The Odysseus was damaged, yes, but it's still very much operable.  The Benisuzume leaves the Pyongyang and Nankings in the dust, reaching the jump point.  There it's a brief flash of light and she finds herself in a friendlier portion of space.

The Enterprise hangs in the distance, turning to face her.  She gets a hail.

"Five Days Darkness here.  What's the code word?"

Mission Success is 'Lighthawk', Mission Fail is 'Rutger'.  Anything else means she gets blown out of the sky.

Once entering a friendlier portion of space, gives Lyla a well appreciated moment to look at the starry pattern surroinding her while her adrenaline levels slide back down.

She hails back with a smirk:"Bluefox here.It's Lighthawk," a brief pause. "As promised I've brought a friend to greet and a..souvenir of somekind."

Letting her essence still linger around Benisuzume leaves the ship blotted with part camo and part blue metal. The greenish taint from the extra cargo gives off an eerie glow from within the shadows.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:08, Sun 05 Feb 2017.

"Nightwolf."  He gives the proper response, "We're reading a lot of rads there, Blue Fox.  Do we need to call in quarantine?"

"Ah, Five Days Darkness.  It's good to hear his voice again,"  Swan Dragon closes his eyes, "I should have known he'd come for me."

The Enterprise opens its hangar bay, and two fighters come out to flank Lyla on her approach.

"We have a few transports standing by for your personal decontamination and for quarantine for Swan Dragon.  I strongly suggest that for each of you.  No telling what kind of viruses might've come with you.  We're also going to have to do a sweep of the outside of our ship.  Since you've been gone it seems we brought a Gunzosha killteam with us from the Buchenwald.  They hitched a ride on the outside of our hull."

After hearing the response, Lyla continues more freely:"The radiation is from the other prisoner from Pyongyang, Takehiko Isakawa, a ghost who is covered tumours. He was...reluctant to co-operate and behave...so yes, putting him in quarantine would be good before we know if he can be trusted."

She pauses momentarily, adjusting her holding of the steering system, before taking the same flight route as the flanking fighters. She gives a look over her shoulder to Swan Dragon, finally lifting her visor up to look at him without any obstacles.

"Understood. No objections here for any of those from me. Wouldn't want to cause trouble by accident. Benisuzume and Odysseys both spend quite sometime without supervision after all. A kill team? They've  been taken care of, I assume?"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:12, Tue 07 Feb 2017.

"We have a special transport for just this sort of thing.  You'll dock with the Jade Lady to offload your special cargo; I'll have the Nightingale and Willy Pete here-" He highlights another waypoint, "For a personal debrief and decontamination."

Oho.  A personal debrief.

"Yes, the kill team has been dispatched.  Lucifer took them in hand personally, I'm told."

There is an uninhibited chuckle from her upon hearing him talk about Daniel:"I'm not really surprised to hear that Lucifer's been busy...did they manage to do a lot of damage?" She can't help herself from inquiring, even though she realizes soon enough she should've just shut up.

After spending relatively long time in the eerie and cold Pyongyang, the social contact with someone who isn't talking down on you feels nice.

"Ah, hmmh, don't need to answer that, it'll just cause me to ask more questions, which I could just spare after the debriefing. Sorry about that," she corrects trying to sound nonchalant, partially amused by her personal debrief. "Great.I'll drop off the cargo and give a proper report soon enough. Blue Fox out."

Benisuzume heads for the Jade Lady swiftly, but with a relaxed tempo, Lyla being happy to get rid of Takehiko, who probably at this stage has less and less nice things to say to her. Not that she took it personally, no, the man just simply irked her and it'd be unfortunate to cause more damage to such an important "cargo".

"Hopefully you won't mind the quarantine. I guess undisturbed rest is something you've been lacking?" Lyla turns to Swan Dragon.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:29, Thu 09 Feb 2017.

"Not too much, though we lost some civilians in the process.  There's also news coming from Journeys about some sort of altercation in a nearby nebula.  You'll get a full debrief."

"I think I haven't slept in three years.  So yes.  Rest will be quite nice."  Swan Dragon closes his eyes, "And if the crew of the Willy Pete are who I think they are, it'll be just like home."

The crew of the Jade Lady take care of her foul radioactive cargo; at Willy Pete, she's forced to stand far back from the airlock because the damn thing is almost burning hot.  It seems fire elementals have taken over this ship, and it's a small miracle the damn bulkheads haven't melted. Swan Dragon gives her an exhausted-but-happy wave, letting her move on.

The Nightengale is a hospital ship, one of the few luxury ones built within the last year.  She's shepherded inside, where they take a close look at her with a geiger counter and a bunch of other technothaumaturgical implements she doesn't recognize.  Eventually she's led to a hospital room which she notes is lead-lined.

"Visitor,"  She hears over an intercom, "It's the Enterprise's XO."

Glad to see Swan Dragon be united with his kin, she waves him off as well, hoping to share more words with the elemental later on, once he had rested for three years worth. Though in her mind she's sure this is not the last time she hears of him, if not any other way than Sayeed would be guaranteed to gossip on it. Lyla shakes her head thoughtfully, before moving on.

Lyla takes the examination with a laid back mind set, mostly lost in her own thoughts and standing where told. It's not the first time, but most certainly one of the most meticulous ones. Having left her flight helmet into Benisuzume, there is no visor to shelter her eyes from the random bright lights of indoors, which leads her to sigh with a light frustration. She taps her fingers to her thigh, a small part of her brain itching for a cigarette to pass the time, but she waits for it all to end.

In the hospital room, she ends up pacing momentarily around while digging out a cigarette. Her dark hair has mostly clinged to her head due to wearing a helmet, and there is a persistent frown on her brow. Now that there is no more need for hiding her bodysuit has settled for a mix of shimmering dark blue and oily black.  The intercom interrupts her idling.

"Oh. Let her in," she looks at her cigarette and places on the bedside table as if realizing that smoking in a hospital might not be looked well upon.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:44, Fri 10 Feb 2017.

XO Chambers walks in smartly, giving Lyla a snappy salute and a snappier smile.  "Well done, Blue Fox,"  She says with admiration oozing out of her voice, "I can barely believe you did it.  The whole crew of the Enterprise was on pins and needles.  Except for the Captain; he had complete faith in you.  Core's already on the line with us, anxious to talk to your extra payload.  From what I can tell, your extra payload isn't happy about that."

Lyla instead gives a wave and a content smile to see a friendly face. She flops down on the hospital bed and leans to the wall behind it.

"Chambers, do make yourself at home," she gestures to the nearby seats. "So captain was steady as a rock, like always. Yeah, you had all the reason to be nervous, it wasn't exactly smooth sailing to be honest. But then again I would have alerted you guys to help out only over dead body."

She lets out a snicker concerning Takehiko.

"It's nothing personal from the cargo, I'm pretty sure he isn't happy with anything we give him. He had the mind set that we should treat him like a princess, give all the praises to him...sheesh, he sure has a rude mouth and I doubt he'll change the way he talks even if its the Core."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:58, Mon 13 Feb 2017.

"It's a law throughout the fleet that hospital ships should be as uncomfortable and soul-sucking as possible," She says as she takes a seat on a harsh chair and grimaces, "Yep, steady as Core.  I don't know how you two do it.  'Smooth sailing' my ass, I'd have been sweating so hard I'd have drowned in my cockpit.  Then again, that's why I'm not a pilot."

She crosses a leg and chuckles.

"Yeah, well, he's definitely not happy about this.  I've gathered that he and Core knew each other personally and he is NOT happy that Core's in charge.  So if you want to think of anything that could really screw up Mr. Isakawa's day, it's that he's stuck answering to Core somehow.  Karma's a bitch, huh?"

"Soul sucking? I wouldn't say that after Pyongyang, that ship was antiseptically white all over and gave off a more depressing feeling than this. Though that being said I wouldn't want to spend any excess time here for fun. Am I to be quarantened here for long, or do I get to spend it in some more life encouraging environment?" Lyla chuckles looking at around the room. "well, Didnt have time to panic even if I wanted to. Flying was tough, but nothing compared to being in that ship. At least with Benisuzume I had something sheltering me."

She taps her fingers on the bedside table.

"Oh, that I didn't know... Interesting. I wonder if Isakawa knew about Core beforehand when being released by us. How did you find out?
This message was last edited by the player at 00:49, Tue 14 Feb 2017.

"Really now?  Weird how they're exactly identical,"  She rolls her eyes, "I really hope you're not going to be here too long.  You haven't had any hallucinations, have you?  Bad dreams?  Nightmares?  They've apparently got one of the guys who boarded the Buchenwald in Sanctuary right now for really bad hallucinations."

She sighs,

"Well, one bright side about being the XO of the Enterprise is that I've got a very, very high security clearance.  Almost everything that goes to Five Days Darkness ends up going through me.  What he knows, I pretty much know."

That might be exaggeration, given Lyla's... relationship... with her boss.

"Yeah, he and Core got into a scrap in Japan early on in things.  He'd pushed around the demons a bit hard and Core put the smackdown on him."

There is a passing frown that decorates her face, when a thought passes through her mind. Maybe she should put some effort into checking that there is no connection between hospitals and the Abyssals. Everyone was always going on about how there -are- abyssal spies anywhere, so why not. Maybe next time when meeting with her associates she could appoint one of them to work in Sanctuary.

She turns her gaze to the window.

"So far, so good. No nightmares here. We'll see about that after a few nights of rest here, before I've had enough of my forced vacation. Bad hallucinations? What was his name.. ah, Grunt, likely? That sounds serious, though given the headache that Pyongyang caused even me to have, not unlikely to have some concequences on a Dragonblooded as well," she shrugs at the subject at hand.

"Someone likes to snoop around I see," she teases the XO, turning to look at her again with a smirk. "Ever thought about adding more to your resume than being an XO?"

"Yeah, that's the one.  He had a freakout in Sanctuary after he was supposed to be checked, and that's the last I heard of him."  She nods, "Hey, I don't snoop, this information is GIVEN to me!  There's a major difference!  And no, being a good XO means being a good intelligence officer anyway.  I'm pretty content where I am.  Do I want my own ship?  Someday, but for now, I'd like to learn from the best there is, right?"  A peculiar look crosses the woman's face.

Lyla knows that look.  Chambers remains the XO for many reasons, and the big one is Five Days Darkness.  It's debatable whether or not she's in it because she wants the 5DD or because she genuinely looks up to the man.

Lyla tilts her head to the side, ever so slightly. Was it a faint tinge of jealousy that just crossed her field of emotions... As if she had any justified reason to feel such things, nor was there any point. After all her "situation" with 5DD was something quite vague, and there had been no real serious talk about what is it that they are.

She shakes her head a bit, and reaches for the cigarette.

"Yeah, from what I heard having your own ship is quite some hard work, mainly because of the responsibility over people. But I'm sure, that one day you'll make a wonderful captain," she smiles lightly. "You are anyways practically irreplacable in your current position."

Lyla pauses the conversation to light her cigarette. For all she cared, they could storm her room and come rob it from her lips, if it was forbidden to smoke.

"So, what was this all about the Gunzosha? All taken care for?"

Nobody's come to steal Lyla's smokes just yet; nobody really has the balls to try here.  Sure she'd get told off in some other places but as a Pre-Exodite she is more or less a living walking goddess.

"Glad to hear you think so highly of me."  She watches Lyla light up the cigarette, and there's a sense she's grateful for the change of topic "Yeah, uh... that was fucking weird.  Apparently a shit-ton of them managed to hitch a ride on one of our ships after dealing with the Buchenwald.  Remember all those fighters?  They were mostly ignoring us because each and every one of them had a Gunzosha tagging along.  We've since found evidence of their messed up armor around the battlefield."

She looks at the cigarette intensely.

"Anyway, some survived and got onto the outer skin of the Last Refuge, bushwhacked a Voyager, and got caught by a bunch of gods getting stoned in the ventilation shafts.  The gods mostly died but that tipped off a Lunar who managed to get in contact with Lucifer.  I want you to imagine how well that went for the Gunzosha afterwards.  The thought warms me the fuck up at night."

True enough, normally Lyla wouldn't give a flying fuck to people telling her not to smoke, without a proper reason at least, but somehow the quarantine feeling made her sceptic about it. Then again, if they had wanted her not to smoke, they could've just confiscated them before hand.

"I know you said you liked cigars more, but once again, fancy a cigarette?" she asks noticing her look and digs out the case to hand it over to her.

Lyla chuckles at the story. "You can always count on Daniel to trash some Gunzosha. Quite the concerning news though, given that they managed to sneak in so easily. That's something to improve our work on. Though chasing down fighters will take much effort and attention away from bigger problems. What were they after, any idea? Other than sneaking a peek at everything."

She frowns looking at the smoke wafting in the air.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:47, Wed 22 Feb 2017.

"No, I really shouldn't.  Just the tobacco's making me crave one really badly.  Thanks though." She shakes her head, "Only a few more weeks until shore leave."

She thinks for a bit.

"I don't think they can keep on doing that.  It was spectacularly wasteful and didn't get them anything of any regard.  Intel is suggesting this was a one-time thing."

"Sorry about this then," she taps some ashes to a nearby cup, her thoughts momentarily flinging to Sayed complaining about her smoking.

"Hopefully a one time thing. I'll bother Daniel for more details, if I feel like it. I'm just glad to hear that they didn't manage to do whatever they wished to. Anything else amiss, or is everything fine on the Enterprise and on the Last Refuge? It feels like I was gone longer than I really was... Oh, are they expecting me to manage to write some sort of report on things?" Lyla realizes with a smirk.

It's not the writing in itself that she detests but more the way they are expected to be written, formality not being her strong suite.

"Oh.  Oh shit, yeah, you'll have to write up a report for Core.  Same old, honestly; but it's even more important now that you're one of three people to enter a hostile, occupied flagship.  Sorry toots, that's your life now." Chambers shakes her head, "Reports, reports, reports.  At least you won't have to submit it in punchcard format, like Core asks when he's mad at you."

She stands up and gives her a nod, "You should be about of quarantine soon if they've let me visit you.  Any messages you want me to pass along?"

Lyla waves a dismissive hand to the report writing:"Yeah yeah, I know. I'm not exactly new to writing reports, it just sometimes varies how they want them. Or rather who wants them..."

She taps some ash to a nearby glass and shrugs a shoulder.

"I guess not. It's not like I'm out of reach completely. I need to sit behind a computer anyways, to write a report. People can just email or message me," she looks at her wrist computer. "I'll make sure to drop by at the Enterprise when I get out. Even if Five Days Darkness was sure of my survival, I'm sure he is glad to see me being alive. Besides you and me still have a vodka shot to share."

She smiles to the XO, the smile carrying a faint shadow of exhaustion.

"Yeah, that'd be Core.  Alright, yeah, we'd love to have you back.  I hope you're not gonna get transferred out.  The ship's a lot brighter with you around, you know?"  She salutes Lyla, "We most certainly do.  We'll make a party out of it.  Until then, Blue Fox."

With that, XO Chambers leaves Lyla to her own devices.  Soon enough the Sanctuary minders bring her a tablet to write reports with.

"Until then, XO," Lyla gives more of a wave and less of a salute.

In comparison to Pyongyang, the room at least lacks in the heavy feeling. Sure, they got their bright lights, and white walls, but thats it. Still it doesn't make Lyla feel anymore at home. The tablet is a welcome escape, as well as the window which provides a view to the stars. She thanks for the tablet, laying it on the bedside table for a moment.

The cigarette resting between her lips, she kicks off her shoes while in search of a lightswitch. She'd rather enjoy the view, or darkness for that matter, instead of the bright light. Flopping down on the bed, she tugs the blanket around her legs, not really caring to shower just yet. It was anyways better to get the report done, before the details would decide to turn into suggestions, instead of facts.

Momentarily staring into the stars and gathering her thoughts, she idly taps the tablet. Eventually she opens her mail, and begins to write down notes. She goes her mission through bit by bit, covering everything from penetrating the hull of Pyongyang to attuning herself to the cells. Naturally she also includes all the things she saw, including the crew cabin and the dogtags. Everything might prove useful for later use.

Having written plenty of reports during her ten years, it's not too difficult for her, but more of a nuisance, and something she didn't exactly like. Kendal was always much better at writing, or as Lyla liked to say to her brother; he was better at bullshitting. No wonder he became a politian. Lyla smirks to herself and halts her report writing to write to her brother, encrypting the e-mail while at it. She didn't want to involve her brother in anything extra..

She just asks him, how he is and what is going on, tells him that she is alright as always, and suggests that they should meet up sometimes, if they ever have time. Which is never as they both well know. Always being busy with their own missions.

She finishes her cigarette and dumps the stump in the glass nearby. There is a brief sigh as she wipes her hair back and tries to return to the subject at hand. Re-reading the report through makes her do some tweaks here and there, and add something little, but in reality her mind is no longer in it. Thinking that she included everything after a while of writing, she just sends the report onwards. The Core could ask for more, if some detail was lacking. For now Lyla just hopes that they won't send anyone else into Pyongyang or any other prison ship, given the headache the place gave even her.

Refreshing her email, finishing the report leaves her idle to blankly stare at the stars. She'd grown attached to the gentle light of the distant stars. It reminded her of earth and time spent gazing at them. It was much nicer this way, than being fronted with the blazing suns at close range. Eventually she turns back to the tablet to write a short awfully official, though encrypted, email to 5DD. Well, he could read her report...so the message practically is her just saying hi.

The message sent, Lyla just sits back and waits.  She gets a read receipt from Five Days Darkness, telling her that he'd want to give her a personal debrief at her earliest convenience.

Soon enough, she's released from the vessel and shuttled back to the Enterprise...

... and here we'll call the thread to a close.