon version of FFM 2025 30: Explanation(s).
“If you want to fact-check, I’ve got the six shaman orders’ training materials from back in the day. I can send a copy of them to you,” Beyari offered.
“I’d appreciate that; I’ve likely been fed more misinformation than I thought.” The calculative look came back to Commander Urrang’s face, now tinged with curiosity. “The field agents of the IRS are trained to recognize and withstand techniques used by Mind-gifted enemies but at least my class wasn’t taught about the basics of Mind-sense.”
“I’d hazard a guess that it’s because you can’t defend against it. If you try to hide or suppress your emotions to avoid detection, it just highlights you to every nearby Mind-gifted who has even a bit of training. You’re less likely to give yourself away if you’re unaware that someone near you might sense your emotional state.”
Commander Urrang crossed his arms. “That would make sense, I suppose. I was trained to view Mind-gifted enemies as combatants whose weapon isn’t anything physical but something that affects my psyche. Knowing that such an enemy would also be aware of how I was feeling at any given moment would hinder anyone’s performance since it would likely lead to overthinking things over taking swift action.”
Beyari nodded. She could already sense it happen; Commander Urrang’s emotions were shifting, squirming even, the human subconsciously trying to present a better image of himself to her by trying to cover up the emotions he was insecure about.
A part of her wanted to hug him and reassure him that whatever he was feeling was fine. She resisted the urge; that would have been too much this early into their friendship — she wanted to call their relationship that already — especially since Commander Urrang was very likely to be touch-starved. The revelation that the Eskel-Zai he had been interacting with for the last weeks was an Inzin was shock enough for one evening.
…Then again, if he consented, would it really be so bad, especially when she would still be there to give him more hugs (and other platonic touches) if he wanted more later?
“May I hug you?”
Commander Urrang startled from his anxieties, pure confusion taking over him. “Huh?”
“May I hug you?” Beyari repeated, making sure to keep her tone unchanged.
Commander Urrang gaped at her, silent as he tried to process the sudden question. “…Yes?”
Beyari tilted her head.
“Yes. You may hug me,” Commander Urrang amended.
Beyari nodded. “Thank you.”
She took care to telegraph her movements, first sidling to his side, then wrapping her arms around his waist. Commander Urrang, more unsure than before, moved his right arm out of her way, hovering it over her back.
“You may hug me back if you want,” Beyari told.
“Right.” Commander Urrang wrapped his arm around her back, his hand finding a place on her waist, careful to set it on an armorplate rather than slip into a gap between them. His left arm remained idle at his side aside from lifting a little to allow Beyari to reach his left side. He was tense like a bowstring, his emotional state a mixture of confusion, alarm and a growing sense of pleasure.
When was the last time someone’s hugged you? Beyari settled so that her friend could lean against her if he wanted to once he got past his shock over being hugged. “Take it easy, okay? You don’t have to worry about my Mind-sense or anything else. Whatever you’re feeling is fine.”
Commander Urrang swallowed. “Right.” Tentatively, he moved his idle arm over her right arm resting against his abdomen. When Beyari nodded to him, he got bolder, moving his hand to her upper arm and pulling her closer. Beyari responded by tightening her hug. Commander Urrang let out a soft surprised noise and held her tighter too.
Beyari observed how her friend’s emotions swirled, confusion, uncertainty and pleasure mixing with a growing longing and want. Commander Urrang’s eyes were wary as they observed her, searching for ulterior motives no doubt, but she just smiled at him and leaned against him. The lighting of the loungeroom did nothing to hide the bits of color coming back to his cheeks, although this time the color was not from the exertion of a spar.
It was not until QWERTY returned that Beyari let go, mostly because Commander Urrang started to withdraw quickly the moment he saw that they had an audience.
QWERTY rolled aers eyes. “Don’t mind me. I’ve seen much worse than two organics doing chaste hugging — and I’m certainly the best audience you can get since I’m not one to gossip.”
Commander Urrang cleared his throat. “I should get going soon anyway. I have an early start tomorrow.”
QWERTY gave him a flat look, seeing right through the flushing human’s excuse just as easily as Beyari did. “As long as you hear out what the others had to say before you go.”
“Of course.”
During the following days, Commander Urrang was more withdrawn when Beyari interacted with him, his emotions a constant mixture of confusion and longing. With how little privacy they had, Beyari could not bring up what had happened (or her touch-starved friend’s obvious craving for more touches).
She probably should have held off the hug after all, or at least communicated better… Well, now she had better find a place and time where she could fix her screw-up somehow.
Beyari: “If he consents to a hug, what’s the worst that can happen?”
Steirdrar, who is already overthinking: overthinking intensifies
WindySilver 
“overthinking intensifies” that’s a good one! And I feel called out by it… :D
Poor Steirdrar; it sucks when you have not had any decent human contact. It must feel weird and a bit scary for him. You can tell he had a rough childhood from this one story. Too afraid to feel affection for anyone, even platonic.
Great job on this! And congrats on finishing FFM! *hugs you* ;)
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It’s actually not childhood that’s messed Steirdrar up this badly; if anything, he had an at least fairly healthy upbringing. The two-ish decades of being in the military at a time when the people in charge are actively ordering civil rights violations and encouraging things like torture, on the other hand, have very much left marks – especially when his family is wholly unaware (and, were they to hear about it, wholly unable to accept that it’s true) that stuff like that is going on, which left him with little to no support network when he could no longer keep making up explanations and excuses for it all. Most IR combatants who defect to the AIRF manage to rebuild their social lives to a healthy state, but Steirdrar has roles in major atrocities on his record, so most people in the AIRF aren’t keen on having more than the bare minimum of neutral interactions with him. It’s pure luck that he wasn’t present at any atrocity that would make Eskel-Zai like Beyari be biased against him too.
Thank you so much! 8D
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