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Johanna stumbled a bit to adjust her glasses as every eye in the room stared down at her. She...wasn't prepared to announce herself quite like this, to say the least. She recognized Cathrida, who by all accounts was thoroughly unimpressed with her arrival, and a girl who looked like she could have walked out of the assembly plant she 'helped out' earlier in the day.

"A-ah..."

“Is there anyone else?” Cathrida demanded of the empty room, looking up and away from her. Johanna tried to get up, but her legs felt heavy. Then she realized her mouth was dry, and she was in a cold sweat. Blood pounded in her ears, and she glanced up to see LAGOS looking concerned, his medical sensors on full alert.

"G-gods no, not here," she whimpered, going unheard thanks to the timely arrival of the wheelchair bound girl. She pressed her hands against the side of her head to stop them from trembling. Her heart felt like it was going to explode. "N-not n..."

She doesn't appreciate what I do.

She's so blissfully fucking ignorant of everything I've gone through, all the things I've lost for this cause.

I'm here and captain pirate diva has the fucking nerve to shut me down like that? She doesn't know a fucking thing about me, what makes her think she can say that?

Anyone else?

ANYONE FUCKING ELSE?

[i]YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT I CAN DO, I'LL SHOW YOU. I'LL RIP YOUR HEART OUT YOU USELESS[/i]

"No, stop it! Bad thoughts!" Johanna mumbled. "Don't lose control..." Regaining some of her faculties, she popped an emergency bottle of pills out of a compartment on her arm, dry swallowing them with a pained expression. The placebo effect dulled the dark thoughts long enough for the medicine to take hold. She felt like garbage; even when the nastier side effects of her condition were avoided, they still hit her like a ton of steel rebar. Sometimes it made her want to rip out the implant once and for all, and more then a few times she nearly tried.

LAGOS brought her firmly back to reality, his gentle electric purr soothing her frayed nerves. Johanna took a deep breath and popped up off the ground, LAGOS bouncing up to her shoulder, but not before pointing at her nose and motioning to wipe it. Johanna ran a hand across her lower lip and it came back red. Yuck. She pulled an old rag out of her pocket to clean up, just as the conversation turned back to her, with the others in the room hopefully none the wiser. Specifically, just at it turned to her robotic buddy.

“Oh, that. It’s some kind of robotic lagomorpha. Or a ‘rabbit’,” the pirate queen recounted.

“What’s a rabbit?” her friend asked.

“A small blob of flesh with large ears, larger feet, and fur all over its body.”

LAGOS did a little spin on her shoulder to show off, practically glowing.

“What do they do?”

“They eat, defecate small pellets, eat those, and wander around. Not that different from what other animals do.”

LAGOS's ears shot up in surprise at this nugget of information. Evidently finding it offensive, he glared rather crossly at Cathrida, shaking a small fist and bleeping, holographic censored swearwords appearing over his head. Johanna giggled at his reaction until the pirate lady rounded on her.

“Who are you? And where did you get this ‘toy’?” Cathrida demanded.

"Toy? LAGOS is not a toy!" she responded, somewhat miffed. "I made him myself! He's my friend!"

“I don’t know. But I swear I’ve heard her voice somewhere..”

Johanna opened her mouth to respond but closed it in surprise as a hand planted itself on her head.

"This is Johanna. Who you might know better by her Radio handle, HopPer. A Radio host infamous for having a nonexistent schedule, having a vague anti-Zern leaning, and there are rumors that HopPer might be supporting anti-Zern elements. But, I mean those are "only rumors"

Johanna sighed. "Nice to see you too, Denzel."

He shot her a friendly grin and patted her head again. "As for LAGO..." he went on, scratching the robot under the chin. ""Hey, little buddy. LAGO is useful for a lot of miscellaneous jobs. Repairing things, storing small objects, modifications and such. Johanna makes good use of LAGO, she's probably our most inventive mechanic."

"Well, I don't like to brag," Johanna said brightly. "But I know my way around an engine or two. And I can fix just about anything you throw at me."

Not a bad pilot either but..." Denzel looked at her, as though trying to detect if she was lying about her earlier intentions. "You sure you want to come on this one?"

Johanna looked at everyone in the room in turn, lingering a bit on the newcomer in the wheelchair but meeting everyone's eyes in good time. A part of her wanted to say no, that this wasn't her fight and she wasn't ready, but in reality that was dead wrong. She was always in this fight, even if she didn't throw a punch or fire a shot, and if others were inspired by her words to fight and bleed for their freedoms, why can't she do the same? And in the end, what would HopPer's calls to action amount to if HopPer herself never picked up the phone?

"Well," Johanna said, crossing her arms and trying to play it coolly. "I'm pretty interested in seeing what it is you want to get your hands on. Figure that would be the easiest way to do it."