Shion can hear everyone's voices as she approaches the bridge.

"-Ironic that she landed in the same spot as when we first met."

"Well pardon me if I don't find this situation very amusing."

"Why not?"

"Because she's missing her legs and one of her arms! What the hell is wrong with you!?"

"You know Hammer, Tony's right, and if you wanna take this so lightly maybe I'll have you be the one to go out and grab her."

"H- Hey wait captain!"

"What's going on in here?" Shion asks breaking up the arguing between Hammer, Tony, and Matthews. "I don't see what the surprise is that you all wanted me to see," it looked like everyone was there, but aside from that she didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"W- Well chief you see we found...erm..." Allen kept stuttering almost as if he didn't want to say.

"You should look for yourself" Matthews says from his seat.

"What are you-" Shion stops in the middle of her sentence, she sees something... SOMEONE, stuck in the window behind Matthews. "I- It's you... Kos-mos..." Shion felt like crying... Maybe she was crying, Kos-mos looked atrocious. Her legs and right arm were completely torn off, much of her circuitry was showing, and she was covered in soot and dirt. But it was still her, it was still Kos-mos...

"I know she ain't in the best shape, but I mean at least she's in one piece... Uh, mostly" Matthews comes over and put a hand on Shion's shoulder. "I figured you could do more with most of her than you could with none of her."

"And although I can't tell until we scan her, based just on observation it looks like we can repair the damage done to her" the professor pipes in, assistant Scott excitedly nods next to him.

Am I... Still dreaming?

"Hey chief you gonna say something?" Allen looks at her with a concerned expression on his face.

"Eh she'll feel better once she sees her up close and fixed," Jr suggests, "hey Allen why don't you go out there and grab her for us."

"Hey wait why do I gotta be the one to- Oh you know what nevermind," Allen is surprisingly fast to give up arguing, "it'll make the chief feel better anyway so sure. Umm hey captain where were the space suits again?"

"Oh gosh, the artificial gravity really makes you realize how heavy she is," Allen gripes as he carries Kos-mos inside (although it was more like dragging).

"Allen..." He looks up when he hears Shion's voice "I- can I please... See her?" Shion then holds out her arms and it takes Allen a second to figure out what she means.

"oh! You mean you want to- Yeah okay," Allen holds Kos-mos up for Shion to take from him. She manages much better than Allen did, in fact it embarrasses Allen a bit, she makes it look like Kos-mos barely weighs anything at all.

Shion holds Kos-mos up with one arm and her face with the other, taking a closer look at her Shion could see much of Kos-mos' artificial hair and skin had been singed and in some areas it had completely burned off "oh Kos-mos, you poor thing..."

Allen just stands there awkwardly, feeling a bit like a third wheel."Umm chief?" Allen finally cuts in "do you maybe want to take her to the professor's lab now? You can't help her by just standing there," he hoped to make Shion feel a bit better, but she didn't seem to look any less upset.

"Ah yes, we should get started huh," the professor pipes in, completely oblivious to the despair Shion's feeling. "Aww the poor thing does appear to be in dire need of repair, lucky for you we're on the case. Isn't that right assistant Scott?"

"Yep, yep, and it shouldn't take long with the four of us all working together," assistant Scott excitedly gestures to Allen and Shion "you, me, the professor, and assistant 2!"

"HEY I HAVE A NAME YOU KNOW!"

"Pffff hahaha," Allen suddenly jolts at the sound of Shoin... Laughing... It felt like she hadn't done that in forever, she had been so depressed lately he had almost forgotten how she sounded when happy. "Alright, you all have a point. Now we should get you somewhere I can work on you, Kos-mos."

"Here let me help you carry her."

Allen sighs, glad to see Shion back to normal again. She is good at acting though... I sure hope she's sincere this time, he only hoped that if she wasn't sincere that she could be actually happy once Kos-mos was up and functioning again. He goes to take off the space suit but is interrupted by a banging sound.

"Ah! Don't drop her!"

"I- I'm sorry she's a lot heavier than I thought!"

"Assistant Scott, be careful! Remember you need love and courage to build or fix any kind of robot. AND THERE IS NO LOVE IF YOU DROP IT!"

"I'M SORRY PROFESSOR, I'VE FAILED YOU!"

"Goodness you two are acting like fools, stop messing around and give me a hand!" Shion then starts making her way to the door.

"H- hey chief wait for me!"

"See that one there," a dark skinned hand reaches up and points at cloud that's slowly drifting across the sky, "that one kinda looks like Yeshua."

"Actually, T-elos, it appears to be a cloud"

"Dammit Kos-mos, you know that's not how this works!" T-elos reaches over and thumps Kos-mos lightly on the forehead, the two girls are laying side by side on the grassy field of their dreamscape. T-elos then looks back toward the sky, "alright, don't fuck up this time. See that cloud? Tell me, what does that one look like to you?"

"It appears to be a cloud."

"Come on Kos-mos! I'm actually making an attempt here," T-elos sighs, "this is not how things were supposed to play out. I should've become one with Mary, not lay here staring at clouds with my failed prototype."

"What good would have even come from becoming one with Mary? Why is it that you were so fixated on that, T-elos?" Kos-mos turns towards T-elos and waits for an answer, she stars at her for quite a while but T-elos won't answer her at all. Kos-mos frowns, "I don't see why you refuse to tell me, but if you don't want to I suppose I can't force you to tell me." She turns to look back up to the sky, a cloud that looks like Jr's dog floats into view and Kos-mos weighs her options on whether she should mention it to T-elos or just keep fucking with her.

"Well now that one looks like Yeshua if he were hunched over and really sad," T-elos turns her attention back to the cloud that she had pointed out earlier that had now begun to fold in on itself, "where even is Yeshua anyways? I wouldn't think someone like him would have many places to be."

Kos-mos thinks about it for a moment, she had only talked to chaos occasionally, but according to Mary's memories he was important to both her and the universe itself. "He did mention that he felt like he was needed here for something, perhaps he found out what exactly that was."

"Yeah, maybe..." T-elos stretches out but doesn't say anything else, and for a few minutes there's nothing but a slight breeze to go with the comfortable silence between them.

"... I um"

Kos-mos turns her head quickly in surprise when T-elos begins talking again.

"I wasn't entirely sure why I needed to become one with Mary, to be completely honest. I just... Didn't have any other purpose. That's what I was told and trained to do." T-elos was trying her best to hide any emotion that tried to make it's way out as she spoke, the expression on her face was unreadable but it definitely wasn't anything positive.

"T-elos..." Kos-mos felt like she should try and help T-elos somehow, but she didn't know how comfortable T-elos would be with her... No, I can't simply lie here and stare at her the whole time. As T-elos continues to stare at the sky with a pained expression Kos-mos shifts closer, and then slowly wraps her arms around the other girl. T-elos stiffens up a bit after being pulled into Kos-mos' embrace but also makes no move to push her away.

T-elos doesn't even try to hug Kos-mos back, but Kos-mos still feels a good bit of comfort by hugging her, and with any luck T-elos felt the same way. While they hug Kos-mos can't help but think back to the last time she'd been hugged herself, as she closes her eyes she can picture the bittersweet expression on Shion's face perfectly. If she had kept track of time correctly that had almost been one whole year ago.

Then something odd happens, a different image comes to Kos-mos' mind. It feels similar to the memory she had just been thinking of, but she doesn't remember anything like this happening.

She appears to be staring face to face with the red testament, Kevin Winnicot. His mouth moves like he's saying something, but Kos-mos can't hear him at all. As the scene plays out she's overcome with a feeling she can't quite describe, it's like a strange mix of happiness, sadness, and... Fear?

The scene suddenly ends there, Kos-mos' eyes shoot open as T-elos shoves Kos-mos off of her. Based on the bewildered expression on her face Kos-mos guesses she had experienced something similar to her.

"What... Was that?" Kos-mos can't answer her, neither of them know what exactly they had seen or felt then.

It was a bit of a long walk down to the lab, and Scott would complain every 2 minutes that she was really cold from floating around in space for months at a time. Allen and the professor didn't even help carrying her at all, claiming to be their 'moral support'.

But they did eventually get Kos-mos down to the lab, and into her pod (which Shion was now glad she thought to bring). Without taking even a moment to breath Shion swiftly goes to hook up all the equipment needed to scan and repair Kos-mos. Her and the professor start up the monitors surrounding Kos-mos' pod, and send Allen and Scott off to go check their supplies.

"Luckily a lot of her internal damage seems to be minimal," Shion says to herself as she reads through the diagnostics, "a few of her components have frozen over, but if we're careful while thawing them they'll only need minor repairs." Shion sighs and scrolls past the status of Kos-mos' inner mechanisms and down to the bigger problem, "it just had to be her right arm didn't it? Not only are we going to need to repair it, but we'll have to rebuild a large portion of her weapons."

The professor doesn't seem to be paying too much attention, and is just listing off the things they'd need to repair her legs. Shion still continues talking though, "R-cannon, R-blade, R-drill... Ugh, what else did we put in there?" She begins pacing around as she continues talking to herself, "those nanomachines aren't the easiest to replace either, and I'm going to make sure we have the right materials to synthesize her some new artificial skin. And we're going to have to clean her out entirely, she's been out here so long she's probably coated in space dust..."

She reaches down and runs a finger over Kos-mos' skin, getting dust and ash all over her finger as she does. "Yep, that's definitely all going to need to be cleaned off... Oh, and I just remembered she stored away a few of her weapons using the UMN. Dammit, I'm going to have to change that now that it's gone." She looks through the data again checking which one's they still have "luckily I still have the blueprints for all these, I'll have to thank Miyuki for thinking ahead and sending them with me... Oh maybe instead of storing them as data, I can change the designs of her weapons to implement nanomachines similar to how her R weapons do. That way she can just store them away in different compartments-"

Shion continues pacing around and rambling on to herself for a while before something occurs to her, "this is going to be a big project for the four of us... We have to repair so much of Kos-mos, and rebuild and redesign practically all her weapons. Are we even going to be able to handle all that?"

"It's nothing to worry about Shion," the professor says, finally noticing her, "it will take some time, but we can repair her no problem."

Suddenly Allen comes back into the room and exclaims "chief, we have a problem!"

"ASSISTANT 2!" The professor shouts at Allen "YOUR TIMING IS HORRIBLE, GO BACK AND TRY AGAIN!"

Shion ends up having to convince Allen to just come back and tell her what's wrong because he got all mopey and tried to actually do what the professor said and try and have 'better timing'. Allen does eventually stop whining though, "w-well me and Scott-" the professor looks like he's about to complain about Allen not calling him ASSISTANT Scott, but Shion glares at him before he can. "-Were looking through the supplies, and I uh... I don't think we have everything we need."

Shion looks disappointed after hearing that "what exactly are we missing?"

Assistant Scott walks in with two large boxes and Allen takes the opportunity to just show Shion what they're missing. "See we have most of the stuff we need, but we're short a few supplies needed to make her electrical circuitry system."

"Well that's a problem... How long do you suppose it would take to get a message to the dammerung?"

"I'm not sure chief, last time it took almost 2 weeks for them to get the message and send one back..."

"Don't be silly you two," the professor interrupts them, "We don't need to go looking for that ship, we can just get some from one of the planets nearby."

"P- Professor we are literally in uncharted space," Shion resisted every urge to just outright tell him that his idea was completely stupid.

"That doesn't mean no one else is here."

"No that's actually exactly what it means." Suddenly she remembers the strange people that had attacked them a few days ago, "at least... I think so." She shakes off the thought, "anyway like I was saying Allen-"

"HEY DON'T IGNORE ME!"

"-Do you think we can get a transmission to them?"

"W- Well Mary and Shelly should be back with the supplies we sent them to get soon. I mean I'd feel bad sending them back out again so soon but..."

"Right, we'll wait for them then. If we're lucky maybe they'll have grabbed the supplies we need anyway." Shion looks through the list of necessary repairs once more, "in the meantime let's get to work on the frame for her arm and legs. We can worry about the weapons after we have all the basics done."

Shion sees Scott make his way in with a few more boxes, so after she sends Allen and the professor off she goes to assign him some work. "Hey Scott!"

"Oh, hi Shion. Is there something you need me to do?"

"Yeah actually, you were the one who designed the armor for her last model right?"

"Y- Yeah, I mean I'm no fashion designer but..."

"Oh no, it was great! Actually if you're okay with it, I'd like you to design a new set for her so I can focus on the repairs." Scott nods in agreement and Shion smiles, "great, thank you Scott~"

Welp, She thinks, time to get to work.