I occasionally write vignettes for pieces I get and then never post them, so I figured I'd change that for today! This lovely depiction of Battery, the coyote executive from Cycles and Origins, was done by  saintsucrose.

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It was hot. Sparklight had a temperature problem, but that was an unfortunate and necessary side effect of protocol. Ionast had to work. Colder rooms nullified it completely. Most forms of air conditioning were prohibited in all but their barest forms, and even then, those were relegated to select places—her office, for one. The stale, rusted blades clicked against their radial walls as they spun busily in place.

Battery didn't think it did much of anything. In fact, she was three-quarters convinced that the fan was more likely to just funnel every heat molecule that passed through the window directly into her face than it was to cool down the room at all. It was fortunate that every thought she had along that line had been subconscious and dismissed within seconds; her pen hand was busier than it had ever been, for the tendrils of her mind grasped at the whole of Sparklight and its status for the purpose of delivering an accurate annual report.

Little in the world was more abstract than the detailed breadth of a company and its assets, however. Being its CEO made those sorts of jobs something spoken in the same breath as the word mandatory. Battery hated that less than she'd actually admit; it gave her a heck of a lot to stay busy.

Read, copy, comment. Read, copy, comment, revise, answer Sienna, revise again.

Her tabs constantly switched between her clipboard of digital notes and the company group chat. Her and Sienna had come to use it on their own simply because nobody else was ever there. The last person that they'd seen log on was Varian, and that was entirely on Sienna's crusade to rope him into roleplay, which ended very prematurely. So, the channel was blank.

It was weird. It was quiet. It was their private space.

Even if there were dozens of members in the channel each typing with the fury of a natural disaster, Sienna was, of course, the most easily identifiable member bar none.

“-I'm kinda busy atm,” Battery had typed.

“-I mean I like”
“-know that”
“-also, stop that. you need a break. you've been in there since lunch.”

Battery chose not to reply directly, but only a minute had passed before her screen lit up again.

“-I don't expect u to answer like right now but I DO have one question for u”

“-What?”

“-have u seen varian”

“-No.”
“-Wait.”
“-Why?”

“-neither did I”
“-by that I mean... heyyy! 1 sec”
“-found him lol”

“-You lost Varian??”

“-hey! lil shit tried to win back what he spent at the bar and he lost so he got uhhh shrank”
“-may have given him a bit too much ionast lmao but! I can see him now!”
“-anyway ur good bby ttyl also varian says hi! <3”

Battery drew away from the tablet. “Hi, Varian,” she muttered quietly. She was almost hoarse; it was as draining to talk to that kangaroo online as it was to do so in the flesh. Ionast was the company's most affordable asset and at the same time its most valuable commodity; it reduced the size of any organic material it came into contact with. It had found its use in Sparklight, shaping its workflow from the ground-up by allowing workers to shrink willingly to do precision work.

Sienna was less than responsible with it. Varian, an ocelot and the most recent addition to the employee roster, had quickly found his place between the two and frequently suffered for it.

And yet, despite everything, the coyote was grinning. Her eyes flicked to the bottom of her screen; 10 minutes talking to that woman. She probably could have been done with the next few pages.

“But...”

She puffed from her nostrils in a kind of quarter-laugh and twirled her pen under her curled index. Her free thumb pried the inner front cover open and her eyes scanned the amount of pages finished; one, two, three... ten already.

“Yeah. Maybe a break is overdue.”

The coyote uncurled her legs and rose to a stand in a single motion, letting her things fall like leaves to the wayside. A telltale tingle in her thighs told her she'd been there too long—a single voice among a chorus of other voices that said the same, really, and to which she responded by diving into a well-deserved stretch. Her caramel locks fell aloft her shoulders, flowing like liquid cinnamon. Before too long she had left the room, pen weighing down paper in the dim breeze.

She'd say hi in person.