[h2][center][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CPlF-IEkXQ]What the Hell Just Happened, Father Joan?[/url][/center][/h2]

It had all happened so fast.

The Blue Danube had fallen victim to the Lord's judgement with nary a whimper, finally confronted with a mandate from the Reaper that even his upgraded machine could not feint away from. Newly free, Rising Star finished off the Bradley pilot in one cruel strike, exactly as she had called it. The close-combat HFV and its Messer both fell limp, floating through space. Father Joan's throat rumbled with a cry of congratulations--

--which was aborted in her throat when the reinforcements came. To her eyes, the pirate HFVs numbered ten ([i]Lumen only destroyed five?[/i]) and, though damaged, that may have been enough to turn the tide. But upon seeing the cloud of smoke that had become of their vaunted ace and his hyperkinetic mech, they had turned tail and fled like the men of Egypt in the face of plague.

Only Paper Tiger remained, up to their cockpits in the wreckage of dead machines.

[color=a0410d][i]Pray hard tonight, boys. For yourselves, and those I took from you.[/i][/color]

...

[i][color=a36209]My...my head...[/color][/i]

Was it supposed to hurt this much? She felt as though she were a little kid again, whipping it from side to side and laughing airily as her long white hair [i]swooshed[/i] around her...she felt as though she were headbanging to her first metal CD again...

She felt like she was going through the windshield again. Woozy. Confused. Afraid.

Six Rooks. More than anyone on the field. More than all of Lumen combined. 

Blue Danube. Who had avoided death at the hands of Lydia Popova's enormous Mega Beam Cannon and Rising Star's lightning fast Waverider. She had killed him in one strike. Left nothing behind.

[i][color=a36209]It felt so thrilling while I was fighting...[/color][/i]

Yet now, as she flew back to [i]Jannah[/i] in relative silence and began proper docking procedure in a numb haze, Joan Heidenreich felt a familiar longing - one that, though no doubt soon to be ameliorated by the munchkin in the hangar, was still aching inside her. She needed a hug.

[i][color=a36209]I only signed up to help them pray.[/color][/i]

When she had climbed into Judah minutes before, she was nervous about her place as the team's newcomer. Now, as her cockpit opened with a hydraulic hiss and she tentatively stepped out, she was afraid that she had just become their Blue Danube. The Lion of Judah.

This didn't feel like a positive change.

Her helmet came off slowly, floating in the air before her, artificial gravity doing what it could to fix her mussed-up alabaster hair. Joan lowered her head wordlessly chin pressing against her collar to avoid the gazes of new and old arrivals both within the hangar. She hung, transfixed, before the chest of her Lion...

[color=a36209][i]Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee...[/i][/color]

...and prayed.