Mark was too busy going over his notes to reply to Kelly, aside from a low grunt of acknowledgement. On his datapad, the former journalist was acting a lot more like an active journalist. He was making organizational charts, bridging related events and people, drawing possible correlations, and also playing a quick game of 'SquidSweeper' in another tab.

Mark's beer sat in front of him, begging to be drank as it gushed tears of disappointed condensation onto the bar. Mark ignored this and continued his plying until suddenly he spoke up, looking at the cieling as he did, "Hey. When exactly is the new ship supposed to be ready, again?"

Viki held her second beer. She downed her first one instant it was set on table in front of her. Now she really felt like getting drunk. Maybe even having sex with someone. But that could wait, since now she was curious. She looked at newest member of the crew. The white-haired nekovalkyrja. "Well hello ther. I am Viki adn you can call me Viki." She presented herself to newcomer. "So who are you now?" She asked not holding back at all.

Lucien's life (as planned on a barmat) seemed to have the following things on it: "Start, Try to Relax, Get Drunk, Get Shit Interrupted, Have Meddling Bitch be Responsible, Harbour Feelings of Revenge, Repeat until dead."
Given that the Scotsman was drunk for at least half of his waking hours, this vicious cycle was set to repeat itself, and it seemed as though he knew more skills while under the influence then out of it.

His liver was more or less accustomed to it by now, the steady cycle of sleeping, waking up, the first drink of the day, work, the afternoon pick-me-up, lunch, more work, drinks with the team after work, going home and falling asleep, repeating the process.

However, that delicate cycle had been interrupted by today's events, and his barmat scrawled cycle only seemed to make sense to the as-of-now happily inebriated Scot.

"I..." He started drawling while looking at everyone present in the room, "Love every single one of ya..." He was wholeheartedly referring to the Atuan team present, before he swivelled towards Camellia with a slight lurch, "Ecschept you... erm... wots yer name?"

Naturally, the drunken Scot was making a marvellous first impression on the professional. The only excuse the Scotsman had was that of being Nepleslian, and stressed out by the day's events.

The nekovalkryja in question, previously unconscious, found herself staring into the eyes of the walking machine intelligence, but felt like she could not do much about it. Her body still felt a bit unresponsive, and would need a few minutes to 'reboot' or so to speak.

"Where am I?" Taela finally asked once she felt confident enough to speak without failing miserably. "Last I remember. . . you were. . . Weren't you the one driving that car or something?"

Camellia narrowed her exposed red eye at the drunken scotsman, she's met her share of drunks at bars and dealt with them too, but she wasn't in the mood to tumble him, so she did the next best thing and ignored him to respond to Viki.

"I'm Camellia," she replied, "Ex-star army, Ex-SAINT. Freelance." She said off handed as she took a drink of beer. "I'm a powered armor pilot."

"Powered armor?!" Mark guffawed and butted into the conversation in one move, "I thought this was a Mecha unit? Then again, it's nice to see someone else who doesn't pilot Mechs. I was starting to feel stupid being the only person not to know how."

Viki looked at woman sitting nearby. So she was ex Yamatai soldier? Spy none the less. "So let me get this clear. You are ex-soldier of nation that stick dicks in everyone elses bussiness and soldier of unit that sticks bussiness in bussiness of pretty one everything there is right?" She asked then. It was very very insulting. But Viki planned it to be. She looked Camelia straight in the eye and took big swig of her beer.

"I was apart of the Fifth Ex fleet." Camellia said with no short sense of pride. "We were the nicest fleet in the military. Until they defected and became the United Outer Colonies, but that was after I retired from Military service and joined Saint." Camellia said, tiling her head to the side, letting her drape of hair fall away from her covered eye, but it was closed, so her heterochromia was still hidden.

"And the only thing I remember from Saint was trying to hook the former sky marshal up with a YSE Taisa." She said with a shrug and a sip.

Okay Viki had to admit that it seemed like lady was no stuck up bitch. WHile she listen to Camelia she typed a message to Kelly.



She then raised her head just in time to respond to Camelia. "Oh, and how did that worked out? That would be one föhlich pairing." VIki said and chuckled.

The semi-solid volumetric image that Zophia had watching over Taela gave a faint and pleasant smile. "You're in your living quarters aboard Dawn Station right now." The AI's smile only got larger however as the small Neko pointed out with a question how she was the instigator of the earlier mess. "Yes, I was behind that whole mess, but I didn't mean anything bad by it at all." she honestly replied. The AI's hand moved to brush aside a few strands of hair on Taela's face, the volumetric fingers flickering slightly as they made contact. Though they appeared to be roughly around the same age, the AI displayed an almost motherly expression as she bent over the Neko.

"I'm just trying my best to make it up to you all. I had to figure out a place to begin though." she started to explain. "If you're curious as to where your friends have went though, they're right here." Zophia spoke, transmitting the crew's location directly to the Neko.

"I suppose you'll be wanting me to leave soon, but before I go, there's a few things I need to tell you." The AI spoke, stepping back. "First, Ged will wake up soon, and it'd be nice if you were all there for him when he does. Second, I'm shipping you some new weapons that R&D had been working over that was meant for the new series coming out."

"You'll love them, I'm sure of it."

*****

"I'm not sure when the ship's supposed to be up and running yet. We did kinda bail on that AI before she could tell us." Kelly replied to Mark. The relatively young man wanted to blast the newcomer to small bits with questions, but he held back. He was the team leader after all...but the itch! It just wouldn't go away! "I suppose they're assigning us power armors now because of what nearly happened last we sortied. Remember how they literally swarmed over us?" he added on tentatively.

Itch-itch-itch!

Camellia then spoke of one of her previous missions, matchmaking a SAoY Taisa and the Sky Marshal. She had succeeded in breaking Kelly's resolve, something that was very difficult to do.

"Objection! I'm calling bullshit on SAINT playing Matchmaker with people unless you got a kickass story to go with it!" he exclaimed, pointing a finger at her in a hammy gesture. As soon as he challenged her to tell the story, the dark skinned Nepleslian reached into his pocket to view the message that Victoria had sent him. "Oh, sorry, hang on." His moment busted by the Abwehran woman, he viewed and thought his reply over before sending it her way.



As he finished, he looked up and at Camellia again. "So yeah, tell us about it."