Alone the cyan supersun is capable of lighting the hundred worlds and all that resides within, projecting the energy to sustain the bright blue sky as the ceiling patterned with fluffy white clouds, the dome surrounding the silver skyscrapers of the central metropolis, towers all in different shapes such as tridents and vases spaced out liberally enough for the streams of traffic to pass through on both dimensions of the grid organized despite the unstandard architecture that has no clone. While the high rises themselves lack any external pattern for their silver shell is instead smooth and absolute, they do project huge screens that display various advertisements and images, some of them more horizontal towards the bottom but there do exist several vastly tall ones hung off of great portions of the walls.

This majestic view is viewed through the artificial window of another screen, this one though abundantly smaller for it resides along one of the white walls composing just a room, one not too large either for it primarily is meant to house a long oval glossy white table top featured appropriately in the center and neighbored by eight black leather Executive chairs with four on each long side, all of them populated by well groomed adults dressed in professional suits.

Similar are these adults around the table who seem to be patiently waiting, a woman whose long black hair is let down speaking to another with an uptight ponytail in discussion kept to themselves and obscured by the conversations between several of the men, their attitudes mostly casual despite being in a professional meeting room.

The conversation with the long black haired woman is halted by the other speaker who pauses to glance down the long end of the table before calmly asking, “Are you set up,” to the ninth participant seated at one of the short ends, isolated but more in a state of authority rather than solitude given that all the other adults glance to her, that participant being the C.E.O herself Dana dressed in her black blazer with green surgeon cuffs over her white shirt, although rather than being buttoned up its instead a tank top, slightly deviating from the professionality of her fellow coworkers.

Regardless she presents a warm smile and nods her head, her amber bangs combed and swept to the side to keep clear her light green eyes that gaze forth as she confirms in an assertive voice, “Yes I am. Now starting off, I heard there’s been issues with Project Instalivery besides just the name so if Vince wants to detail that a bit more that’d be good to hear.”

That then positions the focus of attention on one of the men with short black hair and a well trimmed beard, wearing a navy blue suit and black tie. He glances at Dana with a slight anxious frown but nods his head before then facing forwards, straightening his expression and reporting in a confident tone albeit suggestively concerned, “Yes there have been some hindrances, but not on the technical end, actually I’ve heard testing of the personal transporters have been ahead of schedule.”

“Ah well that’s nice,” notes Dana with a smile, although one short lived as the man Vince continues, “Perhaps but it won’t mean much if we aren’t allowed to use it,” which instantly brings worry in her face.

“The fight to have this approved by the E.T.A has been…less than smooth,” apprehensively states Vince before elaborating with the movements of his hands above the table, “Teleportation technology has from its birth been in governmental hands, they regulate all aspects of it from production to testing to distribution and where that is distributed to, which also happens to be nearly always in their own hands. I mean especially after the C ring bombing incident they’ve been ever more protective over that technology, so I guess it makes sense that they’re a bit hesitant to just let anyone own a teleporter in their house.”

From the pleasantly enthusiastic expression from the start, Dana’s first contortion is the almost aggressively excited state when she asserts more argumentatively, “But the products we’re selling to the customers are just receivers, not senders. The senders will be in the hands of authorized establishments, and I thought the E.T.A would be the ones to make that authorization anyways so they should be trusting. I mean either way don’t we have Marvin’s team all just on security features alone to avoid anything like that happening?”

Sighing from the riled up state the C.E.O reached so quickly, Vince just notes in a more mellow tone, “Yes we do…and yes they know but they still don’t trust people who aren’t their personnel running the machines. It’s-,”

“But what about the agreement to let them have full view access to the network, they’ll be able to track any deliveries anyways,” interrupts Dana although accidentally as told by her sudden ashamed face, following up with the apology: “Oh sorry, I didn’t know you were still going!”

“It’s fine,” assures Vince before he lowers his head and again sighs, his tone unchanged when he reviews, “Yes even with that agreement they’re still strict about it. I wouldn’t say this is dead in the space but I wouldn’t say we have a clear way to victory either.”

“To be fair, we are the first,” offhandedly mentions the woman with long black hair who continues, “, and the first to these sorts of things don’t have it easy. And to be also honest even with all the precautions we set in place there’s still not a hundred percent chance someone doesn’t somehow meddle with the receivers to let them send, or for someone with access to a sender to do something dangerous. It’s just a whole new can of snakes that the E.T.A isn’t all too enthralled with being asked to worry about, and you know them, they get irritable when they have more work to do.”

Next to her an elderly bald man lightly chuckles and seconds, “Yeah Mari’s on the dot with that one, I mean the pain it is to negotiate contract extensions with the Anti-Exmatter research team is a shot up the- you know. Different agency I know but still.”

“And mind you, unlike those projects where we’re only distributing to official governmental personnel, we’re trying to convince them to let us hand this over to just about any random person with just about any intention,” elucidates Vince in an unwilling but necessary argument back to the boss.

“No I understand,” empathetically but clearly reluctantly Dana responds, her voice now more mellow too in disappointment after the fiery offense that failed.

She releases a sigh with her face to the ceiling, one of exaggerated volume somewhat immaturely especially in the office environment, for even the fellow coworkers pass around judgmental glances before she lowers her gaze back to Vince.

“Just keep at it, Omor might be right about extension negotiations being a pain but it’s a miracle those contracts were formed to begin with,” she speaks now with a more bold, confident tone, glancing at the senile man and back to assure, “We were able to get that miracle to work, we can get this one too. I just know this is the future of delivery, if this works this might be the theoretically best way to ever do delivery, I couldn’t think of any way to get a leg up without I don’t know just making everything on printers.”

Panning to each of the eight around the oval table, the C.E.O proclaims again assertively, “We’ll be making history with this project, I don’t doubt other companies will try to do the same I mean hell I know Congo has been breathing down our necks I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something in a couple months, but in the end as always our main objective is the pursuit of advancement for humanity.”

“And we’ll be the ones people think of first anyways,” she more sheepishly appends, the tone more childish and her voice tapered to a near whisper.

“Anyways!” exclaims Dana in a more casual voice that nearly causes some of the executives to jump in their seats as she pans around, “Do we have any good news to talk about? Because I don’t want this meeting to only just be a coping session if that’s alright with everyone, I mean hopefully it’s not all bad.”

Such a request doesn’t receive instant response as the eight executives remain completely silent, even the more lax individuals like Omor who exchanges glances in a clear expression of uncertainty, an expression shared amongst all of them who swivel side to side in their seats, for it seems none of them quite has positive reports to fulfill the leader’s hopes.

They just awkwardly stare at each other around the oval table in front of the long window screen across the wall, Vince shrugging his shoulders especially given he already gave his report thus had little to provide.

Time runs slow in this extended pause of silence, in fact it feels as though it runs exponentially slower as every second passes multiplies the cramping agony of the void.

A head first low rises that of a woman with a black bowl cut who offers ecstatically, “Oh wait, Namar was talking earlier about something good with Project Sunnet” to which instantly a blonde man whose hair is tied in a bun raises his head fretful, glancing rapidly and demanding profusely, “Wait what?”

Light gleams from Dana’s eyes as she leans forward with delight, a smile creeping up on her face as she urges, “Really, well what happened?”

From the bowl cut woman to the boss, the blonde man Namar reluctantly remarks, “Ah great…I wasn’t planning to talk about this but here we are.”

He then takes a deep breath to center himself before raising his head and cusping his hands to better report, “So about that, we recently made some distance with negotiations and they’ve greenlit us to operate one satellite in the Rim.”

“ONE satellite, miss,” the man emphasizes in an attempt at quelling the boss’s excitement, trying more with: “It’s no more than a test run, really we’re just tossing it out there to see if anything happens, we’re basically just baiting for any raids. The deployment team would’ve preferred putting a fake but the contract said it had to be genuine so we could really make sure it’d be fine. We’re not going to be compensated if anything happens to it of course.”

Selectively listening in such a way that doesn’t lessen the exhilaration clear on her face like that of a puppy whose owner has just returned home, Dana leans even more over the table and picks out, “‘Deployment team?’ Wait a second, there’s already plans for deploying the satellite, like already? There’s already a team for it and all, plan and everything? Wait when is this supposed to happen anyways, how far down the pipeline is this?”

“Not very-,” Namar disappoints.

“He said they’re supposed to go tomorrow,” concurrently recalls the bowl cut woman who becomes the target to Namar’s death glare.

Slamming her hands on the tabletop and standing up, Dana orders without hesitancy: “Put me on the team!”

“What??” simultaneously shouts every single executive even including the one who exposed the truth, for she hadn’t meant to cause such chaos.

Following up stands the woman in the ponytail who urges, “Dana, there are so many reasons why we can’t just do that.” She raises her fist and with every point mentioned she lifts a finger, “You’re not on the team, you don’t even have a role for it, you haven’t been briefed even though it’s tomorrow, and above all it’s way too dangerous for you to go!”

Maintaining her assertion with the same stance, Dana just tries to argue back with a heightened volume: “Get me on the team, make me an overseer, get me a meeting with the team leader in a couple hours, and I’ll be fine. I mean besides if they think it’s safe to just send out a couple of our guys I see no problem with safety.”

“Well…,” mentions Namar albeit now nervously, “...they are being accompanied by military guards…and the whole team signed a death waiver so….”

He then lowers his head and mutters, “There’s a reason why I wasn’t going to bring this up.”

Regardless of the rather ominous mention of potential fatality there is no yielding from Dana, for she holds her stance and again persuades eagerly, “Well then get me one of those waivers and I’ll sign one too.”

“Dana don’t you realize how dangerous that is-,” desperately urges the woman in the ponytail, or at least attempts to with the throw of her arms.

On the other side of the table Dana keeps her hands on the surface and her body standing up, and on the other side of the table she gazes back at her employee before declaring, “They must’ve too, and their lives are no less valuable than mine. Remember Crystal, I do have the authority to do this, this isn’t a request rather it’s a demand.”

Down the table the eight executives just stare in utter bafflement to the insanity of their boss, the standing one in the ponytail whom named Crystal specifically lowering her head with a defeated sigh, muttering under her breath but audible enough in the complete silence the head caused: “I still can’t even tell we changed bosses.”

Across from her another woman, although with dyed forest green hair, shoots a glare at the bowl cut woman and reprimands, “Lisi you doomed us all.”

Without even retaliation the bowl cut woman, Lisi, just depresses her head and mutters ashamed, “Sorry Marge.”

Also apprehensively raises the head of Namar who gazes towards Dana and announces, “Well if you are fully certain this is what you want…which I wish we had the power to deny but we’re practically a monarch here…the leader Thompson said he can only do a meeting in five minutes since later today he has to do training…with the team…who are actually in charge of deploying the satellite.”

Clapping her hands together gleefully with seamless victory, Dana’s face stretches in a wide smile as she asks blissfully cheerily, “Well then it seems we’ll need to wrap this up soon, sorry if there was anyone else who wanted to discuss, we’ll do that tomorrow.”

“You’re going to be out tomorrow,” reminds a man with short light brown hair but darker trims along the sides, wearing thin glasses with chromatic edges around the lenses.

“Right you are Laram, we’ll discuss the day AFTER tomorrow,” revises Dana completely blissfully, carefree in a situation where such behavior is questionable.

Still standing up, Crystal gazes straight at Dana, shaking her head with a sigh at the horrible but unstoppable decision made by her boss.

She fixes her gaze back at her and in a desperate bid for optimism she decides, “Well I guess you’ll actually be forced back at headquarters since that’s where the takeoff is happening, so maybe I can try to make some time to see you off.”

At the same time each of the other executives begin to stand up given the conclusion of the meeting, each of them at their own paces as while Omor leaps out of his seat Namar drags himself out of his, walking around and gently pushing the back of the chair against the oval table.

Placing her hands together and tilting her head with an endearing smile, Dana reciprocates in a tender voice: “Aww, you miss me!”

“I’ll finally be able to slap you,” reveals Crystal.

“What,” asks Dana.

“What,” repeats Crystal.

As all of the executives now stand up, although all of them remain by the table and facing their leader, by the center stands the woman in the ponytail who sighs before pushing out a smile and nodding her head, marking in a more genuine friendly tone: “See you tomorrow.”

Standing alone at the other end of the table is Dana who after lowering her arms and straightening her head gazes back with a sobered expression, huffing through the nose to present her own sincere smile and depart: “You too.”

All the sudden the entire room starts to oddly blur, not only the walls and window screen but also the black leathery chair behind and the white solid table ahead. From edges bleeding over the environment to a complete breakdown of any structure, the world becomes one stain of whites and blues before it all sparkles, flashing bright before the entire room shatters in flickers of light, flickers that disperse away with the only remnant left being Dana herself, although now in a substantially darker room with red lighting from strips along the ceiling and racks along the walls with traditionally shaped firearms held above.

For in truth the C.E.O wasn’t at all in the meeting room inside the silver city, instead she is inside the larger but darker armory room with carousel shelves containing grenades behind her as what was the comfortable leathery black Executive chair she was seating on in truth was a single hovering stool without cushion surrounded by racks of heavy armor plates primarily chest plates and pauldrons, sleek and stylized in blacks and reds.

There is no visible exit to the room for it’s closed for isolation of any sounds, a room seemingly from a military base given the sheer number of weaponry from the black board on the wall overlaid full of pistols to a long device resembling a rocket launcher hovering over the shelves of metal disks that seem to be landmines of sorts.

Although rooms like these are the commonplace of the team fortress that the C.E.O is actually in, at least it was the substitute of the many offices that were prevalent in the prior manor.

For as she stands in the dark red armory, completely silent with the smile depressing to a frown, her cheery tone extinguished after the exchange of goodbyes, there is nothing more clear than the lack of belonging for someone sporting business attire to be standing in a weapons vault.

Although belongingness wasn’t exactly expected, as this wasn’t her home.

Not to say the last wasn’t either, but the last was the house of her friend.

This was the fortress for fighters.