Futuristic Burning Sails [OPEN]

[SniperComZero]

...The short version or the long version? Seemed a little cliche, but, Olivia picked up her tablet for a sec', just so that she could check the time. They still had a little ways to go before they'd get to the station, so... "...Fuck it. Give me the long version." The more time he's talking about himself is the less time he's spending asking about her.

 

[Infab]

"H-How.... how did you...."

Eve tilted her head a bit, in a sort of inquisitive manner. Still, she remained upbeat. "Oh, my business cards have electronic interfaces implanted inside them in paper-thin layers. I can modify them by touch to say anything I wish." she replied, "Clever, isn't it?"

She tilted her head to the other side, resting almost clawed hands on the table between them. "As for how I know... the organization I work for deals in collecting information and secrets. I knew who you were long before I met you." Her voice grew quieter as she spoke of these private matters. "...It also helps that my employer has had her eye on you for some time. I'm sure she'd be delighted to know that I met you in the flesh. She's quite a fan of your journalistic work and points of view."

Meanwhile, Damien simply rolled his eyes as Katja spoke of the vodka and snacks. "The vodka is cheap, watered down shit we stole from a fringe Sol colony. Those snacks are old. Been in there for about five years." he explained briefly, before moving towards the lift to the crew quarters. He didn't seem too happy to be there. Likely because he was stuck babysitting his sister during the trip to Shadespear.

 

[Frankafurter]

Katja looks at Damien as he says something then skulks off to elsewhere, she looks at Amy and gives her a look, "He must be great at parties."

She sighs and throws the five year old packet of trash tier peanuts on the table and refocuses on Amy, "I don't expect people around here to really talk to me, it's not like I have any old war stories or common interests with them. So was there something in particular you wanted to ask?"

 

[joshuadim]

"Alright. Where to begin..." Vance muttered as he gathered his thoughts. Perhaps starting with the simple stuff would be best for such a long explanation, and that's what he decided on at first as he started to talk: "I'm old. Old enough to know 'Terra' as Earth, before we even began going out beyond the moon and back when humanity was still divided between many nation states... especially the big two superpowers. One of whom I fought, bled, and apparently in their eyes died for: the United States of America. As I believed back then, it was the embodiment of freedom and liberty for all the people that lived within and allied themselves with them and ultimately I was the country's greatest champion. A weapon for ideology and power. A super-soldier, if you will."

He leaned back in his chair and continued to speak, not breaking eye contact with Olivia as he did so. "Even countries with the best intentions always end up having the worst of skeletons in their closets, as I would find out after stopping a Soviet rocket, being launched into space, and drifting for all those years in... well, the SSOID doctors called it 'biologically induced cryostasis' but in any case... one day I was home with everything I knew around me and the next I woke up after hundreds of years of sleeping and apparently having crossed through a wormhole that flung me into another part of the galaxy entirely in that time. I've been catching up on most of history through texts and documents on the net, seeing what happened following after I disappeared. The wars, the atrocities, my own country partaking in both. Even though I've lived in this new now for a few years... I can't get over any of it. The future I mean."

He then chuckled motioning with a hand in a vague gesture that meant everything around him: "I mean, hell. I wish I could tell my friends and family about all this. Everything now would have been like utter sorcery to everyone back then. They couldn't even begin to dream of such concepts like interstellar travel and yet I'm the only one here to witness it when everyone else I had known are now ghosts. Ironic."

He then sighed and shook his head, "Obviously, I signed up with the SSOID after returning to reality for a short time. Hoping that maybe if I could throw myself back in the field I could... adjust to my situation. But all I saw was just the same old crap that I knew back then, only its worse now. It hit me that I had traded one shit government for another, only that the latter now had laser weapons and robots and all sorts of other future stuff. It's why Nat, the uh... the only person I actually know here, is on the run from Sol. The stuff that transpired and was unearthed... it made me realize that I needed to learn how to actually live again. And so I drifted from place to place until I ended up on VOC-1. Met a good man there, probably the best friend I ever had in all this, before... well, you know."

He then stayed silent for a moment before shrugging his shoulders. "So, I hope that covered pretty much all my bases."

 

[Breadman]

"Nothing in particular." Amy shrugged "Only person I have history with is Valk and the kanad bounty hunter you might have seen around. The robot one." She paused for a moment realizing that she may be talking to someone who has never seen other species till recently. "The shorter ones. Look like....what was it? Sharks? Those were still around back then right?"

 

[Frankafurter]

Katja stares at Amy, "Sharks were still around back then but I think they were an endangered species by then, but the uh... Kanads? I have no idea, the timeframe I'm from, humanity still thought it was alone in the galaxy. The colony ship I was on launched in the early 2160s, before the uh... what did they call it? First Contact War? There was no Sol Government yet, it was still the UNGSI. We were only supposed to be in cryostasis for maybe five years with a ten year margin of error, so that might give you an idea of just how wrong they were about that projection. I honestly don't know what went wrong or why I was the only survivor, I never got to see the state of the ship after I woke up, but it must have been pretty clapped out by the time the Reavers picked me out of its interior. And they didn't bring anyone else with them so I can only guess what the corpses looked like in the pods."

She leans back a little and unfolds her arms to rub her hands together a little bit, "I mean, I'm just some bumpkin mechanic from a village out in the woods in Finland, so I couldn't even begin to explain the things that could have gone wrong. Honestly, the mech they brought out with me, I didn't even know the ship was carrying it in the cargo bay, they told me I was just going to be operating the power-loader mech to move cargo off the ship when we arrived. I mean they trained me back on Earth for the systems in the mech but I thought it was just part of the like... regimen for serving on the crew since maybe they were gonna send a combat mech along after we established the colony. Some limited personal combat training too, mostly just to shoot straight when it mattered and how to keep the guns we were given clean, familiarization of the weapons being shipped with us for defenses, that stuff."

She looks down at the slung PDW on her hip, "Though, this isn't exactly a gun I'm familiar with, but I figure guns haven't changed too drastically since my time, at least the mechanical ones. I don't know if you got Martian Deathrays or Venusian Manmelters or whatever science fiction thing that's probably the common method for aliens to kill humans. Honestly, given that this is still a lead slinger, I'd say shooting high speed bits of metal never went out of style even in the far flung future."

 

[Breadman]

Amy listened to Katja as she ranted on about her issues with the present. As she spoke some questions were answered. She was from before humanity made first contact. From a place called Finland, likely one of the petty nations Sol was fractured into before unifying. Why she survived when others didn't isn't something the bounty hunter wouldn't ask. Space is big and has hidden traps in all that space. The stories of dead hunks of lost ships, drifting around and being a complete mystery for everyone is a common story among travelers and explorers. Nobody in Katja's place would know why they survived, unless they deliberately caused it. Which in her case would make very little sense given the timing.

"Martian Deathrays and Venusian Manmelters?" She raised an eyebrow "I've only ever heard those terms when the kids got into my wife's vintage holovid collection. We're not at that level yet." She shook her head "Lasers are good, but aren't instant death unless juiced enough. But when talking about plasma, that melts through most things when you hit them."

 

[SniperComZero]

Vance was talking for, uh. Kinda a while. Enough time for Olivia to have kicked back and put her feet back up on the table. "Y'know, you head out far enough east--" does the term 'east' even work when space has no cardinal direction? "--then you're bound to find people who still call Terra as Earth. Granted, I think that's one part old culture to three parts 'piss Sol off', so, make of it what you will."

"But, y'know what they say. More shit changes, more it stays the same. Sol does a bunch of bad shit in order to liberate and protect people, but. Shit. 'least Sol probably half-believes that they're helping things with the fuckin' messes that they make-- and that's coming from someone who hates their guts. With them I can at least look at 'em and be like, hey, it's mostly incompetence and power hungry groups of assholes dragging each other back into the bucket. Even if spook assholes like you and that other bitch really, really shake that some times."

"...Anyways. I'd love to say I've got some elaborate, tragic backstory, but it isn't really all that special. Grew up on Mars. Only child, mom died after birth, dad tried his damnedest to take care of me, flunked my dumb ass through school and didn't really have many good prospects ahead of me, so, y'know. Military, right? Turned out I was a pretty fuckin' handy mech op." A barely amused breath left Olivia's nose. "Kinda like my own super soldier. 'Cept, the only thing that makes me worth barely more than a pile of shit's the fact I can make a big hunk of metal move good. Got shipped off on the Ex-Fleet to 'peace keep' around the old Creed territories. I-- uh. Fuckin', you were OID, you probably know better what happened there than I do, and I was fuckin' there."

Olivia's fingers were drumming across her thigh. "...Got discharged, and never really could get myself used to civvie life. Headed out into RQ, did odd jobs and short contracts. Figured I'd just be stopping on that colony for a week or two at most, a~aand. Here we are. That's the long and short of it, anyway."

"At least with you, you had the good luck of probably knowing anyone you used to know thought you were a hero. Better luck of not having to find out whether they actually did or not."

 

[Frankafurter]

Katja cracks a rare smile at Amy, "Sorry, I used to spend time reading comics as a kid, it was how I improved my English skills besides the rather comprehensive courses in school. Mostly comics from well before my time, American ones." She puts on a faux heroic voice, "Captain Astro in: Revenge of the Martians!" she gives a chuckle, "It always amazed me how humanity had such a wild imagination for what fifty years let alone one hundred years into the future may have looked like to them. Flying cars, ray guns, rocket ships that could traverse the galaxy in hours while only using conventional propulsion..."

Katja frowns a bit and looks down at her hands, "It all seemed so optimistic and hopeful, it's just a shame the reality of what the future held was so disappointing. More wars over land, religion, money, and resources, culminating into a third world war that nearly wiped everyone out. I think after the third, humanity realized it needed to stop fighting each other and start making actual progress because we had long since outgrown the cradle we were in. Earth was running out of room, resources, and time. We started pouring nearly everything into space programs and faster-than-light travel research, we started sending our first test jumps out shortly after, by the time I signed on for the Ardent Pilgrim mission, there had already been limited success in colonization efforts of the rest of our home solar system. I obviously don't know what happened after that personally, but the things I've read and have been told so far during my recovery, doesn't sound too ideal to me."

 

[Breadman]

"We got our shit together to meet our neighborhood and spread our problems there. Some colonies struck out on their own, while others kept with Sol." Amy shrugged "It's far from perfect, but small comfort is that we're not living in the worst case scenario at least." Amy looked to the rest of the room for a second before saying anything again. "Captain Astro huh? I never read or watched much of it, more of a fan of foreign media like the Ayr animations and soap operas. But I remember that name being very big time sounding. Was it Lance Astro? Or was it Chance? Vance?"

 

[joshuadim]

Spook asshole. Vance wasn't entirely fazed by Olivia's descriptor of him but it also made him feel a pang of guilt with the reminder that he did fight on what he now realized was the wrong side, both then and now. As he listened to Olivia speak he realized that she too had been used as a tool, and it almost felt as though the two felt the same about it. When she finished he gave a slow nod: "Being used as a tool for someone else's agenda is not a good feeling. Reading through the history archives made me realize how bad everything was and how, with all my good intentions, all that I ended up doing was perpetuate it. Especially when I realized the governments of the world tried to *copy* what I am, unsuccessfully I might add, to try to gain an edge in their own pursuits of power. That ended up with the Gene Wars because they wanted more like me when I wasn't there."

He then looked aside for a moment, "How many lives I could've prevented from being lost if I hadn't been on that damn rocket." he said softly, "How things would've been different." He then returned his attention back to Olivia, "I don't think you're a 'pile of shit'. You feel guilt about these kinds of things, I do understand. Hell, you might be able to make up for that with *this*," He motioned around towards the ship itself, "Taking down the lunatics that took down VOC-1 and making a wrong into a right in this galaxy. Maybe that's how you'll be a hero. What do you think?"

 

[Frankafurter]

Katja nods a bit, "Yeah, something like that, Captain Astro was a comic series that had been around for a long time. Him, Lady Venus, all those characters sort of were banded together to fight the baddies of the star system. Though early on some of his issues were him fighting more terrestrial threats to America, like the Nazis and Soviets. I used to have some digital copies on my datapad, but the whole thing was fried when the Reavers found me so all the data on it was gone."

Katja rolls her shoulders and sighs, "Maybe on Shadespear, someone will be selling old digital copies, who knows. The boss lady kinda gave me a stipend of money to start with but I was gonna save that for buying combat equipment or if I get lucky and find someone who can handle it, a repair job for my implant. I just don't have much faith in finding someone who can fix it though."

 

[Viper Actual]

Upon boarding the Mordred there wasn't much for Nathalie to do but wait for the group to arrive at Shadespear. Unlike some of the others, Nat remained inside the cargobay seemingly readying her gear in peace rather than spend the time chit-chatting.
This would not be the first time she had visited the infamous station though unlike the previous times there were no covert kill-team, network of undercover sources or a stealthed SSOID frigate standing by to help her out should the assignment go bad or her identity get made.

Nathalie sighed. Instead, she'd have to rely on the Reavers for backup. Or rather, I'd be part of their backup.

As far as the assignment went Nathalie would not be hesitant to carry out whatever orders she was given. Whether they'd be morally correct or not was not of her concern as completing this mission would bring all of them closer to Anora.
Thinking about it made a part of Nathalie feel hopeful as bringing someone of Anora's reputation to justice would surely bear some merit to it though in reality Nathalie knew that her world would never be the same.

Sighing once again Nathalie's thoughts faded away. As the Mordred launched from its mothership she went to find some company, stepping into the bar but stopping at its door. From behind her visor she observed the others before seating herself at an empty table away from the others. Nat loosened her mask and visor, revealing her face, icy blue eyes and pursed lips.

 

[SniperComZero]

For how she was listening, Olivia didn't look entirely convinced by Vance's words. She was pretty stoic in her disposition. Except one thing. Getting used as a tool. That one seemed funny to her. Somehow.

"What I think?" She shrugged, arm slung over the back of her chair. "You, me, this little crew, sure. We'll probably be heroes to each other. Rest of the galaxy? Half of it'll probably be resentful we took out that terrorist bitch since she was moppin' up pirates, and staying out of their territory, and nothin' changes. Other half, I dunno. Probably get cleared of the colony drop thing, and they'll forget about us in a week. Probably'll still be hounding after us anyway for, y'know. Piracy. God knows OID'll still be up your ass and her ass once this is all done."

 

[ANIMAL MOTHER]

"Taking down the lunatics that took down VOC-1 and making a wrong into a right in this galaxy. Maybe that's how you'll be a hero. What do you think?"

"Except the work we do does not produce heroes." sternly interrupts a voice walking towards the table Vance and Olivia are seated at. Typhon emerges from the doorway holding a mess tin in his hand, and shoves a spoonful of some greyish-purple slop into his mouth with the other. Without even asking either, he pulls out a seat and sits with them as he continues eating that strangely colored gruel.

"For VOC-1, consider simple revenge instead of heroics." he says in between bites. "It's much more achievable here."

 

[joshuadim]

Vance wanted to reply to Olivia but a sudden interruption changed his attention to Typhon as he looked over the doctor for a moment. "Your work, you mean? There is no we in that matter." he replied. "I'm after justice, since no other authority else seems to be going after it for what happened." he then said, "Revenge isn't my main priority." A half-truth, as he did want to personally see to it that Anora and everyone else that followed her be grounded to dust for what they did. Such desires however he suppressed with a drilled in mindset that he always needed to put his wants second to what was needed elsewhere. Besides, at some points justice and revenge do cross paths when push comes to shove... or so Vance justified to himself as he let the thought run through his head.

He then leaned in forward, not taking his gaze off the doctor: "I'm here only to right the wrong that has been committed not just against me, or you, or anyone else here on that ship but for the innocent people who barely made it out alive. The same innocent people you wanted guns pointed at when they were scared and tired after surviving a massacre. So no, I am not one of you pirates."

 

[ANIMAL MOTHER]

" So no, I am not one of you pirates."

Typhon slowly ate his gruel as Vance talked him down, lifting his eyes up to meet his once he was done speaking. "Oh, that much was clear already," he says while wiping his mouth with a napkin. "From the moment you threatened us just for being cautious with unknowns after the captain, my employer, and her family had been marked for death." Another spoonful goes in. "Now please, save your frustration for those vampires. It wasn’t I who brought the station down.”

 

[SniperComZero]

Olivia was halfway tempted to just up and out before their argument got messy. But, she'd humor herself. If it got messy, then it might be fun to watch, anyway. "...He does kinda have a point." She canted her head in the direction of Typhon. "Fuckin' no one's gonna be lookin' at us like heroes, so there's no point trying to act like one." She was taking the more pragmatic approach between them both. "...Granted." Her head turned fully to face Typhon, now. "I don't like being a pirate. Something feels off about it enough already. I hope to god that your employer ain't considering getting into shit like torching civvies and people peddling. I'm a merc. Not a monster."

 

[Breadman]

"Digital you can acquire from any library on the net, but if you want something physical, good luck. The wars made getting anything like that almost impossible." Amy rubbed the bridge of her nose remembering just how much she spend on certain figures of her collection "...I have killed people to get some of those damn figures." She realized "Not the pettiest thing I've bought with blood money, but goddamn..."

 

[Viper Actual]

"Here I thought that jarheads were supposed to numbingly optimistic," said Nathalie as she suddenly seated herself at the same table as Vance, Olivia and Typhon.
Yet again she had managed to move in an eerily silent way, using the ongoing conversation as a cover.
"We'll be heroes to those that survived VOC-1. None of those people will get their lives back," she paused and glanced at Vance, nodding, before lookig at Olivia and Typhon. "The rest of the galaxy can burn as far as I'm concerned."

Nathalie shrugged. "Or at least go back to their respective holes. Anora might hunt pirates, sure, but she's clearly shown that she's not afraid to get messy if she wants to. That behaviour could get even worse and if she's getting backed up Upyri intelligence it'll take a long time before her day of recknoning arrives."

 

[Frankafurter]

Katja nods to Amy's statement and notices the sort of cold front coming from the table of the four others, she rolls her neck to get a hitch out of it and looks at Amy, "I don't know if I can do this lifestyle, it's not that I can't fight, it's just that... I dunno, this isn't the sort of life I would have preferred. I've never actually killed anyone, injured sure, but never killed. I have the training and now the equipment, but I dunno if I have the actual mentality to follow through on well... murdering someone."

She looks down at her hands and interleaves her fingers to start twiddling her thumbs slowly in thought, "I guess inside a mech there's a certain level of... detachment from the situation, but up close and personal? I dunno, just hits different to me." She looks at Amy, "I'm sure if it comes down to life or death, I'll choose life, but it'll probably take some getting used to. Never really considered life as a pirate or even just a petty criminal. I mean the most illegal thing I ever did was street racing back home and the occasional barfight, but never something like this."

 

[Breadman]

"Let me give advice I give to anyone who was thrusted into this type of life. You're going to do fine." Amy said as she tore her eyes from the counter now that she's processed her new problem "Stay with the crew, since its your best shot at cleaning your name." She turned her head to Katja and spoke with a calm tone "And once you're cleared...just run. Run as far away from this life as you can." Her eyes shifted around the room to see who was there. "A bunch of us have some damage that keeps us at it. Me, I started because I wanted to strike back at my father and was prayed on by a recruiting officer with a pretty face. Fifty years later, here I am in a mess half-someone else and half-mine in the making. Maybe I'll finally leave it after this or maybe I'll be back a year later. Who knows?" She shrugged.

"I'm not gonna bullshit you, chances are that you will kill someone sooner or later. There are very few people on pirate crews that haven't done it. But you have a chance to get out. For better or for worse, to the people in charge, you're a ghost and can slip through their fingers. Keep that in focus and it will make things easier to swallow." The bounty hunter leaned on the counter, trying to stop her roll as she felt she was becoming like a teacher giving a student a lecture "Hell, if you want...I can try and hook you up with someone to kickstart that life once I'm no longer burned."

 

[Frankafurter]

"I mean, I have no name to clear right now. As far as I know, no one knows I exist outside of this crew. I could run now, but I don't think I'd get very far given the sort of summaries of this part of the galaxy. I can't go home to Earth, there's nothing there for me anymore. And worse yet, while Easel said the brain damage itself was mostly fixed, the actual implant is damaged and if I try to utilize it to pilot the mech, I could very well die or worse, become a vegetable." Katja looks down at her hands again, her eyebrows knitting slightly, it's might not be so peculiar that she finds death a better alternative to being incurably braindead and on life support, even with all the advances in modern medical sciences regarding neural damage repair and such. She reaches back and idly adjusts the PDW slung to her side to get it to stop bumping her thigh as her foot bobs up and down in an anxious tic.

She looks at the others, then refocuses on the woman she's currently speaking to, "If all this blows over and I have an exit plan, I'd probably just try to do what I originally signed up for with the Ardent Pilgrim mission. I'll find some fledgling colony that'll have me and put the skills I was given to use. I'm sure a combat mech like the one I have and maybe the inclusion of a basic modular industrial mech design would let me help out with whatever the potential colony needs be it agriculture, forestry, or mining. Hell, maybe go swords into ploughshares with the combat mech and have it refitted to be a utility role. I just don't want to make a career of my current 'employment' situation."

 

[Emperor Sagan]

I knew who you were long before I met you. In that moment, Shelby felt very small, an insect trapped beneath an ever expanding microscope as the implications emerged all at once. A breath came to him finally, which he let out calmly, a sort of mental block engaging that forced his mounting anxiety to level before reaching a potentially frightening summit. He didn't even need tranquilizers. Or were those the hallucinogenics? He couldn't remember anymore. All that he seemed to know were the words bouncing around his head, spoken a moment earlier by Eve.

"A fan," he repeated, quiet and subdued, but reaching for that simple, easy rationale that stood out. Yes, a fan. That he understood. Everyone was a fan. Well, not everyone, but they would be if they heard of him. All the rest were just people who didn't like music, or dancing, or... or him. But that was because they didn't know him for who he was, they only disliked him because of the corporate label. Certainly, that had to be it.

Like an aged computer rebooting, he blinked hard and took another breath. "I-I... I'm happy she is a fan. Not um... not everyone is." So, someone higher up in the Black Masks was a fan. And by proxy, which always seemed more sincere, as anyone could say that to his face or just want to enjoy the excitement of being in line for a meeting. A real fan. A dangerous fan, not like the kind with loose hands, but legitimately dangerous, on perhaps a level he could not comprehend. Dangerous like the people who could drop a colony station from orbit and frame it on someone else type of dangerous. The almost juvenile level of pride threatened to overcome the shock in that instant, but the emotions were too subdued, under the invisible hold of the blankness which sometimes overcame him in these moments, the same sensation when he had nearly been struck in an assassination attempt all those years ago, or killing those soldiers on VOC-1.

"I'm... glad," he managed, remembering to speak again.

 

[Infab]

The lift up to the third deck slowed to a stop, the whining of the cables and wiring ceasing as the door slid open. Damien stepped out, looking down the hallways to his left and right. To the right, a dully lit hall with a metal grate floor that clacked when you stepped on it. Either side of the hall was lined with various doors. The crew quarters. His was at the far end, near the front of the ship next to a small hatch that lead to a tangled mess of wiring and other equipment which was all attached to the equipment below on the bridge.

In the other direction, the communal showers and restroom, as well as a hall leading towards the captain's quarters. His mother would normally be in there, doing something he didn't care about instead of focusing on their collective work. He stepped out, turning right and heading down the hallway between the individual crew quarters. Eventually, however, he paused. Right outside a certain room. It was the one his sister always used, normally marked by a yellow sticky note that read STAY THE FUCK OUT in red marker. It was still there, taped to the door with strips of clear packing tape.

He stepped closer to the door, resting his shoulder against the door's frame. Then, he spoke. "...You already know that I don't plan on tailing your ass around Shadespear. If you get yourself into something messy, that's on you... And we both know you will. Just a matter of time." he said, just loud enough for her to hear through the door.

He was met with silence on the other side. He knew why. She was probably sulking. "If you plan on crying in your room the whole time, though, be my guest. You're just cementing yourself as a colossal fuck-up, who bothers everyone around her by doing stupid shit. You have no friends because every time you try to make any, you fuck things up. Better you don't even try, right?"

More silence. But after a few moments, he did hear something. Movement. Then, the metal slab door slid open. Lauren stood there, glaring at Damien. Damien straightened up, stepping away from the doorway. "Touched a nerve, didn't I?" he said, his expression remaining as serious as ever.

A second later, Lauren's fist smashed into his nose. Shattering his glasses, and forcing him to stumble backwards into the door across from her room. "Fuck you." spat Lauren, as Damien cluched his face. She stepped out, her boot crushing the remains of his shattered glasses, before storming down the hallway towards the elevator. Whiping her face with her shirt.

She stepped out of the elevator into the lounge a minute later. She looked about. She needed to find someone to talk to. She needed to prove her bastard brother wrong. Everyone seemed to be busy talking to one another, save for Vixaya off in the corner. Bingo. There was someone. Maybe she could make up for before too.

She strolled across the room, past the others that were chatting, before sitting down near Vixaya. "Hey, Vix." she said, "I really love what you did with your disguise. You look like a totally different person. I just kinda slung on some punk clothes and dyed my hair. Not the kind of person to try and blend in, really."