Junebug came down the ramp in a series of rattling thuds that drew all eyes to her.

"Whoa," Neil commented and even Taya who had been privy to what Junebug had been spending her time on during Neil's 'funeral' ceremonies on Cyloneika, looked impressed. She had changed out of her familiar battlegear and was dressed now in the suit of powered armor she had began work on years ago. The suit was of the same brownish tan ceramic her chestplate was made of, indeed the repair kit for her original armor had been used to provide the outer layer of this suit, the inner core consisted of sandwiched layers of kevlar/monocrystal composite, which was relatively light weight though the armor would still have been hard to maneuver without the power assist of the servos built into it. The mechanical guts of the armor had been cannibalized from a mobile surgical unit whose laser scanners and other imaging software as well as ultra precise servo controllers kept the armors guide points a few millimeters from Sayeeda's skin as she moved, giving her a fluid control that differed little from her natural movement. A pair of power cells were perched between her shoulder blades, protected by sharply angled armor plates. The helmet was also based on her usual commo helmet, though the addition of sensors, an imporved heads up display and a more sophisticated commo suite had bulked it up to a point that it didn't seem out of place with the extra three inches in height she gained from the armor. The faceplate was matte black due to simple filtering, though it could be changed on command to be clear or mirrored. Slung across her chest was a two millimeter rail gun. The weapon had three barrels, each of which accellerated a small glass pellet up a spiraling track before they exited the barrel at close to a hundred thousand feet per second. It was designed to be a vehicle mounted point defense weapon and would have had two much kick to wield without the extra mass of the armor, even so a boxy gyroscopic stabalizer hung just forward of the magazine, designed to cut down on the prodigious torque the weapon would create. A large pistol designed for the larger hands of a Hex hung at her belt as a back up, and her familiar submachine gun, looking toy like against the bulk of the new suit, was strapped to her thigh in case of real emergency. The final touch to the small arsenal was a wrist mounted grenade launcher, its drum magazine cannibalized two wrap around her right arm in a spiral, allowing her to select from different munition types on the fly. Sayeeda would have preferred just to hang grenades from her armor, but Taya had pointed out that the kind of fine motor control she needed to use them might be harder in the armor and that hanging a bunch of munitions where they could be cooked off by enemy fire somewhat defeated the point.

"What?" Sayeeda asked innocently as she climbed into the jeep beside Neil, the suspension creaking under the sudden addition of the armors considerable weight.

"If I'm going to go to the ball the least I can do is dress formal," she said with a grin that was audible through her helmet speakers.