RP: Cirrus Station [Post Episode 3] A Pleasant Invitation

Evening, a day after the events on Prilisa IV...

Head Administrator Cassefin Montreal, dressed back in her usual Cirrus Station regalia of brown vest, black slacks under a open Cirrus Station lab coat, hurried down the corridor leading to the Cirrus Station Security quarters. She had her glasses back on, her left hand busily holding the lenses still while her right arm, still in the translucent sling, hung silently across her midriff. Cassefin was busily reading away at the multitudes of information whizzing by on her volumetric glasses, but paid attention to where she was walking...enough attention to verbally reprimand a slacking on-duty CSS members while she trekked onwards, determined, just as she always was.

"Great. Now where the hell am I?"

Claire walked down the hallway at a brisk pace, irritated that she now had to navigate a station that she didn't know the layout of. And everyone else was either busy or they weren't inviting conversation.

However, in her mutterings, she was only half-paying attention to where she was going. She was trying to find a map or something remotely useful on the same device she had used earlier to speak to her previous superior. By that token, she truly didn't pay attention as she rounded the corner... Running right into Montreal by accident. She collided with her and stumbled backwards, managing to catch herself before she fell backwards. She blinked, looking at who she just kamikazied. "Agh.. I'm sorry. I didn't see you. You ok?"

Cassefin was caught off-guard by the sudden collision, and as a result wobbled backwards onto her rump. Her hand went up, flinging her glasses into the air as she yelped in surprise. "H-hey!" The Head Administrator began turning red in the face as she looked back up at Claire, fierce red irises burning hot. "Watch where you're going, buffoon!" The Head Administrator helped herself up, dusting herself off and taking a deep breath, hastily reaching to retrieve her spectacles, which had fallen at Claire's feet.

"Sorry, miss. I'm just trying to find somewhere to stay for a while since it looks like I'm stuck here for a while." Claire frowned at her. Has she seen this woman before? She may have been back planetside, but everything then was a blur so she had barely remembered anyone. Damn her indiscriminate memory.

Seeing her reach for her glasses she reached down first and picked them up, handing them to the snappy woman. "There you go. Again, sorry for hitting you. Hope I didn't hurt you." She smiled faintly. What she was smiling about wasn't clear, as it didn't look apologetic. When she handed her her glasses, she had done so with her scarred hand, completely forgetting to hide the odd marking on her palm. She quickly realized this however and pulled it back quickly once the glasses were out of her hands.

Cassefin glared at the woman in front of her. “Feh!” she spat as she snatched her glasses from Claire’s grasp. “You wouldn’t be able to hurt me if you tried…” Cassefin’s haughty voice trailed off as she replaced the spectacles on her face. When they were positioned to her liking, the Head Administrator took a deep breath to calm herself before returning her attention back to the CSS member before her. “You are Winters, correct? Claire Winters?” Cassefin asked…although from the tone of her voice, it sounded as if she was already decided on exactly who the young woman before her was.

"Hehehe... Of course I couldn't hurt you. I'm a marine aren't I?" Claire's amused sarcasm wasn't very well concealed, but at least there was nothing condescending about it. She didn't believe in personal insults. Why fight with someone when you can just amuse yourself with them? Either way, it seemed she had found an interesting specimen. "Yes, that's me. Don't let my name fool you, I'm not that cold." Her expression hadn't changed, so it was hard to tell if she was joking about that or not. "And you are...?"

“Hmph! I’m your superior, Claire. Head Administrator Cassefin Montreal,” Cassefin said, pride swelling within her. “It’s good that I found you, Winters. I’m here to inform you that your old squad is being relocated, and you are now a part of Cirrus Station Security Squad #35,” the Head Administrator said, her words leaving little room for the poor marine to argue. “If you would follow me, I just so happen to be visiting your squad leaders…you can get acquainted with them there. So, let’s go.”

With that, Cassefin brushed past Claire and forward through the hallway, making tracks towards Dream’s Shrine in the old armory a corridor or so away from the security personnel quarters.

"Ah... miss Montreal.. of course..." Claire began to laugh as she haughtily moved past her. This would be an interesting place. Nevertheless, she followed after biting her tongue so Cassefin wouldn't get too mad at her for laughing. The geshrin woman followed her, but at her own pace. Somehow her easygoing stride managed to keep up with Montreal's pace. "Though my real superior just kinda left me hanging. I think you'll do a much better job here. I'm already looking forward to it." Claire smiled again. She seemed happy to be getting away from the boring post back planetside. Also: She was happy that she wasn't being grilled for being a security guard at a place that was dealing in slave trading.

“Yes yes, I’m certain it’s truly a pleasure for you. Now hustle it up,” Cassefin said, just as they turned the corner into view of the bulkhead door to Dream’s Freespacer Shrine.

Standing outside the door, was the tall graceful figure of Serra, the resident Elysian engineer. She was apparently waiting and looked annoyed while standing outside the door. A large something tucked under one arm.

Cassefin paused as she caught sight of Serra, giving the unaware Elysian a stern stare. She took another breath, as if preparing herself to engage in a no-doubt-unwanted conversation with the elegant angel. “Serra,” Cassefin said in singular acknowledgment, straightening the pair of glasses across her nose and reluctantly running the fingers of her good hand through her vibrant red hair. “Is your squad captain in here?”

"Yes she is," came the calm reply from the Elysian Patriarch, not even turning to look at Cassifin. Taking a small measured breath, Serra raised her free hand up to her face and pushed her own glasses up her nose bridge. After she lowered her arm she turned her lavender eyes to the Administrator and Claire. "Captain Dream is undergoing a 'purification ritual' to rid herself of the planet's contaminants." She said calmly, as she now turned to face the two smaller women. "She told me it would take several hours at least for her to be completely free of the things she picked up on the planet."

“That’s great. Really, terrific,” Cassefin stated blandly paying no attention to Claire. When the Head Administrator attempted to move past the large Elysian, she was mildly annoyed to find that she couldn’t budge her. “Would you kindly remove yourself?” Cassefin said venomously. “I need to speak with your captain immediately.”

"I'm sorry, Captain Dream gave me explicit orders to keep anyone out." Serra said to the smaller administrator. "She has a chunk of live plutonium in the middle of her chest and she's using waste radiation to clean herself of microbes from the planet." Serra muttered. The room is probably not safe for any of us to enter ‘till she is finished and removes the vented radiation."

The fiery-haired Head Administrator narrowed her eyes at the Elysian blocking her access, not sure whether she believed her or not. Cassefin stared directly at Serra, in hopes to break some of that will and forcer her to step aside…of course, Cassefin’s stern gaze wasn’t a miracle-worker, and it did little other than tire her eyebrows from all the furrowing. She moved a step or two back, squaring herself in the center of the doorway.

“…DREAM!!” The Head Administrator bellowed abruptly. “GODDAMMIT! I NEED TO SPEAK TO YOU!”

"Must you yell ma'am?" Serra asked, rubbing one ear with her free hand, then switching her load to that hand then rubbing her other ear. "You can contact her with a visual display."

Apparently the thought didn't occur to Dream, either. The armory/shrine's door slid open, with a very naked Freespacer standing in front of it.

"Uh? What's... happening?" She wondered, in a low, sleepy voice.

Her chest-mounted radioisotope thermoelectric generator was open, a large gaping metallic hole in her chest just between her breasts, evidently displacing more than a few of her internal organs. The cavity was deep, practically reaching almost until the front of her spine.
Even in the low light of the room, her skin was practically emerald green, covered by dark-blue, almost black stripes all over in an abstract full-body tattoo: swirly, vinelike fanged lines on the left half of her body, and squared, jagged, circuit-like patterns on the right half. Evidently, after suffering so much from the planetside trip, her symbionts were undergoing some sort of intensive regeneration.
A harsh smell of ozone drifted out of the hyperoxygenated room.

"...oh, Claire, Real. Sorry, I was busy..." She muttered. "Do you need anyth-"

The shrill noise of the contamination alarm interrupted her, ringing loudly from the corridor.

"...what's that?"

Then she remembered. "Whoops." She said, stepping back and slamming the door. "Sorry! I forgot!"

Cassefin stood dead-pan serious as Dream made her appearance from the blocked doorway. It was quite obvious that the first thing Montreal caught site of was the gaping hole on Dream's chest. Or perhaps Dream's chest in general, it was difficult to tell. The Head Administrator took a good look, then quickly shot a glance at her own chest, then back to Dream's. Cassefin then sucked in some air, tore her gaze off of Dream as her pupils trailed to the corner of her eyes, and released her breath through a a half-mouthed, clenched-teeth sneer. Her displeasure was almost palpable.

"Would you please put some clothes on. I'm not running a whorehouse here," Cassefin said to Dream, keeping her eyes tastefully averted.

Serra turned her gaze to the naked spacer, then down slightly. She then returned her gaze to Cassifin's general direction, looked down at her own chest, then picked at her uniform top while sighing.

"Half my size, and still bigger then me." She muttered plainly, a slight twinge of sadness mixed in, apparently she was just as embarrassed as Cassifin, about being smaller then Dream. Then she blinked and remembered Dream had her containment chamber open.

Taking time with her watch, Serra sighed, "Administrator, all three of us have been hit with a ten second exposure from Captain Dream's radio isotope. I would suggest we go and get decomtaminated."

Claire just raised an eyebrow at the spacer's less-than-graceful entry. She also apparently was the only one present that didn't start comparing her own chest to Dream's. Her eyes seemed fixated on the radioactive hole in Dream, frowning a bit. That couldn't be comfortable at all. And she seemed to walk around like she wasn't aware of it's existance. Certaintly the diverse crowd on Cirrus station.

A question ran through her mind but before she could open her mouth to ask it, Serra answered it by stating the need for decontamination. "Ah.. Why exactly does she have that? Does she need it to live or something?" Claire looked at Serra, then added. "Sorry, I admit I don't know much about spacers.. Though I guess I should just ask her whenever she returns." She shook her head. Her mind seemed a bit disorganized. She did catch Cassefin's self-concious expression, though. This brought a small smile to Claire's lips. This woman standing next to her amused her to no end. Still, she would have to supress the urges (For the most part) of heckling her. For all her quirks, she didn't look like someone who knew anything outside of work.

"From information available, Free State citizens live on unshielded spaceships, as such they are continuously bombarded by interstellar radiation as well as radiation from their fusion reactors. They have been exposed to it for such a length of time that their bodies have adapted to the waveforms and the single celled phytoplankton, lichen and diatom that they have personally infected themselves with feed off it." Serra stated, almost repeating verbatim the Nelpeslian encyclopedia entry on the species.

"When they are serving on a ship or space station that is not a Free State holding, they infect themselves with a radioisotope to fill in for the radiation that they normally get from their ships." She finishes with a calm pushing of her glasses up her nose bridge.

"Yeah, pretty much."
The door slid open again. Dream was there, wearing her ridiculously colorful long-sleeved outfit (thankfully, made out of radiation-absorbing fabric). "The universe is full of radiation, so, rather then building shielded spaceships to keep the radiation out, it makes more sense to adapt to radiation."
She smiled, stepping out of the room. "Ok, Flower, clean up the mess a bit please." She said in a loud voice. From inside the temple came a shizzing, shuffling metallic noise, interrupted as the door closed.

"I'm sorry, but, if you want to visit the temple, you'll have to wait five minutes. The inside is still a bit irradiated." She said to Cassefin and Claire, brightly.

As if Cassefin were here to visit it. Yeah, right.

"That reminds me." Serra said as she offered the item she was carrying to Dream. "Here's that item Flower found. I tried my best to repair it." She offered. "A donation to your temple." Serra finished with a smile.

"I didn't come here to visit your stupid shrine!" Cassefin blurted out in anger, thankful that Dream had clothed herself. "I'm-" the Head Administrator started, but stopped for a moment and took a few deep breaths, inhaling lungfuls of air from her nostrils and releasing them in single, long whooshes from her mouth. The breathing technique seemed to work; she wasn't red in the face anymore.

"I'm well aware that this shrine is highly radioactive at the moment, thank you," Cassefin lied. She had no idea. "As the Head Administrator of his research facility, I'm required to visit many of the areas with heavy concentrations of Freespacer personnel...as such, I regularly give myself anti-radiation medication. But that's not what I'm here for."

One more extraordinarily long, deep breath. "CSS Squad 35 has recently accomplished a scenario that...my supervisors have deemed extremely out of the ordinary," As hard as she tried, Cassefin could not keep her gaze on one place as she spoke...as a result, her eyes flitted from person to person. "As a result, they have suggested to me that I should...reward...you all. I must admit, Captain, your squad performed admirably," Cassefin said, shifting her arm in the translucent cast slung around her shoulder.

"Therefore, I am inviting you and your squad to attend a special congratulatory dinner with me tonight in my personal quarters."

Having finished his meditations, Deacon slowly rose from where he had been sitting stone still, barely breathing. When he opened his eyes he was surprised to find many of Cirrus off duty scientists standing mere feet away and staring at him. He gave them a smile as he reshouldered his katana, and then began to weave his way through them, not difficult since they parted like the red sea to let him pass.

Sighing to himself, he would shake his head and begin to head towards the shuttlebay he had started his journey with Cirrus from, but as he stood in the hallway leading to it, he stopped, just staring down the sterile corridor towards the bay in the distance.

'What am I doing here?" He softly asked himself. "I don't belong here. These people do not understand how I was trained, and they surely don't understand how i operate..."

With one more shake of his head, he turned and began to walk at a brisk pace back to the barracks, passing the small group just after the offer of the dinner was made. Would he attend? Maybe, but if it was right at this moment, the Kohanian had far too much on his mind to join in any festivities. He didn't even look up from watching the floor tiles slide by him as he passed his bosses and peers. As the door of the barracks slid closed behind him, Deacon threw his sword up onto his bed and went to the far end of the room, put on as much weight as he could find onto the bar of the benchpress that was by the food and drink dispensers, and began to just work out his frustrations....on over 400 pounds of weight, seemingly without strain.

Dream's colorful outfit made Claire's eyebrow raise even higher. It was here that she realized how little she knew of outside Nepleslian space. She would have a fun time here. Definitely. She felt almost giddy inside. Up until the end, her previous post had been extremely boring. Looks like it wouldn't be the case anymore.

Her eyes turned to the head administrator as she started having an outburst. 'She needs to calm down a bit. Stress isn't healthy for you..' She thought silently. Claire began to wonder how long it would take for the radiation to do any serious harm to them. Shouldn't they be making their way to get decontaminated already?

When Claire heard the invitation, an expression of suprise came from her. "Woah.. are you sure? I mean, I'm sure I'm excluded since I'm technically not part of the squad.." She didn't sound that dissapointed however. "Oh and just for the record, I didn't have anything to do with the whole slave trade thing going on... honest. I wasn't even aware of it." She was still feeling uneasy about that it seemed.

Dream was overjoyed. "Woah! Really? A dinner! Awesome! A good chance to share a glass of water all together!" She said, taking Serra's package with an acknowledging nod and unwrapping it.

"Thankya, Serra." She pulled out the complex-looking piece of machinery, metal and wires and a large crystal-glass convex lens on one side. "A bit of redecoration and carving and this'll make good show next to the others in the shrine." The piece vanished in her deep, oversized sleeves.

"NOW LET'S GO CALL EVERYONE!!" She shouted, throwing her fist in the air. "When is 'dinner' supposed to happen, anyway?"

Cassefin wasn't sure whether Dream was pulling her leg with that last question or not. She never was good at truly gauging what a Freespacer was thinking...that's what she paid experts for.

"...dinner usually happens in the even. For normal people, anyway. I haven't made a specific time, but you all can expect it to be around...2000. Or 8pm, if you want to run by Trade Universal Standard. Your Savtechs will inform you of the details and where to go to reach my quarters when the time has come. Inform your squad and tell them to wear..." Cassefin had to pause for a moment. "...well, I'm sure you all don't own formal clothing. Just tell them to dress as best as they can for the occasion."

As Cassefin finished, she readjusted her spectacles and turned back around. After her first step, however, the Head Administrator recalled the fourth person in their little party. Cassefin didn't bother turning around, instead waving her uninjured hand idly over her shoulder to catch their attention. "Oh. This is Claire Winters. She and two more have been assigned to your squad. The other two should be around sometime soon. Congratulations."

Dream nodded. "Yes, I see. In the even, so at 8 pm, which is an even number. Ah, you crazy Nepleslians, living in abundance!" She spun on herself. "Eating every two hours, even!"

Then, she eyed again Claire, as if it were the first time she saw her. "Oh. Claire. You're with us now? Awesome! Welcome to the team!" She clapped her hands, dancing. "I'd... invite you to the shrine, but we'd better wait for decontamination. Anything you want to ask?"