The Premier stared them both down from behind her ornate desk. Despite them standing and her being a head shorter, her presence towered over them in ways Page couldn't ever match. "Tell me, which one of you started it?" she asked, voice toned to a deadly edge. If she didn't like what she heard, she had the power and whim to demote Page back to her trainee rank. She couldn't afford that, especially when she had worked all her life to her Senior Lieutenant.

Her rank was the last thing Dara would sabotage in Page's life, so she opened her mouth and blurted, "Dara tripped the alarm, and as we were going to devise a plan for an emergency retreat, she turned the wrong hallway and abandoned her mission partner. According to Article 4 Section 5—"

"I told you—it wasn't intentional!" Dara whirled to Page, eyes flashing to dare her to say anything more to the Premier. Page regarded it as a challenge. Oh, hell yeah. She'd say more. In fact, she'd divulge how Dara tripped the alarm—by dropping the mana sensor right into the nest of lasers protecting the Laic servers. They weren't even there to hack the database. That was more of the tech department's job. "It's just a mistake!"

Page glanced at Dara at the corner of her vision. "Mistakes in the field can cost you a soldier's life," she replied. "You don't want that, trust me."

"Page is correct," the Premier said. From Page's periphery, she watched Dara's confidence deflate. Ha, served her right. "She has also demonstrated good leadership skills by not leaving you on your own when you got lost in the facility."

She puffed out her chest. Of course. She would always return home with her soldiers breathing and in one piece if she could. That ability earned her a title among her peers. The Untouchable, they called her, because as long as she was present, they could rest easy knowing that they wouldn't be harmed by something mana couldn't heal.

"But," the Premier continued, slapping Page's ego to the side. "If you aim to be some kind of leader in the Domain, you need to take care of your soldiers. Not just by being The Untouchable, but also their wellbeing, your relationship with them, and if they are not performing well, you are also to be in charge of their additional training."

A scoff flitted out of Page's lips. In an ideal world, she would have never dared to do it in the Premier's presence, but the expectation was too much. "How am I supposed to keep on training people in the field?" she demanded. "Field work isn't for training!"

"As a senior officer, it's your duty to make it seem like it's a controlled environment," the Premier answered. "You know how to get around the area, you show your soldiers how it's done. Field work is still extended training for most of our new cadets, and you can't expect them to know something they only experienced in theory. Something was bound to go the wrong way, and it's your job to foresee that."

Page glanced at Dara at an inopportune time to see the girl smirking. Was she that happy with Page being reprimanded? Bitch. "However, I will implore you to work on your spatial awareness and attention to commands," the Premier said to Dara. "You cannot keep aggravating your commanding officers just because you think you know better."

"Premier, I—"

The Premier put her hand up, silencing Dara. "No arguing," she warned. "This is the point you will say 'Yes, ma'am' and force yourself to swallow my words. Commit to it, and I expect to see improvement on your next mission."

It was Page's turn to smirk. Them getting out of the Laic facility was nothing short of a miracle. Page found Dara right before the enemy platoon found them. She wrestled the errant girl into disabling a researcher and donning the white coats. Together, they walked out of the building and the area without interference. It would have been an easy task if Dara cooperated the first time around, and if she didn't mess the operation up, they'd be home with a load of magus ore supply to last them the entire year. Now, they have to wait a while before sending agents to the same facility for the same mission the second time. Ugh.

"I also cannot have my soldiers engaging in an altercation from the inside. That is the beginning of the fall of great empires," the Premier continued when Page thought their dismissal for the day would be due. "I will be assigning you two on recycling duty for the next two weeks. Work out your differences, and I expect you to have better coordination when another mission calls for it."

And the Premier's word was law. Sooner than later, Page's hands were in scratchy wool gloves and her feet in rubber, knee-high safety boots. She trudged over a pile of Laic scrap lifted by the scavengers from the war zones, poking a metal prod on hollow and filled surfaces. Most of the metal garbage was burned and melted in the incinerator, but what they were really in search of was the magus core slotted into every Laic device. Even with just a few samples, the Domain's scholars could figure out what Laics had been doing to the mana stored inside the ores. And if they were able to crack that enigma, developing spells that work against Laic devices would soon follow.

A loud bang echoed behind Page, and she turned to find Dara throwing her prod to the ground. Standing on the hood of a forge vehicle, the girl resembled a toddler throwing a tantrum in Page's eyes. "Ugh, I hate this!" Dara mussed her bobbed hair, undoing the painstaking gel work that must have gone into it. When she lowered her hands, she looked as if a cow licked her up the face. "Why do I have to get assigned to recycling duty with you?"

Page scoffed. "Gee, couldn't have made it more subtle," she said, bracing her hips, adjusting her stance on the hood so that she faced Dara fully. This girl didn't even deserve her full attention, much less a fraction of it. "I don't want to be here either, okay? So let's just do our job and convince the Premier we've gone and made up. Simple, but I guess your feeble mind can't take that."

Dara put a hand on her chest as if offended. "You didn't just say that," she mock-gasped. "You do not insult my genius and get away with it scot-free."

"What are you gonna do? Cry to the Premier about it?" Page taunted, pointing her prod to the Domain's ceiling. Out in the scrapyard, it was the blue sky, lightly overlaid with the faint sheen of the protective barrier surrounding the entire city. "If you're really a genius, you'll know all she cares about is harmony. Cooperation. Teamwork. She wouldn't care about your whiny ass and your bruised ego. The same thing goes for me and for everyone in the Domain. So, suck it up, pretty face. You're not that special."

Dara sniffed. Oh, was she crying? Too much? Page turned away and continued with her present task of prying the hood open and searching the engine for the core. It was the second thing cadets sent to the front lines were told to look for when they were in a bind. The emergency mana the magus core could provide them would be enough to power an effective retreat.

Page delivered what she wanted to hammer into Dara. As much as she wanted to sugarcoat things and make something seem like nothing when it was not, they were in the middle of a war. No amount of whining could change that. Field work wasn't mere frolicking in the fields. It was a matter of life and death, and if Dara couldn't see that for what it was, that wasn't Page's problem. The Premier could make it seem so, but at the end of the day, soldiers were responsible for their own survival. One couldn't save others if they couldn't save themselves first.

So, Page steeled her heart even upon hearing Dara's soft sobs. A soldier could cry even on a battlefield. The only thing they weren't allowed to do was die.