The passing months were harsh, unaided by the sudden turn of events that had occurred behind her back. Yeshua's incessant debilitating behavior and Koehler's own brand of protective impulsiveness clashes, nearing getting the latter killed. That was nothing to say about the strange actions and demoralizing behavior of Yeshua towards some of the other pilots prior, especially Elora, it seemed. Once the guilty, yet lying cadet was brought up and tried, Lorenzo tipped the scales some and instead enacted some sort of cranial experiment on Yeshua, hoping to cull his sociopathic tendencies manually.

Nevertheless the other cadets didn't take it well, least of all Koehler. After the announcement, Elora ran off and spent the rest of her day alone, crying; as much as Lora wanted to help, she wasn't sure of what she could say about Yeshua, like what happened with Ryan. Koehler was also punished for his aggression, playing 'assistant' to Sergeant Ken (whom reminder Lora of someone that she couldn't quite put her finger on). In some form of compensation, though, he got to refurbish his Frame into a new model.

Lora herself, meanwhile, was quite disconnected from most everyone else. It probably wasn't healthy or necessary, but she wanted to take advantage of the isolation for meditation and other mental strengthening. She would often sit alone in her bunk to perform her breathing exercises, played a passive but attentive role in the lectures, focused hard on the art of the Star Fist (which she became rather good at). To say she was spending her time attempting to do anything but train herself was obviously wrong. There were even times she would pace out to the hangar, trot along the catwalks to reach the Caliburn, merely to stand there at stare at it. Judge it. Determine what exactly lay within that she could conquer.

Needless to say, Lora's prowess in the simulations improved. Her already above-average Synchro Rate ensured she was the first to reach 100% hard synchronization potential, and she did everything in her power to keep it there throughout the simulations. In fact, she was in one of the trainer chambers right now, taking a virtual Caliburn out on another test run in a virtual solo mission. She had insisted, in recent times, to crank up the difficulty of the sims higher than the cadets would typically be given. Though Lora never yet managed to actually complete one of those solo missions emblazoned with additional difficulty, the experience seemed to speak volumes with her.

After failing yet again in this hard mission sim, Lora was ejected from the system where she pulled herself out of the harness. The local operator present was happy to help, but Lora declined the offer as usual. This time, she had actually to make progress in the mission, but had gotten triple-teamed again by the Cruxi mechs after being pinned down by artillery.

The ace pilot and junior officer yet continued to keep to herself, pacing down the corridors en route to the hangar again. Noboyd could say for sure why she did this, but Lora knew. Those noises, those whisperings at the edges of her consciousness - they couldn't be fragment of her own imagination. They were there, and they weren't from her. It had to be the machine, the advanced control AI built into the Framewerk to sustain and translate the pilot's actions into its own. As their synchronization grew, the Frame aligned with her more and more until their minds were fusing together.

Or so she theorized, anyway. Not that she had attempted to put this into words for anyone yet.

Less than an hour later, Lora could be found standing at the catwalk stationed around the Caliburn, leaning on the handrail to observe the Framewerk. It was inanimate as ever while Lora was outside it, but she tried to think that she could still resonate with it somehow. Belief in such spiritual mojo wasn't very tactful for a scientific operation dependent on some of humanity's most advanced technologies yet, but it was one of the blocks Lora was raised upon. It hadn't meant to survive the trip through basic training and the depths of the XJ9 program, but here it was now.

Her thoughts drifted back to her brother. After all this time, Lora hadn't even sent so much as a message to him. How was he holding up through all of this? Surely, he didn't think poorly of her for not responding for a while?