What trickery is this?

"Aeron?"

The soft voice pulled Aeron out of the middle of his work. He was reassembling the Snipetron after cleaning it. He was doing it slow and methodical, each move as carefully thought out as a Japanese tea master running a ceremony. He shook himself out of the half trance and looked up to see Alicia standing there. The Tenno still wore her warframe. Then again, they had only been back for a few minutes. Aeron still wore his, but for a different reason.

"Yes, Alicia?" Aeron asked calmly.

"You knew." She said flatly.

"Knew what?" Aeron asked carefully. "I have been busy."

"Our new 'guest' refuses to talk to us." Alicia said with a half sigh, half snarl. "I have had to scan remotely. But what I found... wasn't what I expected." Aeron bowed his head. "What is a woman doing in a Loki warframe, Aeron?"

"It's not my story to tell." Aeron said quietly. He bent back over the rifle, only to pause as Alicia stepped closer.

"Aeron, I have to tell Sensei what I found." The Trinity said slowly and carefully.

"You think he doesn't already know?" Aeron asked somewhat snidely. "I bet he knows."

"Aeron, she won't talk to us." Alicia said slowly. "Is she unstable?"

"She never was. No." Aeron shook his head. "She is angry. With me. She has cause." His words were clipped, precise.

"What did you do?" Alicia asked after a moment.

"We were a heck of a team." Aeron said slowly, his eyes on the rifle in front of him, but his gaze far away. "We were partners. She was my spotter and I was her sniper. How she got the Loki is her business. She altered the voice systems to sound masculine. She had reasons." Aeron said when Alicia shuddered.

"That probably permanently altered her voice. It had to hurt." Alicia said, shaking her head. "And you say she is not unstable."

"She had cause. She wasn't unstable when I knew her." Aeron sighed. "Now? I dunno. She didn't start cursing the moment she heard my voice, so... I dunno."

"What did you do?" Alicia's voice was quiet, but held command.

"I left." Alicia made a 'get on with it' gesture and Aeron sighed again. When he spoke it was a monotone. "We had been together for years, but... I needed more. I needed to talk to other people. To socialize. It was stupid, I know, but when Fran asked if I would join her clan... I jumped at it. They offered Jac a place too, not knowing that Jac was female. I don't think they would have cared."

"And...she...?" Alicia asked slowly.

"We had a fight." Aeron said with a wince. "Verbal only. I told her about the offer and she went ballistic. Told me I couldn't go. She said I was 'abandoning her'. Maybe I was, I dunno. It...escalated enough that the guards were called." Alicia winced again and Aeron nodded. "They separated us. I left, and I didn't go back."

"So you did abandon her." Alicia slumped a bit.

"Yeah. Like I say, she has a right to her anger." Aeron said softly. "But she won't hurt anyone else." He looked behind Alicia and nodded. "Will you, Jac?" Alicia spun with an oath as the air behind her shimmered and a familiar form appeared out of an Invisibility field. The Loki was unarmed and it's posture was...odd. Alicia relaxed a bit.

"Always with the all seeing eyes, huh Aeron? Never could hide from you. You didn't come back." The masculine voice sounded from the Loki. "I wanted to apologize."

"I was angry." Aeron said softly. "I went straight to Fran's ship. I never left it, until they all died."

"I am sorry for your loss." The Loki said softly. "I looked for you at every gathering. Every group I joined for missions, I prayed to find you. To apologize for what I said, what I did. But I never did. I never found you."

"The four of us were a team." Aeron wasn't seeing the Loki now. He was staring at something only he could see. "We never worked with anyone else. Four of us were a good size for that. But...Fran didn't like snipers..." He jerked as the white surged forward and then he relaxed slowly.

"What?" The Loki asked softly, disturbed. "Aeron?" Jac pressed when he didn't speak. Then Jac turned to Alicia. "I apologize for ignoring you, following you. But I had to see him. What happened to him?"

"Losing all the others in his clan hurt him badly." Alicia said softly. "There is something in his mind that acts as a mental bandage. At times it won't let him feel at all."

"My god." The Loki said softly, then went stiff as Aeron shook his head. "Aeron..."

"You don't owe me anything, Jac." Aeron said softly. "You...wanted me to stay. And then you said why and I couldn't handle it. I... I couldn't..." He slumped. "Damn it, I am whining again." He shook himself.

"I don't care." The Loki said softly, and the helmet retracted to show a girl's face. Her eyes glistened and her voice was still masculine, rough and edgy. "Through time, space, war and death, I found you. I am not leaving or letting you leave me again."

"Jac..." Aeron sighed. "I don't feel that way for you. I never did. I never...felt for anyone..."

"So... What you told me..." Alicia mused. "About me not being your type..."

"No one was, Ma'am." Jac said softly. "As far as I know, he never has." Alicia's eyes went very wide at that. "Yeah."

"Ever?" Alicia blushed. "Oh... dear... Aeron? Didn't your clan inquire?"

"I convinced them not to press." Aeron said in a monotone. "Fran and Matt were an item. Joe was... well, he had a friend in another clan. They left me alone. I...convinced them that I had a girlfriend in another clan."

"Aeron." Jac said, her masculine voice disapproving. Aeron looked up as the door opened and then stilled in place.

"Jac, don't move." Aeron said with a gulp. "Sensei, this is Jac. Jac? Karl Sensei." Jac turned to see Sensei still in his Rhino warframe standing in the door, his Hek shotgun leveled at her. At that angle, none of the pellets would hit Alicia or Aeron. A Loki would probably be able to dodge the first blast, but four...? Jac froze and Aeron shook his head. "You still don't think things through. Do you, Jac? You are under full time surveillance here. It's not paranoia when they are all out to get us. You hitting Invisibility probably set off silent alarms throughout the facility." Sensei inclined his head slightly to Aeron, but the barrels of his Hek didn't waver.

"I mean no offense. I am not your enemy." The girl with the man's voice said slowly. "I will exit my warframe."

"You do that." Sensei said without inflection.

The Loki's helmet sealed and then a hissing noise sounded. The exo skeleton bio armor went stiff and a small lithe form struggled out of it. She wore the usual Tenno bodysuit but her face was clear. She looked at Sensei and her eyes were downcast. The shotgun didn't waver.

"For the insults, I apologize." Jac said, her tone still deep. "But I had to see him. I had to." She met the Rhino's gaze squarely. "I have forgotten much in my cryosleep, but I do remember that. I remember my love."

"And now?" Sensei said softly.

"Now?" Jac said slowly. "I don't know. I was always better at getting into problems than out of them. Aeron was always the planner, the methodical one. We were...a good team."

"The best." Aeron said under his breath.

"How old are you, Jac?" Alicia asked, her warframes built in med scanner whirring.

"I haven't aged since I put on the warframe. I was twenty one standard years old when I stole the Loki." Jac said softly. Aeron sighed, but did not comment.

"You what?" Alicia said with a snap. "How do you steal a warframe?"

"You can't anymore." Jac said quietly. "Way back when, if you waited until it is in maintenance cycle and keyed in a full reset of the systems, it accepted the next user as it's main user." Alicia was shaking her head and Sensei finally lowered his shotgun.

"Why?" Alicia asked softly. "Why this deception? It.. It had to be excruciating. The Loki warframe isn't designed for females."

"It conformed after a while." Jac said with a shrug. "It was going to be my brother's. He... He fell off an obstacle during a run, hurt his head. He wasn't going to recover. Indeed, he died in his sleep a week later. My father was old school Tenno." Alicia inhaled and Jac nodded. "We were given a chance at a Loki warframe, so no female was going to be 'right' for it." Old bitterness sounded but then vanished. "I showed him." She said with a small smile. "His face was a study when he found me in it."

"Look, Jac..." Alicia said with a wince. "There is a reason that warframes are geared for males and females. The anatomy is different." She finished her scan and shook her head. "That warframe hurt you when it bonded to you, maybe permanently."

"I am Tenno." Jac said calmly. "So I was raised and so I live. I serve." Alicia looked at her, then at Sensei who shrugged.

"Aeron?" The Rhino asked quietly.

"Jac is crazy but not unstable." Aeron said calmly. "We were a good team." Jac's eyes lit on him and he smiled a little. "I apologize formally, Jac. You deserved better than me just vanishing out of your life."

"And I apologize formally." Jac said with a nod. "I had no right to call you what I did. You are not a soulless piece of crap." Alicia looked from one to the other, her wonder apparent even through her warframe. But then Jac crumpled a bit.

"Jac?" Aeron asked. "You okay?"

"Dizzy." Jac said with a swallow. "Been a while since I was out of the warframe." Alicia scanned her again and sighed.

"You need fluids and electrolytes." Alicia said with authority. "Are you going to be a pain?" She asked sourly.

"No." Jac replied. "I do need to talk to Aeron, but it can wait. Aeron... I..."

"We will talk." Aeron promised her. "Let the docs tend you. They will anyway and they get upset when people don't do what they say. Don't get them upset, Jac." He warned her.

Jac smiled and stepped close. She ignored Sensei raising his shotgun again as she threw her arms around his warframe and hugged it tight. She released Aeron and stepped back, nodding to Alicia while ignoring Sensei. She followed Alicia from the room, the Trinity shaking her head in disbelief.

"Ah, Jac..." Aeron said fondly as the door hissed shut behind them. "Don't take it personal, Sensei. She is... well..." He shrugged. "She is Jac."

"She was always like that?" Sensei asked as he slung his shotgun.

"Yeah." Aeron said quietly. "I... I hurt her. It was some time before I realized how badly my vanishing would have hurt her. And then... The War... I looked for her too, but never found her."

"So... why the voice?" Sensei said after a moment.

"A female voice from a Loki?" Aeron asked with a shrug. "It would have bothered people. And then we had all kinds of problems with people trying to infiltrate us for various reasons. Many Tenno would have immediately assumed she was a spy and opened fire. She changed her voice herself before coming to join the ranks. She used the short of her name. Jac for Jaclyn." Sensei nodded at Aeron's explanation. "Bad times."

"That they were." Sensei agreed. "Can we trust her?"

"That I don't know." Aeron said with a frown. "It's been a long time. But, she can keep a secret. She kept her identity and gender from me for almost two years until she was hit bad enough I had to open part of her warframe. Surprised the hell out of me, let me tell you."

"I believe it." Sensei said, examining the shed Loki warframe. "Can you work with her?"

"She obviously hasn't lost her crush on me." Aeron said with a sigh. "But yeah, I can."

"You okay?" Sensei asked.

"Truthfully?" Aeron asked. "I don't know. She is... I don't feel for her the way she feels for me. I never did. But... I do like her."

"We will give her a chance." Sensei said with a nod. "Good shooting by the way."

"Not up to my standards, but okay." Aeron disagreed calmly. "I will improve."

"You shot that Lanka out of that Ancient's tentacle and it's not up to your standards?" Sensei asked incredulous.

"I was aiming at the tentacle." Aeron admitted a bit sheepishly. Sensei stared at him and then started laughing. "Hey! I take misses very seriously."

"You shot the gun out of it's tentacle with a miss?" Sensei was chortling. "You blew the gun out of it's hand! And you are complaining?"

"I..." Aeron sighed and chuckled as well. "All right." Aeron said with a sigh. "I'll stop."

"Aeron..." Sensei said, his mirth subsiding. "I don't know if any of the rest of us could have hit the tentacle or the gun from that range. Either way, it was a heck of a shot."

"I will try not to whine." Aeron agreed. "I have always been a bit... down... Even since I was a kid."

"Fair enough." Sensei said, his mirth gone. "You are very good at what you do, Aeron. Don't ever deny that. Come on." He waved for Aeron to leave the half assembled rifle.

"What?" Aeron asked, unsure. "I have to finish."

"You need to relax." Sensei said with a sigh. "Geez, I am turning into a shrink."

"Sensei, I can't leave a weapon half done." Aeron said, his hands starting to fly as he reassembled the rifle quickly. In less than a minute, it lay gleaming on the table. He picked it up and carried it to a locker that he placed it in and sealed. Sensei was nodding. "Warframe?" Aeron asked.

"We are going to run the obstacle course." Sensei said with a nod. "All the Tenno but Alicia who is busy with Jac. She will run it later, she has no issues with socializing like some of us do. So, you, me, Will, Ric and Two." Aeron chuckled and Sensei looked at him. "What?"

"I was just wondering how stable Ric is." Aeron said with a snort. "Because between my problems, Will's amnesia, Alicia whose love for Will is sort of returned and she likely has problems with that, Two's existential quandary..." Sensei stopped in midstep and Aeron shrugged. "She started as a figment of Serene's imagination, right?"

"A little more than that." Sensei said but he was shaking his head. "And then the three humans who were thralls have issues -understandably- and Amelia who has issues of her own..." He sighed. "Is this a dojo or an asylum?" He asked sourly.

"A dojo." Aeron said with force. "You don't have to be crazy to what we do..."

"But it helps." The pair of Tenno chorused on the final words.

"Ric is remarkably stable." Sensei said with a nod. "A whiz with tech and explosives. Strange sense of humor, but stable."

"Most explosives experts I have known have been a bit...strange." Aeron said in a mild voice. "I look forward to working with him."

"Be warned." Sensei said quietly. "He is a history buff and found an old entertainment media called TV. Something called 'Monty Python'? He liked the accent from the media and copied it."

"Do I want to know?" Aeron asked, only half humorous.

"He calls it 'Londonderry', whatever that means." Sensei said with a shrug. "He is stable, he just talks in an odd accent."

"Londonderry?" Aeron thought hard. "I...think that was someplace on the island of England or was it the island of... Scotland?" He shook his head. "Dang, it's been a long time since I studied ancient Earth geography."

"Northern European continent anyway." Sensei said with a nod. "Mostly gone since the Collapse. He is good with any kind of tech you can name. And he knows better than to tinker with Orokin tech without safeguards." He said as Aeron winced.

"Good." Aeron's voice held old fear. "So, a run and then I talk to Jac. You want to be there?"

"We better keep it formal." Sensei agreed. "I will be there."

"Okay." Aeron agreed. "So, full obstacles, parkour, all that?" Sensei nodded and Aeron grinned under his warframe. "Sounds like fun."