After eating, Violet dragged Sparky throughout the ship, insisting on showing her all the rooms. Sparky complained the whole time about already knowing the layout, schematics, and about being called Sparky. She insisted on being called Alexandra for some reason. Violet ignored those requests and continued to show her around eventually bringing her to the bridge.

“Is this worthless tour over yet?” Sparky complained.

“It was not worthless! And yes it’s over. Had to occupy our time while Haru cleaned herself,” Violet said, wrapping an arm around Sparky. She tried to avoid being touched by Violet, but ended up getting in a head lock.

“Agh, let go of me!” Sparky exclaimed trying to pull her head out of Violet’s arm.

“No, you’re too cuddly! How old are you anyways?”

“If I tell you, will you release me?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m fifteen.”

Violet made a sarcastic gasp, “Fifteen, less than a year from man hood,” she said and wiped an imaginary tear from the corners of her eyes.

“I. Am. Not. A. MAN!” Sparky yelled and successfully pulled herself free from Violet’s grasp. After fixing her hair and making sure her cybernetic implants didn’t get damaged she said, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go and collect my belongings.”

“Oh, are you going back to the station? I shall accompany you!”

“No, you won’t!” Sparky protested.

Then the airlock door opened and Haru came in wearing her harem yoga pants and crop top, “Hey, where you too going?” Haru asked.

“Gotta collect Sparky’s things and talk to Okiri about a little more business,” Violet answered.

“Oh, great. Get to see him again,” Haru said sarcastically.

“Yep! Isn’t it fantastic!”

“Stop calling me Sparky! It’s not my name!” Spraky yelled leaving the bridge in a huff.

Haru watched and asked, “What’s got Sparky in such a bad mood?”

“I don’t know. She’ll tell us eventually,” Violet said, shrugging and following Sparky out of the bridge. As they walked the halls of the massive dreadnaught suddenly felt ominus and empty to Violet. As though the ship needed to have people within to work and die. While she contemplated this she turned to Haru and said, “We’re going to need a crew for this ship.”

“True. Maybe Okiri can provide them?”

“No, we need specialists for the mission. So, we need a specific crew of expendables.”

“We can’t call them expendables,” Haru corrected.

“Red shirts?”

“No.”

“Peasents?”

“No. They will be just crew. Nothing else. Besides this ship has enough room for several thousand people. How and who the hell do we talk to about getting crew?”

Violet held her chin as she contemplated this, “We need a few thousand expendable people and all of them need to know how to fly a fighter craft. Ontop of that they need to not be pissed off at us. That’s a small list of people, who I’m pretty sure are all dead.”

“Also, true. We’ll find somebody. Who else would we need?”

“We’ll need a couple of tankers, a medic or two, and someone who can bail us out of trouble if things get rough.”

“Well, we can recruite Jin. That’ll handle one of the medics. And Oni can be one of the tanks.”

“Oh, I forgot about Oni. She can also double as the person to bail us out.”

“Let’s face it you’re already that person.”

Violet thought for a moment, then shrugged, “True,” she said as they reached the umbilical, where a few guards stood in their way, but let Sparky through. “Excuse me, we need to speek to Okiri,” Violet said. The guards looked at each other with confused faces, then Haru stepped forward and repeated what Violet said in Japanese.

The guards nodded in recognition and one spoke on his communicator and waited for a response. Once it came he said, “Okiri is on his way and will be here shortly.”

“Good,” Violet said, “We’ll just wait here.”

***

As Okiri approached, he heard exited yelling coming from the end of the umbilical. He picked up his pace and quickly reached the end of the line. “ONE, TWO, THREE, SHOOT!” Violet and Haru yelled as they and the four guards played rock, paper, scissors. Haru won the round.

“God damnit, Haru! You were supposed to let me win!” Violet protested.

“I never agreed to that.”

Okiri pinched the bridge of his nose and spoke in japanese, “Why, did you call me down here?”

“Oh, hey Okiri! Just need to discuss a little business,” Violet said, noticing Okiri and Haru translating for her.

“What do you need to discuss?”

“We need to stash the ship away for a bit while we track down the crew to man the ship. We’ll of course pay you with proper credits.”

Okiri nodded and said, “Of course, that’ll be just fine. Anything else?”

“You want to join us for a game of high stakes rock, paper, scissors? The pot’s at five-thousand credits, double or nothing.”

“No,” Okiri said flatly. Then Sparky walked by with a couple duffle bags and now wearing a tank top and baggy cargo pants. Okiri looked startled when he saw her and blurted out, “Wait! Where are you going?”

Sparky turned around, “I’m joining Violet in her mission. It’ll give me proper recognition and safty.”

“Yeah! Sparky’s with us!” Violet said, unhelpfuly.

“My name isn’t Sparky! It’s Alexandra!”

“What was that Sparky? I couldn’t hear you over Violet’s yelling,” Haru said.

“I said- ERRRR! Never mind!” Sparky yelled then stormed off to the Reaver.

Okiri sighed and said, “Well, be sure to take good care of her. She is very valuable to me and my family.”

“Will do!” Violet said happily then turned her attention back to the rock, paper, scissors.