[color=92278f]"Thanks Ness"[/color], Sev released her finger, [color=92278f]"We'll get through this thing. I should probably give the kid some space for right now. I'm sure she feels a certain way about how I just vanished for all this time"[/color]. Sev had always sort of assumed that dropping off the map would keep Myrn and her friends safe. She never really considered how they would feel about her absence especially considering everything that they had been through together. Her gaze wondered from Nessa to the photo on the table and her heart sank. [color=92278f]"I can't believe she kept this"[/color], Sev grinned as she moved to scoop up the photograph as gently as possible. [color=92278f]"This was our little makeshift family. That's me, Myrn, her older brother Kanji, Amanzi, Dex and Rondo are in the background there but you can barely see them"[/color], Sev paused for a moment as if she were reliving the memory, [color=92278f]"I wish things could've stayed that way forever"[/color]. Sev could recall every single detail of that day. Everything from the smell of the ocean, the feeling of the sand between her toes, the kid's laughter as they played, it all felt like a hundred years ago. [color=92278f]"I don't think I've told you my story. My full story. See, years ago the 'secret' facility where I was created and raised was attacked by rebels. They had somehow managed to figure out our location and what the branch was up to. By this point in time we'd already handled over a hundred missions on the Council's behalf. I've always thought that either me or one of my sisters didn't do a good job of covering our tracks. Anyway, the rebels attacked our home killing the scientists and security. They wanted to raze this place to the ground and thinking back I honestly couldn't blame them. We did terrible things. Things that I'll probably never tell you about. I had been thinking of defecting for awhile by the time the attack happened. My sisters thought I had a glitch, that I was defective and needed an update or a straight up memory wipe. Well I used the attack as a distraction while I made my escape. I left my sisters to fend for themselves. I still feel some regret for it to this day but I had to leave. Six hates me for abandoning them and I don't blame her. I assume that the rest of our sisters were either destroyed, captured, or just dismantled and harvested. I may never know. So I escaped, I stole a Guard fighter ship and flew as far as I could before I was eventually shot down and crashed like you did. I ended up on Koa. It was probably one of the most beautiful planets I've seen. There were beaches with orange and pink sand. Crystal clear blue ocean water for miles. I thought I was safe but it turned out that Koa was a war-zone and I had landed smack in the middle of the fighting between the locals and the Council Guard Army. And that's when I met her. Amanzi came and fished me out of the wreckage of my ship. She didn't have a clue who or what I was just that I needed help. She used to have a saying 'hand over hand, you help who you can'. That's just the kind of person that she was.....I loved her"[/color]. Sev paused and looked longingly at the photograph. She hadn't realized how much she missed Amanzi until she had to talk about her. [color=92278f]"After the fighting was done she questioned me to figure out what my intentions were and I told her the truth. That I was running, that I was done with the Council and their games. She gave me two options, she could find another ship and get me offworld where I could continue running, or I could stay and help them fight back the Council forces and help them reclaim their world. I chose to stay and fight. The Council Army was razing villages to the ground and murdering families in the streets. I had to do something to help so I joined Amanzi and her rebel fighters. We fought for months and eventually are numbers started to dwindle. That was also around the time that we found Myrn and her brother Kanji. The Council forces had raided their village. By the time we got there most of the damage had already been done. Their mother and father had been killed from blaster fire from the tanks that the army was using to siege the coast. I'll never forget the faces of those kids when I pulled them from that burning house. I found them huddled together under their parent's bed terrified. From that point on Amanzi focused our efforts on dealing with the civilians that were caught up in the war. Since we had fewer fighters it was a lot easier to move in and around townships to save who we could. We kept running into more and more resistance from the Council Army where we should've had the drop on them. Myrn figured out that they were somehow tracking the Annex that was connected to my brain"[/color], Sev reached up to part her hair and show Nessa the scar that was still there. [color=92278f]"The Annex connected me to the Council Net therefor they had access to my movements but it worked both ways. Eventually our field medic, Dex, and Myrn had to perform a surgery in order to remove the thing. That's why I'm basically bald in that picture. After that things were fine for awhile. We still hit Council camps for medical supplies and rations to give to the refugees. We carried on like this for about a year or two, time gets a little hazy in wars. Finally I think the Council was tired of allocating resources to a war that shouldn't have went on for as long as it did. I'll never forget that night. We had bunked in the remains of a warehouse and we could hear the bombs dropping before we knew what was happening. Kanji was the first to go. It was quick. I was up and trying to coordinate the remainder of our team to evacuate when I realized that we were short a person, Amanzi. I found her trapped under a mountain of rubble and she was bleeding out from getting hit with the blast. I tried....I swear I tried my damnedest to get her free but it wasn't enough. The bombardment was still going on around us and we needed to move. That's when she grabbed me and looked me dead in the eyes and said 'Sev, my love. You have to go. You have to protect our family and continue to fight for what's right'. She gave me her gun and told me to keep it so that she could continue to fight at my side. After that she.....after that she was gone. Our moral was at an all time low afterwards. As the newly appointed leader I had to pick up the pieces and get us all back in fighting shape. It was hard but we fought with everything that we had. Even managed to get a few hundred recruits from the remaining cities but it wasn't enough. Koa eventually lost the war and there was only a handful of us left. Somewhere on Koa there's a bounty for all of us because we terrorized a few Council buildings before I eventually decided we needed to split up and relocate. And that's how I ended up on that dust bowl where we met. Believe it or not I left it a lot better than I found it. I worked mainly as a scrapper but I moonlighted as a bounty hunter and part time gang buster. I figured it was the right thing to do. So, that's me. My whole bloody story"[/color]. Sev took out her pistol and gazed at it briefly. The memories just came flooding back one after another. All of the joy and all of the sorrow and horror that she'd experienced in her time on Koa. It felt good to finally talk about it all though. She somehow felt as though a giant weight had been lifted from her chest. She felt free. The android just sat in comfortable silence trying to give Nessa time to process the story she'd just told. It was a lot and she didn't want to overwhelm the Star-Born with anymore banter. She simply placed her pistol on the table and began dismantling it the same way that she had done countless times before. It made sense to Sev. Combat made sense to her as well as preparing for combat. The irony of being a weapon maintaining a weapon struck her with a grin as she worked.
	Myrn worked at her desk with tears burning in her eyes. The fact that she had spoken to Sev like that hurt. It felt like a cheap shot to mention Amanzi. Her heart hurt at the notion that she probably upset Sev. Myrn's fingers moved frantically as she worked. It was the only thing that ever took her mind off of everything. Everything like losing her brother and the perpetual loneliness that she faced living in an asteroid field in the middle of nowhere. Tears where beginning to pepper the keyboard as she typed. The pitter patter of a tiny creature stirred Myrn from her emotional spiral. She turned to face the creature with a sniffle, [color=ed1c24]"Puppy"[/color]? The girl wiped her greasy hands on her pant legs once again before kneeling down to beckon the beast. It was unlike anything she'd ever seen but it was cute in a weird sort of way. It was carrying something too. Some sort of tech of some kind. [color=ed1c24]"Come here baby"[/color], Myrn patted her thighs to get it's attention. 


	Six merely had to put enough effort into a thought in order to send the report to the captain. She blinked and in an instant it was taken care of. [color=f26522]"Check your com for the report"[/color], she said getting up from her seat, [color=f26522]"And look I really don't care about the details of your...whatever she is to you. I just need her in her right mind and ready to fight when I figure out where to strike next. Contact me again when you have that done. Don't waste my time with anything less because I have subordinates for that"[/color]. She crossed the room on silent feet, like a deadly specter. Her eyes cut a downward, disgusted glance at Feya as she passed. [color=f26522]"And if she's that big of a problem to you then you should have her put down like the beast that she is. I don't have time to deal with dead weight while I'm in the field. I [i]gave[/i] her the Star Hopper on a silver fucking platter and she couldn't get the kill. Either fix her or assign someone else to my unit that can get the job done. Now if you will excuse me captain"[/color]. With that she moved towards the door taking a moment to leave four deep gashes with her new claws in the frame as she walked.