YSS Heartbreaker, Wardroom
Sayoko's expression, for a moment, was that of pure shock as she caught sight of a Nekovalkyja whose....unique coloration made Katsumi's look positively standard in comparison.
Polka-dots and a tail? That's...not something one would typically expect in a Type 33 Nekovalkyja created by the Star Army. As she began drafting a report to her superiors about the occurrence - sighing at the less-then-professional antics of her fellow crewmates in the background - the SAINT Neko's work on the aforementioned report came to an abrupt interrupted by the arrival of the Taii.
After resuming her seat, however, all thoughts of her crewmate's unusual appearance were pushed to the wayside as Tsukisaki-Taii began the briefing in earnest. As she took note of both the
system the
Heartbreaker was in and the
planet it was approaching, a faint smile graced Sayoko's expression as she recalled memories of her time in the Xiulurian Rainforest Training Reserve - though said smile quickly vanished, for two anomalies had occurred to the SAINT operative as she pondered the cause for the beacon's activation.
Although Matonaka-Heisho had voiced the first - namely, why the supposedly-unexplored system and planet had already been named - the second (and far more important) of the two discrepancies hadn't.
According to the highly-classified SAINT dossier that Sayoko had memorized prior to embarkation, Uesu's fleet had (in theory) passed through the system
seven years ago in YE 30 - meaning that the five-year-old beacon shouldn't have been there.
Despite this rather critical revelation, however, the Santô Hei had no intention of informing the Taii, for her handler in Intelligence (her
true "commanding officer," regardless of whatever the rest of the Star Army believed) had been crystal-clear in her orders that Sayoko was forbidden from disclosing the dossier's contents to
anyone, no matter what the situation - and if there was one thing that the young Neko could do, it was following orders.
Even if those orders led herself and her crewmates into an ambush...