( mental link ) day :041

[iuno]

[ some number of hours after the announcement about the decision they have to make — return to the Station or stay on Hyrypia — there's a restless feeling that hums along the Nest connection for a good few minutes before Juno actually speaks. a sensation like drumming your fingers along a surface; starting to speak and changing your mind. starting— ]

( So. ) [ a pause. nearly vibrating with that strange, jittery impatience. ] ( Who's going where? )

[ he plainly doesn't care, and it's not a social question. but he thinks it would be good to know who to expect to be around on one side or the other. ]

Comments

[earthborn]

( I'm headed back up. I'm not really gonna be of use here, unless you guys are really screwed. )

[Shepard is practical about practical matters.]

( You? )

[iuno]

( I'm— )

[ he wants to stay, that much is obvious. Juno hates being relegated to the sidelines for anything and he has a need to feel useful. but — Nureyev. Nureyev is still asleep on the Station and... Juno has abandoned him once already. he hates the thought of him up there, vulnerable and alone. ]

( I'm going back. Not really an outdoors kind of lady; all this fresh air is bad for my lungs. )

[earthborn]

( Fair enough. )

[Shepard's not going to call you out on this one, Juno. Emotions are scary and we do not need to discuss them.]

( Plenty to do on the station anyways. I'm thinking about trying to run anybody who's willing through some kind of basic training on not dying. Surprisingly few spacers for a space station. )

[iuno]

( Yeah, I get the impression a lot of them haven't even left Earth. )

[ through the mental link, Earth is a distant part of the past for Juno. he's never seen it, barely knows anything about its history or its traditions, so he can't really imagine living in a time that hasn't spread itself across the galaxy. ]

( What kind of training were you thinking? )

[earthborn]

[At the word Earth, Shepard's memory leaks abruptly, an acrid spurt of smoke-smell and a deep, bone-felt rumble, like the sound of a rockfall, or a building collapsing. Fires, red in the dark. Then it's gone, shut off; Shepard's Earth is at war, and losing badly. Whenever she thinks of home, she remembers that it's burning, that if her enemy there wins she may well be the last example of her species from that universe. And yet, here she is, shaking it off once again.]

( Basics, for starters-- how to secure your own hardsuit, how to do it for someone else if they can't. How to get around if there's no gravity, that kind of thing. You know how the older hosts, they've got this trick of dropping knowledge sort of... directly into your head? )

[Shepard exudes a vague sort of head-focused sensation, as if to mimic the experience at Juno without repeating it.]

( That doesn't cut it with me. In an emergency you need to have known and done something before, not just remember what if felt like for someone else to have done it. Muscle memory. )

[iuno]

[ he lets the impression of war-torn Earth slide off him with only the slightest acknowledgement of it — or it sinks, maybe, into the deep tar pit of him without making a ripple. ]

( Sure, makes sense. ) [ it should probably be a necessity when you're living on a space station; he doesn't leave Mars often enough to have needed it back home. ] ( Self-defence too, maybe. I know we're not exactly a militia, but where I'm from, it never hurts to know which way to point a pistol. )

[earthborn]

( I've been told I don't have the demeanor to teach a basic self defense course. )

[Asuka's exact phrasing had been somewhat harsher. It lifts the spirits, it truly does, to see the young people so engaged.]

( But if you're up for figuring out the logistics and teaching the lessons, I'm in favor. It's not like we're here to make friends with the Enemy, after all, and as far as I've been told, they're trying to screw us right back. )

[iuno]

( It can't be that hard, right? Pick a time and place, get some people who know what they're doing to show off. I should at least be able to teach someone to hit a target with a phaser. )

[ it's pretty obvious that Juno has never been much of anything but a detective with single-minded obsession. ]

[earthborn]

( I'll show you where the shooting range is, once we're up there. )

[Shepard can appreciate a certain focus on the important things. She is, after all, the kind of person who joined the military the moment, was quickly shunted into black ops, and fully intends to stay there for the rest of her life if not forcibly discharged for one reason or another.]

( You'll have to catch me up on what a 'phaser' is. Different worlds, different tech, right? )

[iuno]

[ there's a grateful acknowledgement of her offer. if there's one thing he can tolerate about the whole hivemind thing, it's that it makes it way easier to get away without niceties. ]

( True enough, yeah. It's just a standard laser pistol. ) [ he's familiar enough with it that he doesn't even have to deliberately try to communicate the impression of it to her; it's already on his mind. ] ( Stun and kill settings, rechargeable ammo. Nothing special. )

[earthborn]

( See that's what's wild to me. Lasers small enough to fit in a pistol and powerful enough to actually do damage. I think the closest I ever got was when got this particle beam once, but it was a beast. )

[Shepard's mental associations with the gun are visceral and readily available, easy as skimming a fingerful of icing from a cake, if Juno were of a curious mind. The gun itself is a generous double-armful, organic in design, covered in a metallic chitin with rounded beetle-shell edges and almost-living heat. The energy required, at least in Shepard's universe, to create the focused radiation of a combat-capable laser is orders of magnitude higher than what it takes to fire a physical projectile.

But oh, how those bugs do fry on beams of red light!]

( Now you got me looking forward to it. )