[center][h1][color=9e0b0f]Ava Lane[/color][/h1][/center]
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Ava listened to the lecture from Professor Lorenzo attentively. Most of these were basic knowledge about the Cruxi that most veteran pilots, such as herself, had picked up fighting them; however, it was interesting to hear them from a more academic perspective.

Many of the new Framewerk technologies, such as Phase Shift, were reverse-engineered from Cruxi technology. She wondered how many actual things humanity had now that were reverse-engineered from the Cruxi. Speaking of 'Alien-like technology', the new-generation Framewerks designed by Professor Lorenzo certainly qualify due to their 'black box' nature.

Not that she expected the Professor to answer that line of inquiry.

Ava briefly took a look around the room, seeing her team members with varying levels of attentiveness during the Professor's lecture.

These last few days, they've certainly started to interact with one another, and certain friend groups started to appear. Such as Aurora and Spark, who bonded over their love for engineering or Arrish and Griffith with their...well, Ava was not sure what to call it, they didn't get off on the right foot, but like the conflict never happened, it seems they're pretty okay now? Just as men sometimes said they didn't understand women, Ava had the same sentiments about men sometimes. Even Minerva and Griffith had established some sort of rapport, sort of.

In any case, the point was that they've all started to form friendship groups.

Not for her, though. As usual, Ava mostly kept to herself.

She was cordial, of course; she nodded and smiled when she encountered them in the mess hall or in the hallways, and made small talk when appropriate, such as that time when the women of her group ended up in the shower around the same time.

But it was clear that Ava had a wall around her.

Her therapist called it a part of her Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder. The avoidance to make connection was part of the diagnosis for that particular psychiatric condition.

Well, Ava knew it wasn't exactly healthy, but given her position...it was probably for the best? Just losing one close loved one affected her this much. She couldn't imagine how much worse she would be if she lost even more loved ones. That was why it was better not make close connections at all.

At least that was how she rationalised it.

It wouldn't affect her performance in battle, because she would die for her squadmates if needed, because that was how a good soldier should be. They were comrades. But friends...or more? That was out of the question.

Then the conversation turned into attempts at negotiating with Cruxi, something that Aurora promptly shut down, citing that they were not civilised beings.

As Ava thought, Aurora probably also had a long history of combat against the Cruxi. Some idealism of 'what if we just talk to them?' was rather common for newer pilots, but most veteran pilots knew that such pipe dreams were just that, pipe dreams.
It wasn't even because 'how can we make peace with an enemy who had killed so many of us?' it was 'it was impossible to find common grounds with Cruxi'.

"I have to agree with Aurora," Ava found herself saying, "If the Cruxi has any morals, they certainly are very different than ours that finding a common ground necessary for negotiation is an exercise in futility."