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I'll try to get my post out before the end of the week, school is being a little... well, it's been a burning pile of shit since about September 23rd and now someone's gone and poured some more fuel in the form of two tests on the same day into that fire.
Astrid didn’t have much else to say on the subject. Or any subject that didn’t involve a socket wrench in some capacity. “I say we return the cold shoulder. Then again, there’s a reason I’m not a diplomat.” Astrid huffed, examining the holographic depiction of the alien vessel, the engineer’s eye trying to pick out obvious weaknesses and comparing to what she knew for certain about their ships from the shuttle. “Shall I prioritize examining the weapon damage to the recovered shuttle to better tell what sort of firepower we can expect?”

“Either way, at least by our standards, they have very little to go on. Treebeard has requested asylum because he’s being persecuted for his theopolitical beliefs, and under our system, the Prize is considered ISA territory, meaning you can choose to grant him asylum on those grounds and they can go f- pray.” She caught herself, “Now sure, that claim may hold less water than a sieve with them, but it’s not like they went out of their way to explain how their law works, if they even have laws beyond ‘The church says so’.”
Holy shit, coming back after 7 months, that's fucking dedication. Couldn't back out on you in the face of that even if I wanted to.
Good question.
“Wouldn’t mind sneaking into a base to blow it up now that it’s a base I actually want to blow up.” Avelyn piped up - quietly so bystanders wouldn’t have uncomfortable questions - once she was done with her meal. “Not now though.” Fighting right after lunch wasn’t a good idea. She pulled her legs up on the chair to rest her chin on her knee and hugged her shins, idly observing the surroundings. First with her eyes, than letting the mental barriers down again and checking that nobody gave any thought to Ashton’s antics. Hundred-fucking-million, Jesus Christ! she shook her head, the reality of the situation still sinking in. A foreign voice in her mind started wondering what all those kids were doing there all alone and sleeping piled on top of each other, but a quick angry look over her shoulder was enough to shoo the curious nobody away.

“Anyway, if we get to pick, I’d rather it was something where getting your head taken clean off is low on the list of threats for a change. Places like this can be all sorts of fun.” She shared her view, having had taken a little more shot and shrapnel in the past four years than one should have by their age and missing the days of walking into a department store with nothing but her wit and deft hands and walking out with a few thousand Credits worth of small jewellery. “That is, I’m not saying I enjoy rifling through some poor sod’s memories while his hair is on fire and my thumb is almost pushing the bullet I put in his shoulder out the opposite side, but I could name a couple of bastards that could use such a send off.” she hurried to explain in a hushed voice - accompanied by subconscious hand gestures - when she realized what she said could be interpreted in a drastically different way to what she actually meant. Not that the explanation sounded much better.

As if on cue, the newscast came on, followed by the extremists’ demands. “Bollocks. This guy doesn’t have hair...” She flatly stated the obvious, “I can figure out how many of them there are, their composition, probably even get an idea of how to best go about this, provided I can get close enough. Or better yet inside that thing to be certain. If the hull is thick enough it could interfere with the Mind Bridge.” she suggested recon before striking, having almost four years of experience doing exactly that. “Also, I’ll ask in advance: Are we helping ourselves to some gear while we’re in there or do we behave?”
Avelyn:

Exceptional Streetsmarts: She's not educated, but not stupid either. She can read the street better than many, and her gut is generally right when something feels off about a person, especially when used in tandem with Mind Bridge.

Exceptional Stamina: She doesn't punch the hardest, run the fastest or lifts the most, but she's found out that the people who do those things usually can't keep it up for too long. When she doesn't have the luxury of quickly downing an opponent with magic, she'll resort to tiring them out, biding her time until they make a mistake.

Exceptional Stealth: Thievery laid good foundations for being unseen, upon which she built during the war, often required to go unseen. She also has a habit of keeping to the sides, where there's less foreign thoughs assaulting her mind, so it's easy for people to assume she's gone off to do just that.

Exceptional Agility: Avelyn has a good deal of dexterity from stealing, further helped by her acquired ambidexterity, agility from quickly navigating various environments and, being primarily a close-quarters combatant when magic fails, quick reflexes from fighting.
“She wants two bricks of what now?” Avelyn didn’t recognize the word, but assumed it wasn’t the Rau’ve term for cocaine. “Keep the receipt, demand to be paid back.” Since they were supposed to be her crew, shouldn’t she technically be responsible for keeping them stocked and not the other way around?

“Can always get more money in a place like this.” Avelyn flexed her fingers when the issue was brought up. “And if Finn doesn’t want to…” she didn’t want to say ‘steal’ out in public, “Redistribute... anything himself, another distraction is always welcome.” Before she was taken, stealing was a necessity. And by necessity, she became good at it. Now, she could read minds, make people see things that weren’t there and move things with her mind. Now, it was fun. Perhaps that said something unfavorable about her as a person, and the fact she didn’t quite care probably said even more. But what the Hell, she had to eat and some people had enough to lose a few dozen credits and keep going. Meet four or five of those people and viola, 100 credits to spend on food. Math.

Finbarr’s comment about Iris and diabetes brought a smile to her face. “Aye, diabetes and about 80 extra pounds.” She added her own two cents, “Keep it up and we might have to load you through the cargo ramp when we reach the ship.”

She continued to wolf down the contents of her plate, listening to Ashton’s stock trading shenanigans until he showed them a number that had more digits than an average hand, dropping her fork in astonishment as she tried to figure out how many decades it would take her parents and her average weekly take to make that sort of money. She gave up not even halfway. Was it really that easy?
And so their own quest began. There was a weird bit of irony in them going to do pretty much the same thing they have been doing prior to their capture - the same thing that formed a large part of their shared hatred for the Ascendancy, but this time on their terms, of their own free will and for their motives. First order of business was reaching their cabbie and not making her fall into despair at the sight of the group. If Avelyne didn’t know what she knew, she wouldn’t think much of them either. Then again, if their foes were going to make the same assumption they could use that to their advantage.

“Mate, I promise if you pick a smaller store next time, you’ll have whatever candy they carry you want and you won’t even have to pay for it. We’re likely to be in transit for a while after we meet our contact, which means time to rest, so there’s no harm in walking, it’s good exercise.” she answered Flame’s call for assistance with a few counterpoints, but before the words could even register, there was already nothing that could be done. “Oh for f- Fine. Your way it is.” she sighed in resignation, following along. Approaching the food shuttle, Avelyn let her mental guards down, letting the proverbial lid slip off and the thoughts of others to flood her head, trying her best to ignore the voices in her mind that belonged to the group out of respect for their privacy.

No one else in a 30 foot radius received that honor though, and every voice she didn’t recognize was isolated, judged and categorized. Beggar sitting by the entrance - low risk. She deviated from the group to toss a few credits into the man’s hat sitting on the ground next to him. Their rightful owner was probably halfway across the bazaar now anyway. Rejoining, she continued. Off duty cop. Shit, potential troublemaker. No, scratch that, he had his family with him, highly unlikely he would do something that would endanger them.

With the list of bystanders exhausted, she shooed all the foreign thoughts away, tranquil silence once more filling her mind. Tranquil silence, and the sight of food. “I’ll be over there.” she pointed a finger and proceeded to wreak havoc on the meat section, actually paying for everything since the place had nauseatingly good security measures. She loathed seeing money go away, but the ‘Eat while you can, tomorrow might be hungry.’ mindset was deeply ingrained and hard to overcome. Taking a seat with her compatriots, she once more turned to Flame. “Any response from the cabbie?”
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