Scenario: "Coffee, Calculus, and Cramps"

Katie “Pidge” Holt sat cross-legged in the back of her favorite campus café, laptop open, earbuds in, and glasses slightly fogged from the heat of her oat milk latte. The screen displayed a complex code she was debugging for her Artificial Intelligence Capstone, but her brain lagged a few seconds behind every command she typed.

It had been two years since the universe stopped needing her as a Paladin. Now, she was just a college junior majoring in Robotics Engineering with a minor in Astrophysics. She was at the top of her class, in the honors program, and her professors regularly fought over who got to claim her as their research assistant.

Pidge was also happily in a stable relationship—something that still felt a little foreign to her, but deeply comforting. Her girlfriend, a fellow engineering nerd named Ayla, had introduced her to the concept of slowing down, of taking breaks that didn’t involve space battles. They studied together often, but Ayla made sure their nights weren’t just about equations and circuit boards.

Everything was going well… except for the fact that Pidge was so damn tired.

She blinked hard, rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses, and took another sip of coffee. Her limbs felt like lead, her head pounded with a dull ache, and her lower abdomen was throwing a riot. She let out a groan and rested her forehead on the edge of her keyboard.

A notification pinged—Ayla.

"Break time. You look like a sleep-deprived algorithm. I brought snacks."

Moments later, Ayla slid into the seat beside her, dropping a small paper bag with chocolate, heat patches, and a bottle of Advil on the table. Pidge managed a weak smile.

"How are you this perfect?"

Ayla kissed her temple gently and whispered, “Because I remember what week it is. Come on, let’s go lie down and binge some trash TV.”

Pidge nodded, finally letting herself relax a bit. Even geniuses who once helped save the universe needed rest. And right now, the only thing she needed to conquer… was surviving her period with a little dignity and a lot of chocolate.