4048/Shores of the Void

Shores of the Void
Date of Scene:	25 April 2016
Location:	Origin System <WF>
Synopsis:	After a rendezvous near Earth of the Origin System, Kushiko explains to Juno Eclipse the inner workings of her world, and shows her the dangerous Void.
Cast of Characters:	428, Kushiko

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Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Quick and quiet; these are the precepts under which the Rogue Shadow was originally designed. Outfitted with the finest hyperdrives and sublight engines credits could buy, and engineered with a superior cloaking system to hide it from prying enemy eyes.

It had taken some time to find the Tenno-aligned relay orbiting Earth, but after a little while scouring over the sensors and sector space, Juno Eclipse had finally zeroed in on the area enough to bring the Rogue Shadow in, quickly and quietly, slipping past Grineer blockades and patrols around Earth's immediate orbit. Reminiscent of Corulag with its blues and greens, the turning planet seems deceptively peaceful for a place rife with war and despoiled by the expansionistic Grineer.

The Rogue Shadow decloaks, and that probably gets some attention on it from the Tenno ships in the immediate area -- one or two of them also pulling into the relay immediately fall into evasive manoeuvres, which forces Juno to do much the same (and probably snarling curses at a close brush or two). Unfortunately, she doesn't have a revolving door on the ventral panel of her ship, so she has to do some creative manoeuvring to park the Rogue Shadow in a way that aligns with the hangar's landings.

When she finally hops out of the pilot's chair, it's with slightly jangled nerves. Her blasters are stuck into her belt, and she's dressed in sleeker, less casual clothing for this meeting. It's as much for warmth as it is to cut an impression -- the simple outfit is reminiscent of her Imperial blacks, but her jacket is stripped of its rank insignia, and her cap no longer sports its round data sigil as its badge.

Her two blasters are holstered one at each hip as she waits for the Lotus or the Tenno or whoever it is of the two she's going to meet, absently stalking from stem to stern as she checks out her ship in the idle time. It looks a bit worse for the wear, but such is the life of an Imperial refugee. It no longer has access to limitless Imperial stores of credits and parts -- Juno has to make do with what she has on hand, most days; or to jury-rig more complicated repairs from simpler parts.

Fortunately she's very, very good at that, and one can bet she's mentally putting together another battery of maintenance as she waits.

Kushiko has posed:
There was always conflict of some kind in the vicinity of Earth: the Grineer versus the supercharged vegetation that had more or less kept the Grineer from terraforming the cradle of human life into their own image. But it didn't entirely keep them out, stations and outposts pocketed not just on Earth itself but throughout the system.

Approaching or even seeing the Moon properly was it's own animal given the flurry of activity surrounding it went.

The lips of a technician at a landing station twists in annoyance at first with the decloaking and arrival of the Rogue Shadow, but as her hands fly over the hardlight display, she affirms information passed along by the Lotus, not to mention making sure other Tenno know of who and why they're here.

More ships come and go. Some are like the Liset, the shovel-shaped vessel. Others are more wildly shaped, ranging from almost insectlike to manta rays. One doesn't have too long to wait at least, as it is Kushiko's voice comes over the local transmission: on the outside, the Warframe Nova Prime would be standing just on the landing dock.

"There you are! Glad you made it here alright. Ready to come aboard? The Lotus has passed along you're to be trusted out here... just might to make sure you're decloaked once you're within range of their systems in the future." Not even remotely a tone of reproval in her voice, but given the evasive maneuvers as a result of the decloak... it's not a stretch to say it was a surprise for some of the Tenno.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Tugging her jacket tighter around her shoulders, the pilot steps back and casts a critical eye toward the sleek lines of her ship. She's about to turn and head for another section of it, when suddnely there's a voice behind her.

Juno Eclipse is unreasonably proud of herself for not going three feet straight up into the air, but she does jerk in place and spin on her heel; instincts and reaction time worthy of respect even among beings like the Tenno -- deadly instincts, to be sure, but only when she's in the cockpit of a starfighter.

Smoothing down her jacket in what is a clear 'I-meant-to-do-that' gesture, Juno tilts her head to the Tenno in greeting. Once upon a time, she might have cut an impressive figure, dressed in Imperial blacks and standing in customary straight-backed military posture. Now, she just looks like a smartly-dressed pilot of no particular allegiance, or someone masquerading as an Imperial.

...Honestly, she'd just hung onto that jacket and cap because they're /warm/, and the Rogue Shadow is frequently not.

"I've been itching to see that ship." Smoothing the palms of her gloves on her thighs, she eyes the imposing Warframe somewhat dubiously. Those things are really creepy. At the admonishment, she grins. "I figured you'd prefer that I not trail a host of Grineer into your relay, but now that I've had my ship here, you people will know what to expect; and I can radio ahead."

She gestures to the Warframe. "After you. I don't know what your ship actually looks like."

Kushiko has posed:
Admittedly, it's a little bit problematic at times when the Tenno actually wants to talk to someone. The Warframe itself might offer measures to transmit voice, but neither is there any physical capability for talking directly.

Couple that with a lack of presence unless one desires it, and Tenno can be horrifyingly sneaky.

The notion of the unplanned surprise is one in which the faceless Warframe does not offer much in way of any kind of emotion or surprise, but those surrogate bodies generally aren't for anything regarding true emotion, save for Valkyr.

Kushiko on the other hand, might have been just been a /little/ bit pleased with herself. As much of a warrior trained and versed in thousands upon thousands of flight, now woken up she is still a child in that sense, so the surprised reaction she's collected out of Juno is one she's going to treasure for a while just yet.

Nonetheless, Nova Prime's head bobs just once, mimicing the move if nothing else. "Well, that's fair, but most times they just leave it alone. When one of us is enough to wipe out a platoon, the concept of actually attacking where there's anywhere between a dozen to a hundred of us.. they'd just as much rather bring something bigger, if they even want to approach at all." she offers with a hint of mirth.

At the subject of seeing her ship, Nova gestures as she turns, and the faint cones of energy coiled behind Nova's head and on her back can be seen a bit more readily. Silent pulsations that distribute and recycle her antimatter energy. "Well... you'll see my Liset in a minute. It's my landing craft, and some of the other Tenno use that kind too." As though to demonstrate her point, the reverbation of engines could be heard as one of those Lisets passed, but a Scimitar and Mantis occasionally could be seen.

Thankfully, her own ship was not far off: a deep shade of orchid bore out a metallic, near crystalline surface across it's topside as one walked and followed the Warframe from one of the landing bay arms and towards where she had landed her ship. As much as, attach the ship pointing spatially up is considered landing.

Kushiko adds, "I don't actually fly my own ship, not directly at least. That's all Ordis' job." Wait, what?

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
In fairness, Juno doesn't have the kind of training that would let her spot a Tenno trying to avoid notice. She herself knows how to hide a starfighter from sensors, but ground training is a different discipline entirely.

Maybe avoiding attention wasn't really necessary if the Grineer and the Corpus see Tenno as such a threat... it would be like trying to wipe out the nesting ground of a rancor beast. Dangerous, and also something of a stupid idea. Smart people just avoid the rancor beasts and their nesting grounds both. Getting those things to submit to domestication is like trying to shout at a thunderstorm to make it behave itself.

"Hmm. That makes sense," she concedes, with a shrug. Another good comparison would be the Jedi. Any Imperial strike force contending with a Jedi tends to make use of overwhelming numbers and an alarming level of overkill, because one just never knows what to expect. Imagining them all gathered together like that -- well, that probably wouldn't be pretty for an Imperial strike force.

Juno tilts her head as she follows after Nova, frowning. "So the Liset is the ship's class, not its name--"

Oh. Look. There goes one now. Juno's eyes follow after the ships as they pass by, silently making note of the aesthetics and the similarities of the different landing craft. She looks away only reluctantly, but it's the last statement that forcibly tears her attention back to Kushiko. Juno blinks somewhat owlishly as she processes that.

"Oh. So Ordis is like an astromech droid. Except..." She squints at the Liset, trailing after the Warframe, and possibly trying to solve the puzzle of how she's going to get /in/ there. "I don't see a droid." Astromech units usually socket into their respective ships, visible from outside it. There's nothing to break this Liset's smooth lines.

"...Where is it...?"

Kushiko has posed:
It feels... /odd/, in more senses than Kushiko would ever like to admit. Juno, and to another degree the Union major she had begun to open up dialogues and discussion with. Add in to the fact that there were still aspects, elements of her identity that she had still not necessarily dealt with? At least there was ways of fleshing it out with interaction with others like this.

Truly, an unexpected result of this Multiversal unification.

"Yeah, just the class of the ship. Didn't need a name other than to say, 'this is a Liset'." Kushiko offers somewhat plainly. It's how one comes by 'Valkyr' or 'Nova' most of the time as opposed to actually naming anything. One is Tenno. All are Tenno, in that sense. At least, until awakening as they had been.

So close to the ship, it's far easier for Ordis to cut in, as it were, a hardlight panel courtesy of an emitter on the ship's underside. His voice is calm, polite, but far from the usual tone of near automation that sometimes would come up; organic one might say. "That is because Ordis is not quite like one of your astromech droids. I can see the resemblance." He pauses, the sinewave of those lines around his cube pulsing with every syllable.

"Things are more complex. They are not things to be spoken of casually. You know this well, for otherwise my Operator nor I nor the Lotus would speak of it with candor." The vessel, as quiet as can be despite the pneumatic hiss of that tube, would see it revolve once, showing a humanoid, monogendered recess. That demonstrates how one gets on, of course.

"Ordis is a Cephalon. There are others, for different reasons. Some of us were made with only one purpose in mind, and to fulfill that purpose is all that drives us. We are light and logic. A construct." A little *glrtching* for a moment as the transmission screen seems to be awash in distortion, "/The ghost in the machine/."

The distortion clears not long after. "My Operator and I function quite alike in this regard. It is part of my purpose because of this. I cannot tell you much more than that." Of course, as he speaks, one cannot help but perhaps have their attention drawn a little more strongly to that cracked facet in his projection.

It's then that Kushiko elects to speak up once more, her hand outstretched to offer her own projection for a moment. "Ours is a complicated nature. Revealing more than that without context will twist the meaning of things that we would share with you, Juno Eclipse."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
The pilot leans back a little, studying every line of the Liset with the rapt attention of a professional. Her expertise lies in engineering as much as in piloting; the construction and design of starships is something she's intimately familiar with.

This thing is alien to her. Certain aspects are familiar, and there are aspects of it that she recognises... but for the most part, she can't fathom what lies beneath the armour plating and access hatches. She can't even fathom what kind of alloy this thing is made of.

Glancing up, Juno looks over as the rotating access panel with its humanoid cutout rotates around. That thing is how to get on the ship? What if cargo needs to be loaded? What if more than one passenger has to get in? What if...

"Well, droids are also designed with specific purposes in mind. An astromech generally handles astrogation, but they're also designed to assist with piloting a smaller craft." Juno folds her arms, frowning slightly. "They have their primary programming, too, but beyond that, droids aren't my specialty."

Squinting at that projection, she probably notes the cracked facet, but elects not to comment on it.

"I understand." Tilting her head, she eyes the panel, shrugging and walking up to it, running her hands over the smooth, cold, hard material. "Permission to come aboard?"

Kushiko has posed:
"If you don't mind the slightly compact space, yes, you may. The landing craft is designed explicitly for that." Ordis remarks briskly and without hesitation, pausing momentarily. "However, should the question of you coming further than the Liset be considered to be in the affirmative, I will need to make adjustments. Please, one moment."

Ordis waits long enough for Juno once she's done running her hand along that material. It's undoubtedly much more refined than most--but there's an infusion of /something/ in it that makes it even more alien than the typical alloys that could be. It probably has a base similarity to other known alloys but the mixture and forging of the vessel both implies and conceals in equal measure.

But once Juno has moved back a few feet, the vessel backs up from the landing dock slightly--thrusters shifting and redirecting the Liset carefully until it's able to be pointed away for a moment. The Warframe that had been silently ever present moves just a little, shifting her weight and walking up as the ship moves around.

The angular aft is presented; hovering carefully is the Liset as it comes a bit closer; not using any of the engines back there as it comes closer. "You're probably wondering, where am I? Where, on a ship this size, am I at?" Kushiko offers. There's an unmistakably wry tone. "I'll let you come aboard, but this is where we have people we rescue situate themselves until we let them off at another. There's nothing as it goes to comfort on this ship because my Warframe does not need this."

It's an interesting way of both saying and not saying volumes. Not directly saying, but implying that element of surrogacy is /really/ that far. This body, this ship of Kushiko and Ordis' are relative extensions of both.

"I know you're curious. But you might not be comfortable here." As she concludes, the rear of the ship opens up, unfolding a ramp and a slightly cramped looking area about 8' by 8'. Panneling and lines indicate some measure of storage and unfoldable elements. It's less barebones and more extreme utility.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Despite all her first-hand experience in starship construction and design, even the pilot can't make out the composition of the access panel's alloy. If indeed it actually is an alloy. She's not quite sure about that. If it is, it's been infused with something beyond her expertise and outside her knowledge in a way that conceals its actual composition. Curious. The scientist in her wonders if it's as strong as it looks; surely both sides of it must be, if it's presented as outer plating like this.

Juno glances up when Ordis delivers his warning, and snorts. "You did look at the specs for Imperial starfighters, right...?"

TIE fighter pilots don't even have room to sneeze in those cockpits. The Rebel Alliance has nicknamed them 'eyeballs,' and the moniker is an appropriate one. They're also not very spacious. Anything more than the essentials would drive up production costs, and if there's one thing the Empire prioritises, it's the ability to overwhelm the enemy. Stifle them with enough opposition, and it won't matter that your own troops are hopelessly unequal to the task, although that strategy tends to fall apart with some Elites.

"I wouldn't exactly call the Rogue Shadow 'designed for comfort,' either. You haven't seen the inside, but I can assure you that it's about as austere as the outside." Juno flashes a wry half-smile. "The only thing I've bothered to make comfortable my pilot's chair, because I spent enoug bloody /time/ in it, and my cot, because when I /do/ sleep, I prefer to be able to do so in a way that doesn't leave me crippled in the morning. Bare durasteel might not be much to look at, but it's a lot easier to clean than other alloys, and it's strong."

She proceeds into the waiting area, eyes up and overhead, noting the compact storage. It might be useful to try and incorporate some of these rack designs into the Rogue Shadow; if nothing else, it would open up more space on the ship. Since they've lost any semblance of a home base, being able to stay as self-sufficient as possible on that ship is a priority. The more cargo they can carry, the better.

"I'm fine," she adds, somewhat dismissively. "A TIE cockpit is a lot worse than this." She runs her finger along one of the paneling lines, and one can almost see the wheels in her head turning. "Interesting."

Kushiko has posed:
It is indeed useful in a lot of ways, the cargo element; the unfoldable portions seem to include an element in which that one can, with the tugging of levers and pads, reveal benches and lock them into place. In the interim it could be used to haul off supplies, people, and other things.

"If you direct your attention towards the fore, you may notice some additional machinery there. When the Operator has--" GLRTCH-- "--chosen poorly to have some damnable beasts with them--" Polite. Calm. One day, the Ordis may someday like the Kubrow. Today is not that day. "--their Kubrow with them, they ride along in a secondary compartment to ensure life support until their arrival and disembarkment with the Operator."

One might think that Kushiko would hold that rancor against Ordis, but she understood more than anyone the degree to which one might be broken. "Ah, so you know the issues with cleaning. /Heh heh/. Ahem. Other systems are non-supportable by any means of direct life support while aboard. However, please be, ah, gentle."

At this, Kushiko feels compelled to remark as Juno explores the limited space. Her Warframe on the other hand, has elected to move about a little more silently; looking in this case to actually board the ship on it's necessary recess.

"As you may recall... Ordis was being picked apart by Grineer not long before I managed to discover him again." Her words are chosen carefully, a vagueness at the edge of her tone. "He dislikes too much poking around, I'll grant. Admiration and awe, however, well that'll stroke his ego."

Ordis makes a startled kind of noise; one can imagine the cube pulsing rather rapidly as he counters, "/Operator/ why must you betray me!" A slight noise as he forces some measure of composure onto himself.

The Tenno continues, "More to the point, yeah, I saw some of those before they blew up and read up on them after. They make me think more of drones yet they put actual pilots in them? That's insane." TIE Fighters as a whole, the whole mass produced inequality and working by sheer numbers works if you're not wasting people in her head, especially given how the Grineer and Corpus manage their numbers games.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Stretching, the pilot runs her fingers along the paneling, feeling for the seams that seem to blend so effortlessly into the rest of the structure. There is a certain elegance in its design, almost modular, in the way that different structures and storage solutions can be rotated into the room as needed. One imagines that with a dangerous captive, one would want as little presented to break as possible.

She isn't sure what a Kubrow is, but whatever it is, Ordis sure doesn't like it. Slowly, Juno raises an eyebrow at the Cephalon's aggressive abnormality. For as little as she's dealt with the Cephalon, she's almost starting to get used to that. It's not unlike Galen's droid, which occasionally flips its ubiquitously polite programming to try and shove the closest on-hand weapon through Galen's face.

"I can hardly take anything apart without tools," Juno points out, "unless this ship is designed to be dismantled with bare hands. I was seeing how the panels fit together. If I can design something similar, this would be useful aboard the Rogue Shadow. She doesn't say much--" And she prefers it that way, "--but she's a good ship."

She turns, glancing back toward wherever it is that the Warframe's gone. That thing's habit of moving silently is unnerving, but she's gotten somewhat used to that, too. Galen does the same thing. For someone with a good fifty pounds or so on her, he can move more quietly than she can, when he wants to. "They do. I was originally trained as a TIE pilot. I think there might have been some interest in incorporating automated TIE fighters, but to my knowledge the program was ultimately scrapped due to its cost. Creating that kind of specialised equipment was simply too cost-ineffective for the Empire to produce it on a large scale."

"They prefer to have skilled soldiers, but they'll accept a certain degradation of skill in favour of overwhelming numbers." Juno's mouth twists in an expression of displeasure. "The Empire likes to make a point when they mobilise a detachment to a given area, although they don't always fall back on numbers. if Vader decides to make an appearance, you really don't need the rest of the army at that point."

She leans back, eyeing the corners, searching for the faint paneling with a keen eye, as though mentally piecing together which components are stored where. She can make out some of them by shape alone; others are more vague. "Anyway, TIEs aren't created with any sort of droid pilots in mind. They're unable to make long-range flights on their own, since their hyperdrive is basic, and they tend to be deployed in such number that a lot of the casualties either boil down to pilot incompetence or mechanical failure."

"I think they're useless rubbish, myself," she admits, finally leaning back against the cool paneling of the wall. Despite the chill of the hangar, the cool radiating from the panel feel good. "Some of the rebel designs are much more elegant... /and/ functional."

Kushiko has posed:
It's rather interesting in a sense, to be feeling around there. Both for one who's never /seen/ the thing as much as Ordis himself. It's true; one would need many tools to be taking apart components of the ship and beyond. But it was also designed to be /excellently/ modular, though the full scope of that was as yet to be seen. Would it be seen? That was also a good question.

As Juno feels along the components, the panels and what have you, some of them break. Not actually breaking in the terms of /oh god why/ but, when she places her hand on one, there's a slight outlining of some rectangular (if curved in corners) places. Pressure plates. "There's a sequence. Press or activate some of them in one way, and the area back there is configured for transport for either dangerous targets, or friendlies." Alcove panel on your left, then above and behind you, and to your bottom right.

Should Juno actually press this sequence as advised, there'll be a pair of smoothed, alloyed benches that unfold, complete with harnesses for /about/ 6 people, three to each side would reveal themselves. No more than that, it seems six alone would probably be pushing it.

As to the ongoing conversation regarding not just technology, but the ideology behind it, Kushiko's phantom voice makes a little 'hmmm' noise. "Ah yeah, that's right, that explains why you were curious about my ship..." She pauses for a moment, "Well, that explains one part at least. What do you want to sacrifice in order to gain the other? What's the fastest way to reach that point?" The shrug could be heard in her voice in regards to that, even if it couldn't be seen.

She does manage a soft little laugh. "Yeah, they remind me a lot of the Corpus, lots of design committee. I mean, sure it works, but it doesn't flow as a part of you." Which a lot of that is here. Some script might be spied from within; it's flowing, and the Multiversal translation effect can't necessarily obtain it, but one symbol stands out: that of the Lotus at least.

"Sheesh," the Tenno muses. "I get it, make it super functional and all that, but letting the possibility of mechanical failure being an issue sounds counterproductive to me almost." The Warframe comes back around. Speaking of some of that functionality and design, one would catch her now holding a particularly elegant-looking rifle as she descended down. The Boltor. Metallic briary up and down it's barrel housing as she presented it for Juno's inspection once she was done on the inside.

Continuing on, the Tenno thinks to add, "You know... I get the feeling from how you were communicating before and what not that you don't really have the time or access to safe places to repair or replace much of anything. I didn't want to press, and neither did the Lotus to make any presumptions. That ship's pretty much where you live because if you put down any place static, the Empire would have a chance to find you, wouldn't they?"

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Eyes flicking over the composition of the chamber, Juno quickly touches them in sequence as Ordis advises, triggering the pressure plates with the light hand of a person trying very hard not to break something unfamiliar. Her touch is still confident enough to suggest someone both familiar and skilled with machinery, though; all of the maintenance work done on the Rogue Shadow is by her own hand. Never mind the deftness required to pilot a starfighter at the blistering speeds a TIE fighter can fly at.

She steps back as the smoothed benches unfold from the wall, tilting her head as she watches the sequence complete itself. "Convenient," she admits, settling down on the bench. That's better. Her posture suggests an experienced pilot, too; braced subtly against the potentiality of gravity or acceleration.

"It's because the pieces of scrap are built so cheaply that they have an overwhelming tendency to fail." Juno grins an unpleasant grin. "Seriously, they don't even have energy shielding. I had a few defective TIES, myself. Let me tell you, that's fun to find out in the middle of a mission. I had to make an emergency landing once. Broke my arm in three places. By the way, TIEs aren't made to actually /land/. They're designed to be deployed from, and return to, massive racks aboard Imperial capital ships; so there aren't any struts or landing gear."

She rubs her jaw, considering. "From what I saw, they don't really seem dissimilar. I think the Empire is more interested in rampant conquest, though, and to hell with the ramifications of that expansionism. The Corpus seems more mercantile. I'd probably associate them more with the Hutt Cartel."

There's a short pause.

"...I hope those two never meet."

She looks up as the Warframe comes padding silently back into the area, reaching out to accept the rifle offered her, although she takes it carefully, mindful of those steel thorns. "Interesting." She bounces it once in one hand, gauging its weight. "It's heavy, but I get the impression it's stable. Not a blaster, I'm guessing. I don't see any calibrations."

"Here." Balancing the Boltor carefully in one hand, she pulls one of her blasters from the holsters at her hip, offering it to the Warframe grip-first. It's a thing of dull gunmetal grey, old but obviously well cared for. There are small well-worn controls governing the charge -- adjustable from high to low to 'barely a charge,' presumably used to stun its target rather than kill it. "This is pretty standard stuff. I bought these in Nar Shaddaa. If you're interested, I can probably acquire a pair for you, though what you've got is probably better."

Namely, the big Boltor in her hands, which she's happy to look over and investigate as Kushiko explains further. "Something like that," she offers, squinting down the sight of the rifle. "More than that, if I touch down anywhere, I run the risk of losing the ship, too. It's unique and there are a lot of unsavoury types who wouldn't mind getting their hands on it, which is why I have PROXY guarding it with a blaster rifle." She shrugs. "It's more of a home to me than Corulag ever was, or my quarters aboard the Retribution or the Executor. And living off-planet is nothing new to me."

Kushiko has posed:
"Excellent!" Ordis nearly exclaims at the observation of Juno's following of those instructions--more to the point, the way she actually behaves around the ship seems to have relieved much of Ordis' instinctive, paranoia-fueled concerns enough to temporarily abate them.

Nor does Kushiko miss the way she's touching them either, given some of the remote optics and camera systems providing her those angles. Oh yeah. Juno's definitely got the skills of a handy operative that could adapt here, she reasoned.

Now, the recounting of her mishaps with regards earns a faint little hiss from that young girl on the screen. "Jeez... half measures with some of that technology because of the credits..." She narrows her eyes a little bit, looking more and more disappointed with the concepts involved, but also remembering a few more things on it. "Makes kind of a weird sense from what I saw of them. They don't go planetside much at all, do they?" she wonders.

On the subject of the Corpus and the Empire, she brightens up when the Hutts are mentioned. Not so much positive or negative. "I remember Revan mentioning something like that, that Lowri mentioned them and some of the intel that was obtained before was related to them, wasn't it?" she muses softly. Occasionally her little holopanel shifts places as it faces Juno. It was rather odd, if anyone else looked at it: the Warframe body mute and quiet with the actual conversation taking place both close up and far away, in that curious way.

"Do they sell to anyone and everyone they can? If they have any lines they draw, they're a bit better than the Corpus at least." Even if it was the most /basic/ of line. Which is either a compliment or an insult to one of the groups.

"Mhm. It's an assault rifle that's Tenno designed originally. There's one that's enhanced with Orokin tech that I also have, but that was one of my first rifles. The bolts travel slightly slower than the average ballistic or laser but they have more kinetic strength." The Warframe gestures to the towards the rear; a kind of lever that can be pulled back for reloading, and the underside can be gripped without risk of sharp cuts at least, as opposed to the topside of the barrel casing. 'Elegant' puts it mildly.

On the other side of the coin, the examination of the blaster goes rather well down an interesting path. At first, the frame is exceedingly cautious due to proximity to Juno. Excellent trigger discipline as she runs her hands over it. Feeling it out, sensing it. Gauging the weight and then the sights themselves as she points it away and outwards from the pair. Within a few moments it looks like Nova has been carrying it a lot longer than one ought to think she should.

"Huh. I like the optional settings. Reminds me I need to tweak some of the options on my own arsenal a little bit... most of the times we just kill as opposed to non-lethal takedowns." She might sound a little sheepish relative to the need to be somewhat nonlethal in recent memory. "But 'better' is relative. I shoot someone with one kind of gun, they know it's that kind. Something like this wouldn't be necessarily bad because then it's just like everyone else's gun in your world or another." Oh dear. Now you got her thinking!

Still, the conversation flows onward: "I thought as much. There's a subdimensional space here that you should be really wary of, we call it the Void. It /can/ be traversed as part of long distance travel, but it's pretty dangerous to go into. It's also where I hide myself in between missions." She makes a thoughtful noise. "You know, if you are wanting to help out here sometime, we can probably raid some of the Grineer and Corpus-controlled areas and get some supplies for your ship sometime."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"It's not hard once you get a feel for how things are put together," Juno points out to the Cephalon. "There are only so many ways this can be put together and still preserve some kind of structural integrity, you know? There's still a baseline of mass involved."

She draws one knee up to her chest, wrapping her arms around it and dropping her chin onto the top of her knee, eyes hooding. Might as well get comfortable; it seems like it could be a lengthy trip.

"'Some?'" Juno quirks a brow. "More like 'most.' It works, most of the time, but there's that forty percent chance that you might be wrong, and then the sublights fail catastrophically, or your control mechanisms suddenly decide they don't want to control the starfighter any more. Technically a TIE fighter doesn't even have life support. Pilots wear sealed flight suits that provide it for them. They're stifling and almost impossible to move in, and the smell of recycled oxygen gets old after a little while."

There's a short pause.

"I'm assuming you breathe oxygen, anyway."

She's aboard the Liset, and she seems to be able to breathe aboard the Liset, so it's mostly a common sense assumption.

"TIE fighters?" Juno muses. "They can. They're very effective atmospheric fighters, and they work well in most standard Corellian atmospheres. Flying in atmosphere doesn't slow them down in the least because of how the chassis is engineered; they've been stripped down to the bare minimum, but that had the perk of making them that much more manoeuvrable."

She shrugs. The Rogue Shadow is far superior in every way, even though it might incorporate certain aspects of the basic TIE design. "I don't know. Lowri comes from the same galaxy as I do, but she's from an era several thousand years before mine. The histories available are spotty at best. Even I couldn't find out much, when I still had a generous Imperial security clearance." Straightening, she leans back and folds her arms over her chest, crossing one leg over the other at the ankle. "A lot of it just doesn't exist any more, and a lot of what does is so bastardized and corrupted that it's bloody useless."

"The Empire? No. They tend to contract out manufactories for their suppliers. Sienar Fleet Systems built the Rogue Shadow, and they also handle a number of the TIE fighter variants. Most of the capital ships are constructed by Kuat Drive Yards, but they also handle TIE fighters, too," she explains. "Other galactic corporations are contracted for equipment. BlasTech handles most of the blaster models issued as standard sidearms. Mine are BlasTech, but I've done a little modification; mostly to preserve their charges longer. The Empire hasn't really got lines, unfortunately, which is why I'm in the business of rebellion these days."

Juno hefts the Boltor, eyeing it appraisingly. Aside from firing projectiles strong enough to affix a target to a wall through main strength, the top of the casing could probably make for a decent bludgeon. Those spikes and thorns could do some serious damage even to an armoured enemy, provided the arm wielding it were strong. After she's satisfied her curiosity, she offers the Boltor back. Although of elegant Tenno design, it's ultimately too heavy for her to wield comfortably; she lacks the strength of a combat-oriented Tenno. Her own blasters work for her, as they have for years.

"These are pretty plain. I can find you a pair of blasters; if I do it on Nar Shaddaa, nobody's going to ask any questions, and I know a few suppliers." She considers. "There are also rifles, assault rifles, and heavier artillery available in blaster form, so it would only boil down to personal preference. They all function the same."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Leaning back, she cocks her head, squinting at the far corner. "Sounds like hyperspace, a little. Hyperspace is how our ships travel faster than light; it's theorised to be anywhere between six and fourteen dimensions; a ship only interacts with five of these. Still... one can hardly take five dimensions lightly. Five-dimensional hyperspace calculations aren't for the faint of heart." She folds her arms, snorting. "I was the best bloody pilot in the Imperial fleet; I can do it /without a navcomputer/."

"The Void sounds a little different, though... and I'm not sure what I've seen of the Grineer technology would be any use for me. It's an inelegant mess. The Corpus, though... I think I might be able to adapt some of it." Juno narrows her eyes, thoughtful. "How do the Corpus power their devices?"

Kushiko has posed:
Theoretically, a trip would not be as far as one thinks: the transit from the relay on Earth to the Orbiter in the Void would be deceptively shorter than most. Ordis hums slowly, a rippling effect in that ring of energy around his cube. "That is accurate. Distressingly so that you might be feeling for how I am working at times--"

And then a sharp reverb in the last tone as he shifts slightly more manic, "/Least you are not a savagg-g-g-gnk" ... "... far less crude compared to others." Kushiko on the other hand might have just sighed a little bit. Even without the Grineer's stripping of those components from the Liset before their restoration, Ordis would be a long way from fixing.

Neither he nor Kushiko had memory as to why.

Juno's explanation earns a slight cringe on the viewscreen at the end of it; some terms like sublight are newly minted to her but she understands enough from Juno's tone that such things are /quite bad/. Which the question of oxygen is somewhat more interesting to field than most. "My Warframes do requires oxygen, yes. I can't actually take them out into a complete vacuum, but the subsystems on my Warframes are able to survive long enough for either recovery or extraction with usually no more than 5 minutes."

That answers that question. "Have to be able to carry people out and not need a full enclosure and all."

She does make a thoughtful noise; so the TIEs can exist and fight in atmo, despite their lack of landing struts and other needful things. This was quite interesting and informative. "I noticed they were pretty quick. Not quick enough, but certainly pretty fast. I have something called an Archwing that lets me actually fight in space as I think your sensors picked up on from that earlier mission."

She quietly marvels however, when it comes down to the fact that Lowri actually comes from a different era, her eyes widening just a little bit in surprise. "Sounds awfully familiar." Her voice gets quiet in this regard. "I don't remember much of anything from the old histories of my world when I was..." Her voice becomes a little bit more hesistant, contemplative. "I was in cryo for a very long time." she remarks at last in regards to that train of thought. "We're still sometimes piecing together things where we can."

Truthfully, the Tenno actually enjoyed the concept of more weapons to effectively master, to experiment with. Every weapon had it's strengths, and such strengths were not measured solely in direct combat skills. The fact the blaster had varying energy levels was unique enough seeing as the Tenno did not do half measures: their weapons were designed to kill first and foremost after all. Nova Prime took the weapon back without problem, she put it away. And in putting it away she revealed another element to her technology.

The weapon itself was cast in that same light that her energy gave off, that lilac-pink as it seemed to be folded into almost nothingness akin to a subspace compartment on someone. It becomes as light, hidden until she reaches for it once more. She did hand the blaster back to Juno shortly afterwards.

"I would like that, actually. I have a good amount of credits to ensure you don't have to spend anything out of pocket. I love finding and building weapons myself as well as coming by them. When I'm not on missions, I'm training and mastering any weapon I can get my hands on. Some of them become part of my normal arsenal, others are weapons I simply collect." Which would make sense given the weapon and martial skill she's demonstrated so far. "Don't worry about heavy artillery ones, I'm pretty good on that regard. I like riflese and automatic weapons a lot."

Kushiko has posed:
Once Nova's taken the weapon, she moves out the hatch, and back around to another part of the ship as Kushiko continues. "Yeah, it's actually a lot like that. Not that Corpus and Grineer generally like going in there, because there's structures from the Orokin that are either derelict or reactively hostile. But as much as they don't /like/ going there they want to go there anyways to try and recover Orokin tech to reverse engineer or use themselves."

She can't help but grin a bit at Juno's words and the pride she demonstrates with regards to her hyperspace navigation. "Strap in, okay? I think I should show you directly. I've given you some of the pieces, but I don't want you to get any wrong ideas, okay?" Once Juno has strapped in where she's sitting, the ramp will close and pressurize, leaving her alone with the viewscreen itself.

"Some of the Grineer stuff is crude and archaic, sure. But some of it's /really/ effective. Their explosive weaponry is some of my favorite, and their assault rifles are strangely satisfying to use against them."

Somewhere, somehow, Clem might have just clemmed a little wistfully as someone pays homage to the Grakata.

"The Corpus and the Grineer both use a type of ammunition cell that's not far off from what I've seen of that blaster there. As to how they power their other devices in general, it's high energy typically. Electromagnetic, plasma, laser, much of it works on universal power blocks depending on the weapon."

At this point, her Warframe has moved back to the underside of the ship, and gotten herself boarded again. From here, the ship actually begins to move, and it's a pretty smooth ride so far.

"We're going to be going to the Void now. I'll explain some more of it as we go. The Void changes you. Ordis and I will protect you, but I have to hear it from you. Do you want to see the Void, and do you want to meet me... the real me?"

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"I also have background in starship engineering and maintenance. I was selected as the Rogue Shadow's pilot, but I was also chosen on the basis of my ability to maintain the ship." Juno sniffs, somewhat disdainfully, at Ordis' ranting. "I have more sense than to blunder into an unfamiliar ship like a rancor beast." She might say 'like an angry rancor beast,' but they're always angry. "I can't afford to be crude. Besides, that would be unprofessional."

She shrugs, faintly. "A pilot in an Imperial flight suit can survive out of atmosphere. The problem is that once their TIE's compromised, they're helpless until someone can rescue them. Most pilots with a damaged starfighter would prefer to crash their TIEs than to die the slow and painful death of asphyxiation or starvation."

"I almost did it once or twice myself, but I got lucky."

"That's the main selling point. They're fast and they're manoeuvrable, and I can't fault them that. They're not as fast or as manoeuvrable as the Rogue Shadow, but they're good for what they are, and especially good for what goes into their manufacture." Juno flashes a faint grin, but it fades. "Yeah. By that point I wasn't in the ship any more, but PROXY made note of the readings on the ship's sensors."

"I'd like a look at that 'Archwing' later, but I suppose I can understand if you don't want to share. It isn't as though there's anything about it I could use." She leans back against the panel. "I suppose a look at its propulsion system, but that's about all I'd have any serious interest in." It isn't that the Rogue Shadow really needs any help in that department, but she's always interested in incorporating new ideas.

She doesn't comment on Kushiko's long sleep. There isn't much she can possibly say that would be tactful, or insightful. How can she bring insight to a topic she knows nothing of?

Once Nova Prime hands the blaster back, she replaces it into its holster, ensuring it's fitted tightly. They're just standard-issue blasters, but they've seen her through a great deal of trouble. She has a certain respect for such simple but efficient tools.

"Yeah?" She glances sideways, head lolling slightly to one side. "I'll take you to Nar Shaddaa. It's probably better that you do the negotiations, because you know what you're looking for. You'll be able to communicate what it is you want in a weapon to the seller, and they'll be able to match you up with something that suits you. Or your Warframe. Or whatever it is that... you know." Juno gestures, somewhat nebulously.

That entire dynamic is strange, and slightly unnerving. She's not inclined to look too deeply into it.

"This isn't my first time in a starship," Juno points out, bracing herself for the ship's movement. Even so, the ship barely moves; she doesn't need to brace herself too much.

She acknowledges the advice about the Grineer with a grunt. She'll keep it in mind. Maybe. More likely she'll stick to what she knows, and keep her blaster pistols.

She considers the issue of fuel with a frown. "So, they're using some sort of fuel cell. That's good. I can try to reverse-engineer something of theirs, if that's the case; maybe I can figure out how to incorporate Corpus technology into the Rogue Shadow... especially coolant, if they have high-energy power sources."

"Right. I suppose it can't be any worse than hyperspace; some people say that changes a person, too, although I think what you're talking about is a bit more literal than that." Juno eyes the wall; carrying on a conversation is a bit odd when you can't see the person you're talking to. "You've stuck your neck out for me, so it would be a bit rude of me to say no, wouldn't it? Yes, I do."

Kushiko has posed:
That background, coupled with what Kushiko had been inferring about the setup Juno and Galen seemed to run made a lot of sense. Start with a specialist then branch that out (if they hadn't already) to cover as many bases without diluting one's skill levels /too/ much. Ordis makes an apologetic little noise. "Forgive me, Ms. Eclipse. It is difficult sometimes." And then Ordis goes quiet for the time being. Not that he needs to in order to pilot shortly, but his focus is better served there.

Kushiko's head bobs once on the screen faintly with the element known about the options for starvation nor asphyxiation. Neither of which are good, all things being equal in a vacuum. Not that her Warframe has the problem of starvation so much, but she didn't feel it warranted to bring up anything on that. Survival's a hell of a thing sometimes, especially when it's a matter of coming down to luck.

"Might have to find a proper environment to actually show it off in. I mean, sure there's a way I can show you it, but it's not really something to look at when it's not an active system being deployed." For now, she foregoes some of the specific details like their classification; no point flooding with datapoints without proper context as yet. "Really, it's something I use when I can't get into a ship or need to fight actual ships."

She did watch through Nova Prime's optics, through that Transference Link. The holsters were a different concept in her head, given that most simply attached their weapons through gravitic or magnetic locking devices to the appropriate points on their bodies, Grineer, Corpus and Tenno alike. Not that she didn't miss the point of them.

"Mmm." she starts. "Maybe. Lotus or a friend of mine might also help pretty nicely with the negotiations like that. Talking to you's one thing, but I like to keep others wondering." Darvo could be an /excellent/ negotiating tool in that regard, to say nothing of opening up trade avenues there. Darvo /had/ been chomping at the bit slightly but with everything else in the Multiversal unification, he and others had to take it one matter at a time.

"It would be for my Warframe. Not... not for me, no." She made a slight noise, before remarking, "Yeah, I'm sorry. Force of habit." Now that her Warframe's properly secured and aboard, the ship begins to move, and the imagescreen fuzzes back into existence at the wall that Juno's staring at.

"We could probably steal some of their power cores and coolant cells that they normally use for powering their ships and facilities on a sabotage run." Kushiko offers. "That way we trash their power setup for a while, and you can look over their systems and get a sample out of it."

The Lotus elects to speak up at last. "The Void is extremely dangerous to those who are not aware of it's navigational hazards. Most planes of existence have some measure of rules that are followed, if not bent. The Void is not one of these places. It remains poorly understood to this day by most."

Even as the Lotus speaks, the ship can be felt moving slightly. The floating screen that had been projected shifts to an outside view; moving past other ships and towards an exit point on the Relay itself. The Earth floating peacefully and the starfield opening up in front: once a few navigational paths check out, the ship accelerates until the view itself all but melts as the Liset disappears from view.

From within at first the colors that had shifted have become rather strange: a light shade of purple, as though the ship were traveling through some kind of gas giant. A pilot's instincts might give them the sensation that the Liset is in a kind of lightspeed transit, and that this stage were a transition point between realspace and the Void itself.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Although Juno glances briefly to one side, as though to acknowledge the Cephalon's apology, she doesn't say anything to it. It's probably better to just let the subject drop. There's not much he can do about his condition, and it wouldn't be fair of her to hold it against him.

Her eyes flick back to the holoprojection of Kushiko. The Archwing does seem interesting, but she'll have to reserve judgement on it until she has a chance to see it in action. An interesting but ultimately useless construct for someone like her. Even with life support systems, Juno is ultimately a pilot of starfighters -- not whatever what thing is. She's not only better off in a standard starfighter, she's far more effective in that capacity.

"Whoever. I just mean someone that isn't me. You know what you want out of it, so actually selecting a weapon is going to be your responsibility, or else you'll wind up with two pistols just like mine. Something tells me you'd want a little more punch than those pea-shooters for that Warframe." The Boltor comes to mind; even on its strongest settings, a phaser rifle probably couldn't compete with that kind of kinetic force. "You can shop around. There are plenty of places in Nar Shaddaa that sell that kind of thing, legal or illegal by Galactic Imperial law."

If it exists, it can probably be found and bought on the Smuggler's Moon. Everything there has a price. Legality is more of a mild suggestion that everybody there ignores.

"That sounds acceptable," the pilot muses. "A few samples are all I'll need. Once I've figured out how they work, I can figure out a way to install the coolant into the Rogue Shadow, but that will take some time. I'll need to be careful how I incorporate anything into the cloaking system; if I burn out those stygium crystals, it'll be bloody hell to replace them. The only stygium mining facility I know of is under Imperial control, and guarded heavily."

She glances to one side as the Lotus announces the nature of the Void; or more accurately, its lack of nature. It does sound a little like hyperspace the way that they describe it. Nobody really or truly understands what hyperspace is, either. It might be six dimensions, it might be fourteen. Five or so of them interact with a ship in transit. A ship can chart a course through it to reach its destination faster, or else galactic journeys would be made with generational ships. The best analogy she's ever managed to find was threading a needle, where the ship is the needle, and the fabric is the warp and weft of space -- with holes and wrinkles as the hyperspace travelled through.

Once the screen shifts to an exterior view, her eyes narrow as Earth becomes a blue and green blur. The violet is a little unexpected -- she knows hyperspace to be distinctly blue, and her instincts are right enough about the ship's blistering speed. It looked streamlined, and with the warped light beyond, she's fairly certain they're travelling through whatever passes for the Origin System's own hyperspace.

So she settles into her seat, and waits, and tries not to fidget too much. Juno is not accustomed to sitting idly by like some kind of cargo; to being a /passenger/. It shows.

Kushiko has posed:
Surely, one day the Cephalon could be fixed. Surely one day when he is fixed, he won't go rampantly homicidal in some special way. Surely not. Hopefully.

"Of course! I'll figure something out along the way. Might have to see about fabricating a weapon of Corpus make at some point that you could take with you along with some ammunition charges to study. Besides, it'll help to know what they look like anyways if you end up fighting out here, Corpus and Grineer tend to drop them after they're killed and their bodies sometimes disintegrate." Infested too, but given where they are on the body and what that body was, she felt it was better /not/ to dwell into that topic of conversation.

More and more it sounds like Nar Shaddaa was not unlike Maroo's Bazaar, albeit a great deal /larger/. Might definitely have to tell both Maroo and Darvo about it and they can secure some deals. She does hmm faintly, after listening to the part about the stygium crystals, "You let me know what you need and I'll be happy to help. We can probably make some decent money off it too."

As the Liset traverses through the Origin System's variant of hyperspace, the Lotus continues to speak: "Much of the current long distance travel accomplished by other factions is done through solar rails. They are similar to the warpgates that exist, yet they launch individual ships and more through the Void much as the Liset here is capable of traversing. Less instantaneous, but it accomplishes the intended purpose of intersystem travel."

There's little need for further words, however, as the purple void of gas and liquid-like space streaks and space distorts ahead into a pinprick of light that expands sharply, white light filling the view in an instant. Yet within moments, the light fades, giving way to the Void itself.

Mercifully the screen becomes just a bit larger, just a bit more dynamic. One could be forgiven at first for thinking one was actually in atmosphere of some kind, spatial plasma resembling roiling clouds, an absolutely chaotic landscape of greenish-white energy that is nothing like the cold black of space. The ship still moves without any hint of gravity tugging on it, despite visual cues saying that moving through this living, chaotic rift screaming otherwise.

The utter lack of true black in any form tells one tale: no stars. There is light but whatever it is /making/ this light has nothing to do with stars or the usual stellar phenomena. The subdimensional space that is the Void is somehow misty, foggy, gaseous and liquid both all at once and none at all. It is a dimensional plane of pure energy that the Lotus explains further on. "The energy of the Void is harnessed through the Solar Rails, and through systems on larger ships in order to slingshot, to effectively 'fold space' and thread ships through an encapsulation of energy safely to their next destination. The Tenno use such rails for when the distance is too great for their ships to traverse the Void."

So that establishes that much at least: the Tenno's landing craft are the fastest compared to the Corpus and Grineer, coupled with stealth technology are even better off, but assisted jumps can manage greater distances even quicker, as well as leaving the solar system in question, potentially.

Kushiko has posed:
A blink and you'll miss it moment sees the location that the ship is arcing towards shimmer slightly; a visual distortion before some kind of structure resolves. The exact shape and size are difficult to determine in a short time but there is a haunting elegance to it's shape as the holoscreen flickers off.

The ship is moving, shifting around to attach to and dock to the Orbiter itself. It's actually flipping upside down, but so too is the compartment in the back. A shudder could be felt, but one's sense of equilibrium was not necessarily disturbed as the inside of the Liset also shifted beyond what Juno could see to actually let her disembark without being upside down when she did.

An opening at the bottom-turned-top part of the transport section Juno was in split open. "Please stand," Ordis asks. "You will be brought up into the Orbiter momentarily. I have ensured the air filtration and life support systems may accomodate one more individual automatically."

Once Juno does stand up, unbuckling herself from the harness and chair, such implements will be retracted into the transformable mechanisms of the Liset in preparation before the lift would begin to taxi upwards towards circle of light. The paneling within the border oscillating open much like an iris opening once she draws closer.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Nar Shaddaa's similarities to Maroo's Bazaar are superficial at best. The atmosphere isn't nearly as orderly or peaceable, although the fast-talking Maroo would probably get along there just fine. The scum of the galaxy tend to gather there, much like Tatooine, for either lack of a better place to go or specifically to disappear.

Where the Empire's orderly edges begin to fray, criminal elements like the Hutt Cartel become the authority. There will never be an Imperial presence in a place like that, because it just isn't worth it to the Empire to bother trying.

People aren't very orderly on Nar Shaddaa. Orderly people don't visit Nar Shaddaa. At least the vendors at Maroo's Bazaar don't attempt to backstab their fellow vendors. Not where anyone can see, anyway.

"I'd like that," Juno replies, regarding the Corpus technology. "Anything you can get your hands on and pass along to me would be useful, although it'll take me some time. I doubt there are very many commonalities with Imperial tech, so I'll need time to study it."

"Maybe. I'm hesitant to knock over the mining facilities on Aeten II." Rubbing at her jaw with one hand, Juno wracks her memory on the topic. "There aren't any other sources, so finding them isn't a simple matter of smashing it and taking what we want. Stygium crystals are exceedingly costly and rare. I can't imagine the project would have been approved if it had been anybody but Vader."

Nobody's going to tell him /no/, after all.

Leaning back in her seat, Juno keeps an eye cocked toward the outside view; she might seem reasonably relaxed, but she's studying it carefully. Her eyes narrow as white light fills the false viewport. What, are they dropping out of hyperspace right over a sun--

Oh. No. No, that's not a sun.

Rubbing at her jaw again, Juno tries to make some sense of the nature of this place -- but after a moment she pulls a face and seems to abandon that. This way lies madness. Trying to make sense of this nonsense is only going to give her a headache. The multiverse is often like that, she finds.

Thankfully, the Liset seems to have some kind of gravity generators, and rotating upside-down doesn't send Juno sprawling onto the ceiling. In fact, she's quite comfortable in spite of all the manoeuvring going on; her seat is barely shuddered when the ship itself docks.

"Uh... thanks." Being able to breathe is nice. How thoughtful of Ordis, although the Tenno probably would have been mildly upset if her guest was asphyxiated by the Cephalon's carelessness.

Fingers deftly unbuckle the harnesses, and she stands up with a grunt and a joint-popping stretch. It's one thing to sit for hours in a reasonably comfortable pilot's chair, and it's another entirely to be strapped into an only moderately comfortable passenger seat, with nothing to take her mind off of... well, being a passenger.

Half a glance is cast behind her as both harness and bench fold neatly into the wall, as though they'd never been. She's definitely going to have to figure out how to incorporate some of those storage solutions into the Rogue Shadow.

She's content to wait, meanwhile, until the Tenno or the Cephalon direct her further, occupying her time by listening to and feeling the movement of the ship. Some might not even notice by its smoothness, but Juno is a trained pilot, and her natural instinct is to notice those subtleties.

Kushiko has posed:
Many good options to consider. The stygium crystal route would probably be a very /unlikely/ option, and the notion of using anything else is likely to be a wash. Maroo would find herself fitting in nicely; the independent thief could get herself some big scores if she were mindful of the rest of the smugglers and bounty hunters out there from time to time.

"Definitely. Maybe some time after we pursue the leads we picked up on Tatooine," she concludes in regards to the subject of the Corpus technology. Anything worth doing well is worth taking your time with." Kushiko concludes, before remarking about the Stygium crystals.

"And actually hitting it would draw attention to the few sources that might actually need it. Even if someone made a lot of noise to cover it up, you'd still be on the short list of suspects no matter what." Kushiko muses thoughtfully. That's enough active dwelling on those subjects for the time being.

It may occur to Juno, after the fact, that the swirling mists of Void space might have been awfully similar to what she sees in Kushiko's pop-ins.

"You're very welcome!" Ordis chirps pleasently. "I felt you would appreciate being kept appraised of changes necessary to keep life support calibrated appropriately. I had to do it when the Operator wanted to turn me into a pettingggg zzzzzoo--decided to hatch a Kubrow onboard. She does take very good care of them."

"Ordis..." Kushiko quietly begins. This earns an apologetic tone from Ordis himself, "I am sorry, Operator. I will begin diagnostic regressions shortly." That leads to him going quiet once more in the interim.

The Tenno speaks again after a moment's pause. "I know you've been on a lot of ships, but I was a little bit worried it might be disorienting due to the way the Liset has to dock underneath." As she speaks, the lift rises. There's a little shift, a shudder as other things in motion both start, and end. And then the lift rises through the opened iris. It's faintly lit in here, machinery now something of a quiet hum that would likely evoke familiar feelings for the often spacefaring Juno.

It becomes clear that where Juno is is in an airlock, a transitionary point between the Orbiter and the Liset itself. Pressurization is equalized without much fuss, and the circular disc above her unseals, lines showing in the nominally flush surface as the interlocked seal unlocks, withdrawing into the recess of the Orbiter. Light, not necessarily bright greets Juno, along with Valkyr as the lift elevates a little bit further, but there's still a step upward necessary.

Wait, where did Nova Prime go?

"Here, let me help you up here. Welcome to my Orbiter. My home." Kushiko offers. Her voice, instead of being consigned as part of the holopanel of before, exudes itself all around the ship itself. And speaking of the vessel, it can be summarized in a single word: elegant. Once Juno has stepped up with Valkyr's assistance, she is greeted with a great deal of smooth lines and the curvature of the ship's bridge.

Yet there's something a little bit off about the bridge, about the circular station she came up through. Much of the smooth, alloyed metals and composites, are fairly similar to what she felt on the inside of the Liset and outside. Glass-like panelling runs above into an outcropping of further machinery and bulkheads as from where Juno arrives at, there's a slight ramp and step up to two separate consoles going towards the aft of the ship.

The fore of the ship features what should be a navigation console by one's best guess, along with communication consoles to either side, situated along the glass surfaces that have to be some kind of reinforced material not unlike transparisteel because if it were glass that would be absolutely insane. Cylindrical moving parts visible beneath each shaped cutout aside the navigation 'station' that Juno has arrived in. One question may nag her after taking it all in.

Where are the seats?

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"It's a little too late for /that/," Juno retorts, not quite scowling. "The Empire already wants my head and Galen's head served up on silver platters. Even if we hadn't chosen to rebel, that wouldn't change anything. An Imperial Inquisitor isn't to be taken lightly, you know? They answer directly to Vader, who answers directly to the Emperor, which gives you an idea of the kind of free rein they're given."

Most of the time this translated into free rein with espionage, and more commonly, the right to infiltrate Imperial holdings, assassinate problem Imperial personnel of high rank, and exfiltrate before anyone noticed.

Unfortunately, this also frequently meant turning on Imperial rank and file, if they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even Galen had often given pause at that unsavoury aspect of their duties.

Personally, Juno had tried not to think about that too much.

"What would concern me more is the inevitable security lockdown if someone managed to hit Aeten II. They'd have it so far under guard I wouldn't be able to get the Rogue Shadow anywhere near the system, even with cloaking measures." Juno pulls a face again, tone one of grumbling concession. "I guess I'd do the same thing if I were in their position. It's not like there's another system where you can find the bloody things."

Ordis has her attention for a moment, and she manages a sympathetic sort of half-smile. Doesn't like his ship being messed with, does he? It's somewhat understandable. He's basically a droid, but instead of a humanoid exoskeleton, the ship is his body. That's the best she can understand it.

She'd be nervous, too. Especially without a droid body to clean the messes up with.

"You should feel evasive manoeuvres on a TIE," Juno sighs. "I thought I'd lose my lunch the first time I had to shake an X-Wing in real combat. Those bloody bastards are fairly evenly matched. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on an X-Wing some time, but I'll need to improve my standing with the Rebel Alliance. I imagine they're still suspicious, given how many of them I've killed in the line of duty. I would be, too."

She braces herself against the wall a little as the lift shudders into life, and the silence gives way to the low-grade sound of background machinery. That sound is a comforting one, even if the particular tenor of it is not the same as her beloved Rogue Shadow. She's spent most of her life aboard a ship in some form or another. Being on a planet can actually be a little disorienting to her -- it's not unpleasant, but it's not what she's gotten physically used to.

Blue eyes track up to regard the circular disc as it recesses itself, squinting a little as she ascends into the light of the--

--wait, that one's different.

"Uh...?" Juno says eloquently, blinking at Valkyr.

That's not the Warframe that she boarded the landing craft with, is it? It doesn't look the same, although every one of these things has an alien aesthetic to it that frankly creeps her out a little. It's probably the lack of eyes. She'd found the Miraluka Star Destroyer captain she'd served under to be a little creepy, too.

The lines of the ship are taken in first and foremost. The curves and rounded lines give a sense of spaciousness, and the generous cockpit viewport also affords a certain sense of space. Yet it's too flat, and the pilot's console butts right up against... a whole lot of nothing.

Well, Ordis had mentioned piloting the ship. It's still a little surreal to see a pilot's console without a seat attached.

She's observant enough not to ask where the seats are, but the look she gives the open area is pretty self-explanatory.

Kushiko has posed:
There's a hint of tacit silence at first, as Kushiko considered what was being said, even as they work on transiting from the Liset to the Orbiter itself. What Juno was about to learn was possibly quite interesting. As they conducted themselves, she brought online one of her other Warframes, Valkyr while Nova Prime went down into the heart of the ship.

"Noted," she remarks quietly at last. "Even if you could execute perfectly, with all the preparation in mind, given it's Vader's project it's still a 50-50 chance to fail due to the fact his approval and use of the project and it's value means he'll be personally overseeing it." 50-50 being the stray chance that he might have been off doing something else.

"The more you detail it the more that strikes me as something that is better served with patience towards an opportunity. So until then, that's something to be tabled." The Tenno concludes. Just because something cannot be struck at in the immediate future does not mean it lacks for future opportunities.

There's probably some sense of drones that /could/ be used for cleaning, given Sentinels but many questions are likely to remain as to how Ordis maintains all of those systems present here.

"Well, that's a relief. That going through all of that wasn't so bad, if what you did on a TIE was all the more crazy!" She falls silent, somewhat withdrawn. "If I'm honest this is still very new to me..." Kushiko remarks quietly. "The concept of having someone on here that wasn't the Lotus before this Unification happened was unheard of."

Valkyr shifted her weight a little bit, guided by Kushiko to move towards the rear of the ship. As she did, the seamless surface broke with a slight pneumatic hiss, defining the shape of a long ramp that descended into the next part of the ship itself. "You've met my Valkyr, already. She and I thrive on the field of battle together. Her rage is my rage, as you saw on Tatooine."

Once one walked down the ramp as it lowered down into the secondary area of the Orbiter, a few things of note greeted Juno. To one side was the Foundry, a robotic arm making little crackling noises as it's fusion welder danced over the blocks of light as it conducted some measure of manufacturing. Occasionally it coalesced into a smooth series of lines of some blade or the other.

To the left was another heavy-looking piece of machinery, looking extremely industrial and would make someone think hydraulic press or another measure of workbench but with a much smaller surface area compared to the Foundry itself. There were power conduits and tubes that hung from the ceiling as when the level lowered down into this area, the ceiling grew deceptively higher as heavy conduits ran along the ceiling towards the rear of the ship. Or at least the dividing bulkhead further ahead.

The actual nature of what it was, along with the compressed panel of lighting underneath a cylinder where it looked like someone could stand underneath probably would be ignored in lieu of a rather sizable animal in front of the Tenno. It made a small *arroo?* at the sight of Juno behind the Valkyr as she went over to scritch behind the batlike ears of the Kubrow.

"By the way, this is Kiras. She's a Huras Kubrow, a hunter and stalker of prey." Prey being implicitly the Tenno's foe in this case. The Kubrow stood up next to Valkyr as she rose, nostrils flaring as she took in Juno's scent. Marking her an ally, at the very least, it's head at least at the Warframe's chest and shoulder level.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"No, sorry. I should have explained," Juno adds. "Galen was an Imperial Inquisitor before he turned his back on the Empire. I was his pilot and mechanic. That gives the Empire that much more reason to go after us because of the authority and free rein Galen had. They don't know what kind of intelligence we could have gotten away with, because our security clearance..." The pilot shrugs.

Their security clearance was basically a few tick-marks shy of 'yes,' and what she didn't have the clearance to get into, she could usually figure out how to slice into it. Most of the time. Not everything was accessible to her, but she knew how to be clever about it. Piloting, mechanical maintenance, and hacking -- those are her specialties, and they complement the Tenno's own skillset well.

"I've probably done worse," Juno admits. "I had to get a little creative with the TIE's mechanics. I survived over a hundred combat missions in one of those tin cans, and most people don't survive that long in Imperial TIE piloting service. I learned to make them do things they're not really supposed to do."

She shrugs. "I've been the same. No one was allowed to even see the Rogue Shadow's exterior, so being in the interior was out of the question. It still feels a little odd to let people aboard or see its specs. It was a black box for a long time, and it wouldn't really surprise me if Vader had its engineers executed after it was built just to keep its secrets."

That is, hopefully, not the case.

Hopefully.

Juno follows after Valkyr, shifting only slightly when the ramp lowers itself underfoot; her sense of balance is excellent. She eyes the Warframe somewhat dubiously, watching the smooth, seamless way the techno-organic thing moves. Although she doesn't usually like to think of something as a 'thing,' she has no other frame of reference for what it is. It has organic aspects, but it also has cybernetic aspects, and it all seems uncomfortably complicated.

The sights of the ship are taken in silently, but it's clear that she's studying it, possibly visually dissecting it, and trying to figure out what it is and what it does. The Foundry is fairly self-evident, although the Arsenal is a little more oblique, and--

"--AGH!" Juno dances back a few paces when her line of sight is broken by OH GOD WHAT IS THAT.

Oh. A Kubrow. That's helpful. That doesn't change the fact that it's a very large furry creature not unlike a petite and slightly better-tempered rancor beast. Basically, a hulk of muscle mass and fur and teeth. Also claws, maybe, but she's not looking close enough to find out.

"Uh," Juno offers, still looking a little frazzled after her unexpected startle. She's careful not to move a muscle while the wall of fur and teeth is giving her the olfactory once-over. "I, uh, see."

Kushiko has posed:
Juno's explanations go a long way to filling in some of the holes and removing the vagueness that had been presumed upon the notions of things like Inquisitor and the like. Being that, then turning away from all of that. Again, the feelings of an odd little kinship potential flickered to the fore. Despite the lack of the memories and full and accurate knowledge that would come with it.

And yet, what does one do when one must go against everything they have ever known? No matter the justification, it is not something that can be easily handled. Kushiko studies Juno. Mark her, she's also growing fairly curious about Galen, but isn't about to press the former Imperial for more than she'll volunteer on her own as meeting Galen at some point will likely help provide context and more understanding than simply talking about it alone will help.

She didn't miss the parallels that could be inferred about Juno's skillset and mindset. She didn't intend to read much into it, but it was knowledge to ponder as they worked together more and more. "Somehow, I'm a bit more content with the fact Ordis does much of the piloting now." she wryly notes after Juno speaks to her record as 'survival' instead of another positive or even neutral term. for it.

Kushiko seems to fall silent given the subject of specs, of black box aspects to it. These are terms she knows certainly, but the reason for her privacy, no, of also breaking out of her privacy were yet to be seen nor not quite the same. No need to amend the sentiment yet.

Valkyr could be forgiven for being believed to be some powerfully built woman, the carapace and exoskeleton of armor woven around her that was densely packed armor, fluidly organic and without any measure of bulk. From behind, the feline tail flicked once or twice, curling upwards without a set pattern. The fabric of what looked like a scarf flowed behind her, ending in different lengths behind her and an angular-looking set of ornate weights that flowed perfectly with her movements.

Now, Juno's response elicits a confused response from the Kubrow, the massive canine-like beast tilting her head. In her mind, Juno's an ally. Not in the same hierarchy level as her Master, but surely there's nothing to be afraid of! The canting of her head prompts a movement from Valkyr, a reassuring little headscritch as she sheepishly remarks, "I'm sorry. I should have explained a little bit beforehand, but we got carried away talking about everything else, huh?"

Juno's startled response draws further attention. Floating passively beneath a spotlight just past the fabrication Foundry before one reaches the Arsenal are a pair of drones; a little richer tone of purple and black but they seem to match the chosen colors of Kushiko's frames that you've seen so far.

The Wyrm looks all the more quizzical at Juno, synthetic flesh flexing about it's body as it 'swims' around. An automated response next to the odd shape of the Carrier. Some of it's alloys appear quite similar to the Nova, just differently colored.

"Kubrows are companions. They're descended from canine species of old Earth but genetically modified in extensive ways for loyalty, power and more. Some are really good at helping take down a target, others can be pretty sneaky and their genetic modifications allow them to cloak themselves and one of my Warframes." Ordis chimes in, "When they're not tracking /filth/ into my pristine interiorss-s-s-s!" A reverberation strikes Ordis for a split second, aggression bleeding to a forced politeness. "Forgive me. I do not know why I have distaste for them at times, but I know it's in me. I do my best to try and keep it reigned in."

There's a reality here to the ship, as one takes in all the details: it's certainly extremely high tech, but there's also a sense it's not entirely intact. Little hisses of air pressure from some of the corners of the ship. Hanging cables and spools of wiring--unexposed thankfully--might be spied once Juno's calmed down.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
First and foremost, the pilot has a scientific mind bright and hard as the edge of a slice of durasteel. She examines things with methodical precision, although she does it quickly, taking in every detail when she studies her surroundings. There's no telling when she might be back to this ship, so she's full well going to remember everything of it that she can.

"Galen is content that I handle the astrogation. Technically speaking, his droid is capable of it, but it takes a human touch to do it well." Although they can crunch the monstrously complex calculations, there's a certain inelegance to a droid's thought patterns. They can't do things spontaneously, only able to act according to their primary programming. "I don't think PROXY could handle evasive manoeuvres half as well as I do. Sometimes you just need to behave irrationally and do the unexpected."

In other words, sometimes you just have to do stupid things to survive. It's gotten her out of tight spots on more than one occasion. Doing stupid, reckless things isn't what most enemy pilots are going to expect.

It works out... most of the time.

"Besides which, I was the eighth pilot in the Rogue Shadow by my reassignment, and he was thoroughly sick of training new pilots by that point." Her half-smile is a little wan. At the time, she'd considered it a promotion beyond belief. The longer she'd worked at it, the more she'd begun to suspect it was a punishment detail, and a lethal one. "I don't let anybody else behind the Rogue Shadow's controls any more. Galen isn't inept, and PROXY is programmed to be able to pilot the ship as needed, but I'm the better pilot. Neither of them have the training and the experience that I do."

She's also grown a little possessive of the ship itself. Although it technically belongs to Galen, it's hers in all but name. She flies it, she maintains it, she repairs it when things break, and she babies it when she feels it's not performing up to its standards. It's almost like a living thing to her mind. And, for lack of anywhere else to call it, the ship has also become home for her.

Valkyr's outfitting, meanwhile, is given more thoughtful study. She hadn't had time to do that on Tatooine, and every Warframe's aesthetic seems to be wildly different. Although they share key traits, like a humanoid posture and having no eyes to speak of, the rest of their design seems to be up for grabs. The syandana in particular is given a long look. That fabric is alien to her, but there's something pleasing about its design, and the way it flows. It might be something like silk; on the other hand, she's not sure that kind of thing actually exists, here.

"You could have warned me," the pilot mutters, a little bristly. "One generally wants to inform one's guest that there's a four-foot tall slab of teeth and muscle and fur in their immediate vicinity, and assure them that no, it's not going to try to tear them limb from limb and eat them." Shiver. That thing really does remind her of a miniature rancor beast with fur and ears.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
She blinks, movement catching her attention -- drones of some sort, which she immediately associates with droids. Those are more familiar, at least. They have a comfortable analogy in her world that she can compare them to. In fact, there's something charming about their construction, although they're put together in ways that no droid could be in her world.

Juno is inordinately proud of herself when she stops herself from reaching out to poke at one of them; if they react anything like Ordis to strangers, it might lose her a few fingers. Also, it might explode or something. That would be bad.

"Canine?" That gets her attention. She turns on her heel, staring at the Kubrow, really studying it this time. "I guess I can see that, though some of it doesn't look canid at all." She gestures, somewhat nebulously, at those absurdly tall ears. "Those look better suited to a jogan-bat. And those claws... I guess a rancor beast." She holds her hands up to indicate something with very large, clawed feet. "Guess that's what happens when you tamper with the genetics too much."

There's a few seconds' pause.

"...can I touch it?" The unspoken question is, 'will it rip my hand off?'

Kushiko has posed:
The full sum of the time the pilot spends aboard, Operator and Cephalon watch. The subtle attention to detail Juno displays towards every aspect of their ship. If they didn't know better they would be concerned about what she's drawing from observation. After all there was a decision to lay themselves bare here.

"Adaptation," Kushiko remarks. "Sometimes, still as a stone, other times, flowing like water." It's a tone of concealed mirth as she adds, "And other times, doing something incredibly insane because they aren't expecting it."

She listens, silent besides the soft little wuffing and grunts from the Kubrow. Ears flick as the big ol' girl is between the attention of the Tenno and evaluating Juno. Trepidation, fear might be felt but the Tenno's demeanor tells Kiras a different story altogether as she and the Tenno exchange words.

"It means a great deal to you. You weren't expecting it, but it does." Kushiko wryly notes. It was a novel sensation to have Juno here, the more she thought about it. The events surrounding her being awake were one thing but now with the Unification? She hadn't dared entertain the notion of other people like this, people who weren't Tenno as allies beyond the Syndicates.

It was nice to have that hope flower again.

The grimace was present in her voice, "You're right." Valkyr stood, a slight rocking back on one heel of the digitgrade-esqe lower legs and clawed feet. Thoughts might turn to a wild animal, the facade of lean alien muscle on display on the humanoid shell as she stands next to the Kubrow, fingers threading through neckfur lightly.

"There are feral ones that are more obviously canines compared to Kubrow and other breeds. I say 'like' because there's no true canine, lupine, or vulpine or other species from Earth anymore. All that genemodding regressed in the centuries since, near as anyone knows." Valkyr strokes the snout, which was very much a batlike trait. The paws were nothing like a true canine, but were superior in flexibility from a glance.

She restrained the urge to chuckle as she answered, "Yep! Kiras sees you the same way I see you. A friend." Unsaid is the degree the Kubrow was genetically modded and bonded to her too. That could all be explained later if it was warranted.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Though she's only focusing on one thing at a time, the pilot's posture suggests she's not new to starships. There are still basic truths in form and function, even if the details might be different between the Liset and the Rogue Shadow. Enough of it translates that she can understand most of what she's looking at. Beyond that, it's her favourite kind of ship, too -- sleek and fast.

"Sometimes it takes a little insanity to survive. I can't tell you how many rebel pilots I must have shot down just because I had the element of surprise. Do something stupid, and they can't help but lock up for a split second... and a split second's all you need, in a dogfight." Juno folds her arms, absently tossing her head to clear her hair from her face. "Well. That, and a little creativity."

Her eyes drop to the Kubrow, considering it less as something that might eat her, and more as a xenobiologist's puzzle. By appearance alone, it looks like some kind of chimera from its canid origins. Traits have been aggressively bred in or out of the bloodlines, and what couldn't be bred had been outright modified at the genetic level.

Part of her has to wonder what the point of that ornate bat snout is, though. It just looks silly, and it can't have improved its sense of smell any more than the base genome of the humble canine.

"Ick, and they're out there breeding ferally? Their genetic structure is stable after all of that tampering? That's a little surprising." Juno frowns, eyeing the slab of fur and muscle and teeth somewhat dubiously. "Genetic modification and cloning aren't new in my galaxy, but there are certain hurdles that even the most learned races haven't been able to overcome. Clones are..." She gestures, somewhat nebulously. "Well, they don't always turn out so well."

Juno lets herself sidle a little closer, still eyeing the Kubrow in obvious apprehension, but she eventually conquers her dread enough to offer a hand for the creature to sniff. Hopefully, she'll have that hand still attached to the wrist when the Kubrow's done with her.

Kushiko has posed:
There's a faint hint of delight at Juno's words when Kushiko speaks, "Oh I /know!/ Even when you can't see their faces you can just imagine it afterwards. Surprise is so fun but when they can't even grasp that you're coming at them in a weird way, oh it's so /fun/." There's little doubt to the analogue Kushiko finds in their respective realms of combat, that it's only a matter of scale being a particular difference between the two.

"Well, here's the thing about that, Kubrow were originally more stable with the genetic modifications that they underwent back then." Kushiko begins to explain. "There's a bunch of historical records and the like from what we know. The different breeds we have now are attempts to reclaim that, but the tech's not quite there. Every so often they need DNA detoxification to repair the degenerative effects that they suffer from the current process."

The truth of the batsnout and how the Kubrow managed to obtain that trait may be a mystery for all time.

Valkyr lifts a hand up, presenting a projection of a feral kubrow: there's similarities evident comparing it and Kiras, but there's enough differences. The fur's a lot more coarse, the animal in general is quite leaner (and meaner) than the current counterpart who eyes that outstretched hand. "They became like this after the fall of the Orokin Empire when they were left to fend for themselves. Only the strongest, most ferocious survived as any trace of domestication disappeared."

With the initial shock wearing off, it's a bit easier to take in other details about the Kubrow, like it's purple and black fur coloring which are likely not natural. Her fur pattern too: across her forehead is a simplified pattern of the Lotus that was very much alike to the Lotus markings that were present in a decorative fashion at various points on the Orbiter itself.

A faint little 'wuff!' as she pants with a little bit of excitement as she snuffs at the outstretched hand, before bowing her head down and into the woman's fingertips to prompt some measure of petting. As big and as powerfully built as she is, it may feel a little aggressive despite her intentions of being friendly to Juno.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"I figured that had to be the case," Juno muses. "Genetics aren't my specialty, but there are a number of races in my galaxy who've made it their own. Even they have problems with physical and mental stability, or so I've heard." Clones tend to suffer from mental degradation when the process isn't watched very carefully, and sometimes physical degradation, too. That the same is true for beasts isn't surprising to her at all. "Tamper with the foundation that much, and the walls start to collapse, you know?"

When the holoprojection flickers to life, she eyes the lean, battle-hardened creature presented. It just looks vicious, and Kushiko confirms that a few seconds later. Something about the feral creature's lines reminds her of a slice hound, only less angular and more bat-eared.

Seriously, why do those things need ears so huge?

Folding her arms, Juno looks over the image of the feral Kubrow. "Hmm. So they went feral. I'm guessing they weren't so genetically degenerate to start; if they can maintain wild populations, then they've obviously got healthier breeding stock. More of a gene pool among breeding stock, too, unless your Kubrows are cloned whole-cloth." That the colours aren't natural doesn't really occur to her; she has no frame of reference for what 'normal' is in an alien batdog.

On the other hand that Lotus motif is probably not natural. Neat trick, but not natural.

Meanwhile she's being bowled over even as she's studying the Kubrow. Juno nearly gets the wind knocked out of her when the beast headbutts her, and somewhat awkwardly, she pats the creature's head... it's basically a dog, though, and when it's clear the thing isn't going to eat her, she manages a grin, burying her hands in the ruff of fur around its neck and scratching. So cute.

Kushiko has posed:
"You'll hear no argument from me there. The Grineer have that to a larger extreme. The cloning tech they use is not complete either, and they're bred for absolute loyalty but genetic defects happen. Some manage to avoid that compulsion of loyalty altogether, or it's weakened enough to let them make their own decisions." Kushiko explains. "But the Grineer are pretty good at fixing and building around the problem, so their cloning remains a net gain for them, especially as they work to improve it."

After allowing Juno to study the projection for a few moments, Valkyr closes her hand, the projection shutting off for now. It occurs to Kushiko at some point later she would have to show Juno her Codex and the scanner she uses to document and upload the imagery she's using here, but that can wait.

"You've got the right of it," Kushiko starts, "From what we've been able to piece together at least. The Orokin were heavy into genetic modification and manipulation as far as any of us know, and the Kubrow strains that exist now existed back then too but without as much genetic instability. The current process maintains them, but it's like a star that's rapidly burning out. It'll burn brightly all the way through then it'll be gone." Valkyr gestures to an alcove just past the Modding station.

"We use DNA stabilizing agents to detoxify them, to eliminate the accumulated breakdown. They avoid much of the negative side effects that happen with DNA alteration since the process we use simply involves an unhatched egg, and the alterations to their DNA bring them back in line with how they were centuries ago, able to imprint on an owner and become fully domesticated. They're really very intelligent and love having someone to interact with," Kushiko finishes saying as Kiras gleefully discovers a new source of scritches in Juno Eclipse.

A grey-black tongue lolls out past the rows of razor-sharp teeth within that muzzle thanks to the scritching being so admirably provided! If she weren't being so friendly, she'd probably be pretty scary--and likely is when the average Grineer or Corpus catch sight of her rushing their positions. Those stupidly long ears flick like antenna trying to find a signal, flattening out for a few scant moments before straightening out once again.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Grineer research sounds pretty dangerous, not to mention stupid. Anybody who plans their species around an inherently flawed method like that is doomed to failure, but the pilot keeps her observations to herself. Even the Khommites, acknowledged as masters of the cloning system, could not smooth out the sometimes lethal flaws in the system.

That the Orokin were interested in that kind of research isn't surprising, either. From what little she's heard, the Orokin were a highly advanced culture; far more than what she's seen of the Corpus and the Grineer.

Juno glances at the incubator alcove, frowning. "So you've managed to preserve or recreate the original Orokin strains, but at the cost of genetic stability. I suppose that makes sense if you've had to resort to those methods to do that."

"They must be valuable if the Tenno go to such measures to use them." She's still scritching the blissful Kubrow, too, but she doesn't seem to be thinking about it too much. The big tongue-lolling slab of muscle isn't so bad when it's on one's own side, is it? "I can imagine."

Something that big has to be really good at destroying things. Given the general shape of their body, they're not unlike a rancor beast, albeit on a much smaller scale, with more fur. Those are basically slabs of muscle, too, and the Kubrow seem to have the same forward-heavy build. "Interesting. Although it still seems biologically impractical that they would hatch from an egg."

Oh well. There are weirder things.

"They remind me of something between a slice hound and a little bit of rancor beast," she muses. "More slice hound than rancor, and shaggier. Slice hounds are usually sleek. And spiky."

Kushiko has posed:
You would not see Kushiko or other Tenno denying the dangers of Grineer research, but in her experience she had seen some very useful tools and weapons come out of it. One of her favorite sidearms was of Grineer origins, just augmented to her own personal specifications. But that cloning tech and research that Tyl Regor was undertaking?

No, that was not going to have good results for anyone that wasn't Grineer.

"It was tradition for a Tenno to own a Kubrow for one reason or another." Kushiko begins, though her voice suggests she is choosing her words with care for a moment. "I don't remember much firsthand. I don't know if I ever had one. I feel like I did, back then. There's a lot of records saying that the Orokin say them as status symbols almost more than tools of war, like we were."

Kiras shifts her weight a little bit, sitting down firmly on her haunches and making all manner of noises, contented little rumbles as her eyes slit slightly from the attention she's getting. "Well, spiky's an option with some of the armor they can wear. It's mostly ornamental, however." Valkyr moves to gesture at a band just behind the neck; Juno might have caught sight of it but not had the opportunity to ask. A sleek little thing nestled against the fur.

"That's her collar. Back when they were more abundant, one of these would tell anyone who saw it that it was not just domesticated but loyal and bound to one master. The Void shielding, armor and health of my frames can also link up and share with her, so when we fight we fight as one. Other collars could also store genetic templates and information for reconstruction in the Incubators." Kushiko explains. Closer inspection would reveal a set of thin tethers connecting it to those powerful neck muscles on the Kubrow.

Ordis politely complains at this point, "Operator, please do not expand the pets you decide to keep aboard. I can only handle so many." Kushiko actually laughs despite herself, before making a faint noise of amusement. "Don't worry Ordis. Between Ikaruga and Kiras, I have all the Kubrow I'm truly fond of."

Valkyr shifts her weight to inspect the Incubator, bringing up a panel with information regarding Kiras and Ikaruga for a moment. "I wish I could tell you exactly where and why they lay eggs instead of live births, but that would require a time machine or a lot of luck with finding an Orokin archive that didn't contain more of what we already know."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"Tradition or not, I can see why something like this would be valuable." It still seems strange that a genetically modified dog would have more utility than a droid, but there's some truth to their being man's best friend. Even if this one has the nose and ears of a bat.

Standing up, Juno folds her arms and shrugs a little. "I never really had a pet, growing up, and I don't really keep one now. I move around too much to be responsible for something like that." Never mind the part where her life is too dangerous. "I'd always wanted a puppy, but my father didn't like animals." There's a slight twinge in her voice when she mentions her father; disapproval, or maybe disdain. It's hard to say which.

"Sounds like the Khommites. I don't know much about them, but I've heard the name associated with cloning. Supposedly they keep replicating certain genetic lines. They've got artists, teachers, scientists. From what I've heard, the whole population is probably a few hundred individuals at best, at least in terms of genetic variety." The pilot pulls a face. "Actually, that must get really confusing after a while..." Talk about an identity crisis.

Standing, she brushes a few coarse Kubrow hairs off her pants, reaching up to straighten her plain cap. Her hair's pulled into a severe French twist under it, making it seem much shorter than it probably is; a tidy and efficient hairstyle reflective of a tidy and efficient person.

"I'm talking spikes made of bone or cartilege," Juno clarifies, "but I guess if you have the technology to play with their genes to that degree, adding something like that to the base template is probably trivial."

The Cephalon's complaints are listened to with a half-smile. She can understand his distress at that. Animals can be messy, and Ordis doesn't have a body to clean up any messes aboard the ship. He'd have to wait at the mercy of one of the Warframes, presumably. That much can be forgiven; she's just as possessive of the Rogue Shadow, although messes on its decks are more of an irritation to her than an actual inconvenience.

Leaning slightly to one side, Juno looks over as Valkyr checks the Kubrow incubator. "Who knows? Just another mystery of the multiverse, I suppose." The pilot blows out a sigh. "I should be shocked that I've got to the point of accepting things like that so readily, but I suppose that's the effect the multiverse has on a person, after so long."

Kushiko has posed:
A proud little bark comes from Kiras at Juno's words, low and content at the words of praise given by the pilot. Those eyes shine with intelligence, glassy white orbs following Juno's movements instinctively. Her head cants ever so slightly at the nuance she senses in Juno's words and tone, the Kubrow appearing like she was trying to figure out something amiss at that twinge in her voice.

When Juno rises, Kiras stands up on all fours as well, and glances between both human and Warframe; Valkyr gestures, prompting the Kubrow to pad her way around and over into the Incubator alcove. After making a cursory inspection for any remaining hairs while removing them, Kushiko is content enough to move on. Such cleansing is done through disintegration of particulate matter via Void energy emission from Valkyr's hand ensuring a properly clean environ.

A contemplative noise would be heard from Kushiko before she spoke again, somewhat cynical, "At least there's variety there, compared to what we know about the Grineer thanks to how the Orokin made them in the first place." Valkyr's fingertip glides over one panel, making a swiping motion to review another datapoint. Her supplies looked good and the DNA integrity of her current Kubrow was in good condition.

It does occur to Kushiko that some things should not be taken so literally at times, and there's a little 'ah!' as she realizes precisely what Juno meant. "That ah, that makes sense." Kushiko admits. "I think I'm more fond of them like this. Grineer have used Drahks which have some carapacing that's close to spiking, what with their cartilege like that, now that I think of it."

Valkyr stepped away once she was done reviewing the data as Kiras curled up to doze a little bit; in her mind the new visitor was to be trusted quite implicitly, and would no doubt be someone that she would be mindful of after her master in the field. "It's been a little bit odd for me since unification and learning about this Multiverse. I'm torn, because there's a lot of opportunity here, weirdness and all with people here. People like you. You're so normal compared to others I've seen so far."

A slight pause: "Relatively. Please, don't take that the wrong way. Weird is what I am, and I think this multiverse has it's own weirdness simply by having a few normal people amidst everything else that seems to be going on with it."

Valkyr takes a few steps forward as the Tenno speaks, stepping up to the final portion of this section of the ship she hasn't yet explained to Juno: the Arsenal. When Valkyr moves over to it, the armature she stands in front of and underneath unfolds, separating into two halves as they curve partway around to cast a field of faintly visible energy around Kushiko's Warframe. "I bet you've also been wondering where I keep some of my weaponry, yeah?"

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Eyeing the Warframe somewhat dubiously, Juno slowly arches one brow as Valkyr cleans up after the batdog by way of disintegration. Neat trick. It's a little creepy and unnerving, but it's a neat trick.

Watching as the genetic data is brought up, she seems to pay special interest to that, but only for a few minutes. Xenobiology had always interested her, though it had been frowned on within the confines of the Empire; she had ultimately left behind any shot at that discipline in exchange for piloting and starship engineering. It's interesting, but she isn't well-versed enough in it to fully grasp what's on that display.

"Sounds like they might have started with the same Kubrow base genetic model, and made their own tweaks. Or are they related to Kubrows?" Juno folds her arms, considering the puzzle. Some selective breeding and different species make appearances in her own galaxy, but genetic modification isn't used so casually or commonly. Special allowances need to be made for that kind of tampering.

At a guess, aside from being a monstrously expensive project, one would need to pay careful attention to bloodlines and modifications to keep the genetic material stable. It's easier to just find a different species somewhere else in the galaxy, close to what someone has in mind -- like a slice hound instead of a mastiff, for example. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to get ahold of one of those, she muses; there are domesticated variants...

"Normal?" Instead of being insulted, the pilot only laughs. "I guess that's the first time I've been called that in my life. If you want my honest opinion, though, I don't think anyone or anything is 'normal.' I mean, what is that, you know?" Juno shrugs. "Nobody can ever seem to explain that, so it makes me wonder if it really exists somewhere in the galaxy... or the multiverse."

Her head tilts slightly as the Arsenal unfolds itself, curving around the Valkyr as though to embrace the Warframe.

"Somewhere that isn't in that thing, I'm guessing. There's no way all of that can fit in there." Her head tilts to the other side, eyeing the panel appraisingly, and then studying the floor immediately beneath it. "Unless it's incorporating a storage chamber under the deck?"

Kushiko has posed:
Valkyr's head bobs once in assent to parts of Juno's theorizing, "Basically, yeah. Pick out the feral Kubrows that are the most vicious, further enhance everything about them, natural armor even more than they had. We don't have exact information but it's probable they spliced in something from another species into the genome, breed in loyalty and there you go." Drahks were quite vicious but they were generally more of a 'tanky' breed next to others she felt.

Juno isn't very far off in her musings regarding the expense of the projects behind it but when everything is solely dedicated to military needs, it's not very hard for either side to find the resources--monetary or otherwise--to support those projects.

Kushiko does manage a faint little laugh not long after Juno's own. "Well, everything's relative I guess. To me, you're pretty normal, if in a very interesting situation, you know?" Valkyr regards Juno in that odd little way, the hidden suit optics momentarily focused on her. "There's probably a baseline somewhere for what normal is, but maybe after a while it's a matter of perspective. When everyone has something in common, that's the norm." she ponders.

And then there's the Arsenal. "Yes and no," Kushiko starts. "Inside this specific part of the armature, no. This is the interface for it." That Boltor from earlier is held in front by Valkyr, cradled against her arm before it dematerializes in an instant, energy warping and shaping as she moves her limbs to hold the elegant frame of the Soma Prime made manifest.

"Between missions, with sufficient forewarning and intel, I can come back here and switch between any loadout I expect will be most suitable. This goes to my Warframes as well, so if there's a mission that it'd be better to bring a silenced kit I can do that here in a matter of moments."

With another weaponry change, she's now holding the Paris Prime bow, gilded with rose gold all but opulent were it not for the black and purple colors contrasting it, if only just so. She has an arrow nocked, but not drawn back very far to demonstrate the materialized energy string.

"Matter-energy conversion at the core of what..." She pauses. "...it's hard to give a good explanation in context with how it works sometimes. I know without knowing how I know." She comes off a little uncomfortable to some small degree, suggesting something more esoteric lies behind everything here.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"I imagine the loyalty was a combination of selective breeding and genetics." Juno shakes her head. "Straight-up breeding domestication into the bloodlines would've taken a hundred generations, and from what little I understand of the Tenno, you probably didn't have that much time. You don't seem very well-liked by the Grineer or the Corpus."

In fact, they don't seem well-liked by much of anybody outside the Lotus or other Tenno.

She only shrugs amiably when Kushiko asserts that she's normal. She doesn't seem to have much of a rebuttal for that. One person's normal is another person's outlandish, after all.

When Valkyr gives a demonstration of how the Arsenal stores things, Juno raises her brows. Extra-dimensional storage is not exactly what she was expecting, though it isn't too surprising, given how advanced the Liset and Orbiter are. "Neat trick," she concedes. The bow's energy string is given a squint, and her brows arch again when she realises it's not actually a string.

Why bother with material components when the technology for energy weapons exists?

"Well, it's impressive, anyway. I don't need to know how it works; this is well beyond any technology I'm familiar with, anyway." Juno gestures nebulously toward the Arsenal. "If I could do that, I wouldn't need to worry about figuring out new and interesting ways to secure things aboard the Rogue Shadow."

Kushiko has posed:
It wouldn't be hard to imagine a thin smile on Kushiko's face as she remarked on Juno's point. "You're partway right. We don't have that much time. It's part of why Kubrow and their variant bloodlines have the degenerative problems they have requiring the maintenance they do." Left implied is the potential degree of genetic manipulation that is possible with that Incubator aboard the ship.

"The Grineer hate anything that isn't Grineer, barely tolerating the Corpus only because they can buy things from them. The Corpus just care about money and that pervades their entire culture. Sell anything to anyone at any time, even us indirectly. They don't like us because we were why the Orokin Empire collapsed, but they'd rather not deal with us if they can help it most of the time" Kushiko offers.

Valkyr steps off the Arsenal's pad, the armature curving back to lock down in place once she's changed to another, more refined-looking version of the Boltor of earlier that clips weightlessly to her back. Seems even if she is merely giving a demonstration, she'd have a preferred kit on at any time by her demeanor.

As she does this, two figures appear from either side of the ramps descending further into the heart of the Orbiter going past the Arsenal. Silent as ever, the figures at least are familiar ones: Nova Prime from earlier before on the left, and Mesa whom Juno had met before on the right. They don't appear to be armed but that's no guarantee they aren't.

"There is one place on the Orbiter we have not shown you." Kushiko's voice quietly notes as Valkyr steps towards the left side of where Juno's standing, her syandana swaying slightly with each step. "We would talk with you as we are, Juno Eclipse, as you have with us."

Despite the lack of eyes on the faces of the Warframes here in the Orbiter, there is the unmistakable feeling of their own distinct gazes upon Juno as they wait for her to take the next step.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"So basically, they're like the Empire. The Empire doesn't much care for anything that isn't Imperial. Or human. It's rare for non-humans to gain positions of real authority within Imperial hierarchy... although you'll usually want to watch your back around the ones who do. They fought every inch of the way for it. Women don't usually earn much Imperial favour, either." Juno flashes a thin, cold smile. "Much like the non-human races, we've fought tooth and nail for it."

Hadn't she mentioned that she had led Darth Vader's personal TIE fighter squadron? Something in her record must have impressed him...

She rolls one shoulder in a mostly noncommittal shrug, folding her arms, though before she can add to that thought, something catches her eye. She glances over at the approach of Mesa and Nova Prime. Just because they aren't visibly carrying weapons doesn't mean she's going to fully relax around them. Something about those things is deeply and profoundly unsettling to her.

A glance is given to the left and right as the three Warframes fall into escort position, one at each side of her and one nearby. "Uh...?" Having the sensation of being watched by something that doesn't even have eyes is /extremely/ unsettling. "Um. I suppose so?"

Somewhat hesitantly, because every fighting instinct in her is screaming that this is some kind of bizarre trap, Juno Eclipse approaches the ramp around the Arsenal, toward the one region of the ship she hasn't seen yet.

/Eclipse/, she tells herself silently, /your curiosity is going to get you killed like the kath hound, one of these days./

Kushiko has posed:
"Got it in one," Kushiko begins. "Which leaves a lot of humans in the crossfire, ones that don't want anything to do with either the Grineer or the Corpus." And therein lie the bulk of the issues with the Origin System: both major factions are practically poison for those just trying to live.

A hint of a smile could be heard in Kushiko's voice as she teases, "Which means I should extra careful around you, yeah? Especially with what you've mentioned about your record and your position; height is one thing, but by all accounts yours was a special position beyond any simple thing as rank."

Not that much more could be added to those thoughts otherwise given the tour as it had progressed so far. The three Warframes moved when Juno did, neither too close nor too far from her with Valkyr bringing up the rear in particular once the former Imperial pilot began to make her way down the ramp.

One could be forgiven for thinking it was some measure of a trap given the escort positioning the three Warframes took up around Juno as they moved down the ramp. Quite to the contrary as Mesa and Nova Prime led Juno into the bowels of the Orbiter. Three doors, but only one of them seemed functional with the remaining two looking woefully inactive.

Juno's attentiveness would help her here: where there had been conduit and cabling alike, upon arriving down in the section behind what was effectively the Tenno's equipment compartment was a few very odd details. Trailing from the side rooms that were locked down, instead of cabling were white cables that were in fact, some kind of bizarre tree vines that pulsed with a more intense glow before fading in a steady rhythm.

Situated just above eye level on the walls, they wound their way towards the central door. A door that shimmered with a beautiful pattern of purple-white light that would fade only on the approach of the Warframes and their escort.

Symmetrical breaks in the flush paneling of the door signaled it's opening, a semicircle of light partitioning as the vault-like door disengages with Nova Prime's approach. The pattern of light shimmering in the air as the door slid apart, receding into the bulkheads with a faint hydraulic noise.

"Forgive us. I can imagine how odd this may feel... yet I hope you will understand why we wish to be cautious." the Tenno offers. The sensation that one is walking into a trap may yet give way to the sense of walking into a hallowed place instead.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"Actually, you're right; my rank was outside the normal Imperial Naval hierarchy. My level of security clearance included things that even flag officers might not necessarily have access to. I also had the authority to answer directly to Galen and directly to Vader as pilot of the Rogue Shadow." Juno gestures, somewhat nebulously. "It was all locked down and sealed after I defected, naturally, but as an Inquisitor's subordinate, I had free rein that most others didn't."

The vines and organic growth are given a long, hard squint, and Juno makes a point of moving on quickly. That stuff gives her the heebie-jeebies; she doesn't need any explanations to figure it's probably some kind of bad news.

When the sigil shimmers on the door, she gives it a sidelong look. Her mind is already running the calculations of how much energy something like that would probably burn on the Rogue Shadow. A neat trick, but an otherwise useless frivolity to her practical mind. Form without function.

"Get to the point," Juno finally says with a half-smile. Her tone isn't unfriendly, but there's an edge to her voice. She doesn't like surprises. She especially doesn't like prolonged surprises. "If you're going to lure me here into a trap, I'd really prefer you get it over with. If it's not... well, I'm sure there's a point to all this. Sorry, but I don't like surprises. You learn to hate them in the Empire, and you learn to hate them even more when you're a fugitive."

Kushiko has posed:
There's more layers to everything, Kushiko senses, but when it comes to Juno's situation she suspects she has gained the majority of what needs to known /now/. What she needs to know later will simply come later.

Thus there is no more delay as she simply remarks, "Of course. You're right." Perhaps there was an instinctive flair for the dramatic that the Tenno possessed without thinking.

Thus was Juno led forwards: the floating symbol simply faded away into nothingness as Juno and the Warframes walked in; the Imperial pilot was given lead in this regard.

There was a short entryway behind the door itself before the room expanded into more of a chamber, and at the center of the chamber was an unusual structure that rose from the raised platform. It was undoubtedly Tenno design given it's strange elegance and curvature of struts and pointed and curved forward.

The fact that the very space behind it swirled with the chaotic light of the Void would be more attention grabbing were it not for what happened when Juno and the Warframes got closer.

Interlocking plates and mechanisms terminated the flush surface of the upper curvature, pieces swinging out of place with a few faint noises. Thus was revealed it's nature: some measure of a seat, as the top half slid up and out of the way, followed not long after by the lower half as it sunk into a recess once moved away.

/This was it/. This was why of all times, of all the incidences where for all Juno or anyone knew that the Warframes were some measure of controlled unit, that some small element of themselves shone through.

This child, sitting in the heart of the Orbiter was what made the Warframes what they are.

The purple-haired youth offered a tired smile from her seat as the three Warframes moved forward, Valkyr who remained standing guardian near the platform with the others standing aside for now.

"The point, Juno Eclipse, was for you to know. For you and I to meet, truly face to face. For understanding."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Despite her words, the Imperial pilot shows no outward fear. Her hands are calm, and her expression remains neutral. At no point does she actually seem afraid. A little tired of being led in circles, maybe, but not fearful.

Then again, when one's immediate superior was Darth Vader for a number of years, one learns not to show fear. Ever.

She squints at the swirling chaos of the Void behind the chamber's altarpiece, but it's too bright to focus on and its patterns too random to follow without watching closely. Letting her eyes slide away from it, she looks to the altarpiece itself. Slowly, her brows raise as she folds her arm.

"A child...?" She can't help it; the words are out before she can censor them. It is what it is, though, and the being she sees before her looks more a child than an adult; one possessed of lethal instincts, but a child nonetheless. She can feel herself frowning. "I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting someone so... young. You look human, although given the multiverse, I'm fairly certain you're not. Nine times out of ten, appearances are useless."

Kushiko has posed:
It's a ghost of a smile that flicks across Kushiko's features as she regards Juno. "I suppose I am," she muses softly.

In response to the question of her humanity, the girl can only offer a halfhearted shrug. "I think I was human. I don't think I'm really human anymore, much as I look like one." Her eyes glimmer faintly with violet luminescence that is a further hallmark of whatever it was that changed her.

What's more telling than the supernatural quality to her eyes is what lies beyond them: eyes like hers are eyes that have seen more than any one person, let alone a child, should have to witness.

She's wearing what looks like a flight suit of some kind, colored a dark orchid purple amidst blacks; her feet don't even reach the floor from where she's seated.

"It's okay. I wasn't expecting anyone I felt I could trust enough to want to meet face to face myself, so we've both got upset expectations."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Juno arches a brow. The Tenno deliberately uses the past tense form of the word, and confirms it in the next sentence. She certainly looks human, aside from that energy roiling in her eyes. What would have stopped her from being human? Then again, she's also seen the Warframes that she controls rip TIE fighters in half without so much as a twinge of remorse.

So has Galen, but at least he feels that remorse eventually. Even at her worst, she herself has felt that reluctance to take a life. It's an action that can never be undone; and, increasingly, something she views as a terrible pollutant on one's own spirit.

Sometimes it's necessary. There are times when desperate action is all she can manage... but the Tenno -- the Tenno doesn't seem to care. They're not human to her. How can they be, if she isn't human herself?

Juno folds her hands behind her back, pacing a short ways, with what little room she has to do so. She doesn't stray too far, and she makes a point of not approaching the Tenno seated on the altar, lest the Warframes perceive it as a threat. If, indeed, they have any independence at all. The jury's still out on that one.

"Fair enough," she mumbles, head down as she works herself through that shock. "Still. Nobody that young should be backed into a corner so badly that the only thing they seem to know how to do is to take lives with reckless abandon. That's wrong, no matter what galaxy someone comes from. There's got to be a better way."

She finally stops on her heel, cocking her head and glancing at the Tenno from the corner of her eye. "I've got an idea." Studying Kushiko coolly, she turns to face her, hands still folded behind her back. "You help me deal with my little Imperial problem, and I'll teach you how to be human again... if that's something you want. I'll keep paying you in credits, beside, and once I've got less of the Empire breathing down my neck, maybe I can do the odd job or two for your Lotus, too."

There's a short pause.

"Speaking of which," Juno adds, "how does she factor into this, anyway...?"

Kushiko has posed:
"The Void changed us."

Valkyr shifts ever so slightly from where she stands by the Somatic Link; her absence of movement may well mark her a statue, but there's hints every time Kushiko speaks. Did the Tenno sense Juno's trepidation?

That was a good question: by all account the young girl seemed human, but had truthfully transcended that notion. There was an air of quiet mysticism in her, but it was woven in with a sense of curiosity of someone who was newly reborn.

A tired smile greets Juno's words, a quiet appreciation for the sentiment behind them, that no child should have to do what she's done. But was she really a child anymore? That was hard to say even to herself. Her memory was fractured enough that all she bore out was instinct at times, and the training she found once more.

She hesistates slightly as she starts to open her mouth to speak. "I appreciate the sentiment Juno, but you don't need to think that about me." She leans forward a little bit, hands sliding into her lap. "I can't tell you much. Fragments. Pieces of what I remember. I was in cryo for a long time before I awoke once more." Her eyes close as she appears to be having some difficulty with the memories.

"All I know is this... the Orokin had us take up the sword to fight for them, to be their weapons, but we had a code. We still do. This may not be the best life, but it's one we can live so others can have the chance to live their own without fear." The unsettling implication besides the fact they were brought up as child soldiers, it seems to have been something they embraced to their own means.

As to the deal proposed, Kushiko merely inclines her head, if only just. "That would be nice... it'd be nice to have someone I could talk to from time to time. There's nothing for me beyond this chamber... nothing yet. Maybe we'll find something that will suffice for life beyond this one."

She brightens up at the mention of the Lotus. There's a hint of a /very/ deep connection there as she looks at Juno. "She is the Lotus. She guides us. Guards against what could threaten us." She trails off for a moment. "If she wishes to, she will let you know."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
How wonderfully self-sacrificing of the Tenno to feel that way, but it doesn't change the fact that she's still essentially a child-soldier. There's no disguising the pilot's disgust at that fact. Any society that would take of its own children and do such a thing to them is nothing but contemptible in her eyes. It's a disgusting and heartless corruption of their own flesh and blood; their own /future/.

Her contempt is more meant for Kushiko's Orokin masters, if what little she understands is correct. She's never had any love of such situations, regardless of the scenario or the world of origin.

So, the Orokin were the ones responsible for this atrocity. Whether the creator or the master of the Tenno, she can't say for certain, but the detail is irrelevant. From what she's heard from Kushiko, the Orokin are long gone, their civilisation collapsed into ruin many generations ago. They are enigmatic at best, to outsiders, echoes of history that no one may ever truly understand but the Tenno themselves... if they could only remember.

"It doesn't cost me anything to talk," Juno admits, folding her arms. She's still bristling a little, but it isn't necessarily directed at Kushiko. "You already have my contact information. That should patch you through to the Rogue Shadow, any time; day or night. If you don't get hold of me, you'll probably get hold of Galen, or PROXY, Galen's holodroid. Either one of them can bring me in if I'm not busy."

Her head tilts slightly regarding the Lotus, but she doesn't inquire any further. If the Lotus wants to speak, she has the impression that the Lotus wouldn't be shy about speaking up. A few seconds are spent studying the transferrence chamber, before her eyes turn back tot he Tenno.

"It's good to see you for what you really are. I should be returning to the Rogue Shadow, though. You're not the only person hunted down like an animal in your galaxy," she adds, with a sardonic half-smile. "I don't like leaving the ship alone for too long, and heaven only knows what PROXY will do to my ship if I'm not there to tell him what to do."

Also, this place may be creeping her out, just a little.

Kushiko has posed:
When it gets down to brass tacks, 'it got worse' is a good turn of phrase when it comes to describing what the Orokin's projects ended up doing in the twilight of their Empire.

Frankly, there's a good deal more that Kushiko is presently inclined to give; to give any more would be to potentially drown Juno in more information than is necessary for her to begin her own path of understanding and gaining insights as an ally like her would require.

Such exact details about the undesirables of the Orokin Empire being used and hated for what they were before being exalted for their roles as saviors would likely strike any sane individual as hypocritical and horrifying. Going forward with that sort of bias in regards to the Orokin would not be helpful, justified or not.

The Tenno could not help but feel a twinge of comfort at the way Juno bristled at the concpets she had so far lain bare. It was new to see, truth be told.

"It may not cost you anything, but cost and worth are not always equal," Kushiko offers with a wry smile. When one has gone so long without the ability to speak in their own voice, every chance to do so is a learning experience. "... such is the nature of the prices paid, and the consequences that follow." Her eyes drifted to Valkyr at that, gaze settled upon the scar-like sigil that occasionaly pulsed with a faint light on the Warframe's chest.

The guise of a child, yet the mind of something else entirely lay within the Tenno. Parts of her Juno could see for wanting to remember, to be that child she could never be. Would she be so forever consigned to that world she and others like her had chosen to embrace? Only time would answer that question.

"Of course. I understand." She glanced forward, taking her eyes off of Valkyr, offering her own smile as well. "Both of us..." Shaking her head she instead opts to switch tracks. "Valkyr will take you then. Hopefully PROXY won't have made your ship his proxy then!" she adds with an impish smile as Valkyr moves forward to escort the pilot back through to the Liset in order to head back to the relay where the Rogue Shadow remained docked.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
"No. No, they're not." For a brief instant, Juno looks tired when she agrees with that; exhausted, in a way that reaches beyond the physical. "In fact, they usually aren't."

The pilot only shakes her head at the rest, unable to come up with a meaningful response. She's tired, and there are still a thousand things to be done aboard that ship. There is rebel business to be done, and sieges and strikes to be planned against the Galactic Empire; more importantly, those things won't plan themselves.

Juno raises a hand in half-wave, half-mock salute. "Hopefully. I'll be seeing you. Maybe some time soon you can come aboard the Rogue Shadow, though you might find it a little quiet." She hasn't got a Cephalon, and that's probably for the best. With the things she's put that ship through, it would never stop mouthing off at her. She stops on her heel, though, and casts a brief look over her shoulder. "And... thanks."

With that, she'll let Valkyr lead her back to the Liset, and then to the Larunda Relay, where the Rogue Shadow -- as much as a home as she's ever had -- lies waiting.