[b]Orange![/b]

She looked at him. Listened, put an arm on his shoulder seriously. Some of the others acted sympathy through the routines she'd given them in moments like this; hers was genuine. She hurt to know that he hurt.

"Pope, last night I got shot at with an air to surface missile launched from a paramilitary helicopter," she said. "And I'm stressed and terrified and exhausted and horrified that this is the life I've chosen for myself. But I'm not on the same framework as you. When I'm pushed to my limit, November [i]will [/i]go on. She'll just be the parts of her that are right for the situation. What scares me is that I'm seeing increasingly that the people I'm up against are so awful that [i]I'm[/i] uninterested in negotiating with [i]them[/i]. That means I'm going to end up on the wrong side of a realignment where we harden into something more... efficient. Built for purpose."

She looked away. "I was [i]good [/i]as a carefree space engineer. Someone who thought that history was fascinating and politics was something that happened on another planet. But I can't live in that world any more and I don't know what my purpose is in this one. I couldn't even make the fucking op in the first place, I had to do it without -" she corrects herself; not because the thought is wrong but to make the pronoun game more comprehensible "[i]November [/i]had to do it without me because I went to the entirely wrong district and fucked around watching retro movies instead. I thought I'd have purpose by now but Monk is enlightened, Ox is off at Jupiter, Dragon fucking lobotomized himself, Goat's a child -"

She turns her hands up. "I, Orange, am not going to crack under the pressure. November? She absolutely will."

[b]Dudekov![/b]

"They were all injured in an unrelated ballooning accident -" Naval sighs. "Fuck. Goddamn it. How are you this sharp after waking up from brain surgery? The hangover alone! I can barely browse reddit without my coffee."