Star Knight Office Warriors

The worst part of waking up...

Candice - Star Knight Candy Stripe - tore open a few more sugar packets than she perhaps needed, and dumped the whole lot into her paper coffee cup, before haphazardly topping it with a lid and grabbing a stir-stick, and making way for the next person in line. This break room is too small, even for us. She sidestepped around the little island-table and idly stirred the cup as she watched her compatriots struggle through the opening minutes of the day. Seven years into this secret identity, and all of her youthful energy was gone; the day just would not start without a hot cup of joe, anymore.

Rosa - Star Knight Camellia Rose - dropped a bag of orange pekoe into her cup, dispensing hot water over it, followed by searching the break room counter for any packets of honey. There were none; Employee Services hadn't ordered any in almost a month. Rosa instead rolled her eyes and grabbed two packets of turbinado, that had been there long enough that she needed to thump them against something hard to break the crystals apart. As she stepped aside for the third member of the party, she chose to break the silence. "Why do we work here, again?" she asked, wishing her tea bag would steep a little bit faster.

The third member, Milly - Star Knight Milky Way Million - was busily ripping the lid off the eighth of an ever-increasing pile of non-dairy creamers. "Rosa, I thought you were the one that insisted we stick together through thick and thin."

"But an office job?"

It was Candice that replied next, attempting fruitlessly to brush her honey-blonde hair out of her eye. "We couldn't exactly stay in high school. Somebody would notice, eventually, if we were never aging and never graduating." She took a tentative sip from her cup, before realizing she had not even put coffee in it. "Ugh. Mornings." She put herself right back in line behind Milly, and wished that she could pull off the wild bobbed hairdo that Milly did. She hasn't even brushed or combed it and it still looks cute.

Milly was now on 13 cups of creamer, and struggling to peel the lid on number 14. "Not to mention, remember the intel we were given by the Great Observer Polaris?"

"What, four years ago?" The last time Candice remembered seeing any other friendly astral beings was right after they'd all gotten their two-year associates degrees together. Degrees that none of them were using here, in this bureaucratic hell job.

"Polaris said to us that there were great forces of darkness, that hid within this building by day. And the best way to get into this building in the daytime..."

"...is to work here, huh," Rosa finished, trying to shake the water out of her tea bag before throwing it into the compost bin. "What, does Polaris think our boss is the source of all the Great Evil in this town?"

"It'd make sense why nobody ever seems to attack unless it's after-hours," Milly shrugged. "Could explain a few other parts of the job, too," she added, having managed to cause the 13th creamer to explode instead of opening peacefully.

"But it's impossible to find the time to investigate around here," Rosa complained as she contemplated getting some ice out of the soda dispenser to fast-track her tea into being cool enough to sip. "They just keep dumping more paperwork on us, with impossible quotas."

"Do not make me think about quotas this early in the morning, Rosa," mumbled Candice, still waiting patiently to get back to the coffee dispenser.