Kicking the Hornets Nest

Kroll sighed with exhaustion as he wrenched open the door to his office and shambled inside, dumping his gear to the right of the doorway before closing the door behind him and trudging towards his desk, crashing into the chair that sat behind it. After yawning and rubbing the small traces of sleep from his eyes, the captain scooted his chair forward and folded his arms onto his desk before nestling his head on top of them. He didn't want to risk messing up any of the paperwork he needed to do, and figured that a brief power nap would grant him the endurance he would need later.

Sten chuckled and slipped out of his armour. The racks were numbered and tagged, but he just hung it up on the nearest one.

"Nothing you're not used to though, eh?" he said, grinning over his shoulder at her.

Aella dumped the pack on a table and poured out its contents.

"I suppose... the fighting is familiar. Waiting in the cold is not"

Sten giggled.

"Yeah, but that's easy enough, waiting I mean," he mentally tried to keep calm. " I mean, I read about some of your fights, and that's... whew. That's some serious stuff!"

Aella smiled at Sten.

"Yeah... They always expected us to put on a better show than the last each time... got a little ridiculous after a while"

Sten leaned up against the wall idly.

"Yeah?" he said, smiling back expectantly. "Like what?"

"There was this one time they flooded the entire arena and had singers perform an opera about a famous victory at sea... Then the singers were replaced by gladiators dressed and dyed to look the same, who fought a naval battle against some slaves... That was ridiculous. And the dye stayed in my coat for months"

Sten grinned.

"Oh yeah, I remember that one. I heard about it. Sounded great, though."

Specifically, he'd heard about it a week later from someone who had once seen a newspaper clipping about it, but they made it sound awesome.

Aella sighs and smiles.

"That was a fun day... like the day where they made me dress up as a sphinx and demand the answers to riddles"

Sten's grin threatened to connect around the back of his head.

"Man. Why aren't you still there? In the ring, I mean."

The griffoness began sorting through the pile of objects that she left on the table, trying to put them in some kind of sensible order for the quartermaster.

"... I was purchased by Feliks after a... difficult fight. He brought me here, to this city and put me to work as a fighter and... entertainer"

Aella shudders.

Sten clicked in the back of his throat.

"Hard luck, ending up here," he said, leaning against a rack of equipment. "I wouldn't have come here if you paid me."

Which wasn't maybe the most tasteful thing to say under the circumstances, but oh well.

Aella frowns and looks over at Sten.

"Why /are/ you here? You are a free griffon, you can go where you want"

Sten clicked again and nonchalantly adjusted something on the rack behind him. It fell off, and he swore, scrabbling for it.

"'Free' is a bit of a loose term in the army," he said. "You do what they tell you, or they kill you. Even if I flew back home as fast as I could, the provosts would still be waiting with a lash and an axe just for me when I got there."

Aella thought for a moment.

"So... the army is  bit like slavery... Did you choose the army?"

"Well, chose in the sense there's always a choice," Sten said, ruefully. "Just, it's a bit hard not to choose the army when all your mates join at the same time. When you're a young griff facing a lifetime of drudgery and service, the army looks like freedom."

He kicked a table idly. "'Course, up close it's just the words 'slavery and drudgery' obscured by a big pile of corpses."

Aella nods slowly.

"We should probably get to the office... warmer in there"

Sten caught himself. It'd be a shame to cut the conversation short, but then again, the cap wasn't the sort to permit you slinking off for too long. Ruddy busybody.

"Yes, yeah, we probably should," he said, haltingly. "The cap'll want a word."

Aella lead the way from the armoury through the halls of the headquarters. Eventually the pair ended up in front of the office doors.

The door to Kroll's office was wide open, as the captain had wanted to get some airflow into his room as he worked. Feeling well-rested from his power nap, the tercel was at his desk filing paper work when Aella and Sten arrived in his doorway. Glancing up at the pair, Kroll nodded and motioned to the two to move into his office before beginning to flip through the contents of a folder on his desk. 

"Come in and close the door behind you."

Sten did as the captain ordered, keeping his face as blank as he could.

"Sir," he said, plainly.

Aella slunk in behind Sten and closed the door. She moved to her customary spot by the wall halfway between Krolls desk and the door.

Kroll stopped flipping through the folder on his desk and looked up at the pair across from him. "So..." he started off slowly as he shifted in his chair, interlocking his talons together. "It can certainly go without saying that yesterday's mission did not go exactly as I had hoped it would, but I commend both of you for hanging in there and not dying." the captain said with a slight chuckle, giving both Aella and Sten a slight nod.

"As promised, I have made a few adjustments to your record, Softclaw. Should be enough to keep your CO off your back, but keep in mind that this arrangement was a one-time deal, understand? You'll have to dig yourself out of your own mess next time you decide to go AWOL, though the dead tend to stay put in their graves once they're placed." With that, Kroll returned his attention to his paperwork, waving a claw in a shooing motion at the pair.

"Dismissed." he muttered as he flipped through a few documents, annotating some of them before setting them aside in a neat stack.

Smug bastard, Sten thought.

"Yes sir," he said, backing out, glancing meaningfully at Aella.

Aella smiled awkwardly at Sten and shifted on the spot.

Things had gone badly. The drug ring had probably gone underground by now, and would be almost impossible to find. She hoped that their failure wouldn't warrant a use of the collar. Not that Kroll had shown any inclination to use it before.

The moment Sten walked out of the room, Kroll began to speak to Aella. "While you and Softclaw were returning the gear to the armory, I received a rather...unexpected visit from one of the members of the Council."

The captain paused for a moment to scratch out some text on a document before continuing.  "It seems that they caught wind of me de-collaring you yesterday, and this is apparently a no-no in their eyes since your previous owner failed to pay off the debt he owed after purchasing you. With that being said..."

Kroll trailed off as he slid open a compartment in his desk and pulled out the small box he used to store the thick leather collar that Aella used to wear around her neck, gently setting it in front of him on the desk before looking up at the griffoness, a hint of sadness showing in his amber colored eyes.

Aella froze, staring at the collar sitting on the desk.

She hated that collar. Being rid of it was one of the happiest moments of her life.

It was a symbol of servitude and it gave her masters power over her. It was pain and tyranny and loneliness all contained in one strip of enchanted leather. To have it forced upon her again...

She tried to fight back tears.

"I-..."

Kroll sighed as he looked down at the box, flipping up the latches that held it shut with a flick of his talons. "The sooner we get this over and done with, the sooner we can move on." the captain said in a calm tone as he removed the thick leather collar from its box and stood up from his desk, slowly walking around it so that he was in front of Aella.

Looking at the hen before him and watching how she reacted to the sight of her old collar made Kroll feel a sickening mixture of sympathy and guilt for what he was about to do. Despite having lived through detestable conditions when he was a younger age, the captain could hardly imagine what wearing such a wretched collar meant to the griffoness, especially after being free of it the day before. Nonetheless, he had an order to carry out, and there was no point in delaying the inevitable any further.

"Let's not waste any more time." he said with a tone of grim resignation as he walked behind Aella and began to gently wrap the thick strip of leather around the hen's throat.

"Just relax and I will try to get this over and done with as fast as I can."

Aella tensed. She wanted to lash out, smash that hateful thing to the ground and flee. She could fight her way out if needs be. Even in her fatigued state she would be more than able to deal with a few guards.

But... she couldn't. She stayed rooted to the spot. A lifetime of slavery left her almost unable to even think about defying an order... and if she did escape, the council would surely take her price from Krolls flesh and blood.

So, she did as she had been trained to, and obeyed her orders.

Kroll made quick work of refastening the thick leather collar around Aella's neck, making sure that it was secure but not tight as it used to be. 

"Alright, there we go." the captain said with a sigh as he wiped his claws against his armor, walking back over to the box behind his desk to retrieve the whale bone talisman that was paired with the collar.

"Now don't hate me for this, but according to the protocol I was given, I have to test this damn thing to make sure that it works properly. I'm not really sure how powerful this thing is, so I'm going to just give it a light squeeze...hopefully that should be  enough to satisfy the Council."

Holding the talisman gently in his claw he tried to give the hen a comforting look. "Alright, on the count of three. "One...two." as soon as the tercel reached two, he quickly squeezed the talisman for a split second.

Aella yelped, cringing as pain shot through her body. As it passed, she lifted a hand up to her neck, feeling the familiar cracked leather. At least she didn't bite her tongue this time.

The use of the collar hurt on a deeper level than physical. It felt like a betrayal. Kroll, just following orders, had effectively re-enslaved her. Now she had no chance of escape.

Kroll couldn't help but cringe at the sound of Aella yelping in pain. Even though  he had personally inflicted pain and varying levels of harm on many ponies and griffons alike throughout his service to the Kingdoms without batting an eye or losing a wink of sleep, the difference between them and the hen that stood before the captain was that she didn't deserve what was happening to her. Not even a little bit. But at least the worst was over for now, and the tercel silently hoped that the griffoness would be able to forgive him sometime further down the road.

Tucking away the talisman in his pocket, Kroll walked over to Aella and handed her a key. "Here. This is the key to my living quarters in the officer's barracks. You can go there and take the rest of the day off if you wish. I need to go have a word with the Council, and then I'll be back to here for paperwork." 

The captain walked over to the door, opened it and was halfway through the doorway before he paused for a moment, turning around as he let out a deep sigh. "I...I'm sorry for having to do this to you, Aella. Truly, I am." After a brief, awkward pause, the tercel closed the door to his office behind him, leaving the hen to her own devices.