W.O. "Mikey" Rangel
Refugee Camp, North of Manila - 12/3/2022, 10:53, UTC+8

Mikey stuck her tongue out at Griff, but had to fight not to smile as she did it. If Griff had just been the other normal person on the task force (well, for given values of normal), she thought they probably would have ended up gravitating towards each other on that basis alone. She hadn't looked forward to being the only unblooded person on a task force that she had been told was one of the most active in the whole war; finding out that wasn't the case had been a relief. It was just lucky that he'd ended up being genuinely likable as well.

Her head jerked up at the announcement, expression suddenly serious. The South Koreans and the Japanese had held the strait, just as the Director had predicted. She didn't really know enough about the navies involved--or naval warfare in general--to know if that was impressive, but she decided to assume that it was. (She didn't know if it was better to phrase it as assuming the best or the worst, but. Y'know. Whichever.)

That sober thought kept her from cheering quite as energetically as she might have, otherwise. Instead, her gaze drifted over to Griff (himself looking serious, in what looked to her like the same funk she had seen him in before) across the gathered crowd (temporarily pacified, and she was just now realizing how tense things had been just a minute or two before, making her more than a bit anxious) then finally over to the other contingent present from the task force.

The scariest teenager I've ever met, she thought, and the Real-Deal No Shit Crown Prince of Japan.

She reminded herself that wasn't a fair judgment, in Cristina's case. Not that the other woman wasn't a teenager--just that Mikey had only left that particular category recently herself. (Somehow, that thought didn't help.) The scary part was definitely right, though.

The prince was even younger, and seemed correspondingly older for his age. That was how it worked for princes in fantasy novels, but she had thought it didn't work that way in real life. Not that she minded this alternative. Really, her biggest problem with him was that she had no idea how to act around him--royalty being completely outside of any context she had.

Mikey suddenly realized she had been staring at them just a tad too long. She caught herself, threw on a smile (which might or might not be visible at that distance) and gave an awkward wave before turning back to her pile of supplies.