"ASSISTANT~!"

"Yes, m'lord."

"Notes."

A pudgy man in a tunic grabbed a pen and an old, crusty notebook.

"Wool-cashmere blend, uncheck. Too itchy. Not absorbent enough."

The assistant was mid sentence when a bath robe flew overhead and treated him like a coat rack.

"I guess I'm stuck with Egyptian cotton for now."

Rogue, once again, was naked in his lab.

"Assistant, new robe please."

His aide yanked off the garment that was draped over him and ran out of the room. Rogue stood there in his sexyboy splendor, pondering what to do with his day. He had just returned from another failed experiment in Spostalea, and though he appeared unfazed, the distress from his repeated implosions was clearly affecting his work. He was surprisingly neat for a mad genius, but the growing disarray in his workplace showed his dislocated state of mind. He trotted back to his table and opened to a recent page in his "To Do List" tome. On top, the word "Lingducken".

The pudgy man returned with a robe of unidentifiable color. It had probably started out as white when it was new, but now looked like it had survived several rounds of paintball. Rogue shut the book and stood, put on the robe as it was handed to him, and sat back down. He opened his tome again, and this time, the page read "Ideal Permutations for Extended Battle Strategies Against Recognized Fighter Archetypes". The words baffled him.

"ASSISTANT~! When did I write this down?"

"Uhm, when you got back from Spostalea, sir. You said you wanted to figure out better strategies and ploys for longer campaigns. You lost a long fight again so you wanted to—"

Lost. Again. Rogue snapped into a silent tantrum. The Zerg commander left his table and stomped his way to a counter filled with beakers of every shade and viscosity. His apprentice knew what was coming, so he strolled to a back room covered by a blast door. The little man picked up a magazine on one of the shelves and opened it to a bookmarked section and began reading, though he lost his progress whenever the room shook with each blast. The small explosions, of course, came from inside Rogue's madhouse, where he had begun mixing cocktails to hurl in his attendant's direction.

"I'll show you lost again," Rogue squeezed out of his gnashing teeth.

Rogue moved over to a refrigerated locker and carefully opened the door. He pushed aside other containers as if he were looking for something in particular, even bypassing the ominous test tubes marked with skulls. There, at the back and covered in sleet, was an unmarked mason jar. It looked like a smoothie abandoned for years or his high school science project before he had really known better. Rogue unearthed it and juggled it in his hands. He actually appeared excited.

He walked over to a few meters in front of the blast door and began stretching. He had gotten a lot of practice pitching from all those midnight baseball sessions with sOs, so there was no way he was going to miss. He wound up his arm with the canister in hand, and drove it into the door. The frozen bottle pinged off the plating and sprang out the window, falling 2 stories down onto the hangar roof. It bounced three times, Rogue cursing each time it hit the ceiling of the building below. The jar spun in place and beamed a distress signal back to the mound as it reflected the harsh noon sun.

"Huh. Did I forget somethi—"

Boom. He forgot to add enough heat. The blast collapsed a portion of the roof, though the structure continued to stand.

"Eh, that wasn't so bad," he reasoned, as he hid from the view of the scuttling fire department.

He turned around and spotted his assistant spying from the door. It was obvious he had heard the bang coming from outside the lab. "You can come out now. We're going to need damage control."

Rogue's secretary-cum-lawyer peered out the window and heard a man screaming from below. It was sOs. While it took approximately four minutes to get up there from the courtyard, sOs reached it in two. He stormed the lab, baseball bat in hand.

"ROGUE YOU BASTARD. YOU WRECKED MY PLANE. IT WAS ALMOST DONE!"

The assistant approached and raised his hand slowly, ensuring he was at least two bat-lengths away. "Uhm, sir.. it was an accident."

"An accident? AGAIN? This is the third time this month you've destroyed something outside your lab. We know you love your experiments, but we agreed that you'd keep them contained in here. We gave you an entire floor for a reason." sOs was inconsolable. He'd been working sleepless nights aplenty over that plane, and it was to be his prized possession.

Rogue didn't appear remorseful, and had little to add as sOs continued his scolding.

"You don't take this war seriously enough. I know you love your toys and ploys, and honestly, they can be really useful. But you've got to learn to be more responsible. Sometimes I think you care more about your contraptions working than you do about winning." sOs glared at Rogue, who didn't feel like answering or apologizing. The Protoss commander was used to this, however, and gave up trying to talk some sense into the unusually bashful scientist. He marched out to attend to the repairs.

"It wasn't even a cool plane."

Rogue sealed the door to his lab and grabbed his vacuum cleaner, and proceeded to tidy up.




It took a few hours but everything looked good as new. The hole in the ceiling had been patched, and the damage to the hull of sOs' plane had been mended. sOs had spent the entire afternoon with his crew to make sure it could still be saved, and the sweat sogging the shirt on his back provided evidence of the hard work. He dismissed everyone as the sun set and let out his relief in a long exhale.

Rogue had been spying on the repairs from a distance, affected by curiosity more than conscience. As sOs stood there admiring his likeness on the plane, Rogue approached one of the mechanics on standby.

"Did they make sure the stabilizers are aligned," he interrogated.

"Yes, of course."

"Did they calibrate the servos and controls?"

"Yes, standard procedure."

"Did they remember to pressure test all the seals and welding?"

"That's scheduled for tomorrow."

"Are you sure they reme—"

Rogue spotted sOs finish his inspection from the corner of his eye, compelling him to make his exit mid sentence. He skirted back towards his workshop muttering, "No, no, this just won't do." He locked himself inside his quarters, resuming his work. He labored well into the night, as per usual, and the lights from his lab bothered his neighbors, until a quarter past midnight when the windows were finally shut. A good night's sleep at last.

Yet the calm of night would not last long. Down in the hangar, the sudden pop of metal striking metal alarmed the apartments facing the courtyard. Saws buzzed, meters rang, and hammers belled a morning's tune. sOs woke in a cold sweat realizing what was happening. He put on his Jin Air jacket and galloped down the halls to investigate. "Not again," he agonized.

He reached the hangar door as the first responder and resisted the urge to barge right in. He shrouded himself in a psionic cloak and entered through a half opened side door, intent on finding out what was happening. Screws drilled, wires buzzed, plates clanged to the floor; every sound unnerving the invisible Protoss more and more. sOs drew his psi blades as he neared and prepared to seize the intruder or strike him down, if necessary.

The sparks from the meddler's welder illuminated his face. It was Rogue tampering with sOs' plane again.

"WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING," sOs screamed.

Rogue turned around, seeing no one. He wondered, unperturbed, "Who said that?" sOs had forgotten to turn himself visible, and he stepped in front of Rogue before reappearing. He had hoped to jolt the irritant into a fright, but that didn't bother him either.

"Stop tampering with my plane!!!"

"Oh. Good. You're here," he responded without stopping his work. Rogue switched on the hangar lights and wiped his hands with an oily rag.

"Your crew didn't do a good job. So I improved it."

sOs was still breathing heavily with his brows slanted to meet by the bridge of his nose. He looked dejected, and he didn't understand what Rogue was yammering on about. It took several seconds for him to realize what Rogue had actually done. sOs trudged over to the engineer's desk and audited the blueprints spread out on the table. Apparently, Rogue was installing upgrades.

"You should have told me you were going to do this," sOs groaned, his expression finally softening. Even though Rogue's methods were often opaque, sOs understood that he often had good intentions.

"You never would have let me."

"Well, you're right. But could you blame me?"

"Yes."

"I almost stabbed you, you know."

"I wanted it to be a surprise. Don't think this thing will be ready anytime soon though."

sOs gave Rogue a good look. He had been working clad in his pajamas again, which were now splattered with grease and soot. sOs had run down to the hangar barefoot, and his unwinding nerves felt a sudden chill.

"Geez it's 15 degrees out here. Why the hell are you in a silk robe?"

"It's stealthier than cotton."

"... just explain to me how this works."




The next morning, Rogue resumed his research into whatever his page flips dictated. Though his assistant once again reminded him about Project IPEBSARFA ("Ideal Permutations for Extended Battle Strategies Against Recognized Fighter Archetypes"), Rogue simply shrugged off the suggestion. He enjoyed hearing his apprentice struggle to pronounce insufferable acronyms, but it did contribute to his absentmindedness.

While Rogue paced around his sanctuary, another visitor paid him a visit. This time, it was Maru.

"We've received interesting news. Life's reign is over. The scepter is up for grabs. SKT's deployed all their best generals. I know you still want revenge for the war of clans," Maru announced directly. He left no time for small talk, as usual.

"Wow. If you become king you're going to give me a bigger budget for my toys, right," Rogue asked. He didn't seem very interested.

"What do you mean? You're coming with us."

"Oh? I don't like those bullies either but I don't know..."

Rogue felt indecisive. On the one hand, he wanted more than anything else to prove himself once and for all. On the other hand, his defeat in every long campaign this year had left him shorn of confidence. Their defeat against SKT weighed on his mind as well.

"sOs and I are going. We can't let SKT rule this continent. They're already the richest clan. Imagine if they become the most powerful too," Maru tried to convince his friend.

"I could just stay home and continue my experiments. Send you some stuff to help out. I bet I'd be more useful that way," Rogue argued.

"You know, we were like that once too. Everyone doubted our abilities and criticized our unconventional tactics. People thought we were just novelties," Maru explained, "Yet all it took was a career defining victory. For me it was the second battle of Ognalea, and I justified my place this year as the head of the Terran Council. For sOs, it was his successful reign as king two years ago."

Rogue remembered what it was like back then. He was just another nameless captain at the time, while sOs and Maru had just gained promotion to the ranks of general with their string of victorious crusades. Maru belonged to one of the lower clans when he prevailed in Ognalea, and he had never come close to success before then. sOs was the jester who became king. Rogue understood what he had to do, but his unease grew.

"Jin Air need a Zerg," Maru declared before leaving the lab to prepare for war. He had given a good speech, he felt, though it was out of character for him to untie so many words. Rogue still didn't seem very convinced, he thought.

Maru was already halfway down the building when the stairwell shook with a dampened thud. The little prince slipped on a step and fell on his bottom which squeezed an unexpected curse from his lips. He staggered to the window and saw that there was another eruption at the volcano that was Rogue's laboratory. Maru dusted himself off and clambered back up, only to be greeted by flames. Rogue's entire office had been destroyed.

His eyes widened in a panic. The castle firefighters were already rushing to the scene, but their dry chemical extinguishers were having trouble with Rogue's various concoctions. "Has anyone seen Rogue~?!" Maru shouted, his voice cracking back into teenhood. He inquired with everyone at the scene but no one had seen a trace of the scientist. When the blaze expired, only the blast door survived.

Maru sunk to his knees and prepared to let out a loud cry, when his theatrics were interrupted by a pat on his shoulders.

"Uhm, sir.. it wasn't an accident." It was Rogue's assistant, spotless and unharmed. He pointed to the staircase, and motioned for Maru to follow him. The Terran general wasn't sure whether to be distraught or confused, but followed anyway. They reached the kitchen on the first floor, where Rogue was busy shuffling jars and mixing ingredients. He looked right at home.

"ROGUE! What happened?! You can't imagine the chaos you just caused," Maru reproached.

"I didn't need my lab anymore."

"What?? I'm really never going to understand you. What are you doing in the kitchen, of all places? We looked everywhere for you," Maru exclaimed.

"I can't go to war without a packed lunch. Foreign food is gross."

Maru shook his head and massaged his distended nape. He was going to have to explain this to everyone. At the very least, Jin Air had its Zerg.