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Remee Halcyon EVERYONE INTO THE KANA!

Remee may have overestimated how many people can fit. It might be cramped. Someone might need to cling to the outside in a space suit. Remee herself probably has to go full-wolf and curl up at someone's feet just to make more room.

Getting to the station takes a bit of traveling. It's quite far away from the multiversal superplanet, and a eight hour flight even on the shortest warpgate path. (Remee neglects to mention the travel time until the journey is already underway.) It's likely feeling somewhat cramped when the station comes up on the viewscreen, seven hours and thirty minutes in.

"There!" Remee jumps up, putting her paws up on the dashboard, and her wagging tail hitting people in the face. "Just like it looked like on the salvage paperwork."

Space Station Sillicon Valley (S3V) is one large outer ring of habitats, with a middle section that looks to be mostly reactors and control rooms and such. The lights are still on, which is promising, and initial scans even show that there's breathable atmosphere and vacuum protection... in the ring. The central bridges seem to have lost atmospheric integrity some time ago.

https://i.ibb.co/z5S9JHX/s3v.png

"It's a self-sustaining biosphere that some pre-unification world launched decades ago," says Remee. "And then it got sucked into a black hole, and only recently popped out."

The ring of habitats have fairly clear delineations - a grasslands, an arctic region, a tropical jungle, and a desert region. While all are still functional, some seem to be in better shape than others - the only really intact airlock is in the middle of the grassland region.
Aidan Proudpick SPACE. For the first full hour of the trip, Aidan has his face pressed against the window, staring in awe at the stars, the planets, the great multiverse galaxy. He has to lean to one side, then the other, watching them pass. "This is so great!"

At hour two, Aidan is back on a seat, draped over it in a boneless fashion that only a squirrel can manage. (This is called a sploot. That is the scientific name.) Aidan comes from a pre-industrial society, which means he doesn't have to have a gameboy to keep him busy, but one can only whittle wood in a single spot by hour seven.

By hour seven, he is twitching madly, restlessly stretching in the cramped space, tail going everywhere.

He finally jumps up as the station comes into view. "Is that it? It uh... that's safe, right?" He is excited, needing to burst out of this place, but damn, that station looks like a fixer upper.
Petra Soroka <X-Watch-Chatter> Liza Grier says, "If I had to lock you in a room with Rita, or with Rita and all of her friends, which would you want?"

<X-Watch-Chatter> Petra Soroka frantically, "Is the--is the room big enough for that many people? Or would it be cramped?"


    This is not what Petra wanted at all. It's pretty much the opposite of what she wanted.

    Fifteen minutes into the eight hour journey, Petra feels herself start to panic. It's a mercy that the Kana's atmospheric regulation is top-notch, enough to prevent any unwanted temperature or odor changes that would otherwise result from packing this many people into the small cockpit--but it still *sucks*! It's extremely cramped, all of Petra's stuff is in here for anyone to see, and her handheld consoles don't have enough power to last the journey, when she can tolerate scrunching up her elbows enough to use them.

    She also, of course, immediately gives up the pilot's seat to whoever else claims it, after setting the coordinates into autopilot. Squatting on the floor of her own mech, crushed between far too many bodies for far too long, Petra's nearly in tears by the time the Kana arrives at the space station. The one thing keeping her psyche together is that she's been giving Wolf!Remee pats and scratches this whole time.

    From her position on the ground, Petra tries to peek up at the viewscreen, knees too stiff to stand up yet. "You really weren't kidding about wanting nature to be a part of it. This seems like it's, all nature, and no function, right? Or are there buildings inside?"
Hibiki Tachibana     Eight. Hours.

    Hibiki is unfortunately not the kind of person to impose herself on an already-cramped cockpit when an alternative is available, and her Symphogear is perfectly capable of supporting action in space even if it really doesn't look like it should. Actually, it's probably easier than trying to do the same underwater. That said, she was not expecting this trip to be. Eight. Hours. And by the time that bit of news goes out, it's too late to switch things up. Nothing for it but to get comfortable(?) and settle in on a nook of the Kana's exterior.

    She doesn't complain too much, if only because she does want to help get Remee and Petra squared away. At least it's pretty good for having thinking time. When she's not going stir-crazy (if that term works when you're the one in the void of space) enough to start up a conversation over comms herself.

    "We're finally here..." She sounds like she's in some half-asleep stupor by the time the station comes into sight, and slaps her cheeks (with no accompanying sound) before standing up on one of the Kana's legs, holding tight onto it so she doesn't slip off. "When you said it'd be a space station, Remee, I gotta say I didn't see it looking like...well, this. I mean that in a good way." All those different environments...

    "For something that went into a black hole...and apparently came out, it looks like it's in way better condition than you'd think. You guys aren't gonna use /all/ that space for sure..."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Phreak is svelte enough to fit inside the Kana--but if push comes to shove, he can easily slip on the copper-colored armor he refers to as 'OFAB' to hop outside and cling tenaciously to the hull. After a long trip endured dourly, he is among the first into the station, engaging in calisthenics the moment his feet touch the solid ground of the habitation ring.

     "Yeah," he agrees with Hibiki. "Looks like it's mostly in one piece." The mirrored, bronze-colored faceplate of his helmet reflects the others in distorted shapes, as his hands race across an AR keyboard only visible to him. "GSF, coming up," he announces in a tone that suggests it's business-as-usual.

     Each member of party receives a floating AR notification, unobtrusively placed so as to draw attention to itself without clouding lines of sight.

'Gridspace Freedom'
Modify RunSpeed
Modify EvadeClsC
Modify DuckExp
Modify DodgeRanged


     "Should help you guys get around and handle any automated defenses easier, if there's any around. I'm gonna head for the control center once we're all settled."
Rita Ma      Rita, by contrast, is shockingly completely unbothered by being packed in like sardines. She huddles down next to Petra with a big smile, evidently just happy to be with the besties. Seaweed snacks are offered!

     That said, she pretty quickly falls asleep while leaning her head on Petra's shoulder, so she's no help at all in fighting the boredom unless someone feels like braiding her hair.

     ----

     After an adorable stretch-and-yawn, Rita finally stands up once the station comes on viewscreens to peer over the shoulder of the pilot's seat. "Yeah. That's like a whirlpool in space, isn't it, Hibiki?" she says on local comms. "But it's still really pretty. Kind of like a rainbow!"

     When the AR notification pops up, Rita reaches out to bat at it reflexively, only for her hand to naturally go through what everyone else sees as empty space. It takes her a second to process what it is. "Oh! Right. The 'buffs'. Thanks, Mr. Phreak! Those are fantastic."

     A little pause. She eyeballs the room, trying to figure out how many people here are independently spaceworthy. Hibiki, for sure, but...

     "So we're going to dock with the airlock, right? And what exactly do you need us to do? It doesn't seem like there's a whole lot to unpack..."
Remee Halcyon @AIDAN: "One hundred percent safe," promises Remee, which turns out to not be true. "All it had on it were some plants and some animals."

"Oh, and the people, but since it's been radio silent they're probably all dead from either old age or when the control rooms lost vaccuum integrity," she adds, casually.

@PETRA: Pats are always good. Even if Remee is a proud independent wolf who doesn't need human affection.

"The outer ring is entirely nature stuff. Maybe there's like a monitoring station somewhere but there definitely won't be like, any civilization."

"Unless like the station employees survived and built up a bronze age civilization inside the abandoned space station like some sort of schlocky sci-fi episode, but what are the odds of that?"

@RITA: "Be backup in case there is anything dangerous - which there shouldn't be, and then help with setting up the teleporter. We'll need to find a power outlet with enough draw, or a decent generator, or something."

@EVERYONE: The Kana docks with the grasslands airlock, and the party can pile out. Aside from the airlock itself, which is in proper space station aesthetic, everything is as natural as it can be (aside from the inky blackness of space overhead, past the ceiling lights). The station walls are at least mostly hidden by steep hills or cliff walls, to add to the illusion. The natural atmosphere is slightly spoiled by the background music that's being piped in via speakers somewhere, but - well, at least that's a welcome reminder that the power is still on here, right?

Phreak can start making his way across the ring, and others can join him or spread out - in all cases, immediately, there's sightings of life. Animals! Real life animals, mostly sheep, with a few mice and squirrels amongst the trees, and a brief appearance of a fox before it darts back underneath a bush, its wheels spinning out in the dirt before it gains traction.

... Wheels? No, legs. Trick of the light. Foxes have legs, not wheels. Obviously.
KNK     Rose and Violet are along for the ride, and on seeing what the inside of the cockpit looks like, and the number attending, Rose says, "We'll hook on outside."

    Eight hours (prompting Rose to ask, "Seriously? You couldn't have said that earlier?") spent with tethers holding both ninjas to the outside of the Kana. They've got no spacesuits, though they're both wearing half-masks -- rather, Rose has a half-mask, and Violet has a scarf wrapped around her lower face. If one looked closely, they might notice both still respirating, chests rising and falling with the expected, unconscious rhythm.

    At some point, Rose takes a nap, curling up and floating in space at the end of her line. Violet produces a pair of handheld consoles and pressures Hibiki to hunt giant (virtual) monsters with her. (A choice is given between using Rose's highly technical setup or making a new file and be showered with gear from Violet's inventory.) Both KNK members (when Rose is awake) stay on the radio, speaking normally, with not much more than time, and no reason not to talk. Neither one, fortunately, has to ask for a food break. That's among the deprivations they're used to.

    The station comes into sight.
KNK     '...but since it's been radio silent they're probably all dead...'

    "Or... the radio's broken and no one could fix it."
    "That'd be too obvious, wouldn't it?"
    Both tap acknowledgments for Phreak's buffs.

    "If we need a generator, wouldn't the core be the first place to check? Wherever's best protected. Were there other airlocks?"
    "Oh, hey, that's a lot of animals. He~re sheepy sheepy sheepy..."

    While Rose starts scanning out into the distance and through walls for heat sources that would match powered electrical lines (or people, for that matter), Violet goes to find somme animals to bother. Given that she switches from 'cooing sounds' to 'turning invisible and silently stalking' as soon as the first fails to work, should it, she leaves little way to avoid her attentions, ending in a triumphant lifting of the wool-mass over her head.
Hibiki Tachibana     "That's great," Hibiki murmurs back towards Remee's mention of the former occupants, with an uneasy undertone, before going to the way more palatable question Rita asked her. "...It does look really beautiful, though. At least from the outside. Hopefully, it'll be the same everywhere inside, too."

    Hibiki is very glad to finally be able to plant her feet on solid and normal ground again - though that said, Violet did a pretty great job of helping her stave off boredom during the trip (she opted to make a new file, suffered through minutes of items getting dumped on her, took even longer to sort through them, and then just used none of that and opted for the simplest big weapon build imaginable). Phreak's buffs get a thumb-up of thanks, and a cursory glance is given around the immediate area...

    "Looks like the animals have been doing fine, even without anyone to watch over them. Or at least, we think nobody's been watching over 'em. I could probably do without the music, though..." The irony of her being the one to say that is lost on her, and she opts to stick close to Phreak for the moment on what's effectively bodyguard duty.

    She's a little distracted by the wildlife, and her focused expression lightens up on staring at some of the fluffier ones go about their business. Wait, did that fox have--

    "...'Course I'm seeing things, being stuck in space for that long..." Onward and forward.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "Yeah, no problem, M" he says to Rita, slightly less cranky for having had the opportunity to stretch. Phreak, who has never seen Earth animals, doesn't know whether they should have wheels or not--especially since his own planet his round little bastard rats well known for their rolling. He doesn't comment on the fox.

     "I can probably do something about the music once I get the center back up and running." He doesn't bother turning off internals--not since he's going to be heading towards the center where there's no O2. He takes off on foot, becoming a blur and kicking up a small plume of natural detritus behind him. Hibiki finds that, with his nanoprogram running, she can actually keep up. It's as if she's been made lighter, and friction is a vague memory. This does mean that turns and deceleration have to happen sooner, so it takes some getting used to.

     First thing is to see if the doors are still powered. If not, he's got access to tools stored in his nanite cloud--pliers, wire cutters, screwdrivers, and the like--to reroute power from something that actually does work.
Remee Halcyon KNK: The pair can pick up on something odd at about the same time... just via very different ways.

Rose can start picking up faint electrical signals... from the animals. Some of the signals are stronger than the others, the mice only put out a faint signal while the larger animals have more juice.

Violet, meanwhile, has no difficulties in grabbing her sheep... which, startled, does what startled animals tend to do. She may not want to hold it directly overhead, at least until it gets all of that out of its system. "Baaaaaa!"

But ... Either that's a *really* ill sheep, or that's... motor oil that it's leaking?

@HIBIKI: As Hibiki goes, she can spot a scattering of odd things, more tire ruts in the ground... some scorch marks on the ground, as if someone set off a rocket right there... and one of the cliff faces looks like it's been scratched up by something metal.

@PHREAK: The airlock door to the control center is unpowered, but Phreak can dig into the control panel pretty easily. It's easy enough, given his tools and expertise, to rig it up to accept power from an external source... if he can find one.
Petra Soroka     Pats are always good.

    She huddles down next to Petra with a big smile, evidently just happy to be with the besties.


    Maybe the trip wasn't *that* bad. Petra, unfortunately, does not braid Rita's hair, her hands locked rigidly in her lap.

    Petra awkwardly reaches over to the pilot's controls, guiding the Kana into the airlock. Maneuvering the controls without being *in* the pilot's seat feels like a whole different vehicle, and Petra's perception of where the Kana is is completely thrown off. The mech loudly scrapes against the side of the docking port and the whole cockpit shudders. Petra squeals and adjusts its position, finally synching it up properly. "Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry."

    Petra hops out the hatch into the station, embarrassment slowly draining from her face, and looks around in curiosity. Animals!! Her eyes sparkle and she rushes over to get a closer look. "I'm really surprised that even the ecosystem survived being transported through the black hole."

    Petra squints, and recoils. "Oh, they're totally robots, actually." That would explain it.

    "Has something been maintaining the robots, then? Or have they just survived on their own?"

    Are there any passageways other than the one leading to the control center?
Rita Ma      "Be backup in case there is anything dangerous..."

     "You can count on me, Ms. Remee," Rita says perkily. Whatever her feelings about the power she wields, 'protecting her friends' is still something she likes a lot better than her friends protecting her.

     She gives Petra a warm glance back over her shoulder, still smiling. It means something like: I'm still trusting you not to look!

     "Yeah, no problem, M."

     "'Em'? ... Oh! Right!" Rita laughs. "What was your letter again, Mr. Phreak? You had one, right? It wasn't 'P'?"

     ----

     Rita's nose wrinkles up when she spots, for a fraction of a second, the fox with wheels. She pronounces disapprovingly: "That's not how they looked in National Geographic."

     Petra sizes them up, and Rita startles a little. "They can make robots that look like that? They smelled a little funny, but it almost had me," she says, rubbing her cheek in thought. "It's probably only been a few years. A decade or two, at the most. I'm sure they could have survived alone."

     She leans against the doorframe near Phreak and pulls out her cellphone, which- with the boon of multiversal tech- still has reception in the Middle Of Literal Nowhere. This is merely a lost station, not a high-security blacksite; Watch contacts might have someone who'd know where the generators are, either from basic space station design principles or direct knowledge of the blueprints.

     While she chats up whoever she's got on the line, she looks over at Phreak. "Do you want me to get the door for you?" she asks, in the same cadence as someone whose spouse is struggling with a jar.
KNK     Violet reacts to the incoming liquid by spinning around herself and her captive in a preternatural evasive maneuver that merely makes everything around her get splashed with motor oil, instead.

    "Hey! This smells like--"
    "What? The wildlife is--"
    "--engine fluids?"
    "--robotic?"
    "No, it's fluffy. Robots aren't fluffy. Cybernetics?"
    "You could put fluff on a robot. Don't know why you would, but you could."
    "You could... but, wow. Weird!"
    "If they're not closed networks, it'll be easy to figure out. If they are, it'll take a little more work. Bring that over here."
    "Are you gonna hurt my sheep?"
    "No more than I have to."

    Violet does bring the sheep over, keeping it upside-down and without the ability to get traction onto anything, so that she and Rose can try gaining (merely virtualy invasive, rather than physically) access, first by checking for wireless signals, and then by checking for physical access ports in whatever part of it's obviously machined, helped along by Rose's electrical sensor suite.
Aidan Proudpick Aidan touches grass immediately like a WEIRDO. He spreads out over the grass, tail twitching up in the air until it sloooowly relaxes. As he lays there, his pointed red squirrel ears begin to twitch back and forth, honing in on the faint sound of things moving around. But things that don't make a normal noise. That's not TOO weird up here, though. Right? He brushes himself off. God, he just wants to explore. BUT, he is also supposed to be a RESPONSIBLE ADULT HERO KNIGHT, which means he should think of something HEROIC AND RESPONSIBLE to do. "We should make sure it's safe and habitable, right?" Aidan tries to think of something that seems important he should say. "Like.. food! And water."
Hibiki Tachibana     Tire ruts...
    Maybe left over from vehicles the old tenants used to ride around here?

    Scorch marks...?
    Shouldn't the grass have grown back over those, if they're that old? Huh.

    ...The rock face torn up?
    Wait a minute...

    'Oh, they're totally robots, actually.'

    "What, seriously!?" Despite any distance that might be between everyone at this point, Hibiki nevertheless double-takes back over her shoulder in Petra's direction, blinking incredulously. Apparently, this is some kind of life-altering revelation to her, and she cannot look at the next sheep bounding over the hillside in the same way again.

    They're still cute, though, even if she does fold her arms and grimace. She should probably stay focused on the task at hand. "I'd offer to get the door myself, but I don't think we should break any more than we have to," she mentions back towards Rita and Phreak, deciding that the former is best for the delicate work. She's going to get a head-start on going over the immediate area for anything that looks power-source-y or battery-like they can use, or otherwise go grab whatever they might need if Rita's contact gets some know-how on that front.

    Heavy lifting, after all, is something she can do. And if they don't need one now, knowing how these things go, they might need one further in.

    ...Would one of these animals work as one, actually? She discards that thought almost as soon as she thinks it.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "Great. Fantastic. No, exactly what I was fucking hoping for," Phreak complains to Hibiki, uncovering a panel on the airlock door to reveal exactly what he -hadn't- hoped for. "This thing's burnt out its power source and it's powered separately from the core unit," he explains to Hibiki. "Which means the habitation ring can keep going if the core loses power, but it also makes it harder to get into the core if that happens. Nothing to reroute to it. And that means we're gonna need a power source to get this fucker open," he concludes, as his tools are slowly disintegrated by his nanite cloud.

     He thinks, for a moment, and it's at that point that an idea strikes him. "No, no," He says, jerking a thumb backwards. "I was thinking of that, too." With a sigh, he powers his suit's internals down, the helmet disappearing to reveal his frowning grey visage. " Robots means bespoke power supplies, and hopefully they're compatible with the rest of the tech here." "

     With his faceplate down, Rita can easily see the flustered, irritated expression on his face, as well as the dark grey flush on his cheeks, "No, I do *not* want you to get the goddamn--" He huffs irritably. "I mean, yeah. Go ahead, please," he says, gesturing towards it and crossing his arms. "But, Hibiki, if you wouldn't mind chasing down one of those things and putting the kibosh on it anyway, it might be something we're gonna need."
Remee Halcyon @RITA: Rita's Watch contacts have to delve into library archives and pull up the blueprints on microfilm, but soon enough they get her the answers she's looking for.

There's one large generator that'd meet the entire station's needs and then some, located smack dab in the center of the station. That's the area that Phreak's heading towards. There are also a few smaller generators hidden in each habitat area, intended as backups in case something goes wrong with the main generator. Altogether the generators are designed to last for quite a long time.

@HIBIKI: As if on cue, a sheep goes bounding over a nearby hill, and bounces off the rock Hibiki noticed was scratched up, leaving another mark. "Baaaaa!"

The reason for the scratches is likely because instead of using legs to leap around, it's on one large spring that's providing bounce power.

@KNK: On close examination, the sheep seems to be a fairly seamless cyborg - about half biological (including the wool, which yes is very fluffy) and half robotic. There's an access port on the back of its neck that they can get into.

@AIDAN: Remee goes to join Aidan for all of this. "Food's important."

Water's not too hard to find. Experimentally (since she's less likely to die) Remee goes to take a sip. "It's... clean water," she says.

As far as food, there's enough foliage here, but unless you're in the mood for grass sandwiches with a leaf aperitif, it won't be coming from the plants.

@PETRA: There's only the one airlock from this habitat to the control center. There's a few other routes into the center from other habitats, based on what she saw coming in, but that'd mean trekking the long way around the ring to get to them.

Also, she gets a notification.
Aidan Proudpick After the sounds he has heard, because Aidan at least is starting to know what machinery sounds like, he squats down just to check. He picks up a piece to chew on it, then even puts his finger down into the dirt to make sure that there is real dirt that they can grow things in. Or use some fancy farm machine. Or just teleporters. Petra brings up that it might not even matter, making Aidan puff out a breath as he stands back up. "Well, if it's clean, then it has be something cleaning it, right? It's not just standing around getting bad." He knows that much, at least. "So... that should be fine, right?"

He pulls out his gun. The shield will MOST CERTAINLY get him into trouble up here. "We should probably make sure it isn't occupied by anything menacing." He realizes he is WAY out of his depth here, but is trying to act like a good member of the team that knows what he is doing.

And he really wants to see all the cool stuff. So he starts heading the opposite side around the ring away from everyone else to help do a complete search.

"...Okay, so how do we go to the bathroom up here?" He asks of Remee.
Rita Ma      Rita snaps her phone shut and stows it back in her satchel, after a one-sided conversation with long pauses. "The big generator's in the center of the station," she says. "There's a small one in this zone somewhere that could open the door, but it's hidden. Maybe Ms. Rose and Ms. Violet could find it, but..."

     "I mean, yeah. Go ahead, please."

     Rita beams indulgently. "Thanks for letting me help, Mr. Phreak. I know you'd get it soon enough, but I appreciate getting to pitch in."

     Then she turns to regard the door, instead of his flushed cheeks. She taps her chin with a finger. "I don't want to make a mess, but... please look away for a second, okay? And get a few feet back, too."

     Rita's back is turned to the rest of the group when she reaches into the door's access panel and grasps the inert power lines. They can't see what happens to her arm. But if one listens very closely, one can hear the tissues rearrange themselves.

     Then a sphere of coruscating electricity snaps into existence around her with a noise like a dozen welders. Her hair and clothes flutter in its cold white-blue light. The grass around her scorches black. In the midle of the discharge, she presses the button to open the airlock... hopefully.

     If that doesn't open it, once her arm's in a state where she doesn't have to hide it, she can just jam her fingers through the metal and pry it open that way. But ideally, they won't have to make a mess of Remee's new home.
Petra Soroka     Petra thinks out loud. "Compared to destroying some part of this place that we're trying to salvage, we might be better off just walking around to another one of the passageways to the center. You know, if we can't get power to this door." Also because she's hoping to see some robot penguins.

    To Aidan, "I mean. Water gets clean in nature, too, it could just be filtration from the vegetation." Wait, are the plants real? Petra kneels down and fiddles with the grass, and digs a few inches into the ground, if she can. Is there some sort of subsoil mesh that provides nutrients to these plants? Despite her complaints, thoughts of how to get agriculture going in the station are running through her mind.

    Petra suddenly puts a hand up to her ear and scrunches up her face in confusion. "Did one of you leave the hatch open? Something's in the cockpit."

    She starts walking over to it, completely unhurried, gun casually in the pocket of her bomber. If it's hostile, she's totally unprepared.
Hibiki Tachibana     '--And yeah, leave it to me, Phreak.'

    She says that, at the same exact moment that sheep goes bouncing around ahead of her. That sure does explain the scratches, if there were any doubts - she can't say she was expecting a spring, but...seriously, who's responsible for building these things like this? Or...modifying them? Enhancing them?

    Hibiki promptly decides to stop thinking about it, and with the help of some of those Phreak buffs (and controlled skidding), she makes to catch up and then actually catch the thing as it comes down from one of its leaps. One that'll end in a nice two-arm hold around all that fluff, firm enough to ensure it won't escape but not tight enough that it'll hurt. "Whoa-hoh, hey..." Although she'd never admit it, the urge to run her hand through it is immense...and since she'd a bit away from the others, and has the pretense of making sure it stays calm, she does it anyway.

    Wait, Phreak said to 'put the kibosh' on it, didn't he? Like...get the power source they need /out/ of it? Is that what he meant? That means...

    ...
        ...
            ...

    Roughly by the time Rita is done doing her thing, Hibiki shows back up at the doorway with a very much still mobile and whole sheep cradled in her arms. "...We can just...hook it up to the next door or something like that if we need power, right?"
Remee Halcyon @AIDAN: Remee follows Aidan, mostly for something to do. Everyone else is handling the mechanical stuff.

"Um - have you never been camping?" she asks, in regards to bathroom usage.

As they go, they encounter a particularly TERRITORIAL SQUIRREL, maybe one that recognizes Aidan's species in some way.

"TCH TCH TCH TCH" it chatters at them from its tree branch.

And then its tail cocks up and over, and fires lasers at them.

@RITA: Rita manages to get the outer door open, and serve as a makeshift power supply. (The group might want to get something else hooked up to it, if they don't want to leave Rita there.) Fortunately, the airlock is intact, but the next room clearly reads as hard vaccuum - anyone going through the airlock chamber had better be suited up.

@HIBIKI: "Baaaaaaaah," says the spring sheep.

@PETRA: There's a bear in the cockpit.
Aidan Proudpick "I mean, sort of. Not in the way you understand it, but yes, I understand the concept of pooping into the ground but burying it, but we aren't..." He takes a breath. If he just thinks about it like the flying island, right? "This space stuff is weird, but I guess if I just THINK of it like a forest, I can see it." This seems completely normal. He twists his head quickly to see the other squirrel. It is SO weird to see it. And he relaxes. "Hey, cool, look, he looks like m-"

Aidan snaps up his shield, staggering back as the laser hits it. "REMEE IS THIS NORMAL?!"
KNK     Though there's more info they could scrape off a robot than a cyborg, having no way of reading minds, Rose is still happier to find that the sheep are living beings. Furrowing her brow at something Petra was saying, she mutters, "Ship-jacker," and takes the ship from Violet.

    Plugging a cable in from her hand into the back of the sheep's neck, Rose starts scanning for information. Hardware capabilities, maintenance logs, dates to show age and recent work, power readings to show how long it can stay up before needing a recharge, and anything to indicate the names of who did the work, pressed the parts, or wrote the firmware.

    Violet, meanwhile, speeds back in the direction of the Kana, running in the manner ninjas are widely known for, until she puts a hand on Petra's shoulder and vaults over her. "Oh, bear!"

    And then she fires taser wires out of her right wrist and hits it in the face with knckout-gas from the nozzle popping out of her left.
Remee Halcyon @AIDAN: "NO IT'S NOT NORMAL," says Remee, diving for cover.

The laser squirrel is laser focused on Aidan, continuing to chitter away at him and take high-powered potshots. Worse, the noise seems to be attracting other wildlife...

@ROSE: The sheep is sheep-aged. (After a brief pause for the GM to google sheep facts,) it turns out to be about four earth solar cycles old, and can go a couple days between recharges (or meals). There's garbage data in the rest of the diagnostic fields, including manufacturer information.

The firmware... isn't written. It's a mess of spaghetti code. It's nigh on impossible to decipher just from a simple reading, with a lot of jump statements and oddly coded logic gates, with variables being numbered instead of named.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Phreak is mollified by Rita's covert praise, and just barely self-aware enough to realize the intent. "Yeah, well, you're a pro, too," he says, brushing it off.

     He toggles his helmet back on, fully suited up and running on internals inside of two seconds. Complying with Rita's request, he turns his back to her. Using the time it takes Rita to take a few precautions, he runs another program on anyone who requests it. This one looks decidedly less legitimate, for the brief presence of an official-looking medical software login page promptly pasted over by a fly-by-night splash page/loading screen clearly done up by some group of software crackers. The logo is a lit cigarette, and names the program, as Phreak had: 'Dr. Hack n' Quack.'

     If anything is less friendly than the sheep, or if the vacuum proves too extensive to survive, clouds of nanites will perform triage on regular pulses to keep the aforementioned individuals alive, if not particularly comfortable.

     When the door is done with, be it cleanly or otherwise, he makes a beeline through it in search of something more firmly within his wheelhouse--namely, a computer terminal he can get running, ideally with a power core supplied by Hibiki. The state of the core--namely, still being attached to the sheep, causes him to utter a sharp, aggrieved sigh.

     "We can *try* it," he says, torn between the looks he *knows* he'll get from both girls and his desire to get things done quickly. "If it doesn't work... ahh, fucking goddammit, I guess we can just go look for one of the ones that's not attached to a robot. But for right now, keep a hold on that thing."
Petra Soroka     Petra peeks inside the cockpit, and is greeted with: a Bear.

    Her first thought: Is this bear also a robot?

    Her second thought: Is this bear going to mess my mech up?

    Her third thought: Is this bear going to mess *me* up?

    Petra panics, and runs in a small, frantic circle, torn between her desire to flee from the bear and to protect her mostly-full box of instant ramen packets. She stops once Violet vaults over her, freezing in place, then spinning around and drawing her gun. She doesn't fire though, whether or not it's brought down by the nonlethal attacks.

    "Who left the door open! Whoever's last should always close it." Petra huffs and pulls out her Banana gun instead, cautiously approaching the bear with it upraised.
Remee Halcyon @PHREAK & CO: Past the second airlock door, there's hard vaccuum. At least the artificial gravity here is still intact.

The reason for the lack of vaccuum integrity becomes clear pretty quickly - sections of the central part of the station have degraded to the point that there's giant holes in the walls. Resealing this part of the station would be... difficult.

It's also difficult to navigate, compared to the wide open habitat ring - the station designers have tried to cram in as much as possible, meaning hallways that have to twist around large pieces of equipment, or rooms that are oddly shaped to maximize available space. Eventually, though, Phreak can get to a terminal that's powered on and connected.

Straight into running diagnostics: The station is, despite losing vaccuum integrity in the middle, is actually in pretty good shape. Left to its own devices, nothing catastraphoic is going to happen to it in the foreseeable future.

... The 50 year old station is also showing that it has 21,740 years worth of data logs available for Phreak to download.
Aidan Proudpick Aidan draws up his breath, pushing out his chest as far as he can, then lets out a long breath. A green air barrier swirls into view, a whirling circle shield that appears in front of the squirrel and Remee. He is quite proud of himself for that.

Until the laser passes right through it and hits Aidan in the arm. "OW!"

He snaps up his gun instead, a wooden affair that fires out a single bullet at the tree to hopefully scare off the squirrel and start running through to the next hub. "I guess... I could live with a couple squirrels shooting at me."
Remee Halcyon @VIOLET: The bear gets tazed, and then hit with a healthy dose of knockout gas.

It looks unsteady, but then it gets up from where it's been devouring Petra's ramen supply, and growls. It's not quite enough to take it out yet.

"Hrrrragh," it says, snorting out a cloud of literal steam as it approaches and swipes at them both!
Remee Halcyon @AIDAN: The squirrel makes a loud noise of alarm when Aidan shoots back, and dives out of its tree.

There's a half minute of silence, and then Remee emerges in wolf form, carrying most of the laser squirrel in her mouth.

"Good news, I solved our food problem," she says, after dropping it near Aidan's feet. "It's kinda like... seafood, you need to pick the meaty bits out of the shell."
Petra Soroka     That means it's probably a robot! Petra's cautious approach is in vain, and the steam washes over her, making her stagger. And then she's caught by the claw, swatted hard and knocked to the ground. Petra whines, and from her position on the ground, she points the banana gun at a particularly meaty portion of the bear, firing a few pellets.

    She sits up, and her hair is noticeably frizzy from the steam and the fall.
Rita Ma      The sound of a Bear Happening, and secondarily of a Squirrel Happening, makes Rita glance back over her shoulder with evident concern. But Remee's helping Aidan and Violet's helping Petra, so it'll be fine, right?

     She continues into the next room, shuts the door behind her, gratefully accepts Phreak's new round of buffs- not familiar enough with computers to be worried by the shady appearance- and then pets Hibiki's sheep on the head. "He's really cute," she says approvingly. "Great job."

     "I don't really know that I'm 'a pro', though, Mr. Phreak. I mean... you've been doing this kind of work a lot longer than I have. It still feels like something that doesn't really suit me."

     Now that The Squad is all vacuum-proofed (at least nominally), she repeats the crackly-electrical process with the next door, sucking all the air out of the room and opening the path forward.

     Ordinarily, 'giant holes in the walls' is something Rita would be able to fix. But the idea of leaving large amounts of tentacle-matter in a place where Petra and Remee are going to live makes her feel a little sick. They'd find out eventually that what looked like metal is really calcified biomass.

     Once Phreak gets into the terminal, she gestures at him: which way to the core generator?
Aidan Proudpick Aidan works hard on NOT killing the thing. And then as Aidan finally gets back and away, Remee comes back with it, dead. In her mouth. And dead. And in her mouth. The squirrel staggers back and away, his hand up to his mouth. He leans over to one side and tests out the filtration aspect of the native flora by vomiting right onto the floor.

"No... no thanks. But I uh... I guess that's a thing you can do." Don't judge, don't judge, don't judge. "I'll stick with grass."
KNK     Though Violet's expression suggests surprise that neither the taser nor KO gas was enough to put the bear down, the speed of her reactions suggests otherwise. A wire unspools from a hidden panel up her forearm, coming into a loop in her fingers. By the time the claw has almost reached her, she's already stepped around it, slipped the loop over the arm (leg?), and given it a high-heeled kick to tighten.

    Some communication passes between her and Rose, but it isn't picked up by the tactical band. It's only obvious for how Rose suddenly straightens, reaches into a pouch on her back, removes a squat, foot-long rocket, twists several parts until a rod pops out of the head, and then underhands the rest of it in a hundred-meter arc behind her.

    Violet leaps back while letting her wire unspool, grabs the thrown rocket mid-air, cuts the other end of the wire to tighten around it, and gives it a good smack.

    In the impossibly short timespan between that jolt reaching the already-primed fuel and actually igniting it, Violet hits the ground, takes two terrain-tearing steps only visible afterward to show where she'd been, and scoops up Petra over her shoulder. Her burst of speed stops when they're both skidding through the grass to a stop another twenty meters away, a more than safe distance as the disarmed but otherwise functional rocket blasts scorch marks into the ground and zooms through the artificial sky in a path aimed at the far end of the habitat zone, the bear's forelimb securely tethered to it.
Hibiki Tachibana     For Phreak's contributions to the keeping-cute-animals-alive-and-powered foundation, he gets one of the rare smiles from Hibiki that's entirely visible even with her scarf blocking most of her face. "...Thanks, Phreak. It'll work out just fine, don't worry." She has no guarantee of that, but that's Hibiki for you. And she certainly doesn't need to be told to keep a tight grip.

    Advancing ahead, there's some slight concern over the bear and squirrel problems that the others are contending with, but she doesn't need to go rushing back to help with those. Between everyone? They can handle those, for sure. ...The same cannot be said of Petra's food supply, but sacrifices must be made.

    Since they're going into vacuum, Hibiki will be sure to hold her sheep close, to try and maximize comfort via Magical Girl Fuckery beyond just Phreak making existing in the vacuum possible at all. "He really is," she mentions off-handedly to Rita, with a pat to the head on their baaaa-tery herself. Better actually focus on the mission too though, and not get too caught up. Especially back in the presence of others.

    Unfortunately she's best at making holes and not very great at fixing them, but at least her Symphogear's thrusters make actually getting around not that much of a pain. She'll tag along the whole way to their terminal, remaining wary the whole time, though it seems like there's not any defenses they'll have to worry about. "...This whole section not having any air shouldn't be a problem for what you wanna do, right?" She's ostensibly peering at what Phreak is looking up on the monitor, over his shoulder.
Remee Halcyon RITA: Rita can make her way to the core generator fairly easily. There's a few small obstacles, but nothing she can't deal with one way or another.

The core generator's still live. This would be an excellent spot to hook the teleporter up to...

... if the area immediately around it wasn't lacking in vacuum integrity and atmosphere.

@AIDAN: Remee looks concerned. "Are - you alright? I guess you'd eat grass if you've taken ill, yeah? But..."

She shrugs. "At least it looks like decent grass?"

@PETRA AND VIOLET: The bear staggers back as it takes a few pellet hits, giving Violet an opening to set up her rocket stunt.

It takes another step forward - and then gets yanked by the rocket, sailing clear across the width of the habitat ring, and slamming into a cliff face.

From there, it slowly slides down the cliff face to the ground, still alive but clearly not getting up in any hurry.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants "Oh, fuck." That's one way to put it. His voice comes through over comms, once there's no more air to carry it naturally. Open space, stars, reflect occasionally on his helmet's visor. "That's all you, Rita," he says, oblivious to her fretting, gesturing to the holes. He'd seen some of what she could do on Petrichor--and doesn't know her well enough to put two and two together from her earlier request not to look.

     What he can do is get around, and he can do it pretty easily even if the central corridors have lost gravity as well as atmo. He's preternaturally limber, his svelte body twisting nimbly to convey him past bulky equipment, suit thrusters feathered expertly to speed him through cramped, gerrymandered hallways. Perhaps unsurprisingly to Rita and Hibiki, he seems in a better mood, following this display.

     Arriving at the computer, he cracks his knuckles and gets to work. "Okay. What OS are we working on, here. ...never heard of it, that tracks." But someone has. A remote Grid connection is established, forked to the Internets of many an Earth until he can find a cracked password reset file for it, matched to the specific version this console is running. It's burned to an appropriate form of blank physical media and slotted into the console. Having given himself access, he naturally runs a diagnostic, muttering to himself as he goes.

     "Talk to me, buddy. What's goin' on?" It's about what one would expect, with one notable exception. "Oh, what the fuck?" His first thought, upon spotting the reams of data available, is to check for an error. "Is this some Epochalypse shit?" But no--it's all there and accounted for.

     "No... black hole time dilation, then, I guess. Phew. Well... if anything, speaks volumes about the memory storage on this fucker." He spends some time skimming through the data, looking for anything of imminent note.

     "Here, Rita," he says, pulling up another window--the diagnostic screen--to tap at the core generator. Answering Hibiki, "Nope, no problem," he affirms. "These red sections here are things that need repairs. But none of them are essential to keeping the place running, and there's nothing bad like a reactor leak or whatever. We can take our time fixing the place. I'm gonna be a minute looking through the files here, but... if you wanna go ahead and take your friend with Rita there, he's probably got some kind of charging cable you can use to hook him up to that thing. Unless they've been self improving and they don't need to any more 'cause they've got some crazy kind of fusion power going on. Which I wouldn't doubt. Place has been more or less okay for almost as long as human civilization in my neck of the woods."
Aidan Proudpick Aidan stands back up, coughing up a last bit of sour. He takes out a water skin to gulp down water from, tilting his head back. A swish, then a spit. "No, it's just. Uh." He looks at Remee, a pleading look in his eyes to hope he doesn't have to explain it to her. But after a second, he just sits. "I am what you guys call vegan." He frowns. "Okay, wait. If it's a robot. Does it... you know... bang? Do they reproduce? Is there something here that MAKES them?"

Aidan leaps up into a nearby tree, scrambling up it with ease to look at the tree line for any sort of.. nest? machine? Robot spinchter?
Remee Halcyon @AIDAN "Hang on, if you're vegan, does that mean you can eat robots just fine?" asks Remee.

It doesn't take Aidan too long to find what he's looking for. There's a nest, with some adorable baby birds in it.

Little baby cyborg birds, which chirp at him and hold their metallic mouths open at him, thinking that he's their mother.

@PHREAK: There's not millenia of every sort of data, to be clear - but processes that leave only a megabyte or so of textual logging data per day do in fact have millions of records that he can pore through if he really wants to. Some of the other processes have had their logs truncated or compressed algorithmically, to the point of uselessness...

... He can find something that tells a story, though - one of the habitat security cameras has been taking yearly screenshots as part of a yearly maintenance routine, meant to diagnose picture quality, and there's occasionally some animal or another in some of the pictures. Over the years, there's been a gradual change - going from mundane flesh and blood to incorporating robotic pieces, artificial materials, or cyborg weapons systems shaping themselves on the animal bodies year over year.

That's the 'what' and the 'when' of the cyborg animals, but the 'how' or 'why' remain elusive.
Petra Soroka     Petra, draped over Violet's shoulder limply, watches as the bear sails through the air, hits the cliff face, and slowly slides down. She feels complicated about this.

    Eventually rolling off of Violet, Petra falls to the ground, then stands up, brushing herself off. "I'm gonna... go close the hatch, now."

    She double checks inside the cockpit to make sure there's no squirrel or bunny laying in wait to finish off her ramen, then twists the hatch closed. "I'll go circle around, check to see if any of the other biomes have surprises waiting for us." She's still hoping for a robot penguin, so she heads to the arctic region first. In case of any surprises, she pulls out her respirator and zips up her bomber jacket.
KNK     Petra falls on the ground. Violet looks at her. "Oh, sorry, did you need down?"

    She surreptitiously smooths out all the little spots on her wrists and forearms that things have shot out of in the past few minutes. They're totally ordinary gloves, now. Nothing to see, here. "Oh, I wanna see! I'll go with you. This place is prooobably fine, now. Maybe. Though I guess there have to be more bears, right? You can't just have one bear. You need bear families. Bears don't, like, bud, do they? Or grow from bear-mold? We don't have bears in the City, so I haven't seen 'em before. Except, you know, the other kind."

    Rose gets about as much as she thinks she can from the sheep... though she checks for one more thing. "So, where've you been...?" If there's movement records, or some kind of location data, maybe she can find a source point, a workshop or recharging station.

    If not, she'll go back to scanning for it.
Rita Ma      "That's all you, Rita."

     "Oh, um. I'm sorry, Mr. Phreak." Rita stares out one of the gaping holes at the stars beyond, her hands clasped anxiously. "I can't... do that, here. But if we find raw materials, I can patch it up the old-fashioned way. When you're done with the computer, do you think you could help me with that, too?"

     Rita's plan is pretty simple, once she consults her notes on the station's structure on her phone again, and peeks over Phreak's shoulder for more data on the damaged sections. "We don't need to fix all of it. But we should make sure the area with the teleporter is airtight, right? So we can open a portal to somewhere with air, and just fill it all up."

     After she's located the central generator with Hibiki, Rita starts hunting for raw materials in those storage areas. It doesn't need to be terribly sturdy- holding in a single atmosphere of pressure is a lot easier than holding out multiple, as in water. Building something that can survive micrometeorite impacts and the like can come later.

     Once she's got all the materials... "I read about this in one of Ms. Grier's books," Rita says in Hibiki's vague direction, as she works. "It's called 'cold welding'! When there's no air, and a smooth enough cut, two pieces of the same metal will just fuse together."

     Her tentacles can covertly supply 'a smooth enough cut'. Then she just has to apply her salvaged metal supplies to the holes like they're sticky notes, painstakingly making sure that the generator room, and a straight path between there to the Grassland ring, are fully airtight. She can test by breathing out little puffs of vapor and seeing whether they seep out.
Remee Halcyon @ROSE: There's some areas in sheep-memory that are coded as 'recharge stations', but those turn out to just be reasonably safe areas in the habitat with good grass for grazing.

@PETRA: Things get gradually colder as Petra circles around to the counter-clockwise end of the grasslands habitat - and at the end, there's a wall, seperating the two sections, along with an airlock between them. This airlock has power... but it's locked down, and won't respond to Petra's attempts to get it open.

@RITA: The cold welding goes well enough. Bit by bit, the string of rooms are vacuum sealed, and air can be brought into them by various means (presumably either letting some in from the grasslands habitat or firing up the teleporter to an air-rich environment).

It's not *perfect* - if someone opens the wrong bulkhead door, it'll all get sucked away. Might want to label those or something.

@HIBIKI: "Baaaaaaa."
Aidan Proudpick Aidan leaps down with ease, landing neatly on his feet. "Well, it looks like the animals aren't... weird. They just exist. I guess if you guys REALLY wanted to eat them, you could." He looks at Remee with some tripedation. But he keeps going. "I guess we should uh... make like a list? That's what we usually do when we are in a bunker. List all our resources, then figure out what is something we need to do right away? Get water, that sort of thing." He starts moving outside of the habitat LEST HE GET SHOT AGAIN.
Hibiki Tachibana     Phreak being in a good mood is--well, good. Getting the chance to flex his stuff like this, literally and metaphorically, after getting no-selled by that door must feel nice - though an eyebrow raises up as he gets to work and mutters to himself about his progress. Black hole time dilation...? Huh...between that and the talk of exactly how the animals here have been 'evolving'...

    "That long, huh..." She lets that line of thought continue for a moment, staring at the diagnostic feed, before promptly nodding. "...Alright, that's worth a shot. If nothing else, I guess we're gonna find out one way or another how these guys have been keeping going for this long. Just call if you run into any bears that actually can breathe in space, alright?"

    With that, her and her little friend go bounding off in the same direction as Rita - the core generator. When it's just the two of them (and their plus one), she allows a slight look of concern on her face that's almost definitely for Rita's sake, but doesn't vocalize that concern. Maybe also for her sake. The actual work is something else, though. Past a very brief frown at Liza's name, "Cold welding...? That's the first time I've heard of it. Let's go ahead and give it a try. Oh, one second--"

    Of course, she's gonna be helping Rita get everything where it's supposed to be, a whole lot faster than if she was working alone. And if there's one thing she can do, it's make sure all their would-be hole patchers are affixed /tight/. But there's one thing to do first.

    What Phreak asked. She's going to try and find the closest thing to a charging port in the room, and the closest thing to a cord she can find in all of this wool. "Turns out I didn't need to drag you along after all, little guy. Sorry about that. The least I can do is give you a top-up. Uh. Or maybe it's like eating, for you...?" If she can find both of those things, and they happen to match...then she'll borrow some of those 'raw materials' to give the cyborg-sheep something to perch on while it gets its full charge straight from the source.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "Yeah, of course," says Phreak to Rita. He probably means it, but she can tell that he's engrossed in poring over the computer right this minute. So much so that he doesn't even notice when she's gone off to the next room--and misinterprets Hibiki's comment about bears that can breathe in space.

     "Bercilak can't breathe in space," he says absently.

     "Well, well, well-well-well. That's a little of the answer, I guess." He flips through the images, holding down the button, watching as the slideshow plays out before him. Answers are so often in the last place you expect to find them.

<J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Mr. Phreak, you can set up the teleporter now. Dial it to somewhere with air, okay?"
<J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "We'll have to get real materials to fix up those walls soon, but that'll give us some breathing room."

     "I got you," he says, switching to the local broadband after looking over his shoulder and seeing no Rita.

     He heads over to the teleport control console, or otherwise accesses it from the one he's using, and pores over both the available commands and the available locations. 'Somewhere with air' is a priority, to be sure--but if possible, 'somewhere that's got air and is also not a horrible pain in the ass to get out of' is preferable. Not everyone is as agile as him, Hibiki, the ninjas or Rita, after all.
Rita Ma      When she and Hibiki are finally done with their work, Rita goes back and gently scores the vacuum-holding airlocks with an 'X', to prevent accidental breaches. It'll buff out.

     Just don't ask why her index finger carves steel.

     Then she sits back down near the central generator, arms crossed over her knees. She's obviously tired, but in good spirits, especially when air's properly restored.

     Then, after a few moments of rest, her expression drops to something contemplative. "Hibiki... you made sort of a face when I mentioned Ms. Grier's name, didn't you? Is everything alright between the two of you?"
Petra Soroka     Shouldn't there be a button here to open the airlock...? Maybe that can only be controlled from the center area, but that sure would make walking around here difficult on a day-to-day basis.

    Petra, pacing back through the grasslands and idly imagining how to improve her everyday life here, passes by Remee and realizes that she's not, actually, going to have an everyday life here, unless she asks for it. Worry flashes across her face, and the wraps her arms around her chest, tentatively calling out, "H-hey, Remee?"

    She takes a few steps closer. "Um. So, do you remember what I said before? About my, um, my living situation? I kind of...." Petra shakes her head and blushes, even though she couldn't identify why. "It was nice staying with you! I would really prefer to continue doing that here, if that's okay! If it's not a bother."
Remee Halcyon @HIBIKI: Direct charging the springy sheep works. It also seems to calm it down enough that it's no longer squirming. "Baaaa."

@PHREAK AND RITA: With some coordination from other Watch members, a suitable location is picked to link it up, and soon enough air starts flowing in and Phreak's lifehacks are no longer needed to keep everyone alive.

The process of Lilian-proofing the other end of the teleporter will have to wait till a later date.

@AIDAN: "Yeah, make a list..."

@PETRA: "... Oh! You..."

Remee tilts her head, and then remembers she's still in wolf form. Well, too late to swap out now, without looking awkward. "Well... are you really sure you want to stay here? I mean..."

"... I'm going to be like, running around here a lot. And eating stuff. And maybe howling, and - I mean, you don't really want a roommate that does all that, right?"

"I mean, if you *really* want to despite all that... sure, I guess?" she says.
Hibiki Tachibana     Once everything is set up, it's all in Phreak's very capable hands to handle the rest. She'll have to be ready for any mishaps that may or may not spring up, juuuuust in case. but Hibiki isn't terribly concerned. Being able to sit down again is nice. She chooses to do so close to the now-contented sheep.

    And the first thing she'd be doing is a relieved but contented sigh, if it weren't for Rita pointing that out. Her eyes go from closed to wide in that 'oh' sort of surprised way, apparently not having realized she made a face at all, before she glances off to the side. "Ah--uh...something happened between us the other day. We got into it a little bit, about some stuff involving Petra. But it's fine, I'm over it."

    She says that in a very curt and end-of-talk sort of way, and goes silent for all of three seconds after. And after that three seconds, it seems like she can't really just let being that dismissive with Rita of all people just sit. "...Alright, I'm not over it, and it involved me too."

    She idly rubs along the wooly creature's body while speaking, seemingly not able to look straight at Rita. "Me and her are basically complete opposites in the way we think, and I don't think we're ever gonna see eye to eye. I wanted to think otherwise for a while, but then..." She starts, trails off, then shakes her head. "...We're seriously not compatible at all."
Petra Soroka     Petra beams and bounces on her toes. "As long as we have a toilet! And showers. And closet space. And I guess we'd need to set up a kitchen, too, since I'm not going to be eating raw cyborg meat every day. Some way to import food..." She grins mischievously, "So if you can put up with a roommate that needs all that, then... I'd be more than happy to listen to your howling."

    Petra squats down and ruffles Remee's fur. "I think it'll be fun! You wouldn't want this whole station to yourself, anyways. "New and better things", right?" A careful paraphrase of Remee's speech last night, to avoid any mention of family.

    "Also, it *sucks* trying to keep the Kana clean enough to ferry people around in when I'm sleeping out of it. The last week, with John and everything, has been the first time it didn't smell like whatever I last microwaved." Petra giggles, pauses, then giggles again, uncontrollably.
Rita Ma      The bittersweet smile that Rita wears is familiar to her face. She looks off across the room, focusing her eyes on the most distant thing she can find.

     "Yeah. I think I understand exactly why you wouldn't get along, Hibiki. That was always a little too much to hope for. Even though you've both been really kind to me, that doesn't mean..."

     Her hands fidget. She flicks a couple of miniscule metal shavings out from under her fingernails.

     "... Well, I don't blame you. It makes me a little bit sad, but sometimes your friends just can't come together. You know?"
Hibiki Tachibana     Hibiki lets silence hang in the air for quite a while after that. One hand is still sifting through wool, the other is clenched tight into a fist in her lap. Eventually, she answers back with a quiet, "Yeah."

    She goes quiet again long enough to make it seem like she's not going to say anything else, but she does, with a noticably apologetic lean to her voice. "...Sorry, Rita. I don't want that to change anything. And it's not like I want you to be sad, either. I just..."

    The hand she had balled up loosens, just to go back to it that much more intensely. Neither of them are looking at each other, but her face is scrunched up just a bit. "...wish I could see her as the person who came with you to have that sleepover at my house, and not anything else. But I can't." A long inhale and a heavy exhale come before she slowly starts standing up.

    "...I'm gonna go make sure everyone is doing alright outside." They both know they're fine, but she gets to walking down the newly-made corridor anyway.

    "...Do me a favor and unplug him when he's done charging up," she murmurs back as she goes, in that apologetic tone again."