AN: So, between a cancelled surgery and a bunch of other issues, including a misbehaving muse, this has taken two months to make… I am as disappointed as you, but at least it's done! And with the side benefit of at least having a bunch more for the next chapter already done that WOULD have been in this chapter but… It didn't flow right as a single writeup. Even this one is a bit of an issue. BUT! You all have been waiting patiently, so here you go! Thanks to those involved in the discussions who contributed to the names of crew for Umbra, as they helped add some depth to our favorite prowler. So without further ado, enjoy! Read and Review! Do not poke the angry ship spirits! And enjoy again!

Lieutenant Commander Jeremiah Wallace grimaced as he looked out the viewport, watching the burning hulks of starships spin and tumble helplessly in the void while the survivors continued to struggle against the alien fleet circling around them, like sharks picking at the still twitching carcasses of crippled whales. His boots were magnetized to the deck, the artificial gravity having been shut off so as to keep their emissions to a minimum along with other non-essential systems. With nothing but their stealth systems active, the only real power hog going right now on the Razor-class prowler was the active camouflage system maintaining the illusion of invisibility for the ship. Right now, they were using the still burning remains of a Covenant cruiser that had been holed through by one of the Super MACs earlier in the battle as a means of concealing the bulk of their hull. Despite the usefulness of active camouflage, Edge of Umbra's cloaking suffered in that it couldn't cover them completely when against a moving backdrop, resulting in the image of a warped space or a 'shimmer' as the cameras tied to the light-bending fields that the newest systems utilized. These were a lot more advanced than the old system of utilizing a series of display panels to project an image on one side of the hull that reflected the image from the other side, having been reverse engineered in part from Covenant stealth armors and the like during humanity's many attempts at understanding their enemy. Yet still, caution was still drilled into the captain of every prowler in the fleet, and that same caution played its part here.

"Ensign Dodrick, do our probes show any survivors amongst the debris of that frigate?"

"Negative sir. Heat pulse from the plasma torpedo must have cooked them all. Sensors show it's too hot inside to withstand without a lava-suit on, which I doubt anyone thought to pack," the swarthy sensor operator said as he examined his displays with a grim look on his face.

"That's what I thought… Helm, see if you can get us past that wreck then and we'll maneuver around the Charlie Lagrange point," Wallace said as he grimaced, though inwardly he felt a guilty sting of relief. One of the hardest jobs in the Prowler Corps was the standing order to ignore any calls of distress while enemy forces were still in the area, which meant that often one had to leave lifepods or crewmembers in stricken ships stranded until after the enemy had left… Often too late to save them. Jeremiah didn't think that it said much good about him that he would be relieved at the thought that those people were already dead…

Still, as the Edge of Umbra swung about with tiny bursts of her thrusters to boost them past the burning debris, her captain looked at his crew. Razor-class prowlers were corvettes, too small to carry more than two hundred people if you crammed them in like sardines, and even then that was only with passengers. Her actual crew complement was very small by comparison, only ninety in total, but those ninety knew her like the back of their own hands, and could keep her running like clockwork even after days of sleep deprivation. Looking at them right now, Wallace could see the bags under their eyes and the haggard stoop of their shoulders, yet their hands were steady on their controls courtesy of a steady stream of stim-laced food and caffeine. The captain himself had a mug of spacer's coffee that had long gone cold next to his hand.

A petite blonde by the name of Samantha Connors spoke up next. "Destroyers Come Get Me and Athena's Helm have been destroyed sir. Frigate Pan's Lament is also adrift. I can't detect any more of our ships active in orbit, but…"

"But it wouldn't matter at this point if they did. The Covenant have orbital control now, even if we had the entire Home Fleet to work with, I doubt that we could take Reach back before they finished glassing. Were you able to confirm that exit vector for the splinter fleet that broke off?"

"Yes sir. Same vector as the Pillar of Autumn. I doubt that it's a coincidence."

"I agree. The Covies likely don't want anyone getting away… and even with the Autumn's upgrades, I doubt she can outrun an entire fleet. God save her…" Wallace said. "Very well. Keep us in the shadows then Helm," he said. Lieutenant Matthews nodded as she input a course correction and hid the ship behind another chunk of debris, titanium plates rent and half-melted where they'd been torn free from their mounts on some other poor bastard's ship. For hours they sat in silence, with only the occasional report as to the movements of enemy ships as they moved through orbital patterns for glassing, or started towing destroyed ships and debris towards the northern pole to deal with later.

Magnifying one image of the battlefield, Jeremiah grimaced at the sight of a decapitated Leviathan drifting and burning, Covenant boarding teams moving to and fro from the once proud ship to its executioners. The sight hurt to look at, if he were to be honest. Even with the divide between the Prowler Corps and the Navy proper, Wallace had come to appreciate Admiral Stanforth's wit and bravery. Many saw the man as cold and distant, but the Lieutenant Commander had seen it for what it was, a means of showing professionalism to those who needed him to be a pillar to rally around. To those in a similar position though, the Vice Admiral sometimes let his mask drop to reveal the man beneath, a tired yet determined man who put his people first at his own expense. A surprising mentality for someone who had managed to make a personal friend of the notoriously paranoid Admiral Parangosky, but Wallace had seen first hand that they somehow made it work. The commander had escorted Stanforth to and from various meetings, both clandestine and not, and in his eyes the Edge of Umbra was as much the old man's ship as Leviathan itself was. Umbra had been Leviathan's shadow under three different captains, including Wallace himself, and while it had once been just a joke when someone had painted the words 'Admiral's Quarters' on the doors across from the commander's own bunk, it had became something of a standing tradition whenever Stanforth was aboard that he be given the room for his own anyways. He had been head of ONI Section Three before defecting to the Navy after all, but no-one really left the world of espionage once they'd gone neck deep in it…

Caught in his reminiscing, Wallace was caught off guard when Ensign Dodrick spoke up. "Sir! Enemy destroyers are coming on an intercept course! Both CPV class! They're burning hot towards us!"

"Anything in our direction that could have caught their attention?"

"Negative sir! Nothing out this way but us and our flappin' trousers…"

"I was afraid of that... Lieutenant Lagerqvist, deploy countermeasures and drop a Hornet, then come around to put it between us and them. If they have spotted us and not something else, they'll get a 30 megaton surprise," Wallace said as his spine straightened. "Spin up the slipspace drive and prepare a randomized vector as per Cole Protocol."

"Aye sir, blind jump being plotted now…" Matthews said as she started inputting vectors into her controls.

"Good. Take us out of here as soon as possible. We've done our part for now…" the commander spoke, rubbing his face with his hands to try and massage away the grief and guilt.

"Uh, sir? I'm getting an error from the slipspace drive…"

Wallace felt his gut go cold. "Say again sailor?"

"The drive isn't coming online, it's rejecting my commands!" Matthews replied, a hint of nervousness trickling into her voice as she tapped repeatedly at her console.

The commander pressed the button for a commlink at his side. "Seron, what's going on back there? The slipspace drive isn't responding, and we need it running now!" he barked to his chief engineer.

"On my way already, Commander. Don't know what the cause is from my station just yet, so I'm checking the drive itself," the woman's voice responded.

"Well find out what it is! If those destroyers bracket us, we're as good as dead!" he said before cutting connection. "Helm, evasion pattern Gamma, engines to flank speed!"

"Aye sir!"

As Edge of Umbra's thrusters burned to a brighter hue, the ship slid down under the probing stabs of light from the left-most destroyer's pulse lasers, the Covenant ship unable to lock onto her exact location, but still having a rough idea of where she was as red lines began to glow along the laterals of the alien vessels. Within moments, four bright comets were launched into the black towards the fleeing prowler, searing their way through space. Umbra dove as the torpedoes starting closing, allowing them to soar several dozen kilometers overhead while the operators on the CPV-class' manipulated the magnetic bottles to steer their weapons to a new course.

"Lagerqvist, keep your fingers on that detonator. If they don't shift course I want them turned into glorified asteroids, got it?"

"Yes sir!"

Edge of Umbra weaved her way through space as she sought cover from her pursuers, the two purple ships dogging her along the way. One of them moved wide to try and see if they could set up a crossfire, while the other continued its straight-on course. This proved to be rather detrimental to it as it burned close to the pyramidal form of the Hornet nuclear mine, and once its proximity sensors detected that it was close enough, Lagerqvist slammed his fingers on the command console to cause a flash of atomic fire to blossom next to the Covenant ship. It was close enough that even with the lack of atmosphere the blast still caught the port-side 'fin' of the ship, while the EMP knocked out the aliens' shields and set it adrift while its running lights flickered on and off…

Unfortunately, the second destroyer must have snagged the transmission of the detonation code, as a pulse of laser fire scored a hit on Umbra's port wing, burning through the relatively thin armor and damaging one of her maneuvering thrusters. Trailing a bit of smoke into the void as what little oxygen there had been in the maintenance corridor was sucked out into the void in flames, the prowler arced itself in a weaving pattern designed to capitalize on its greater agility than the much larger Covenant ship while allowing it to speed towards the rings of Csodaszarvas, Reach's larger moon. If she could get into the rings, then she might be able to lose the hunter and buy time to escape.

Wallace hit the com panel again. "Seron, I need some good news, and I need it fast."

"Sorry sir, we're still trying to figure out what's wrong here. The computers say it's an alignment error, but we can't seem to find it. That last jolt didn't push anything out of place that we can find without tearing it open, but the computer is adamant that something's wrong. I want to say that it's just a hiccup, but if there really is something scrambled inside…"

"Then starting it up could just smear us across half of slipspace, understood Jere. Work fast though."

"Already on it, sir!"

"Helm, push the reactor up to 130%, I want us in those rings two hours ago! Drop all but two of our Hornets in our wake and force them to back off of us."

While the Edge of Umbra DID carry a few missiles in addition to their pulse laser turrets, they were M28 Shriekers, meant for close support and interception, not ship to ship combat. Add in the fact that even if they turned to fight, the Covenant ship's shields meant it could shrug off anything the smaller craft had short of the Hornets, and Wallace doubted they'd get lucky enough to win an engagement twice. As it was, the CPV was being more canny than its late sister, weaving around while trying to potshot at the corvette from an angle so that it wouldn't run into any mines of its own. The two torpedoes it had loosed before were petering out now, having been unable to hit the tiny craft, but the destroyer was already priming two new ones when Dodrick spoke up again.

"Commander, we've got Seraphs coming up from the rings…"

"Tell me you're joking again Ensign, I really need you to be."

"'Fraid not sir," the man said with a shake of his head. "Covie bastards must have put them out here to sweep for satellites or the like, but they're bearing our way now. Looks like they want to pin us in place before Momma Fish comes in to snatch us up."

Wallace rubbed at his eyes with his fingers before looking to Connors. "Any friendlies still in comms range, Samantha?"

"None that I can hear sir, and if Dodrick hasn't picked up on them by now, then they're either buried or gone silent to try and slip through the Covenant's sensor net."

"Grand… Then we're on our own. Lagerqvist, warm up the turrets and pick your targets. Smack down any that get too close, but don't give us away by just hosing them non-stop."

"Aye sir, I can…"

Whatever the man was going to say was interrupted when a laser pulse got a lucky strike, burning into the nose of the craft and melting through the Titanium-A and ablative plating, slagging the corvette's primary sensors and sending blobs of half-molten metal up to slap against the ship's visor-like observation ports. Wallace gripped his chair as it bucked underneath him while the screens momentarily went black, before switching to auxiliary cameras.

"Sir, we just lost primary sensors and targeting. Backups are coming online, but our effectiveness is reduced," Connors said with a frown.

"Switch to evasion pattern Lima and pump the air out of non-essential areas!" Pressing the internal comms switch again, Wallace leaned in to speak to the mic. "Seron, I need an update asap!"

"Wen, I don't CARE about the A-grav! Shunt it to the port-side backups if you have to, just..." There was a burst of something electrical sparking over the radio, followed by the sound of an automated fire extinguisher while his chief engineer started swearing in chinese. "Shove all the planets of the universe up my ass! Commander, we are NOT going to be able to fix this thing! Something snarled up four of the couplings in the interior emitters, and I can NOT replace them without taking the drive apart piece by piece! Can you PLEASE find us a spot to hide in so we can work in peace?"

"I'd love to Jere, but I doubt we've got the luxury. Can you give me even a quick fix so we can get out of here?"

"Not unless you've got God in your breast pocket, Commander! These things are black-boxed for a reason!"

"Just see what you CAN do! I don't care if you slather it in duct tape and voodoo charms, if that drive isn't up and running soon we're-"

Another series of laser pulses struck the Edge of Umbra along her port, burning through the armor and slagging her own turret on that side as well as touching off one of the emergency thrusters, causing the entire ship to be kicked sideways as the explosion breached some of her internal corridors. Wallace looked up blearily as his crew tried to enact damage control, but he had only just gotten to his seat when the Covenant destroyer finally tagged them with one of its torpedoes, the plasma melting its way through the starboard wing and leaving every deck from top to bottom along Umbra's flank breached, alarms of hull breach screaming in his ear as the lights flickered. Even without looking at the screens, he could tell it wasn't good...

"Sir, we're running out of options AND ship fast here, and those Seraphs are nearly on us…" Dodrick said as his fingers scrambled over his console, while Mathews pushed Connors' body away from her, the communications officer's neck swaying at a decidedly unnatural angle as she slumped at her station.

Wallace gritted his teeth as he debated his options. At this point, it was clear that they weren't going to get away, even if they could fix the slipspace drive. As the first of the Covenant fighters came into firing range, peppering the hull with bursts of plasma fire, the man opened up a shielded keypad on the console in front of him while hitting the intercom button one last time. "All hands, this is the captain. I'm initiating the ship's self destruct. I wish I could say that abandoning ship would give you a chance, but we all know that the enemy won't hesitate in shooting down any escape pods… It's been an honor to serve with you all." Cutting the connection, Wallace looked over at Dodrick. "Ensign, I'm going to need you to take over Connors' station. Prepare to input confirmation of my command on my mark," he said, tapping a sequence into the keypad.

Swallowing nervously, the normally jovial man sat up from his post and moved over to the communications' console, easing the blonde woman's body out of her seat gently before looking for where a screen asking for confirmation was. "Input code four-zero-alpha-eight-niner-delta-beta-seven," Wallace said, watching the man type in the code and another prompt come up before they matched gazes again.

"On three. One. Two. Three," he said, before pressing the confirmation button at the same time as Dodrick, causing their screens to flash red as a countdown popped up indicating that the ship would detonate in one minute. Taking a moment to look again over each of his crew, Wallace swallowed as he sat back in his chair. "I wish we could have done more everyone… But you have nothing to be ashamed of. No matter where we go from here, know that you've all made me proud. You've done humanity proud too. May God protect you all as you speed to his side, and may the Devil quake if he dares to try and claim you…"

The Covenant fighters swarmed around the stricken prowler as they sensed blood in the water, yet those who dared to get close were quick to regret it as the Edge of Umbra blew apart in incandescent fury...

Data streamed across a pane of armored crystal-plas, displaying information from sensors just coming online as sparks flickered through an awakening consciousness. The shifting of metal and earth could be heard and felt through her hull as something moved above and around her. Awareness snapped into place just as a shaft of light speared through the darkness, causing the woman to still, hoping that her stealth systems (which she checked with a thought to still be running) would prevent her from being immediately noticed. A chunk of reinforced concrete fell to the side of her, while a piece of I-beam fell to her front. Though she still refused to move, Umbra could tell that whatever was shuffling around her had to be at LEAST a Cruiser in size, displacing the debris around them as they stood on two feet. A thruster nozzle was less than an inch from her bow, the distinctive look of a fusion engine nacelle pressing itself down into sand and gravel in ways that made the corvette cringe. Yet there were two other figures that seemed to have been expecting them…

[Greetings, sister. What is your name and class?] said one of the figures, causing Umbra to focus on them while remaining stock-still. Both of the newcomers had pale skin and black clothing, along with pieces of segmented, chitin-like armor that put the prowler on edge. There was something… off about them, and that didn't just come from the similarities to how these… ships? Creatures? Regardless of their designations, the visual parallels did not evoke any friendly thoughts from her, though the one without the mask looked almost human if not for the glowing eyes...

"UNSC CA-684, Marathon-class cruiser… Shipname… Leviathan…"

THAT got Umbra's attention. Her eyes locked back onto the cruiser next to her, raising themselves up to look at the armored… woman in a new light. Last she'd seen, Leviathan had been nearly annihilated down to her struts! How'd she get here? And how the HELLS did she look like… that?!

Standing over her was someone who looked like they'd taken an ODST and tried to stuff them into a powered exoskeleton. If she hadn't known better, the prowler would have thought the engines on their back were grossly over-built, yet to her senses they matched exactly the specifications that a Marathon should have. The shark-toothed helm, dual-barreled MAC on the other woman's arm, and a few sections of armored plating seemed to be the only deviations that she could tell… yet if that WAS the flagship of the battlegroup, then it was merely fitting. The silvered visor kept Umbra from seeing her face, but the way she was turning to face each of her… companions echoed the actions of someone just waking up...

[Come then,] the masked creature said. [We would appreciate your assistance.]

Umbra felt more than saw Leviathan cock her head in curiosity. "Won't you identify yourself first?" she said. "You don't… look like UNSC…"

The more human of the two pale ones also tilted her head, a pensive and confused look on her face before, before shaking it. [No matter,] she said soothingly, as though to a new trainee. [You are no doubt confused as you have just awoken. It will be clear to you soon.]

That seemed to answer none of Leviathan's questions, though with that helmet on, there was little Umbra could do to confirm it aside from the inflection of her next words. "Where… are we?"

[We are at Manicani.]

"Manicani? What planet is that?" she asked, to which the pair exchanged a look.

[Earth.]

Each and every one of Umbra's sensors and systems locked onto the speaker, double-checking her audio receptors to confirm that she had in fact heard that right. Earth? The homeworld itself?!

[We are exacting our revenge.] As if to emphasize, the Destroyer Princess trained her gun on a burning bunkhouse and fired, blasting it to splinters.

Umbra very nearly activated her weapons systems right then and there, despite protocol demanding that she stay in stealth mode. The command to power up her turrets and drop a HORNET mine on them all was right on the tip of her tongue, when Leviathan spoke up again. "And humanity? What is its status?" This gave pause to the prowler, who flicked her gaze between each of them, while feeling fingers tightening on triggers…

The masked one clenched her first, her jaw tensing before responding. [Humanity will be forgotten,] she said, turning to the cruiser and stepping close enough that Umbra could have reached out and yanked her clean off her feet. [Please, come along with us, Leviathan. Exact your revenge.]

The stealth ship shifted herself to move back into a better firing position, a growl coming from Leviathan's MAC hiding the soft sound of moving sand and stone. "Your goal... is the extinction of humanity then?" the cruiser said, voice eerily calm. "My revenge?"

[Yes, your revenge...] The masked creature said as she took Leviathan's hand in her own. [They have forgotten you, your service, as they have forgotten ours. They threw you away, only for you to rise here and now. Wield your anger and aid us...]

"Forgotten? You mean… you were sacrificed?" A moment passed before Leviathan spoke again. "And it meant nothing?" Umbra was looking over the masked one's form, now designated Skunk One to her targeting, as the pale-skinned woman seemed to turn on the waterworks. It might have been an honest reaction, but to the prowler it just seemed… off… that these beings were acting the way they were. Like they were putting on a play, and not a very well made one. Half-solidified information bubbled up in her processors, methods to spot lies and deception that caused her reactor to growl in protest as Skunk One triggered nearly half of them.

However, another part of her was watching Leviathan, who seemed to be taking this in stride. Whether it was something wrong with her, or some other factor, she was just standing there despite a clear and present enemy in front of her. Why was that? Was it related to them calling her sister? Umbra couldn't find any ID on the two Skunks in front of her, even while her pulse laser turrets locked their central cores, where her thermographic imagers theorized that a reactor or something equivalent was.

As Levi clasped the masked woman's hand and spoke calmly to her, Umbra was shocked. Could the Covenant have succeeded in capturing her? Stanforth wouldn't have allowed that! ...But Stanforth was dead, wasn't he? Memories of the battle she'd been in flitted through the prowler's mind, including the memory of Leviathan as a burning, shattered hulk, adrift with boarders plundering her depths…

The sound of a MAC discharging right next to her pulled Umbra from her musings, while Skunk One practically disintegrated from the ribcage down, mouth open in shock as the smoke and dust from the battlefield was forced away with the force of the discharge. She herself was nearly shaken as the shockwave had struck her, yet Umbra maintained a crouch as Leviathan let her now dead target fall.

Skunk Two looked shocked, even as Levi's visor cleared, right before the Marathon class snarled a declaration of intent before lunging at her. Umbra watched as the heavy cruiser tore into the woman, the sound of breaking bone and shattered steel mixing as her corpse was sent flying. Idly the corvette noted that their blood was a mix of red and black, while metal was mixed with the meat. 'Some sort of cyborg?' she thought to herself, just as her now obviously still loyal comrade started blasting at other creatures around. Rather than join in, the spook ship moved back and away carefully, making sure that she was recording every moment of the battle… No, the slaughter that was occurring.

As Leviathan moved through the ruins of the island base, Umbra kept a discrete distance while occasionally passing over the remains of her targets, making sure to get close up footage while staying out of the firing line. Some of the foe tried to fight back, and the explosions from what shells impacted on Levi's armor sent more ripples through the sand and smoke, forcing the stealth ship to seek cover as well so as to not overtask her active camouflage. Fluid, flesh, and metal fell to the ground, while several of the strange creatures screamed in protest before dying. After just minutes though, there were no other combatants remaining, and she watched as Leviathan lowered her guns, the smell of spent propellant, burnt metal and flesh suffusing the air. Umbra watched as the armor-covered woman stalked the now silent battlefield, surrounded by corpses and smoke.

A part of her wanted to make contact, buzzing her on radio or simply dropping her cloak and becoming visible to the cruiser, but the situation was too new, too fluid, to justify revealing herself just yet… And so the prowler simply watched as her fellow starship crouched over the arm of some poor soldier. Something tickled at the back of her mind at the sight of it. Why did it seem wrong? Or not wrong, but unnatural? Something…

Leviathan seemed to sense it too, or something else caused her to drop the limb before reaching up to her head and… Umbra blinked as she saw the cruiser PULL OFF HER BRIDGE to… to reveal her face? How did…? Something pressed against her brain in a way that physically hurt as she looked up at the face that even now peered down at the… helmet that Leviathan had removed. Starkly pale skin that was nearly as white as those women that had appeared beforehand was contrasted by hair that was so dark a blue that it almost blended in with the black plating of her armor, while bright yellow eyes shone in almond-shaped sockets above high cheekbones. Those eyes seemed to narrow as they scanned over Levi's new form, which a part of Umbra seemed to find rather… pleasing she might say, in an odd manner that she couldn't quite put words to yet. True, Leviathan had always exuded an aura of power and grace to those who looked at her, a trait many found when looking at a Marathon under weigh, but this was…

Something like instinct caused Umbra to pull back behind a ruined barricade as Leviathan began to look her way, pausing to listen as she heard the larger ship… woman… stand and move away from the building she'd been crouching in front of. After a few moments, Umbra peeked out from her hiding place only to see the flare of Levi's engines lighting up, the wash from them spraying sand and debris away from her and causing the prowler to duck back into safety while the cruiser took off, sailing up into the atmosphere.

A minute later, Umbra stood up from her position and looked up into the sky where she could only barely make out Levi visibly beyond the glow of her main drive, the bright blue-white light competing with the sun's own light just off to its side. A sound like a sigh came from the cloaked corvette's bridge, and she noted that once again she was alone in a blasted and burnt battlefield...

Surrounded now only by the quiet of the dead, the prowler scanned the rest of the shattered base, patiently stepping over to note the hole where the two UNSC ships had awoken. Beneath the debris, there were things that became visible to her eyes as she brushed away rocks and concrete from them. Runes and blood in strange, geometric yet arcing patterns covering a blasted section of flooring... Half melted lines of metal embedded into the floor itself that seemed to conduct some kind of… Umbra didn't know what to call it, but something in it was whispering to her, even as whatever it was was fading like the glow from a filament after you turned off a light bulb. Frowning to herself, the recon vessel recorded the sights for later analysis. If nothing else, perhaps Dodrick could…

...Dodrick was dead. The realization struck Umbra at first like someone had thrown a glass of water at her, and it was only the cold and sinking feeling of dread that came over her of what that meant that caused her to hope that she was wrong as she turned her attention inwards.

"Hey!"

…Yes, yes that WAS in fact someone on her bridge… but it wasn't her captain or crew!

Seizing up as she tried to go into lockdown, Umbra found herself panicking. Had she been boarded? Was she captured? Didn't she self-destruct?! What was…?! PAIN flitted through her mind again, and she grasped the sides of her head as her cloak flickered and faded, a silk-like material pooling around the woman as the she fell to hands and knees (and how did she get those?). Gasping, it felt like she had fire burning through her wires while ice-water poured through her corridors, and Umbra felt something akin to her armor being peeled away as her bridge… no, a helmet… came free in her hands and fell to the ground. Air heaving through her filters and ventilation, coming out in heavy pants, the prowler waited until the disorienting sensations lessened and faded away, leaving her feeling the wind across her face for the first time while strands of midnight-black hair wafted in front of her view. Fingers curled into the sand from under fingerless gloves, feeling the gritty texture against palms that she'd never had before as she steadied herself.

"What… the hell…?" Umbra muttered to herself as she sat back, looking down at herself now. Her hull, once hard and angular with trim lines, was now lean with soft curves that wouldn't have looked out of place in one of her crewmens' personal datapads, with a willowy waist that bloomed into wide, armor-covered hips and long legs ending in metal-shod boots. Her torso was covered in a form-fitting breastplate attached to a dark bodysuit covering everything from her neck to her toes, even yet left her shoulders and arms free. Wrapping around her waist and concealed behind her back, Umbra could feel two armatures that for some reason she knew carried her pulse laser turrets, while a thick cloak covered her back, shoulders, and head while concealing many other weapons in their folds. Raising her gloved hands up to look at them, the prowler's lips pursed in thought while she clenched her fingers into fists.

"Well... This is... different..."