RP: YSS Miharu Prologue, Day 3

Yukari watched as Nyton went to join Leutre. She had accepted his idea; it made more sense to her anyway. She would not get through to Leutre, not yet ... someone of his own kind, from a parallel background, had a much better chance than she did. She shook her head, and then picked up another box and started walking toward the cargo storage area.

It was at that point that she felt a slight brush of air against her back. She turned -- "Gah!" she shouted, nearly tripping.

Sigurd reached out and held her by the shoulder. She gulped a little; it did not take much of Sigurd's strength to hold her, she could tell. "S-Sigurd-san!" she said.

"Suzuka-Chui," he said after she was standing on her own. "There is an unidentified vessel in the bay. I cannot ascertain if it is occupied, but it is armed. Kurohoshi-Juni is examining it now."

"Eh?" Unidentified vessel, Yukari thought. That was odd. A cargo runner? She had not seen one. Any shuttle used here would be a Star Army type ... perhaps Kotori had returned in something other than a standard shuttle?

"Claymere-Juni, Veressis-Hei, we will reassemble the cargo later. Sigurd-san said there is something in the port bay; please accompany me?"

Leutre's head perked as he overheard Sidgurd's words. Unidentified vessel? Where there were unidentified vessels there was usually... "Illegal salvage!" Leutre cried out excitedly as he dropped the box he was holding.

With a large grin on his face he bounded over to Yukari and Nyton. Bouncing enthusiastically from one foot to the other he quickly said, "Unidentified vessels means salvage! Give me eight hours and I'll dismantle any shipboard security system. Wait. No, no, no, that'll take to long. Give me armory access and an hour!" Taking little pause for breath, he continued to ramble on. "Boy, I haven't done any salvaging in ages. We'd better get a cleaning kit incase there's any biomass residue spread about the equipment. The last ship I picked apart had someone's head splattered across the hull. Just like stroganoff!"

Yukari, thankfully, didn't know how to blanch. She managed a pained smile. "Ah, let us wait until we see it, neh?"

The three went and followed Sigurd into the other bay. Once there, Yukari's mouth opened in the form of an unbelieving gape.

"Uso."

There, with the light flattly shining off of it, was Hrist, her ship. She walked toward it.

"Suzuka-Chui -- "

"It is fine, Sigurd-san." Yukari touched at the base of the nose, which she could barely reach with the flat of her hand. "Kotori must have brought it ... but why?"

After doing a walk around examination of the unknown craft, Masako had decided to take a nice look in the cockpit. The raven-hair neko had about half of her body in the cockpit and her rear in the air as her comrades entered the room. "Sugoi," her voice could be heard from the innards of the small craft. "It looks like an old Hoplite I've heard about....only different, I think," she said as she pulled her head out of the cockpit and blinked at both Yukari and Sigurd.

"Oh, Suzuka-Chui, Sigurd-san," she spoke up with a smile before letting herself float to the ground via anti-gravity. Looking over at the Chui, the warrant officer cocked her head to the side in confusion as she scratched her left cat ear. "Do you know who the owner is, Suzuka-Chui?"

"Ahhh ... yes, I do, Kurohoshi-Juni." Yukari blushed a little; she had not planned on Hrist being here. Her ship was not a fighter anymore; why was it here? "It is a safe craft; it will not threaten us."

"I see," the young neko replied as she looked back at the small craft before nodding. "I understand, Suzuka-Chui." she stated with a smile. Sighing quietly, the warrant officer stretched her legs slightly. "Well, with that out of the way, I guess it's back to work." she replied before scratching her ear slightly.

"How have you been doing on the other hold," Masako asked out of curiousity. "Sigurd-san and I have been able to at least keep pace with the amount of containers so far."

"Come on, Dige-san, you're up. Don't worry, I'll keep him from doing anything to you while you're under..." Tomi moved over to the examination room he'd hidden himself in, jerking the curtain aside and grinning. "Unless you make this troublesome for me, that is."

Nyton had followed along and watched as Yukari blushed over the unknown ship. He wasn't sure what her connection was with the vessel but he did not think long on it when Masako asked how things were going in the other hold. "The cargo is getting offloaded but most of it being food products we could do with Freeman's guidance as to where the food supply should be placed."

"I am as docile as a lamb, I'll have you know!"

James snorted and moved to the table, patting its surface gently.

"I'm ready. Just be gentle, it's my first time."

Leutre fidgeted with his uniform. Busting me down to a mechanic was one thing, but now basic labor? When will I be able to do something remotely interesting on this Goddess forsaken trip?

"So, how are thinks on your end, Massy?" Leutre moved over to Masako and Nyton to join the conversation. "Did you find anything interesting among all that junk, or are you as bored of all this as I am?"

Tomi pulled the ST backup device down, readjusting it yet again. "You're going to take a nice little nap... when you wake up, you're all done. I'll probably be doing my own backup by then, so feel free to just get dressed and leave." Pulling it onto James' head, she started the procedure, sending him into a deep sleep.

Okay, so this hasn't quite been the glorious career I envisioned so far, she admitted to herself. But hey- anything was better than the alternative as far as she was concerned, and with the rest of the crew unloading cargo, she probably wasn't too badly off by comparison. So, to hell with feeling sorry for herself- there was still work to be done. Mustering up an empathetic smile, she turned to Tom. "Is the headache subsiding?"

Tom grunted in response.

"Yeah, I'll live. Thanks for the backup. I'll be going now."

He took small, careful steps out of the medical bay, fearful that anything faster would cause him to fall.

"Man, that's never fun to go through," he muttered.

It would take some time before he reached the bay.

Yukari was still looking over the vessel, though more absent-mindedly than anything else. The paint alone ... she'd only had a brief moment to see it before, but now, up close, she could appreciate the time they put into it.

She shook her head. Why Kotori brought it onboard, she could not guess at. But she would find out soon.

"Hai," she said, then approached the others. "Let us hurry and organize the cargo. Ketsurui-Taii might return soon -- we should be ready for her."

With that, Yukari took one of the boxes a careless LAMIA had left behind and went to the port cargo storage area.

(( I'm going to go ahead and fast-forward a bit here, since Tomi's the only one awake in the med bay now and the other scene is basically ready to move on. ))

Once James was under, Tomi walked to the reconstruction tube, ordering it to begin crafting his upgraded body. That left her with a nice segment of downtime in which to explore and get used to her new lab, but, soon enough, the new body was done and it was back to work. It was time to play musical chairs with bodies.

Two unconscious bodies- one on the ST backup table, one in the reconstruction tube. They needed to swap locations. And of course, Sigurd had gone to unload cargo, leaving her with the task of moving them. Lifting James' unconscious 'old' body carefully- and once again reflecting that she really did miss her old NH17 body's strength from time to time- she carried it to the examination room and flopped it on the table. Then, she took the still dripping-wet 'new' body and placed it on the backup table, beginning the process to write his fresh backup to it.

Finally, the 'old' body went in the tube to be dissolved. Where exactly the raw materials went, she didn't know- and didn't want to know. In the event that something went wrong and they ended up eating hemosynthesized food for a while- well, that stuff was nauseating enough without imagining that old bodies were recycled into it.

Once James' backup was finished, she carried him to the examination room once again, sitting his still-unconscious form on the table and putting his pile of clothing on the desk. Then, finally done with the transfer, she laid down on the ST table and began her own backup- sans unconsciousness. She wasn't big on pain, but with nobody around to wake her up, she wasn't going to run the chance of falling asleep on the table for a few hours.

A chime resounded through the port bay, with the MEGAMI reporting: "Returning Fox shuttle."

A scant 10 seconds later, the advertised T4 rose through the atmospheric field covering the hole in the floor and hovered to the rear end of the bay where it settled down, its pointed nose only a meter away from the segmented armored shutters separating the auxiliary ship's bay from the main one while the nodal system was still at working furnishing the insides of the Hoshi.

Quiet had dominated most of the shuttle trip: Kotori had concentrated on the piloting itself. She did, however, provide the violet haired neko with an holowindow showing external views from the T4's sensors... so, at least Mizuho had gotten an eyeful of the docked experimental vessel.

The Taii and let herself drop to the floor. Her golden eyes scanned around to witness the progress that had been done in her absence and she then turned to her new guest. "Welcome aboard the Miharu, Yukisato-san."

As Kotori disembarked the shuttle and welcomed the newcomer to the ship Nyton looked over at Yukari. "You were saying something about being ready for her?" he whispered. I wonder who our new guest is and what her purpose will be. he thought to himself.

Yukari said nothing to Nyton, focusing squarely on the new crewmember. No rank mentioned ... not military personnel. She stood straight and bowed.

"Welcome back, Ketsurui-Taii."

Nyton motioned for the other crew members to line up and follow Yukari's lead. "Taii on board! Atten-SHUN!" he commanded before he faced Kotori. "Render courtesy!" he said before he too bowed. As he bowed he tried to size up the new arrival. Perhaps some sort of dignitary? A passenger? She has no rank. I guess Kotori will explain it all soon after she chastises me for being overly formal. he thought with a slight wry humor.

"Another one?" Leutre murmured to himself as he watched the two figures disembark. "Hell's Bells, I swear those Neko multiply every time I lose sight of them. Second bloody addition and we haven't even started our mission proper yet." He began fidgeting as he wondered what sort of person the newcomer would be. The fact she had no rank was promising. No rank means no authority, which probably means she's neither pompous nor demanding, he thought as he carefully studied the newcomer.

James drifted back into conciousness slowly, like waking up from the most refreshing sleep imaginable. Stretching his new muscles, he stood up groggily and shivered, scrubbing at the rapidly-drying residue.

"...Bleh, if this is what slime feels like I've got something else to dislike."

Shambling over to the desk, he quickly put his uniform on and stepped out of the examination room. Seeing that Tomi was in the middle of her own backup, he walked out into the hall and stretched again.

"To the cargo bay, then!"