[ChicletPrime]

Chapter 4: Gentle Gaze

• Is this the chapter where me and Caleb escape from Ever's clutches and fly free?
  
• (i only just found the guy and already i want to run away into the future with him)
  
• okay. alright. INTERESTING. and here i was just wondering if our very convenient amnesia had something to do with the girlfriend being in the Deepspace Tunnel or something, and -- when "Grandma" took us home for the first time, I didn't know who Caleb was, and he says "It's okay if you've forgotten. I'll remind you."
  
• so Caleb was definitely part of my tragic and unknown past.
  
• and we're now being patched up in a med bay. and i'm still not sure if this is really Caleb or not.
  
• honestly, if we were playing any other type of game, i would be infinitely more suspicious too. this is just slightly too clean.
  
• of COURSE i can't believe you're back, THERE WAS A FIREBALL WHERE YOU WERE STANDING
  
• also, really despising that choke collar he's got. now that i see it, i just stare at it all the time. good thing i don't have gravity evol, or i would be trying to mangle it and we all know my control isn't that great.
  
• this guy has been telling me he'll always be by my side since i was a child in arms.
  
• he doesn't remember what happened after the explosion? "when i woke up, i assumed it was connected to the aether core" and "i just 'knew'. that's all."
  
• Caleb, i know you promised me that you'd never lie to me, but i have a feeling you're holding about fifteen things back here.
  
• "if i didn't join the Fleet, i would've been 'abandoned'. i couldn't contact you - i can't bear to imagine you being put through that pain again."  i do not in the least understand that. hopefully the girlfriend is equally confused. why the hell didn't he contact us once he recovered and how did he end up in the Fleet and promoted to the position he has now in so short a relative time?
  
• hang on hang on.  'abandoned' as in... pushed into the Tunnel and lost, only this time deliberately?  did Ever snatch him and give him the worst ultimatum possible?  join, or be lost? join, say nothing to anyone so if you can't get back a second time, nobody will grieve a second time?" and i just read that first Anecdote, he knows exactly what being lost in the Deepspace would entail.
  
• well, apparently i'm not going to press him for a better explanation. i am written as an emotional marshmellow a lot of the time, aren't i?
  
• oh. Grandma definitely didn't make it, but it sounds like he made sure i was okay.
  
• interesting comment Caleb makes about somebody else: "Come back to me when the bauble around his neck grows a brain."  so they're all in control collars, as if that is at all surprising.
  
• oh boy! i have been voluntold to go live in his quarters. traitor schmaitor to the fleet, no probs.
  
• New Cover Identity Acquired: New Adjutant To The Colonel.
  
• i hope i get a miniskirt for a uniform. and access to that command chair. and maybe the thin baton thing.
  
• in a more serious note, i hope this doesn't backfire spectacularly on both of us. i still don't get what happened to the surveillance we were under, since apparently we aren't under it anymore. unless we fucking ARE and Caleb's playing me. crap, Caleb's playing me, isn't he?
  
• whowhatsits about his armband? does it signify something special? or just.. i guess just a rank symbol and because he is the rank he is, he's already proven he could give a shit about anything else because of the bodies he's already stepped over.
  
• i may be a fool, but i am a fool in love.  curled up in the cockpit of his personal aircraft, i tell him eeeeeverything that happened since i lost him.  i am hopefully not so much a fool that i tell him about Sylus, the N109 and my own personal aether core.
  
•  /facepalm
  
• girlfriend, he has a collar around his throat and a demonstrated ability to lie cleverly and easily under extreme duress. WHY did you tell him about your aether core?
  
• "Caleb, the one who's pulling the strings is Ever," she says miserably to the guy who's wearing the mechanical eye on his left breast.  for all we know, it's tattooed on the flesh underneath along with a manufacturing date and serial number.
  
• At Caleb's Place: gee, sis, how about you call in to work and ask for more holidays? we could totes get caught up with each other!  also, fingerprint access, you can come and go as you please. (although this is on a floating island so no way off except by plane, everything is dusty like nobody lives here and the decor is bland and inoffensive.. like nobody lives here).
  
• apparently i am THAT sort of New Adjutant To The Colonel, the one that has home access, the miniskirt, the uniform and the baton.
  
• point of interest:  he's in his regular clothes now and no collar. maybe its just when he's wearing the uniform?
  
• i am such a dork for this guy - by all means, lets jump on him piggyback style so we can head to the kitchen for a homecooked meal of my five favorite dinners.
  
• also: very tin foil hat, but the shirt he's wearing has detailing that looks like he's wearing cloth handcuffs.
  
• niiiiice. apparently the bedroom i picked out to stay in is HIS bedroom.
  
• /stares off into the distance as four fanfics at once struggle to write themselves in the air.
  

is it my imagination or are these chapters fairly long? maybe its just because i'm stopping to think every four seconds.

i'm going to go check out the translations for up to this point.