[h2]Jennifer Whittemore[/h2]

Swaying on her feet, it seemed questionable that Jennifer was even paying much attention to the briefing, until the small girl gave an emphatic nod. Right, right, send the aggressive trio off to pick off reinforcements. And if they got in trouble or were needed, just run away! Or fly away, in her case. Sounded simple enough; go out, kill some monsters, come back, rinse and repeat.

And try to not get too badly hurt in the process. No doubt they'd all heal pretty well, but there were limits to how fast that would go.

The engineering bay was the same boring old place as ever. Really, she didn't even know what most of the things [i]did[/i] or what they were [i]for[/i], and she'd never really spent much time there. Normally, Jennifer would be more likely to head over to medical, even if it was for the sake of Chi-Mechframe testing, but it probably made sense to store everything in one place for general deployment. Hm, not that there was much for her to actually pick up from it? More a better place to put her clothes.

As usual, the nice researcher lady whose name she couldn't remember--where had she left her notebook before lunch? Maybe up in medical...?--was there, holding the little pink stone that represented the core of Albion's combat functionality, and the source of its armour. Just slot it into the choker like so and--

A polite cough interrupted her. Right, Albion still had its [i]quirks[/i] to work out. Like, if she didn't want her clothing shredded, take it off now. No fancy matter-absorption [i]here[/i]. Right, [i]now[/i] she could just depress the gem fully and...

It [i]felt[/i] strange. It always felt strange. Something [i]hooking[/i] into parts of her body she was barely aware of, thin spikes of metal lancing through her skin, spreading out and flattening, forming armour and clothes perfectly contoured and skintight. A transformation that started from the inside and tended to disregard whatever was clinging to her at the time. Maybe that could be useful on its own? 

At last, the masked visor settled into place, and all along the Chi-Mechframe's length, blue light came to life.

Hm, that seemed like a good phrase to copy. "Albion, launching!"

Jennifer's exit was less a launch, and more a graceful fall backwards out into open sky. Closer and closer came the ground, accelerating constantly despite the rushing air, enough to slip past the earlier-launching Hoshiko. But it didn't matter, as now she was transformed, and nothing, [i]nothing[/i], could beat this manoeuvrability. 

With no warning, no clear impetus, the freefall turned into a corkscrewing loop, Jennifer laughing at the feeling of free flight--and levelled off. This was a serious mission, after all, there was only a [i]little[/i] room for showing off. Just a little. 

... which way was North? She wasn't a homing pigeon.