The crew of the Helios Rain only wanted to resupply, but the ship-thieves that boarded them had different ideas. It wasn't much of a fight--Min and Trance handily disabled the ship pursuing them while Harrsk and Ae dispatched the boarding party like they'd done this before. Aside from a few exceptionally awesome displays of combat skills, the fight was merely a good training exercise.
Back on planet, the majority of the group went to a bar to celebrate another escape. What they found instead was an old pal--the bodyguard that blasted Ae in the face when she first met the crew, named Rane. Harrsk knew him too, it turned out. Rane ran with his mother. Ae went over to meet her friend who had surprising news for her. He claimed her husband had hired him to find her. The change that came over her was startling. She immediately asked to be released to go see a man she named "Darrin" to the surprise of the crew. Still hurting from the recent nightmares about the Ouroboros, Ruby volunteered the whole crew to support Ae. Harrsk uses this as an excuse to send another threat to his mother via Rane, and also to cold cock him.
At the "ship" Rane piloted, Ae is reunited with a man from her past, and their child. Darrin is ill; dying, in fact. He crossed the galaxy to find her before he could no longer take care of their child Cyra. He explained that Ae's mother, an Imperial Senator, had found them and poisoned Darrin. Cyra, precocious for a three year old went to perform CPR on her fallen father, when the poison burned her mouth and incinerated her tongue. This is the legacy of the Zubaestras. He asks that Ae stay and be family with him and their daughter until he dies. Ae hesitates at first, but soon performs the simple binding ceremony of her planet and spends a few precious days with her family before Darrin is taken away forever.
The crew is curious, and much taken with the adorable yet terrifying Cyra. Etzio glimpses into her thoughts and sees Darrin as his daughter found him, and the rage that has lived in this little person since. Min and Ruby play with the little one, and Harrsk gifts her with the bone knife he used as a child, which Cyra immediately takes to. Like mother, like daughter.
After burying her husband, Ae comes back to the ship, her long sleeve shirt discarded for once from the heat. Her arms and torso are a pattern of scars, random and deep on the left, woven into designs on the right. "This is what family is to me," she stated to the gathered crew. "I will kill them."
Brought together by the loss of a good man, and the horror of the careless damage done to an innocent child the crew puts aside its differences and prepares to help Ae assault the imperial compound that the Zubaestra family calls home.
Min slices into the mainframe for info about passcodes and docking procedures. Etzio sends a threat to his former squad which is scheduled to be in the area. Trance covertly sets up a meeting with a former client of his who just so happens to be a guard in the employ of the senator. Ruby contacts Korso for information the rebels were intending to use to attack the same planet, and gets a little flirting in, too. Harrsk helps Ae teach Cyra how to hurt melons.
It's a bonding moment for the whole crew, as they prepare to rain retribution down on the monsters that weave their fates.
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