Meet cute j and rian

"Sergeant," says J, lingering last in the doorway after the mission briefing.

Roger doesn't wait to hear the question or complaint. He can guess what their Temple Assassin cares enough to stay after class about. "You're on Bravo Team on purpose, eh." The only response from J is a slight narrowing of his eyes, which means Roger guessed right and that fact annoyed him. "Saint needs you to learn to be part of a team," half-stern, then half-Scout Leader as he continues: "Look, the more versatile you are, the more ways you can work, the more use you are to the Emperor, right? And that includes learning to work \*with people.\* The rest of us have to do it all the time."

J is usually in a good mood on the van ride down, because he knows he's on his way to Work and Be Useful and you know Do His Duty and shit, like he's Meant For? But he's only sort of half-Working this time. The Inquisitor has decreed it, sure, but. J's sort of wasted doing things that \*aren't\* hopping over and assassinating the most tactically-useful targets. It's a misuse of the Emperor's resources, right?

Usually he joins in on the chit-chat but usually he's going to be ditching these people immediately and this time he's going to have to keep socializing with them for the whole mission. If he chats with them now he might run out of chat to have with them.

The vibe on the ship is weird and uneasy until whoever's got the aux cable puts on Venga Boys in protest. Then the vibe is raucous, and J feels heavily burdened.

It's fine once they're on the ground because they almost immediately get shot at. Whatever it's like when everyone is bored and safe on board the ship, all of these people work for the Inquisition because they're good at what they do, and they've all been successful in surviving thus far - they're much more functional and competent than J expects, now that he is getting a taste of \*Working\* with them more closely.

They run into one of the groups of Imperial Guardsmen who have already been at work trying to clean up this mess, and these guys have a flamethrower, which nobody from the *Praxis* thought to requisition before coming down here, because they're all idiots, they agree communally in conversation whilst standing on a rooftop looking down at the actions of said Imperial Guardsmen prior to heading down to introduce themselves.

"If you keep fukken starin at that guy ya gonna wear a fukken hole through 'im," says Yarrow. The psyker has been in J's peripheral vision, nursing a lho, for the last five minutes; this alone keeps J from being startled enough to hop six feet away, because he was *not* expecting Yarrow to *talk to him*.

Yarrow has the courtesy to stay out of people's heads. He doesn't even look at people; he's not looking at J now, nor at the mingling of Praxes and Guardsmen across the plaza, nor at anything but the ground in front of his cigarette. How's he know who J is looking at, J thinks indignantly.

"He has the flamethrower."

"Sure, ya watchin the fukken flamethrower, cuz ya gonna go steal it if he puts it down," Yarrow says, scowling even as he takes another drag from what is currently a stick of mostly-ash. "If you think he's hot then say you think he's fukken hot. Fucksake. Be a fukken Prax about it."

J decides that's not worth dignifying with a response. He does shoot Yarrow a sidelong glare. Unfortunately Yarrow is in the middle of rolling his eyes when J begins the glare, and once his eyes have been rolled Yarrow tries to shoot a sidelong glare at *J*, and so their eyes meet.

They both look away instantly and they both feel bad about it, although J doesn't know *why* he so distinctly feels that he's done something guilt-worthy.

Yarrow drops his lho stick and grinds it out. "Fukken honestly though," he says. He gives himself a little shake like a critter that's gotten a paw wet, then stalks off with his hands in the pockets of his well-bedazzled jacket.

They're shacking up with these guys for the night. The Praxes have better food than them and are not at all concerned about provisioning on this mission; Yarrow has furthermore added to the stocks with a double handful of perfectly good edible nuts he'd found on the sidewalk when they passed a pocket park; they are perhaps trying to bribe these guardsmen with food to make up for their annexation of the flamethrower. Sure they could just flash rosettes and take it but they're *Praxes*. That's not how the Saint would like us to do it. The Saint would like us to only flash rosettes in corporate settings because corporations are not people.

Anyway, the atmosphere is convivial. No one has forgotten they're in an active war zone, but hell, it's always war, and as long as you post pickets you can absolutely play cards while eating fresh fruit along your MREs. J is happy to stay on guard duty. He can hear everybody socializing and he is literally socialization-adjacent and he is experiencing socializing, in some way, and that's something, that counts as something, that gets put down as "socializing time" in the bullet journal but cross-hatched with "Work time."

The guy who's in charge of the flamethrower is also socialization-adjacent. Nothing Yarrow said earlier is worthy of a response, but J may eventually work his way up to "being a Prax about it" at least enough to speak to the guy. It's hard enough to come around to accepting that as a self-assigned task for the night; it's even harder to figure out how to carry it out. Initiating non-purposeful conversation with a stranger is an absolutely professional-tier socialization move and J was told he could use socialization skills as his dump stat because of his Glorious Purpose.

Fortunately, violence breaks out. J is well-placed and looking in the right direction - the flamethrower guy has an immediate threat on him, and J bares his palm and hops over and grabs the guy and hops away to drop the guy off a safer distance from the threat. The guy throws up; J puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles alert to the rest of the Praxes; the guy pulls his gun out and shoots blindly back towards the threat; these all happen simultaneously, such that J only hears the starting second of his own whistling before it's drowned out by fire.

Yarrow sees them talking, later. Yarrow walks past them with his downcast gaze and his air of ill-humor and Yarrow mutters, as if it's not directly and aggressively *at* J, "you fukken better. Fukken incel-ass shit"

J shouldn't rise to it, J shouldn't even know that word, getting that reference is breaking kayfabe and letting somebody get visibly under his skin is breaking kayfabe and still J turns, truly indignant, and says "I am a *priest -* "

Yarrow says "Fukken volcel-ass shit" and walks directly to Captain Macaskill, who automatically reaches into one of his pockets and offers Yarrow a handful of trail mix